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When the audiences dwindled, Mink ordered us to pack up everything except the end tent. The children trouped past on their way out. Minnie waved and left the tail end to come over.
The tiny girl stood on her tiptoes to look in at the mummy. A smile lit her face. “Lady T. is pleased you’re here,” she said. “She looks so pretty when she’s happy.” I would have to find Minnie a doll more her size.
The giant hunched through the curtain door from the center tent. “Good-bye,” Minnie said to the giant, her expression solemn, and he spared her a small smile. I found it odd she should bid him farewell, for she followed right after him. Still, she was a small child, with a small child’s logic.
It grew dark, and we had packed up all except for one small tent lit eerily from within, when men from the town appeared again on the lot. Mink, lamp in hand, welcomed them through the canvas door. He left his lamp outside, where Al Bonfiglio loomed, arms akimbo—a warning that there should be no trouble. My curiosity got the better of me. Bonfiglio leered at me as I approached, and I almost turned back, but he motioned me in.
The dimly lit interior smelled of sweat, tobacco, and whiskey. Men pressed around a small platform in front of dark curtains. A sinuous piping began, an oboe perhaps, but I couldn’t see the musician. Ceecee slid through the curtains, now clothed in diaphanous veils that hinted of curves.
Ceecee commenced a snaky foreign dance of insinuation, and there were murmurs and embarrassed coughs. As Ceecee undulated, the veils swirled to suggest but never reveal the truth of what lay beneath. The dance disturbed my senses, for I knew him to be a man, but my eyes kept on forgetting. His gyrations were a distorted reflection of the dancer in my dreams—a lie wrapped in silks and candlelight. I looked nervously at those around me. This was dangerous fare. Someone could take strong offense if disgust overwhelmed desire. But the audience was swept up in the illusion. Men whistled and called encouragement. Lust hung in the air like a mist.
Ceecee slowly peeled away veils and dropped them to the floor. Finally no more than a filmy skirt surrounded his hips and two scarves crisscrossed his chest. He ran his hands up and down his body, taunting the audience with their unvoiced question. I squirmed, aware of the breathing around me. He slid the gauzy sliver from his left shoulder—and revealed a man’s smooth chest. Someone laughed, and the man in front of me groaned, but before discontent could turn to anger, Ceecee stepped back into shadow and drew the other scarf aside. Perhaps it lay in the way he hunched his shoulder, or maybe it was a trick of light, but beneath the scarf I could make out the beginni
ngs of a snowy mound. Ceecee narrowed his eyes and smiled spitefully as he let the scarf slip into place again. He made a moue at the audience, twirled, and bowed.
“Is that all?” a man cried harshly, and I feared for the worst, but Ceecee smirked, then slowly drew his skirt past his knees and swayed his hips, revealing one shaved leg and one hairy. I realized I had leaned forward with the others—repulsed yet unable to look away.
The skirt rose past his thighs, and I clenched my fists, fearing a fight, but the audience gasped.
The lantern went out.
“Thank you for coming,” announced Mink. “Please follow the outside light to the door.”
I stumbled after the rubes, as stunned by the ambiguity I had seen as they.
“How does he do that?” I asked Bess when we pulled over to sleep miles away. Everyone else had gone to bed, and we were alone by the fire. “It was a trick, right?”
“Oh, there’s tricks of the trade, all right,” she said as she combed out her beard. “I wager you didn’t know that half of all cooch dancers you see are men.”
That was a shock. I lowered my voice. “Is he a homosexual?” I couldn’t believe I had asked a lady that question, but Bess wasn’t an ordinary lady.
“I wouldn’t care if he was a nancy-boy,” she said. “They love other men, that’s all. Pain is what he loves. Pain and laudanum.”
“Laudanum!”
“Laudanum was why he was a geek when I first met him,” she said.
“It’s true?” I asked. “He earned a living biting the heads off live chickens and rodents?”
“Yes, being a he-she is a step up for Theodore Spittle,” Bess answered. “Back in New Jersey, when it was just Mink, a mediocre sword swallower, and me, we joined a cheap tent show for a spell. There we met Theodore Spittle, enslaved to laudanum so bad that he sat in a pit, drooling, and killed chickens with his bare hands for dope money. He hates it that I saw him like that. He fancies himself a slick and dangerous creature, and he prides himself on terrifying others, but every time he starts to scare me, I remind him of those days and how pathetic he really is.”
“How did he end up a he-she with Mink’s outfit, then?” I asked.
“Theodore Spittle cut a man’s face up for taunting him,” Bess said, “and Mink liked that. A little man like Mink needs minions to do his dirty work. In the confusion before the law arrived, Mink spirited him away. He weaned Spittle off the dope and had someone teach him tricks, and Spittle became Ceecee, the Star of the Show. In his spare time he performs nasty little duties for Mink. But if Ceecee is back on the dope, he’s not reliable. If I find a bottle of syrup or some such in Ceecee’s care, I’m going to enjoy handing it to Mink. Ceecee won’t be star of the show for long. Mink won’t trust him to wipe his own ass.” Bess flung her comb into her bag like game into a sack.
I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. Bess was right. It helped to think of Ceecee as a pathetic geek rather than a dope fiend with a razor. “I guess Billy Sweet should watch his mice,” I said.
Bess laughed. “You’re a huckleberry above a persimmon, you are, boy.”
We were interrupted by Miss Lightfoot, all of a fluster. “Come quick,” she said to Bess. “The giant is vomiting something fierce.”
Bess took off at a run and I followed, but it wasn’t to the giant she ran.
“Send for a doctor, you damn fool,” she yelled at Mink. “What kind of businessman are you, who doesn’t protect his investments?”
“Wasn’t that bottle of stomach bitters enough?” he complained.
Bess snorted. “That’s probably what made him puke.”
