WATER FOR ELEPHANT - Sara Gruen [66]
DON’T HAVE MONEY?
WHAT HAVE YOU GOT?
WE’LL TAKE ANYTHING!
I pass a newspaper box, and the headline reads PRETTY BOY FLOYD STRIKES AGAIN: MAKES OFF WITH $4,000 AS CROWDS CHEER.
Less than a mile from the lot, I pass a hobo jungle. There’s a fire in the center and people stretched out around it. Some are awake, sitting forward and staring into the fire. Some are lying back on folded clothes. I’m close enough to see their faces and to register that most of them are young—younger than me. There are some girls there, too, and one couple is copulating. They’re not even in the bushes, just a little farther from the fire than the others. One or two of the boys watch in a disinterested manner. The ones who are asleep have taken off their shoes but tied them to their ankles.
An older man sits by the fire, his jaw covered with stubble, scabs, or both. He has the sunken face of a person with no teeth. We make eye contact and hold it for a long time. I wonder why he’s looking at me with such hostility until I remember I’m wearing an evening suit. He has no way of knowing that it’s about the only thing separating us. I fight an illogical urge to explain this and continue on my way.
When I finally reach the lot, I stop and gaze at the menagerie tent. It’s huge, outlined against the night sky. A few minutes later I find myself standing in front of the elephant. I can only see her in silhouette and even then only after my eyes have adjusted to the light. She’s sleeping, her great body still but for her slow, slumbered breathing. I want to touch her, to lay my hands on that rough, warm skin, but I can’t bring myself to wake her up.
Bobo is lying in the corner of his den, with one arm stretched out over his head and the other resting on his chest. He sighs deeply, smacks his lips, and then rolls onto his side. So human.
Eventually I make my way back to the ring stock car and settle on the bedroll. Queenie and Walter both sleep through my arrival.
I LIE AWAKE UNTIL DAWN, listening to Queenie snore and feeling utterly miserable. Less than a month ago, I was within days of an Ivy League degree and a career at my father’s side. Now I’m one step away from being a bum—a circus worker who has disgraced himself not once, but twice, in as many days.
Yesterday, I wouldn’t have thought it possible to top throwing up on Nell, but I believe that last night I managed to do just that. What the hell was I thinking?
I wonder if she will tell August. I have brief visions of the bull hook flying at my head and then even briefer visions of getting up right now, this minute, and walking back to the hobo camp. But I don’t, because I can’t bear the thought of abandoning Rosie, Bobo, and the others.
I’ll pull myself together. I’ll stop drinking. I’ll make sure I’m never alone with Marlena again. I’ll go to confession.
I use the corner of my pillow to wipe tears from my eyes. Then I squeeze them shut and conjure up an image of my mother. I try to hang on to it, but before long Marlena has replaced her. Coolly distant, when she was watching the band and jiggling that foot. Glowing, while we were spinning around the dance floor. Hysterical—and then horrified—in the alley.
But my final thoughts are tactile: the underside of my forearm lying above the swell of her breasts. Her lips under mine, soft and full. And the one detail I can neither fathom nor shake, the one that haunts me into sleep: the feel of her fingertips tracing the outline of my face.
KINKO—WALTER—WAKES me a few hours later.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” he says, shaking me. “Flag’s up.”
“Okay. Thanks,” I say without moving.
“You’re not getting up.”
“You’re a genius, you know that?”
Walter’s voice rises by about an octave. “Hey, Queenie—here girl! Here girl! Come on, Queenie. Give him a lick. Come on!”
Queenie launches herself onto my head.
“Hey, stop it!” I say, raising an arm protectively because Queenie’s tongue is rooting in my ear and she’s dancing on my face. “Stop it! Come on now!”
But she is unstoppable,