Orphan Eleven Page 9

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She nodded uncertainly.

  “I’m going to make it spin.”

  He hadn’t believed her when she said she didn’t get motion sick. This was a test.

  Diavolo fiddled with the mechanism behind the plywood circle.

  The air smelled of pomade and sweat. On the other side of the tent, a woman balanced another woman on her head. How was that even possible? A man dressed in purple pants stood on a ladder, juggling rings; a woman sat reading a book with her legs bent in a way it wasn’t possible for legs to bend. Her toes turned the pages.

  Lucy’s limbs went stiff.

  “Ready? Stay still, count, and breathe.” Diavolo cranked the lever of a motor behind the plywood circle. The motor caught with a ch-tick-ch-tick-ch-tick, then began to whir. Lucy started to spin.

  Everything went upside down. Right-side up. Upside down. The whirring grew louder; the machine spun faster. The world was a streaming swoosh round and round.

  “Good,” Diavolo shouted as the wheel began to slow. And the whoosh of color became the sky and the ground and the shapes of recognizable things. Upside down, right-side up. Then back and forth, until finally the wheel came to a stop.

  “Not bad,” Diavolo said.

  Lucy’s head felt woozy, but she smiled at Diavolo. She liked how encouraging he was. Maybe Bunk and Rib had been wrong about him. He could be difficult, but he could also be nice.

  “All right.” He nodded.

  She waited for him to unstrap her legs. She was looking forward to stepping off the wheel and standing on solid ground.

  “Okay, then. Keep counting and breathing, like we practiced. Don’t decide to scratch your head or shoo a fly or wipe your nose. Do you understand?” He stared hard at her with his riveting eyes.

  Lucy gave a small nod. Hadn’t she already passed the test?

  “We won’t make it spin. Not yet,” he called to her.

  That was good. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  A minute later, she heard metal clanking. She didn’t move her head to look. She would show Diavolo that she could follow instructions.

  A flurry of motion. Out of the corner of her eye, something shiny: blades lodged in a table, handle sides up.

  Knives!

  Diavolo had one in each hand. He was tossing them into the air and catching them by their handles.

  He was going to throw knives at her!

  The blood drained out of her head. Sweat dripped down her back. Her heart flung itself against her chest.

  No! Please no!

  She heard the first knife wing toward her and the sudden startling whap as the blade sank into the wood.

  The sweat went cold on her face.

  And then another whizzed by and she heard the whap as it sank in near her foot. Her knees shook.

  Her head felt smoky. She was in a hazy dream. His words snaked back through her ears. “Don’t decide to scratch your head or shoo a fly or wipe your nose.”

  Was this true, or was it a trick, the way Miss Holland’s lessons had been?

  She was afraid to close her eyes. Afraid to open them. One blink, one wrong breath could result in a blade through her arm, her ribs, or even her heart. She counted tick tock, tick tock, like a clock. But each time a knife gripped the board, her teeth chattered and her hands shook.

  She couldn’t breathe evenly. She couldn’t breathe at all. A gasp lodged in her throat.

  A blade buzzed by her ear.

  Her head swum. Her knees felt like mush. If she moved, she would be sliced in two. A knife would separate her head from her body. It would impale her.

  She closed her eyes. Memories came in a blinding rush: Papa playing the harmonica when she was a little girl. Dilly learning her times tables. Mama’s face when she realized her new husband, Thomas Slater, was not who she thought he was.

  Finally the whizzing stopped.

  Lucy’s eyes popped open. Knives were stuck deep into the wood, forming an outline of her body. A knife pulled at her hair.

  “Left hand is off,” Diavolo growled, pulling out each knife and throwing it on the ground with an angry clank. “Focus, Diavolo!” he shouted.

  “Again,” he barked. “I need more accuracy before we start the spin.”

  The spin?

  A sickening feeling came over her. He was going to throw the knives while she spun on the wooden circle! She would be his moving target.

  Lucy’s hands held the handles so tightly, they ached when she let go. She leaned down to unbuckle her ankles, her fingers stiff and clumsy, the pancakes and sausages from breakfast surging up into her throat.

  “Stop!” Diavolo roared.

  Lucy leapt off the stand, her knees buckling underneath her, but she caught herself.

  “You can’t leave. You’re my target girl!” he shouted.

  Lucy ran like she’d never run before, the words spinning in her head.

  I am no one’s target girl.

  Her head hurt. She breathed in the sickening smell of puke and tried to brush off the globs of pancakes stuck to the sequins and jewels.

  But all she could think was: she had made an enemy of Diavolo!

  She ran back to his dressing tent and grabbed her old orphanage dress, sticking the precious paper and pencil inside.

  The gong sounded. People thronged to the cook tent. Lucy threaded through the crowd in the opposite direction, heading for the elephant house.

  Lucy ran around by the riverbank, where there were fewer people. She stood out in the sequined dress. She loved the shoes, though. It felt so good to run in shoes that fit.

  When she got to the elephant house, she slowed down. She could hear the scrape of shovels next door in the camel house, but the elephant house was quiet. Grace and Doris were probably on their way to the cook tent, like most everybody else.

  Baby was tethered more in the pond than out. Jenny was tied nearby. She regarded Lucy without surprise, as if she’d been waiting for her. Then she sucked water into her trunk and shot it across her back.

  Lucy went into the feed room and changed into her orphanage dress. Back outside, she washed her face in the cool pond water, took the button and the silk bag out of her shoe and put them in her pocket, and did her best to clean herself up. She was just finishing when a blast of water hit her. She leapt back.

  But it was only Baby. Baby sucked in another trunkful and sprayed Lucy again.

  Lucy grinned. Then she noticed that Jenny’s food basket had rolled out of her reach. Lucy pulled it closer to the elephant and set it right-side up. Jenny went back to eating.

  Lucy waited to see if Baby would squirt her again, but she seemed content now. Had Baby wanted to tell Lucy that she needed to attend to Jenny’s basket?

  Grace and Doris would be back in a little while. Lucy needed to figure out what to do, but she was still too upset to think clearly.

  Reading soothed her. It got her mind off her worries and helped her calm down. She looked around for a book.

  Near the haystack was a small table and a canvas chair. On top of the table was a notebook. It wasn’t a book, but it was something. She pulled the chair near the elephants and began reading.

  Sweat forms a line around an elephant’s toenails. Jenny likes when I place a cool rag on her feet. Baby has sensitive skin. I have been applying salve to her legs twice a day, she read, when suddenly an old cabbage plopped onto Lucy’s lap. Lucy handed the cabbage back to Baby, who wrapped her trunk around it and shoved it in her mouth. Then her trunk found Lucy’s face.

  The elephant wanted something. What was it?

  They had food and water. The chain that tied one foot of Baby’s and one of Jenny’s did not seem too tight.

  Lucy went back to reading. Elephants respond to kindness. You will never get them
to do their best work, unless they trust you. This made her think about Mackinac, Grundy, and Miss Holland. She could cross out “elephant” and write in “orphan” and give the notebook to them.

  Now a carrot hurtled through the air and landed on Lucy’s foot. Baby again.

  Lucy offered the carrot to Jenny. Jenny wrapped her trunk around it and put it in her mouth.

  Baby waded closer and Lucy went back to reading, but no sooner had she begun than she was hit by another cabbage.

  Baby didn’t want her to read?

  Across the way a cat leapt onto the fence. It was just the four of them. Jenny, Baby, Lucy, and the cat.

  Lucy’s eyes lingered on the tight words handwritten in blue. These were Grace’s elephant training notes. They were important.

  Lucy began reading, “ ‘Respect is key to the relationship,’ ” but this time the words went into her mind and came out her mouth.

  The sound of her own voice startled her. She stopped.

  Baby sent a carrot flying her way.

  There was no mistaking what Baby wanted now. She wanted to hear Lucy read. Lucy began again. “ ‘Respect goes two ways.’ ”

  Her voice sounded strange and deeply familiar.

  Jenny got more carrots, shoving them into her mouth, the crunch deep and satisfying.

  “ ‘Unless you first win an animal’s friendship, they cannot be trained. Wild and dangerous as elephants are, you must always respect them.’ ”

  Lucy’s hands trembled, but she read on and Baby stopped throwing food. Lucy had figured out what the little elephant wanted. She kept reading as if she were in a trance. It was just Lucy and the elephants. No one else could hear.

  A few minutes later she heard footsteps approaching. She leapt up, knocking the chair over, ran to the table, and returned the notebook. She said a silent goodbye to Jenny and Baby and slipped down to the river, drawn by the rushing sound. She found a large, smooth rock on the bank and sat down to think.

  Betts had been nice. Maybe she would take Lucy on? Diavolo said Betts needed someone more experienced. And Diavolo was Betts’s boss. He was everyone’s boss. If he hated her, he wouldn’t let anyone give her an apprenticeship.

  She could hide in the train. But it would be five days until they left. And where was the train, anyway?

  The map at Jabo’s didn’t have the train. Or maybe it did and she hadn’t noticed it. She’d go back and look. Jabo would be there. He’d know what to do.

  She ran back around by the horse corrals and out to his train car, hoping no one would tell Diavolo where she was. He was the owner. He could force her to be his target girl.

  Jabo’s train car was empty. She headed straight for the map to see where the train was.

  She wanted to wait for Jabo, but she didn’t dare. Jabo’s home would be the first place Diavolo would look.

  Lucy was headed down the stairs when she spotted Nico and Jabo.

  “Here she is!” Nico sprinted toward her.

  “Indeed,” Jabo said. “Come. Let’s sit inside, shall we? We have some significant matters to discuss.”

  One look at their faces and Lucy knew they knew what had happened. Probably everybody knew by now.

  She followed them back inside. Jabo sighed when he sat down in his upholstered arm chair, kicking his legs onto the footrest. Nico pulled up the workbench. He sat on one end, Lucy on the other.

  Jabo wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “You, my dear, have had quite the morning.”

  Lucy nodded.

  “Diavolo dedicated three hours to training you to be his target girl. And now he’s furious. I’m afraid Diavolo takes offense easily and often. And some of the roustabouts who work for him are not as refined as one would wish. They are, well…the word brute comes to mind,” Jabo said.

  Lucy wrote quickly, then handed her paper to Jabo.

  I didn’t know he was a knife thrower.

  Jabo nodded. “That occurred to me. Even so, I’m wondering if this unfortunate situation could have been averted if you had been better able to communicate with him.”

  He wanted me because I don’t speak, Lucy wrote.

  “Ah, of course.” Jabo made a clicking noise. “Thank you, by the way, for your letter, Lucy. I’m sorry I have not had an opportunity to respond until now.”

  Lucy nodded.

  “You have a well-reasoned argument and an impressive facility with the written word. However, I’m not convinced that your silence is in your best interest. I believe it is a way of limiting yourself that you will soon outgrow.”

  Lucy frowned.

  “If you don’t believe me, look at the stars.” Jabo pointed to the window.

  What stars? It was the middle of the afternoon.

  “Go look,” Jabo said.

  Lucy went to the window and peered up at the blue sky and the fluffy white clouds.

  Jabo came up next to her. “You don’t see any, do you?”

  Lucy shook her head.

  “I can’t see them either,” Jabo admitted. “But they are there waiting for the cloak of night. And then we will see them shining brilliant, luminous. Glittering sparks of light in the dark sky.”

  Lucy cocked her head.

  “I see your voice just as clearly,” Jabo whispered. “It’s a star inside you waiting to shine.”

  Lucy bit her lip, shaking her head. He didn’t understand. Not speaking kept her safe.

  “I’m not the only one who believes this,” Jabo said. “Bernadette said much the same thing to me, and Grace is coming around, Lucy,” Jabo said. “She heard you reading to Baby.”

  “Out loud?” Nico asked.

  Jabo nodded. “Quite unusual to have that little elephant take a liking to someone that way. Baby did not much care for Doris. The feeling, as I understand it, was mutual.” Lucy exchanged a look with Nico as Jabo went on. “Made a terrible racket anytime she came near. Doris was happy to make an exit with all her limbs intact.”

  “After that she went to the candy butchers. They caught her stealing spun sugar,” Nico said.

  Jabo nodded. “Lost a chance for that, I’m afraid. She’s trying for an acrobat apprenticeship, which I do not recommend. An acrobat apprentice must be able to cook an omelet while balancing on the high wire.” He sighed. “If only life were long enough for all the practice that’s required.”

  “I thought she wanted to be a fortune-teller,” Nico said.

  Jabo shrugged. “Socorro would have nothing to do with her. She said the crystal ball began to boil when Doris came near. But back to you, my dear. We must deal with the problem at hand. Diavolo’s taken two of your chances.”

  Lucy gasped. All of her chances were gone!

  “He can’t take two for one mistake,” Nico said.

  “I’m afraid he can. That is an owner’s prerogative.”

  “I have two chances left. Lucy can have one of mine,” Nico said.

  “That is most gracious of you, young sir. However, the chance system doesn’t operate in that manner. Still, all is not lost. Betts took a liking to you, Lucy. She wishes she could take you on, but in her current condition she needs a fully trained dressmaker. Still, she wanted you to have this.” Jabo handed her a flour sack.

  Lucy stuck her hand inside and pulled out a blue dress, with its own blue belt! She went to the bathroom to put it on.

  The dress fit perfectly. She couldn’t stop looking at herself in the tiny mirror over the sink. She hadn’t had a dress made for her in five years.

  Jabo nodded appreciatively when she came out. “Betts is a maestra with a needle and thread. Now, I’ll see that Diavolo gets the costume back, but you should wash it first.”

  Lucy nodded.

  “All in all, you OOFOs are making good progress. Eugene is working for Nitty-Bitty. Nico h
as an opportunity before him. He is deciding what kind of a man he wants to be.”

  What did that mean?

  Nico’s cheeks flushed like someone had walked in on him with his undershirt on.

  “And you”—Jabo looked at Lucy—“you must try again with Grace. She has agreed to take another look at you, provided you demonstrate your verbal proficiency. That’s a reasonable request, my lady. She needs to know you can warn her if something goes wrong.”

  Lucy plunked down on the workbench and crossed her arms.

  “Two words,” Jabo said, his voice kind and gentle. “If you can read out loud, you can say two words.”

  “I’ll write them down for you,” Nico chimed in. “You can practice by reading ‘John Robinson.’ ”

  “That’s my man, Nico.”

  Lucy bit the inside of her cheek, struggling to control the rising fear.

  “Listen to me, Lucy,” Jabo whispered. “None of us gets long on this lush and lovely planet. Don’t relinquish any more of your precious life to whoever it is who has hurt you.”

  What was he talking about? It was her choice not to talk. Lucy turned away.

  “My father measured six feet three inches. Do you know how tall I am?” Jabo asked.

  Lucy shook her head.

  “Three feet six inches. Six three, three six…nature’s little joke, but it wasn’t funny to me. When my father looked at me, the shame in his eyes was excruciating. The day he left me was the worst and best day of my life. I know it’s not easy what we’re asking of you. But look at me, Lucy.”

  Lucy’s eyes flickered to Jabo’s.

  “There are people who love you. People here and people in your life before. Pretend you’re talking to them. Let your voice be heard.”

  February 4, 1939

  Home for Friendless Children

  Riverport, Iowa

  Dear Mrs. Mackinac,

  I do not understand what you mean when you say your orphans don’t remember about their lives before & that is for the best.

  I don’t know about your other girls, but my Lucy is smart. She would not forget she had a mama and a papa, may they rest in peace, & a big sister (me) who wants her more than any other thing in the world.