Avenue of Mysteries - Page 106

Pastora could climb the ladder--those border-collie types are very agile and aggressive--but when she got to the top, she lay down on the diving platform with her nose between her forepaws. The dwarf clowns danced under the stepladder, holding out the open blanket to the sheepdog, but Pastora wouldn't even stand on the diving platform. When Paco or Beer Belly called her name, the sheepdog just wagged her tail while she was lying down.

"She's no jumper," was all Estrella said.

"Baby has balls," Juan Diego said. Dachshunds do have balls--for their size, they seem especially ferocious--and Baby was willing to try climbing the stepladder. But the short-legged dachshund needed a boost.

This would be funny--the audience will laugh, Paco and Beer Belly decided. And the sight of the two dwarf clowns pushing Baby up the stepladder was funny. As always, Paco was dressed (badly) as a woman; while Paco pushed Baby's ass, to help the dachshund up the stepladder, Beer Belly stood behind Paco--pushing her ass up the ladder.

"So far, so good," Estrella said. But Baby, balls and all, was afraid of heights. When the dachshund got to the top of the stepladder, he froze on the diving platform; he was even afraid to lie down. The little dachshund stood so rigidly still that he began to tremble; soon the stepladder started to shake. Paco and Beer Belly pleaded with Baby as they held out the open blanket. Eventually, Baby peed on the diving platform; he was too afraid to lift his leg, the way male dogs are supposed to do.

"Baby is humiliated--he can't pee like himself," Estrella said.

But the act was funny, the dwarf clowns insisted. It didn't matter that Baby wasn't a jumper, Paco and Beer Belly said.

Estrella wouldn't let Baby do it in front of an audience. She said the act was psychologically cruel. This was not what Juan Diego had intended. But that night in the darkness of the dogs' troupe tent, all Juan Diego said to Lupe was: "The new dog act isn't stupid. All we need is a new dog--we need a jumper," Juan Diego said.

It would take him years to realize how he'd been manipulated into saying this. It was so long before Lupe said something--in the snoring, farting troupe tent for the dogs--Juan Diego was almost asleep when she spoke, and Lupe sounded as if she were half asleep herself.

"The poor horse," was all Lupe said.

"What horse?" Juan Diego asked in the darkness.

"The one in the graveyard," Lupe answered him.

In the morning, the dump kids woke up to a pistol shot. One of the circus horses had bolted from the sooty field and jumped the fence into the graveyard, where it broke its leg against a gravestone. Ignacio had shot the horse; the lion tamer kept a .45-caliber revolver, in case there was any lion trouble.

"That poor horse," was all Lupe said, at the sound of the shot.

La Maravilla had arrived in Mexico City on Thursday. The roustabouts had set up the troupe tents the day they'd arrived; all day Friday, the roustabouts were raising the main tent and securing the animal barriers around the ring. The animals' concentration was affected by traveling, and they needed most of Friday to recover.

The horse had been named Manana; he was a gelding, and a slow learner. The trainer was always saying that the horse might master a trick they'd been practicing for weeks "tomorrow"--hence Manana. But the trick of jumping the fence into the graveyard, and breaking his leg, was a new one for Manana.

Ignacio put the poor horse out of his misery on Friday. Manana had jumped a fence to get into the graveyard, but the gate to the graveyard was locked; disposing of the dead horse shouldn't have become a matter of such insurmountable difficulty. However, the gunshot had been reported; the police came to the circus site, and they were more of a hindrance than a help.

Why did the lion tamer have a big-caliber gun? the police asked. (Well, he was a lion tamer.) Why had Ignacio shot the horse? (Manana's leg was broken!) And so on.

There was no permit to dispose of the dead horse in Mexico City--not on a weekend, not in the case of a horse that hadn't "come from" Mexico City. Getting Manana out of the locked graveyard was just the start of the difficulties.

There were performances throughout the weekend, starting with Friday night. The last was early Sunday afternoon, and the roustabouts would collapse the main tent and dismantle the ring barriers before nightfall that day. La Maravilla would be on the road again, heading back to Oaxaca, by the middle of the day on Monday. The dump kids and Edward Bonshaw planned to go to the Guadalupe shrine on Saturday morning.

Juan Diego watched Lupe feeding the lions. A mourning dove was having a dust bath in the dirt near Hombre's cage; the lion hated birds, and maybe Hombre thought the dove was after his meat. For some reason, Hombre was more aggressive in the way he extended his paw through the slot for the feeding tray, and one of his claws nicked the back of Lupe's hand. There was only a little blood; Lupe put her hand to her mouth, and Hombre withdrew his paw--the guilty-looking lion retreated into his cage.

"Not your fault," Lupe said to the big cat. There was a change in the lion's dark-yellow eyes--a more intense focus, but on the mourning dove or on Lupe's blood? The bird must have sensed the intensity of Hombre's calculating stare and took flight.

Hombre's eyes were instantly normal again--even bored. The two dwarf clowns were waddling past the lions' cages, on their way to the outdoor showers. They wore towels around their waists and their sandals were flapping. The lion looked at them with an utter lack of interest.

"!Hola, Hombre!" Beer Belly called.

"!Hola, Lupe! !Hola, Lupe's brother!" Paco said; the cross-dresser's breasts were so small (almost nonexistent) that Paco didn't bother to cover them when she walked to and from the outdoor showers, and her beard was at its most stubbly in the mornings. (Whatever Paco was taking for hormones, she wasn't getting her estrogens from the same source Flor got hers; Flor got her estrogens from Dr. Vargas.)

But, as Flor had said, Paco was a clown; it wasn't Paco's aim in life to make herself passable as a woman. Paco was a gay dwarf who, in real life, spent most of her time as a man.

It was as a he that Paco went to La China, the gay bar on Bustamante. And when Paco went to La Coronita, where the transvestites liked to dress up, Paco also went as a he--Paco was just another guy among the gay clientele.

Flor said that Paco picked up a lot of first-timers, those men who were having their first experiences at being with another man. (Maybe the first-timers looked at a gay dwarf as a cautious way to start?)

But when Paco was with her circus family at La Maravilla, the dwarf clown felt safe to be a she. She could be comfortable as a cross-dresser around Beer Belly. In the clown acts, they always acted as if they were a couple, but in real life Beer Belly was straight. He was married, and his wife wasn't a dwarf.

Beer Belly's wife was afraid of getting pregnant; she didn't want to have a dwarf for a child. She made Beer Belly wear two condoms. Everyone in La Maravilla had heard Beer Belly's stories about the perils of wearing an extra condom.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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