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A Feat of Strength

Stephen Faulkner

    Mestell’s Travelling Circus and Sideshow was a night to night, town to town affair. Its operation required the hard work and diligence of every member of its troupe by day for moving and setting up and, the morning following a performance, for breaking camp and moving on again. By night there were the two shows to put on, a feat of collaborative strength of will and endurance that kept all the performers, road crew and their respective families awake in a nervous thrall born of the worry about the dangers with which they lived from day to day, show stop to show stop. Only a month before – and the memory was still vivid in the minds of the entire Mestell troupe – a badly rotted post for the bigtop had collapsed, pinioning and ultimately killing one of the clowns who, like all of Mestell’s employees, was doubling as a camp workman at the time. To Conrad Mestell, the circus proprietor/manager, this unfortunate incident was just another red line in his accounts log: another clown to hire, a pillar to be quickly replaced so that the show – the entire business – could continue as usual.
    “The man is a crumb of the worst sort,” once said Edmund “Rawsteel” Rawson, the circus strongman, his tongue wagging drunkenly. “I’ve known the guy almost forever, so I know what I’m talking about. He’s a crumb! But it’s either working for him or starving. I mean, you know, child, we have to eat, even if it’s out of his pig’s trough.”
    “I know, Papa,” said his only child, Tessa, consolingly. “You’ve said so a hundred times.”
    “Just a hundred? A lot more than that, I’ll bet,” sighed the strongman. “But someone has to speak out against his scummy kind. I mean, Chiro’s dying like that didn’t have to happen, and that was only one example of how cheap and low Connie Mestell is. What about when he fired Thelma, the fat lady? All right – agreed, she was getting a bit too obnoxious to bear but is that any reason to fire someone? And what’s a circus without a fat lady anyway?”
    Tessa smiled as she stacked away the last of the dinner dishes and then went over to the clothing trunk to lay out her father’s leopard spotted bathing suit for the night’s show. “You have an hour before showtime, Papa,” she said. “I’ll fix you some coffee while you dress.”
    “And before that,” Rawsteel went on, rising slowly from his stool. “He gave the snake charmer, Louisa, the sack, just because he had to lay out a little extra cash to supply live mice for that boa of hers. What kind of business is he running here anyway, will you tell me that?”
    “I’m sure I don’t know, Papa. But change, will you? Coffee’s almost ready.”
    “What time is it?”
    “Quarter to six. The early comers will be arriving soon.”
    “You know,” said the strongman as he dropped his trousers and kicked them aside. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Connie tried to can me one of these days.”
    “I don’t think so, Papa. I’m sure you have nothing to worry about on that score.”
    “No, really,” he insisted. He hiked the old fashioned swim suit past his muscular hips and pulled the single shoulder strap over his massive deltoids. “I mean without Thelma, Louisa and before that the magician – but what’s a magician doing in a circus sideshow anyway? But no matter who, we’re just talking sideshow folks here now, right? Anyway, he’s killing the sideshow is what he’s doing. Wants to make it all bigtop, get all the drawing acts. So, how does he do it? Snaff the little fellow, that’s how.”
    “Well, Papa,” Tessa cooed in his ear as she hugged him from behind. “He won’t ‘snaff’ you. You’re too valuable to him. You’ve been with him too long.”
    “Hah! Thelma was with him just as long as me, my sweet, and where’d she end up? Some nowhere little town in Alabama is where. And me? I’m already forty seven – over the hill. Who needs and overage strong ox anymore?”
    “Well, first of all, you haven’t even reached the hill, let alone being over it. You’re just hitting your prime, Papa. You’re just too stubborn to see things for what they are. Stop worrying.”
    “Hmpf!” Rawsteel snorted then, letting the conversation lag in order to enjoy his coffee. He sipped noisily, despondent and dour faced. Tessa hated to see him like this, slightly tipsy and as argumentative as a soap box orator. His bouts with this, his own brand of melancholy, had come very infrequently when Tessa’s mother was still alive but since her death four years earlier, an anticlimax to a long and nagging, blood spitting spell that had left the Rawson family stranded in Biloxi for three months awaiting the inevitable, the strong man seemed to be losing an inner battle of nerves and conflicting feelings. He never drank enough to get himself actually drunk, just enough to get him talking. And his voice would rise on crescendos of anger, slumping to lulls of silent uncertainty and fear. This early evening’s repartee with his daughter was milder than most but no less painful of numbing in it consequences for Tessa.
    “Half hour, Raw,” came a voice at the wagon door. “Boss says don’t be late this time.”
    “He’ll be there, Benny,” promised Tessa. Footsteps were heard tripping cautiously away outside, each step taken seriously for the impediment of long, floppy shoes and sagging, baggy trousers.
    “Twenty five years,” mused the strongman as he checked himself in the mirror. “I been with this show twenty five years. You know that, Tess?”
    “Yes, Papa. I know.”
    “You were born in the circus, you know – of course you do, what am I saying? – in this very wagon, even. Connie Mestell was just a juggler then, in the sideshow, too, always in the booth right next to mine. He’d throw those damned tenpins right at me, bounce them off my chest and catch them as they came back to him and then go right on juggling as if I was just another prop for his act. What a character he was back then....”
    “I know, Papa. But let’s not go over all this again. I’ve heard the story maybe....”
    “A hundred times? I know. But what harm, eh?”
    Tessa knew well what the harm was; the fact that it would make him late for the show, the fact of the way it made him feel after the telling, the impenetrable silences, the slouching curve and sag of his posture, the buried rage it would cause that would leave scars as deep and ugly as knife wounds.
    “They say that greasepaint gets in your blood...” Raw began and Tessa was relieved. He was beginning his old tale much nearer to its end than usual. It would be mercifully short, then – only twenty minutes to go anyway – and he would be on time for the show, the time which he would utilize, more than just performing for the gathered crowd, in mulling over all the bad scenes with Conrad Mestell, stories which, refurbished and freshened in his mind, in front of his daughter, would hound him throughout his time on the sideshow stage. This time, however, the telling was going to be curtailed, being that he had begun it so far along its usual path and he would not feel so dejectedly lousy afterwards and would be able to do the final late show without a hitch.
    Tessa listened, sipping her coffee, watching the time until she heard him say, “And to think that I allowed that money grubbing crumb to be present at the christening of my only....”
    “That’s it, Papa. Showtime.”
    “Already? I thought I had a half hour.”
    “You talked your way through it.”
    “Like always, eh? Well....” He gulped down the last of his coffee, got up and turned toward the steps down to the wagon’s low doorway. “Wish me the best sweet.”
    “You know you are, Papa,” she said and kissed him on his coarsely stubbled cheek. “There’s none better.”
    “Now that’s what I like to hear,” he said, eyes widened in mock revelation. “Optimism!” And without another word, “optimism” still ringing softly in the cramped wagon quarters and in his daughter’s ears, “The Mighty Rawsteel” clomped outside, down the creaky steps of the wagon onto the sandy path that led to his raised booth in Mestell’s Traveling Circus’ sideshow.

***

    The air had gotten chilly through early part of that late spring evening and it wasn’t long before the sideshow arcade had been vacated of all but for the few die hard freak enthusiasts and the smattering of viewers who lacked the necessary price of admission to the bigtop toward whose body-warmed seats and thrill promising program the rest of the burgeoning crowd had fled. Dispersing the last of his own meager gathering of busybody oldsters and stray waifs with a final heave of his lead weights, broken chains and wood blocks littering the stage at his feet, “the Mighty Rawsteel” bade his group of curiosity seekers a solemn good-bye and disappeared behind the faded brocade that served as a backdrop for all his performances of muscular doings. Later, when he was sure that the small crowd had sufficiently dispersed, each going their solitary ways, he emerged from behind the large curtain and commenced to clear the stage of its detritus, replacing the barbells and handled, square, weight demarked metal blocks to their central locations on stage for the late evening performance. That done, Rawsteel, fatigued, sweaty and cold, his one shoulder strap slipping down his arm like the slip strap peeping through the armhole of a debutante’s gown, made his way along the sandy, weed strewn path back to his wagon.
    The cold had chased everyone inside and the take from those kind enough to cast their money in appreciation of the strongman’s feats had been poor, indeed: pennies from the children, nickels and dimes from the adults. “I remember when, if ever a penny was tossed to me, it was wrapped in a dollar bill,” Rawson recalled out loud, sadly. “Now, they don’t care anymore. The art is dying. I am as strong as I ever was but no one cares anymore.”
    “Yes,” agreed a mild voice from between two supply wagons. “Little circuses like this one are dying – only we’re too pig headed to admit it, you and I, Raw.”
    “Benny? What are you doing out here? You should be getting ready to go on.”
    “I am ready,” said Benny, stepping out of the shadows into the dim light where his friend could see him. “As you can see.”
    His bulbous nose, powered by a battery pack concealed in his voluminous patched, plaid trousers, flashed on and off like a neon firefly as if to prove his statement of readiness. Pink tuxedo tails hung to his heels while the dicky at his throat, stiff as a plank, lay ready on his bare chest to pop up and clout him on his white greasepainted chin. A dainty, flowered hat sat cockily in place on his burnished orange hair, elephantine ears flapping wildly in the breeze as if to carry him aloft, Big Foot Benny was indeed ready to go on at a moment’s notice.
    “So,” said the clown after a short pause. “Weather’s killed the sideshow for the rest of the night, I guess. How was your take for the early?”
    “Not so good. Mostly just penny-ante.”
    “Well, if this cold snap lasts much longer it won’t be any use for you to be out for the second show. Folks’ll just be rushing straight for the tent and skip the sideshow altogether.”
    “You said as much already,” Rawsteel noted. “But there’ll be some that’ll stay and there won’t be any kids that late – mostly oldsters taking it all in at their leisure. It should be worth it, I think.”
    “Don’t go fooling yourself about the kids, Raw. Kids stay up a lot later these days than when you and I were starting out. They’ll be around and you’ll have so many pennies thrown at you that you’ll be able to use them for weights in your act.”
    “Maybe,” said Raw and winked. “But I’ll be there – that’s the thing.”
    In the lull that followed both men smiled at the air that was raising tender goosebumps on the flesh of their arms. Benny’s garish red mouth, outlined in black, formed a point of reference on which Raw could focus in the poor light. It might seem silly to think of all clowns as being good, decent sorts, he thought. Every profession and job has its share of skunks as well, but Benny’s one of the better few, a good guy to have for a friend. Good clown, too. Can put me in stitches with a half turn, a goofy face and a flap of his ears. Mastell knows he’s good. Benny’ll never get the sack and even if he does, he’ll land on his feet like a flop-footed cat.
    “I don’t want to keep you, Benny. You got a call to catch and all, but I’ve got something that’s been buggin’ me that I’d like your opinion on.”
    “Glad to help if I can, Raw. You know that. What’s up?”
    “Prob’ly nothing, I guess but there have been rumors goin’ around that Mastell’s planning to....”
    “To kill the sideshow for good? I know, and you’re right. There is nothing to it. I spoke to Connie not too long ago and he told me that the last few to go – Marvo, Louisa and Thelma – they’ll be the only ones. So, don’t worry yourself, Raw. Your job is safe; straight from the man himself.”
    “He’s lied about things like that before, you know, Ben.”
    “Not to me, he hasn’t. He’s always been pretty straight with me. I believe him. If he tells me no more canaroonie, then I’ll take his word.”
    “Doesn’t mean that I have to, though.”
    “Suit yourself, Raw,” Benny said, skipping backward. The signal was clear. Benny had to go. Talk time was done. When Benny had a clown call to answer, he was there and he prided himself on his punctuality. “Keep it light, Raw. And don’t worry so much. Connie thinks of you like a brother.”
    The strongman didn’t answer, only turned and walked away from his comical friend who was already headed in the opposite direction toward the noise and music of the bigtop. After taking only twenty or so steps Big Foot Benny turned around and watched his bare backed friend sidle somberly between the rows of wagons and then turn a corner and disappear from view.
    “I held him as long as I could, Sweetheart girl,” whispered the clown to the air. “I hope you’re in the clear, Tess and, if you’re not – well, you know the big goon better than I do. So good luck to you.” Then, hearing the opening chords of the Clown March starting up in the bigtop, still nearly half an acre away, Benny broke into an awkward flat-footed run, not wanting to be late for his entrance as his soft-hearted, muscle-bound friend so often was.

***

    The wagon which housed the Rawson family’s cramped living quarters with bedding barely enough for three was still in a shambles by the time Tessa’s father was making his way homeward. The few cups and saucers still lay waiting for their bath in the sink and Tessa’s bed, the smaller of the two bunks, was warm and disheveled. Tessa’s diaphragm lay stickily concealed under her pillow as she finished dressing, pulling on her thick, and hairy gym socks while Michael Mestell, the circus proprietor’s son, lay behind her on the bed, stroking the silky material of the back of her loose fitting blouse.
    “What are you hurrying for? The tent show won’t start for another half hour or more. We’ve still got time.”
    “You’re going to be running this outfit soon enough, Mike, so you should know,” Tessa said. “With weather like this the bigtop always opens early.”
    “Guess you’re right. Big Daddy Raw will be storming in any minute now and I can’t have him catching with my pants down. By the way, where are they?”
    Having quickly located and donned his clothing Michael and Tessa set out to do the cleaning that had gone wanting during their eager tryst. Bed made, sink cleared of dishes and silverware, confidence restored, another round of coffee set to brewing for Rawsteel’s tired return, the couple relaxed. The water was just beginning to gurgle in the coffee maker when he entered.
    “Lousy day for us this time around, Sweet. Not even enough in gratuities to buy us a pound of salt. Oh, ‘evening Michael. How’s your money minting old man these days?”
    “Pop’s just fine, Mr. Rawson,” Michael said. He was seated comfortably on the edge of Tessa’s neatly made bed. “Just stopped by for a chat and some tea.”
    “Ah, yes, tea. Your Daddy always was one for the English stuff – probably got you into it, too. But for me, it’s....”
    “Coffee’s on right now, Papa,” Tessa cut in. “Almost ready.”
    “Girl after my own heart. Thank you, darlin’. Where’s the ‘Crow?’”
    “Right where you left it.”
    Raw pulled out the half empty bottle of liquor from its hiding place buried amid the jumble of clothes and old books in the packing crate and worried the cork off with a squeaking plurp. “Glass?” he said, holding up the open bottle.
    Tessa got him a glass. He poured and took a long swallow and sighed contentedly. “Michael?” he asked, holding out the bottle to the young man.
    No thank you, sir. I’m good.”
    “Teetotaler, eh?”
    “Just not now,” was the polite reply. “Perhaps later.”
    “It’ll probably be gone by then,” Raw said and took another swig, emptying the glass. A cup rattled in a saucer behind him; Tessa keeping busy.
    “Coffee’s ready, Papa.”
    “Give it a little more time, Tess. I want it good and strong.”
    “I guess you’ll need it,” she said as her father poured himself another and then recorked the bottle.
    “Put it back, will you, Mike? This should do me nicely.”
    Michael replaced the bottle from where it had come, nestling it deeply under yellowed paperback classics and folded, long-unused costumes.
    Another gulp, a belch and then Rawson asked, “So, Mike, what brings you here this chill evening? A cup of tea, some nice talk with my daughter and what else? What’s on your mind?”
    “Why nothing really, sir. Just a social visit is all.”
    “Just like your Daddy would do: come for a friendly, social call and it wouldn’t be long before he got down to business. You’re a lot like him, you know.” Another sip, a short one this time. He rolled the liquor on his tongue, savoring the bite before swallowing. “The good in you, mostly, I’ll admit, comes from your Pa.”
    “Well thank you, sir. That’s very kind of you. My mother does say that I’ve got his sense of humor.”
    “Yes, that,” agreed Raw.
    “And his good looks,” interrupted Tessa. “He’s got Connie’s nice smile.”
    “Yes,” Raw agreed again, a bit surprised this time at his daughter’s appraisal. “That’s true, too – I guess. But for the rest of it.... Well, you’ve got your mother’s good sense and charm....” He waved his hand as if chasing away a thought. “Never mind, though. I don’t want to preach any.”
    “Best not to go into it, Papa. And, anyway....” Tessa cast a look toward Michael which her father did not catch. “Before anything else, Michael and I have something to tell you.”
    “Tessa! Now?”
    Tessa didn’t answer, only waited for her father to waken to the gravity of her tone but he didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary as he took his last, long gulp of Old Crow.
    “Yes, lad,” he said. “You’ve got Connie’s look in the eye like when he spotted a good deal in buying this broken down hell of a traveling bomb on wheels when it was clear to everyone else that it was on its way out and down but not to Connie – no sirree. He built it up with the deftest hand that anyone took to cleaning house to make it work. Make a buck anyway he could. Now, don’t you be like that when all this is yours, son. Connie’s a man with a shrewd eye for business and you’re certainly his own. He’ll make you anyway he sees fit if you let him but, please, don’t be like him, that son of a liver swiping sumbitch, pinching every penny that comes his way ‘til it bleeds. Only do that kind of thing when you really have to, son. Your Daddy’s trouble was that he did it too long until it became a habit and he lost something because of it – but not his shyster’s eye. No, not that....”
    “Mister Rawson, I....”
    “And what the devil are you conniving about now, Connie’s boy?” Rawson asked, making the title of descendence sound like a curse to be weathered rather than an honor. “You’ve got your Daddy’s sly look and your mother’s sweet tongue. So what have you come to tell me, making it sound like the Lord’s own blessing when it stinks of rot? That I’m out on my ass in the street? Is that what you’ve got the gall to throw up to me? I’m fired, right? Old Daddy Conrad sent his son here to give me the axe on the spot – I just knew it. Go ahead, tell me. I’m nub enough now not to give a blasted damn about it anymore.”
    “No, sir. That’s not it at all.”
    Not at all, thought Rawson. Connie used those lying words to stave off so many a harried worrier until really giving the old heave-ho, say, to one of the clowns that didn’t have a drawing name no matter how good the fellow was in the ring. The sideshow is dear, so it seems and Connie’ll be done with it soon enough so why not do away with the strongman first, second, third or whatever. Old friend, the most painful one to heave out the door and the one – yes, he knows it – who’ll give him the most trouble and why not send his bratty son, bring him into the family business with a bang – throw him the crappy jobs with which he can prove himself? I know you, Connie. You and me are there, all the way and always were but you were always at least one step ahead of me. I don’t care about this sniveler’s good sense of humor or judgment like his Mama’s got. He’s your kid, too, and just the same as his old man.”
    “Not at all,” huffed the strongman. “Your Papa all over again. It’d be just like him to send his mealy mouthed brat to do his dirty work instead of having the balls to come down here himself....”
    “Papa!” Tessa blurted. “Michael is not mealy mouthed and he’s certainly not a brat by any means. He is a grown man in his twenty fourth year and very worthy of you respect.”
    Rawson stared at his daughter for a moment and then, chastised and repentant, he nodded. “You’re right, Tess. That came out in anger and it was wrong of me. I apologize, Michael. I guess I judge you too harshly. Please forgive me.”
    “Don’t bother about it, sir. You’re right, I am my father’s son, like you say but I am also my own man. I know my father’s faults all too well and I have vowed to myself that they will never, ever be mine.”
    “I recall Connie saying something almost exactly like that concerning some power monger we had dealings with back in the day. I only hope that you have more strength of character than he did to keep to those vows of yours.”
    “I’m my own man,” Michael repeated and let that be his answer.
    “Your father instilled a lot of himself in you by just being your Daddy and being so close to you. We’ll just have to wait and see whether ‘your own man’ is worth bragging about or just loaded with a lot of sincere sounding bullshit like your Papa is.”
    Another staring contest ensued until: “But Michael came here with something to tell me. Say your piece, then, Mike. I’ve got a show to put on tonight and I don’t want to be late.”
    “Well,” said Michael with a sigh. “As for that.... The sideshow’s being cancelled for the late run but just for tonight. The weather being what it is, you understand.”
    If you say so. What else?”
    “Well, sir, Tess and I have been considering things pretty seriously lately – I’m sure you’ve noticed – and, well, the truth is, we’ve decided to get married, sir and – well – we want your blessing.”
    Tessa fished the bottle of Old Crow from under the books and clothing again and set it on the table in front of her father, figuring he might need it. He pushed it away. Sliding a bare arm across the table, he grabbed Michael’s elbow, squeezed it tightly and laughed.
    “Oh my children, you are really something, you know? Michael, I still can’t stand your Daddy but I think I love you. No beating around the bush, you just hit me in the face with it. But I want to tell you something, both of you,” he said, shrugging away the last of his mirth. He got up from the table, walked over to his daughter’s bed, reached under the neatly fluffed pillow and, to the horror of both of them – and at their dazed expressions Rawsteel bellowed a happy laugh – pulled out the smeared diaphragm and waved it in the air at eye level. “When I found this the first time I wanted to burn it and switch the living shit out of both of you. Yes, Michael, I knew it was you from the first. You’re the only man in this camp young enough and brazen enough for my little girl, so it had to be you. But then my anger turned to fear quickly enough. I mean, what if it got a hole in it somehow or if it just didn’t work properly and you got her pregnant? You’d have to tell your old man and, knowing him, he’d do his best to find a way to leave me and Tessa out in the boondocks somewhere, in some poor burg, then reroute the show so it would never come that way again.”
    “He might,” agreed Michael. “But I wouldn’t let that happen and even if it worked out that way, I would have returned.”
    “Just like MacArthur,” quipped the strongman. “You know, if you would do that then you are your own man but your father probably would do all he could to keep you with him and that was what scared the Dejesus out of me – the reason for that paranoid little diatribe a little while ago. This,” he said, holding the contraceptive high. “Was the reason for me running scared for my job and for Tessa’s future. You want to put all that to rest in my mind, Michael? The go ahead and marry her. You have my every blessing. But I think you’ll have to do a lot of smooth talking to convince Connie.”
    “Mister Rawson, you should know Pop better than that. Anytime he and I get to talking about you, it’s always, ‘the god old days’ and how you and he were always like bother, you two against all comers. I’m sure he’ll be okay with Tessa and me getting married, no doubt in my mind.”
    “Why don’t you go and get your father and bring him here, Mike,” suggested Tessa. “A lot to talk about – let him see how the other half lives.”
    “Yeah, Michael, bring him around. I have a score to settle with him, a marriage to plan, a half bottle of Old Crow to share.... I may want to punch the bastard out some but.... Go on, get him. I’ll be good. We’ll be okay.”
    Michael ran the entire distance back to the office wagon and returned shortly, chattering animatedly with his father about all that had transpired. Conrad Mestell entered the strongman’s wagon beaming happily at all the prospects that lay ahead, his haggard face drooping suspiciously at the overriding odor in the place of burnt latex, the remnants still smoldering menacingly in an ashtray, flecks of seared contraceptive cream still noticeably adhering. Soon the smell was dissipated and the conversation took its course.
    There were no bouts of anger or Raw’s flailing fist as he had darkly suggested. It was just a friendly family get-together.

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