Leaving Wichita
By Harry Buschman
Captain Noah looked out the trailer window and watched the men stacking sections of the tent frame on the trailer. It was too early to get a read the weather, but if today was anything like yesterday, it would be an onshore wind, gray, cold and threatening -- without ever being fair or foul. Probably a good day to hoist anchor.
Anything to get away from Wichita! They would
be heading Northeast today,
heading for Topeka. Maybe things would look up for Captain Noah in Topeka. He
hoped so. There was always a rainbow just out of reach -- around the bend in
the road. If he could get to a new place, a place where no one knew him, he
was
sure his luck would change and success would come his way. “Too late to
turn
back anyway” -- he switched the light on over the tiny sink in the trailer
and
looked down at his elaborately decorated body and wondered whatever possessed
him to take up life as a tattooed man.
His body was nearly hairless yet he had to shave it every day. Underarms. Genitals -- and every other day the beard. No hair grew on his head and as he shaved his underarms the single light bulb above his head reflected it as though it were made of polished ebony, and if you looked closely you would see a three-masted schooner with all sails set and a sun sinking on the horizon. The ship was the Annette. It was a ship he sailed on as a boy. When he closed his eyes he could see that ship in his mind and remember his dream of moving to a new place. The dream began when he was a boy and wanted to see the world. He lathered his underarms and put a new blade in his razor, he wanted to get the shaving out of the way before the men hitched up the trailer and drove off.
He was 57 years old now, and a freak traveling
with Braddock’s Circus. He took consolation from the thought that he was
a normal freak. Zippo, the black skinned boy with his tiny doll-sized head,
and Ajax the Legless Wonder. Magli
and her troupe of midgets, some less than three feet tall -- the Ubangi girls
with lips two feet in diameter. Nanette, the bear girl; they were all freaks.
He was nothing like that at all. He was a man, a perfectly normal man. If it
wasn’t for the tattoos that covered his body from head to foot he could
walk away from this place and start a new life somewhere in another town. A
place where nobody knew him.
Captain Noah, the tattooed man, shared the
trailer with Zippo and Ajax the Legless Wonder. Zippo was 6’ 6”, weighed
230 pounds, and although he was almost as old as the Captain, he had the intelligence
of an infant. His head came to a point just above his eyes and on that point
he sported a tuft of red hair. He was a problem when he smoked his pipe, Ajax
and Captain Noah had to watch
him like a hawk. He could not make the simplest decisions for himself, and while
Captain Noah was normally as gentle as a lamb with him, Ajax treated him like
an animal. With a free hand he would swat him for no reason other than to show
him who was boss.
That’s exactly what he did when the trailer suddenly jolted as the hitching crew connected it to the rear of the tent van. “Sit down, you big oaf. We’re movin’ out. You’re gonna fall down and break somethin’.”
Captain Noah quickly finished shaving and turned out the light over the sink. “I’ll be glad to get out of this town.” He turned to Ajax, “Take it easy on him Ajax, he don’t know what he’s doin’.”
“Zippo hungry.” He pointed to his mouth and rubbed his stomach.
Ajax propped himself up on his bed between two pillows. “Y’can’t eat now -- we’re movin’ out. You’ll spill food all over me.” As if to punctuate his point, he threw a magazine at Zippo catching him behind the ear. There was no love lost between Zippo and Ajax.
Braddock’s Circus had a bad reputation.
“Too many freaks,” some people said, “not enough acrobats.”
Acrobats are kinder to each other than freaks are. Freaks bore a simmering distaste
for so-called normal people and it spilled over into their feelings toward each
other. Even though Captain Noah considered himself to be an ordinary man --
one you might bump into on any street in America, he had grown to dislike his
fellow workers, the sawdust, the lights, and even the audience that came to
see them.
They performed under the tent as clowns and pratfalls; they were put on display
before the show began. They would sit or wander about in a circular enclosure
inside a small tent next to the main big top, (they called it the “pit”)
and for a dollar a head people would come to gawk at them. The freaks hated
it. Questions would be thrown at them from the crowd -- the kinds of questions
that cannot be answered civilly. “Kin y’go to the bathroom widdout
any legs?” “How d’ya get up and down the stairs?” “Kin
y’fuck?” “Kin y’shit?”
“That’s all they think of, these people. Eating, fucking and shitting,” Ajax would say to Captain Noah. He would reach a point where he couldn’t stand it any longer, then Zippo would pick him up and carry him back to the trailer. Ajax would cool down in time and come back to the “Pit” on his own, walking on his hands. But the scars didn’t go away -- freaks are never happy. Even Zippo, who didn’t know any better, would have moments of melancholy. “Zippo never grow up -- poor Zippo.” None of them shared Captain Noah’s dream of finding success in another town. The next town would be no better or worse than the one they left, they had seen town after town come and go. There was no reason to think that Topeka would be any better than Wichita.
The trailer lurched, heaved and gained speed
as Braddock’s Circus moved out from Wichita. The three men wedged themselves
into their own personal corners,
Ajax in his tiny bed, Zippo between the sink and the small refrigerator, (just
out of Ajax’s reach) and Captain Noah sat in the chair by the window. They
would stay in these positions until the caravan made its first rest stop. They
learned from experience that walking around the trailer as it bounced along
behind the tent truck was hazardous.
It was also difficult to be heard inside the trailer. Every sound was amplified and echoed and it sounded to the Captain as though they were inside a kettledrum rolling downhill. He looked at his roommates in turn -- Zippo, who seemed to have shut himself down to a dormant state. At the first rest stop he would become animated and hungry. He would walk up and down the caravan looking for something to eat. Ajax was slumped down in his wrinkled bed, only his head could be seen above the mangled blanket. But his eyes remained wary, they darted from Zippo to the Captain and back again as though looking for reassurance that all would be well.
In spite of the noise, Captain Noah found himself drifting off to sleep. He found himself dreaming of Topeka, a city he’d never seen. The buildings were white and tall -- the streets were wide and all the traffic lights were green. The sky was a watery blue and sprinkled with feathery clouds so thin the sun shone through. It seemed for a moment to Captain Noah that he had found his El Dorado. Then the trailer lurched to the side and stopped.
Zippo was on his feet in a flash. He ran to the door, and his heavy footsteps made the trailer tremble. “Time for break. Take walk now.” He had one hand on the knob when Ajax threw his pillow at him.
“Just a Goddamn minute Zippo! You gonna
leave me here? Come over here! Come over here, y’hear me.” Zippo caught
in the act of trying to get away by
himself, hung his head and lumbered over to Ajax. Ajax raised his hands like
a
small child and Zippo lifted him out of bed then walked him to the door. As
they
stood in the open door, Ajax turned to the Captain. “C’mon Captain
... rest stop,” he said. The Captain had no idea of the time, and when
he looked outside it still seemed as dark as when they started. But he was grateful
for the rest stop anyway, being cooped up with Zippo and Ajax, listening to
their bickering made every trip seem longer than it was. They were like two
children and it would be a relief to talk to somebody else for a while.
They stood by the side of their trailer and waited for the others. Usually the freaks would pile out noisily, they would share food they had brought with them or play cards for a few minutes. Scuttlebutt was the big item ... who was getting it ... who wasn’t ... who owed who ... and so on.
Captain Noah, Ajax and Zippo had no way of
knowing the caravan had stopped
for a grade crossing, and as our scene is set in the mid-west the string of
freight cars numbered a hundred or more. Everyone waited for the caboose to
glide by, ready to start their engines again -- waiting for the gates to creak
open. Then they would streak across the rails bent on making up for lost time.
That is what happened on this dark frosty morning in Kansas.
The line of circus trucks and trailers pulled rapidly away from Captain Noah and Ajax, cradled in the brawny arms of the brainless Zippo. They stood and watched their trailer bounce over the tracks, its open back door swinging wildly. For a moment it looked as though the driver would stop, but as soon as it reached the other side it speeded up and disappeared into the early morning sky.
“Come back!” Zippo’s plaintive comment was the first response. The others were too shocked to respond.
Finally, Ajax reached up and slapped Zippo across the face. “Well, y’dummy! See wat’cha got us into. I didn’t wanna come outta the trailer. Did you Captain?”
“Well, we stopped. We all thought it was a rest stop. We always get out at a rest stop ...”
“Bullshit! You’re always on his side.” He looked up accusingly at Zippo. “Hold me straight, Goddamn it, y’got me tilted over on one side.”
“Look Ajax, he’s an idiot -- he’s a pair of legs. Nobody’s against you. We’re in this together.”
Zippo tried to smile, first at Ajax, then at the Captain. “Be OK?” He asked tentatively.
“Be OK.” The Captain tried to put a positive spin on the situation but he sensed that freaks in the circus are one thing, while freaks walking through a small town are another. He had no idea where they were and he tried to recall the map he looked at last night when he was trying to find out how far it was to Topeka. There was some small towns just outside Wichita and they must be near one of them. He could see a few buildings up the road and he started walking in that general direction. “Let’s go, men -- we’re not gettin’ any closer to home by standin’ around here.”
One of the buildings up ahead was a train station. There were a few lights burning along the covered platform, one of which illuminated a faded wooden sign saying “Nectar.” Captain turned to Ajax, nestled in Zippo’s arms. “At least we know where we are,” he smiled. “Welcome to Nectar.”
Ajax wore an expression that flitted between irritation and anxiousness and Zippo’s face wore no expression at all. Ajax and the Captain were well aware that if they were seen in a public place normal people would be frightened out of their wits. They were freaks, fish out of water, and were something to be seen and gaped at in a circus side show not on a public street in a one horse town like Nectar. Zippo didn’t care. He would be at home wherever he was -- flood or fire, it was all the same to Zippo. He only knew he was hungry.
“They’ll kill us when they see us,” Ajax said, “you know how people are.”
“You think Braddock will come back for us?”
“He won’t miss us ‘til tonight, when they get to Topeka. He’ll start back maybe tomorra -- maybe not. He might think we walked off.”
“We’re done for then,” the Captain said.
“I’d like to go quiet like. It’s somethin’ I always hoped for.” He looked up at Zippo. “Still hungry, Zippo.”
Zippo nodded eagerly, “Yeah, Yeah! Zippo hungry!”
“Tell ya what, Captain. Take us to the train station. Leave us there -- somebody’s bound t’come in and see us there. Maybe they won’t panic -- just maybe. Maybe they’ll get the police and ... and. Maybe it’ll all be for the best.”
“I’ll stay with you.”
“No y’won’t. You’ll move on. It’s a new town, Captain. Your always lookin’ for a new start in a new town, aint’cha?” They started walking toward the railroad station, and in the growing light the lights above the covered platform suddenly went out. “Y’can pull yer watch cap down. Pull it down low over yer ears. Roll y’sleeves down.”
“On my own?”
“On y’Goddamn own, Captain. Without
anyone to hold y’back. Go on! Go on!
Y’may never git the chance again.”
© Harry Buschman 2003
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