The Circus in Winter Read Online Free PDF Page B

their long and happy marriage.
    In the sparkling candlelight, Porter swirled scotch in his crystal glass and read aloud the letter he'd received that day from old Clyde Hollenbach. After Porter bought Hollenbach's circus, the old showman and Marta, the Fifteen-Fingered Lady, had settled on the beach in California."
Two children,
"Hollenbach wrote,"
twenty fingers. All is well.
"They toasted Hollenbach's jolly circus family with red wine. After dinner, they listened to Strauss on the Victrola and floated across the room, staring with far-off eyes over each other's shoulders, moving together flawlessly by mere touch.
    Then they retired, undressing wordlessly, back to back. Porter blew out the lamp, and they climbed under the chaste white sheets and turned to each other without passion.
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    HALF-ASLEEP , Jennie heard a voice say, "You are my sweet, my little Dixie Anna." It was her father, back from the boat, smelling of fish, sweat, and whiskey. In a minute, he'd start plaiting her hair while her mother fried mullet, and after dinner, when they thought she was asleep, the house would start its swaying. Jennie felt his hands, then more. She kept her eyes screwed shut, held onto the image of her mother smiling. She was twelve now, not six.
    One day, her father got so drunk he fell off his boat into the Gulf waters. After swimming to shore, he decided a change in vocation was needed, a job conducive to benders. So, he bought spades and shovels and went out each day in search of the pirate Jean Lafitte's hidden treasure. Legend had it that Lafitte had spent one winter hunkered down nearby in a secluded shanty, hiding from the Spanish navy, and as a precaution, had buried a fortune in the sand.
    By now, Jennie was the man and woman of the house: cook, farmer, laundress, härterer. Sometimes when she was hungry, she went down the road to Sister's. There was always food on the stove, and Sister paid Jennie to collect ingredients for her conjure balls and charm bags—horse hairs, fire ashes, snake skins, cedar knots. People came from as far as Mobile and Pensacola to buy them. Jennie tried to save the money for winter—stashed in her mother's keepsake cigar box—but more often than not, her father would return from treasure hunting hung over and empty-handed, find the money, and buy himself another drunk. She'd begun wearing her mother's old dresses, and at night, her father buried his head in her calico lap for consolation. Sometimes, when blind drunk, he came home a buccaneer, one of Lafitte's Black Flag men, and called her Veronica, his Creole mistress. "I gave you the map," he'd say, giving her a teeth-rattling shake. "Tell me where it is!" He'd rip her dress open, drag her by the hair before he fell on top of her. He always cried, during and after. Jennie never cried.
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    WALLACE PORTER made love in the dark.
    Jennie was careful that first night with him. Barely moving while his lips traced her cheeks, she imagined herself dead, a cold body under examination. She could not imagine herself a virgin and strike a pose of timidity, because she could not remember ever being so pure. Jennie knew that to work her bed magic on Porter would send him reeling, and later, he would feel ashamed and blame her for driving out the animal in him. This had happened with other men who left before morning, and always, she awoke to find everything from their pockets heaped on her dressing table: silver coins, fraternal rings, watches, and (sometimes in their haste to leave her) wallets stuffed with bills, calling cards, even tintypes of their families. Jennie kept this bounty locked in a cedar box, her wintertime savings account. She wore the key around her neck. In his sleep, Porter touched the key, but Jennie moved his hand from her throat to her breast.
    At daybreak, Jennie woke up alone in Porter's bed. Out of habit, she looked over to the dressing table and was relieved to find it just as it had been the night before. On the