Scrumpy hated the circus. He nearly pulled my arm out of the socket with the fuss he kicked up when we passed by. I was no big fan either. Their presence in our clean wholesome little town created a small rank cesspool on the village green. I thought the mayor must have lost his mind to allow them to set up there but he had made a big public statement about the old fashioned quaintness of this kind of family entertainment and anyone who said anything to the contrary just looked like some kind of child hating jerk.
My child was long grown and had set up home with his wife and kids far away from the place where he was raised. A good company had offered him all of the opportunity and security a man needs in this day and age in exchange for a move to a state he had never even thought of. He is a good son and asked me to move closer to him after his father passed a few years back but this is my little town and Scrumpy and I could not imagine living anywhere else. Not that it is any kind of Utopia mind you. The townspeople and even my neighbors are no easy customers but when Bill and I moved here almost five decades ago as a young family we liked the conservative atmosphere of the place. The promise of a simpler and gentler pace to life.
We were almost past the whole sloppy set up when a circus person ran past us from behind. I thought Scrumpy would go berserk. He barked and barked at the man who ran by wearing a flimsy windbreaker over a day-glo colored unitard. There was a sparkly line of rhinestones down the side of each leg. Wasn’t he cold with this first chill of autumn? I bent to calm my feisty terrier whose barking had only increased when the man turned to look back at us. Though no friend of the circus, I met his gaze and smiled with my small town welcome smile and instead of smiling back which is the custom here he looked slowly at me and then at Scrumpy and sneered maliciously.
I am no novice. I don’t pretend to believe that the world is candy coated and beautiful fairies sprinkle gold dust on the lawns at night to make then twinkle in the morning. I know that no matter what, people will be people which means that you can expect just about anything. But that nasty sneer with the heavily made up face and the obscene unitard leaving nothing to the imagination sent a shiver of honest terror down my spine. I dropped my smile and stood up. Scrumpy had reduced his bark to a mumbling growl and we resumed as calmly as we could our walk.
I thought nothing about that circus for the next couple of days though I had a mind to call the mayor’s office and lodge a complaint about the demeanor of the circus folk. But what would that have done? It was fine family entertainment and one grumbling old lady would cause more strikes against the old ladies than the circus folk. I let it drop and let myself be charmed instead by the sound of their calliope mixed with the rustling of the wind in the fading leaves of the mature old trees on the village green. Scrumpy would not be fooled however, he remained opposed to these intruders who had set up their campers and caravans around the dirtied canvas performance tent like hotdog buns neatly lined up around a pan of grilling dogs. They would be gone in another few days so why get excited I said to Scrumpy as I pulled gently on his leash. The rust colored leaves sifting down slowly around us.
That night a sharp wind sliced through the town setting the dry leaves on the run from where they had accumulated against the curb stones. A feeling of chaos reigned as the near bare branches swung wildly in the dark sky and orange edged clouds flew over and past the full harvest moon. I had just made a mug of Indian Spice tea and was ready to tuck myself into my favorite chair to read a bit before going to bed when Scrumpy came sidling up to me with the pleading look in his eyes that I know so well and have learned to acknowledge. He wanted to nip out for one last pee before bedtime. We walked to the door, I opened it and held it out for him. With a terrier’s joy he wagged down the front steps on his stubby little legs and went off to one of his preferred spots. I watched the clouds make a hide and seek with the moon as the wind blew my robe here and there. A minute or two into my reverie, I was startled to hear Scrumpy’s bark come from somewhere down the street. It was completely out of character for him to stray. Ever since the closure of his puppy years a long time ago we had sealed our agreement to stay close to each other. He barked again this time sounding even further away. His betrayal hit me like a punch in the stomach. How could he, I thought, run off like an undisciplined ruffian? I stepped out into the wind and called his name quietly at first since I didn’t want to make a fuss for the neighbors. After two or three tries I heard nothing so called louder with perhaps more urgency in my voice and still nothing. I stood there in my robe feeling every minute of my seventy one years. Feeling very alone and somehow but not quite helpless. A fresh gust of wind slapped at me bringing with it the faintest sound of the circus calliope. It was then that I decided to get dressed and go out and look for Scrumpy.
It felt odd to be out walking the streets at night without my companion. Odd and yet liberating in a strange sense. The wind swept me along in the direction that I had heard his last bark coming from. The way into town. Main street was dead with the coffee shops and retail places dark and waiting for the next day. I looked down every side street and each small alleyway hoping to see my bad boy tearing at a garbage bag or humping away on some stray female in heat. I gripped his leash tightly in my hand and scripted the lecture I would give him in my mind. Might even have to give him a sharp whack on the behind like when he was a pup. He had really crossed the line this time, I thought as I came to the end of the main street and stood before the village green. Leaves blew past me and swirled against the aluminum sides of the circus campers. The big tent looming behind them like a menacing shadow.
I walked the perimeter of their encampment. Voices both jovial and argumentative came from the different “homes” as they unwound from their day’s work. Cooking smells drifted out from partially opened windows festooned with frothy yellowed nylon curtains as I skirted by. It occurred to me that Scrumpy might have let his greedy belly lead him here so I decided to enter the camp and see if he had changed his mind about the circus. I squeezed between two parked campers, stepping high over the trailer pull that jutted out behind the one and found that I was on one of their main pathways that made an inner circle around the tent. The Town Council were not going to be happy when they saw the damage their camp had made. Litter was everywhere and the once thick green carpet of grass was now worn down to dirt and mud. I wandered tentatively along knowing that I was probably trespassing and feeling very much an intruder in a foreign place. The same place where I had let Scrumpy run free so many afternoons while I sunned myself on a park bench.
A smaller tent stood close to the big one and was lit brightly from within. Its flap was pulled back and a strong smell of urine was exhaling from the gaping hole. I peered in. It was the sorriest sight I ever saw. Mangy and decrepit animals of various sorts stood chained to make shift stalls ankle deep in very soiled straw. A miniature pony tried in vain to scratch an open sore on his rump with his glitter glue speckled muzzle while two llamas looked sad and listless cramped together in a tiny corner, their hind fur matted with their own excrement. No wonder Scrumpy had a thing or three to say about this circus. At the far end of the tent was another opening. It seemed to enter into a small room or chamber. I could hear the sound of something sizzling on a hot pan. The odor of searing meat wafted out into the animal tent. I thought I heard a man talking patronizingly to someone else. Like the way you would talk to a child or an animal. Suddenly it struck me that it must be Scrumpy. He was talking to Scrumpy. It all made sense; the animals, the food, a friendly companion to share your supper with.
A cage full of grayish white doves cooed and fluttered on my right hand side as I walked through the tent dodging large dollops of animal dung. I was emboldened and completely confident that my little charmer had schmoozed his way into a late night supper so I strode right up to the opening and stuck my head in. It was a make shift studio with a filthy unmade bed against one canvas wall, a battered table with one old chair in the middle of the space and a sort of kitchen made out of a thick plank of wood laid on two saw horses on which a man was cooking something on a hot plate against another canvas wall. He was talking steadily and patronizingly while he cooked but I could not see to whom. Then he moved briefly to his left to grab a can of something that sat there and with a dizzying wave of near madness I suddenly saw to whom it was he spoke. Scrumpy’s severed head lay on a sheet of brown paper torn from a grocery bag. His round brown eyes open and staring, his velvet pink tongue hanging over his just recently cleaned doggy teeth, the off white bristly fur at the base of his neck red and rusty with clotted blood.
My hand flew to my mouth as if operated by someone else while my mind screamed horrible, horrible, horrible. I backed out of the doorway with every nerve in my body shivering and shaking with uncontrolled fear. I don’t remember physically walking out of the tent only vague pictures of the animals turning their empty eyes to me one by one as I passed them as if we were all resigned to say nothing and sneak away in our terror.
Once outside of the circus camp I ran home as fast as a seventy one year old woman can run. I locked the door behind me and near jumped out of my skin when the chime clock on the mantle rang out the hour. It was eleven. I was usually asleep by eleven. Asleep with Scrumpy at the foot of the bed. Tears welled up in my eyes. My Scrumpy gone forever. I cried good and hard for a little while. I thought of his sweet face and the last look I had of it and then remembered something else. I remembered the man at his hot plate. His back turned to me and beneath the apron he was wearing the obscene day-glo stretch of a unitard with a row of sparkling rhinestones down each leg. I went over to the mantle and stood quietly for a moment with the tears drying on my cheeks. I reached for the box of matches that I kept next to the New England Candle Shoppe oil lamp that my grandkids had given me for Christmas years back and had a mind to see it flicker.
Next morning I was out early. The wind had made a mess of all those leaves that had piled up by the curbstones. I was sweeping them into tidy piles when my neighbor Jean Bevens came out with her broom to do the same.
“Good morning Jean” I smiled while pausing from my work.
“ Did you hear about what happened downtown last night?” she began.
“No, what happened?” I asked all ears.
“Well, seems like they had a fire at the circus they had set up on the green.”
“No!” I replied astonished that something so unexpected could happen to such a quaint, family oriented kind of thing.
“Yes, they certainly did and I guess it was pretty bad. One of the performers died. A trapeze artist they said.”
“How awful.”
“I heard that he was also in charge of the animals but thank God they were OK. They were found all over town this morning.” Then she lowered her voice and continued in a conspiratorial way. “They think he was drunk or something and hadn’t locked the animals up properly. They think that he fell asleep with a lit cigarette.”
“Hmpf!” was my reply.
“I know,” Jean said “I thought the mayor was crazy in the first place. Anyway, where’s Scrumpy this morning? It’s not like him to miss leaf sweeping.”
“Oh, he’s in the house sulking. I’ve brought the suitcases down. We’re going to spend some time out with Billy and the kids. You know how much he hates travel but those kids are getting older by the year and I want to spend some time with them before they are too busy to spend time with me.” I finished chasing the last stray leaf into the pile and looked back at Jean.
“I don’t blame you. I was just telling Arty the same thing the other day.”
I liked Jean. She was a pleasant neighbor, not that she was an easy customer mind you. But she had a sensible way of looking at things and understood completely about a grandmother’s need to see her grandkids. After all, just because we didn’t agree with the mayor about this circus thing didn’t make us a couple of child hating jerks.
—Ellen Marie Magee
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