The Blue Moon Circus Read online

  Copyright © 2003 by Michael Raleigh

  Cover and internal design © 2003 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Raleigh, Michael.

  The Blue Moon Circus / by Michael Raleigh.

  p. cm.

  1. Circus owners—Fiction. 2. Orphans—Fiction. 3. Circus—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3568.A4316 B58 2002

  813’.54—dc21 2002153628

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One: Strange Times, Strange Notions

  Chapter Two: A Complication

  Chapter Three: The Mage of Arroyo Grande

  Chapter Four: Ship of the Desert

  Chapter Five: Camp

  Chapter Six: A Pachyderm and a Visitor

  Chapter Seven: Welcoming Committee

  Chapter Eight: Old Tents, Old Men

  Chapter Nine: Epistles to the Faithful

  Chapter Ten: A Passage from India

  Chapter Eleven: Two Women

  Chapter Twelve: From the Court of the Tsar

  Chapter Thirteen: The Return of the Red Ape

  Chapter Fourteen: Adventures and Explorations

  Chapter Fifteen: Legerdemain

  Chapter Sixteen: The Blue Moon Circus

  Chapter Seventeen: A Legend of the West

  Chapter Eighteen: Rasslers

  Chapter Nineteen: Charlie’s Troubles

  Chapter Twenty: Miss Lucy Brown

  Chapter Twenty-One: Battle Joined

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Parade!

  Chapter Twenty-Three: First Show

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Something to Think About

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Last of the Long Clowns

  Chapter Twenty-Six: The Autobiography of Lewis A. Tully

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Mexican Standoff

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Adventures in Colorado

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Cowboys and Other Travails

  Chapter Thirty: Wise Men

  Chapter Thirty-One: Jupiter’s Lark

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Women and Other Concerns

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Preston

  Chapter Thirty-Four: “Hey, Rube!”

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Recuperation

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Rearguard Action

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Simian Disturbance

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Strange Times, Strange Notions

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Hector C. Blaney Circus

  Chapter Forty: A Little Luck

  Chapter Forty-One: Command Performance

  Chapter Forty-Two: Back Pages, Old Scores

  Chapter Forty-Three: The Oldest Foe

  Chapter Forty-Four: Breaking Camp

  Chapter Forty-Five: Unfinished Business

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For Sean, Peter, and Caitlin

  Acknowledgments

  The author wishes to thank Mr. Bill Jackson of the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, for his gracious assistance in the research into some of the more arcane aspects of the old circuses, and Ms. Rebecca Powell of Bozeman, Montana, for her invaluable knowledge of the behavior of horses.

  Grateful acknowledgment must be made as well to his editor, Mr. Hillel Black, for his insightful comments and suggestions in the finalization of the manuscript.

  Finally, the author owes much, not only in this project but in many others, to his agent and friend, the tireless and always supportive Jane Jordan Browne.

  Prologue

  Wyoming, 1919

  The world had gone wet and gray, and all of Wyoming seemed to have turned into mud. Lewis Tully sat on a rock, his clothes and hair dripping. Overhead, the sky was one long, low thunderhead waiting to burst as the others had done for what seemed a week now. The floodwaters were receding, and here and there Lewis could see the places where the great rush of rain and riverwater had swept away his small camp. His circus.

  The tents were gone, all of them, and his Top—his gaudy Big Top less than two seasons old, and most of the wagons, and God knew what else.

  Lewis stared down at his soaked shoes and the gray coating of mud on his pants all the way up to his belt, from wrestling the panicky colt out of the mud. He tried to wipe some of it off and then heard someone coming, the sound of boots squishing in the wet earth. The other man squatted down and poked a dark-skinned finger at a piece of wood stuck in the mud, waiting for Lewis to acknowledge him.

  “I’m listening, Sam. That kid gonna be all right?”

  Sam Jeanette smiled. “More scared than anything. He can’t swim. Took in a little water in his lungs but he’ll be all right. That fella Whitey from Kansas, he busted his arm. That’s about it.”

  Lewis nodded and looked at the other man. Small and wiry and dark, veteran of wars and colored circuses and more than one disaster in the employ of Lewis Tully, Sam Jeanette was unscratched, calm, he actually looked dry. And he had something more to say.

  “Go ahead, Sam.”

  “We lost most of the herd, Lewis. Forty at least. Three of my zebras,” he added.

  “Damn. Sorry about your zebras, Sam.”

  Sam nodded. “Lost one of the llamas, too, and them two dogs. The wagons…”

  “I know about the wagons.”

  I know about all of it, he thought. I know what it means: I’m finished.

  Shelby showed up, dark hair sticking out from under his hat. He’d managed to bloody himself, a long gash down one cheek, and now he stood half stooped, hands on his knees, waiting for the two of them to finish. In the silence that followed, he looked at Sam, then at Lewis.

  “How you doin’, Lewis?”

  “I’ll live, though I’m not sure what the point is.”

  “Well, we been through…”

  “Yeah, we been through this before, but never this bad. We hadn’t made a dollar yet, J.M., and we lost near everything. We’re done, and I’m all played out.”

  Shelby nodded and looked away.

  “I’m all played out,” Lewis repeated. “This is my last show.”

  They slogged back up the muddy road toward the towns they had played just a few days earlier, forty-one men and women pulling, prodding, and coaxing their animals and staggering under the weight of all they carried, and Lewis Tully kept his head down. He would not meet the eyes of those they passed, refused to see the pity, the curiosity, perhaps even the amusement. He wondered if it were possible not to look up till they were back in Oklahoma.

  “Lewis.”

  He
turned and then looked where Shelby was pointing, and he felt his gorge rising.

  On a long, low spur a hundred yards or so ahead of them, a tall, almost skeletal man leaned against a gleaming blue touring car.

  “That nasty old Hector Blaney,” he heard a woman’s voice say.

  Well, sure, it’s Hector Blaney, he wanted to say. Who else would we run into at a time like this?

  Blaney had parked his car half off the road, half on it, so that they’d have to pass close by, close enough to speak—close enough for Lewis to hear Hector.

  Hector Blaney thrust his hands into the pockets of his bright blue suit and smiled. Behind him, two of his men climbed out of the back seat. The driver followed, a powerfully built man in a shirt cut off at the shoulders to show thick arms dark with tattoos: Joe Miles, Hector’s strongman and personal bodyguard.

  “Flood did you folks some damage, eh, Lewis? Looks like you’re through for the season.” Hector looked at him wide-eyed, unable to hide his satisfaction.

  “You’re a sharp one, Hector.”

  “We didn’t lose a single beast, not a one, nor my tents neither. We’re in fine fettle. You got to seek out the high ground in flood season, you know that. The whole world is like a battle, Lewis, and you got to seize the high ground first, before your enemy does.”

  “That or set fire to his seats during his show, or steal his horses, or damage his tent.”

  “That’s just…that’s a bunch of lies,” Hector snarled. “Next thing you’ll be blaming me for your luck. You know you never had much luck, Tully. Just better watch that talk,” Hector said, and Joe Miles stepped out from behind him, flexing his shoulders.

  “Yeah, watch your mouth,” Miles said.

  “You speaking to me, there, handsome?” Lewis asked. He turned to face Miles, then felt an improbably huge hand on his shoulder and knew without looking that Joseph Coates—a genuine strongman and the closest thing to a giant he’d ever seen—was standing behind him.

  The faintest hint of uncertainty flitted across Joe Miles’s face, and Lewis smiled, made a small snorting sound, and turned back to Hector Blaney.

  “Guess I’d best be on my way, Hector.”

  Hector Blaney nodded but he was looking past Lewis now, counting and assessing loss and capabilities. Lewis took little satisfaction from the man’s need to be certain they were finished.

  “Yep,” Hector said after a moment, “sure looks like you all are through for the season.” Then he grinned. “Maybe for longer than that, eh, Lewis?”

  “Yeah, might be so.”

  “Going back to raising horses, I expect.”

  Lewis nodded and looked past Blaney. “What I’m best at, it seems.”

  “I admire a man that knows his limitations. Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you, Lewis.”

  Lewis felt the bile at the back of his throat and started walking. Shelby materialized beside him.

  “Pretty hard thing, time like this, having to see him.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Lewis bit back his anger.

  Of the many circus men he’d known, there had been some he was not fond of and a few he couldn’t trust, but only one worth despising, only one man he could truly call an enemy, and here was another of life’s small, bitter jokes, for that one circus man to be watching the end of Lewis Tully’s last circus.

  Lewis could feel Hector Blaney’s eyes on him as he slogged on through the mud, and against his will, a tumble of images from the past visited him. He saw his many confrontations with Hector Blaney, scores of battles large and small: hostile circus columns blocking one another’s way on a back road, bar fights, punches and thrown bottles, Hector’s tireless acts of malice and minor sabotage over the years, each incident cementing animosity and guaranteeing life to their quarrel. And now in memory Lewis saw the beginnings, all of this starting out as nothing more than two young bucks banging heads and horns for their place until Hector had made it all serious.

  A single moment came back to him, the Germaine Brothers Circus, last part of the 1896 season: five men standing in a hot tent that smelled of mildew and sweat, Matt and Henry Germaine, Lewis Tully, Hector Blaney—both still in their early twenties—and a trick rider named Bolger. Lewis remembered the silence inside the tent, the buzz of cicadas in the trees outside. Accusation, angry denial, evidence offered, and the young Hector Blaney fired summarily from the show for plotting to cause injury to a rival.

  Lewis could still see Hector in his mind’s eye, tall and skinny and colorless in a shirt cut for a heavier man. Hector had been trying to work up a goatee but had managed only a few scraggly black hairs so that instead of looking distinguished he resembled Jefferson Davis’s pale ghost.

  Lewis Tully remembered little of what Hector said in his own defense that afternoon, but he could still recall Hector’s final words to him:

  “This is all your doin’. You done this ’cause you never thought you could hold your own with me. I got a long memory, Tully. You and me ain’t finished.”

  The young Hector Blaney looked from one face to the other, his outrage bringing high red spots to his pale face. Then he glared once more at Lewis, eyes wild.

  “You wait, boy.” And then he rushed from the tent.

  Over the years, the moment had become obscured by more immediate troubles, and Lewis had come to think of their mutual loathing as natural, a logical thing. But now the scene in the Germaine Brothers’ tent visited him across time, and he saw how a single moment may alter all that comes after.

  And Lewis believed that sometimes a man was paired for life, for better or worse, with certain people so that their paths crossed throughout life, at times in the most unexpected places. In his case, fate or God or whatever ordered the universe had paired him with Hector Blaney, just as it had paired him from an orphan childhood with his friend Shelby.

  Lewis realized that Shelby had come alongside.

  “He waited a long time to see this,” Shelby said, and Lewis heard the anger rising in his friend’s voice, anger to match his own.

  “Twenty-three years, J.M.”

  Shelby stopped and put a hand on Lewis’s wet forearm. “Let’s you and me just have one final word with Hector.”

  “We’ve got enough trouble without getting into a clem with Hector, much as I’d like to set him on his ass. Besides, Hector didn’t cause the flood.” And then Lewis felt himself smiling. “We don’t want to give him any more credit than necessary,” and he patted his friend on the back.

  “Too bad that time you broke his arm, you didn’t break his neck instead.”

  “Too young to know any better.”

  “What you told Hector—are we through, Lewis?”

  He caught himself about to deny it but there was no denying how hard it had been to put this last show together. All along he’d thought of it as his last chance at running his own show, had even come to think of it as The Last One. And now it was finished.

  “Sure looks that way.” He shot a quick look at the long straggling line of tired muddy circus people—his friends, for God’s sake—and couldn’t see ever going through this, or putting anyone else through it again.

  “I’m through with circuses.”

  They walked a few more steps through the squelching mud before Shelby said, “All right, so we’ll raise horses,” in a voice flat with disappointment.

  ONE

  Strange Times, Strange Notions

  Oklahoma, 1926

  A brawl, and in a blind pig, which made it far worse, disturbing the peace compounded by transgressions against the Volstead Act.

  The fight, Lewis told himself, had not been his fault.

  “Not my fault at all,” he said aloud into the darkness in his cell.

  It had been Shelby’s fault, and old Emmett McKeon’s, the two of them getting into the kind of card game anybody could see would lead t
o trouble, playing poker with a couple of oily city types named Swan and Faraday. The two city men had been cheating them all night, and would have gone on lifting their money with surprising ease far into the night. Then Lewis, twenty feet away at the bar, had caught something, a quick look from one man to the other. A few minutes later, Lewis joined the game. For several hands, Lewis marveled at the countless ways Shelby could find to part with his money, and he studied the two well-heeled strangers till he saw how they were doing it. A couple more hands and then he called the two sharps on their play.

  The resultant fight had been spirited, for the two men were not without companions in the room, but it had been brief, for the sheriff of the town of Jasper, Oklahoma, chose that moment to burst into the room with four of his deputies and announce that they were all under arrest.

  And so Lewis Tully sat in a cell crowded with snoring friend and foe and listened to a man in the next cell play mournful tunes on a harmonica. The crescent moon was visible between the bars of his cell; it rose like a silent ghost as his heart sank.

  Fifty-two years old and I’m in jail.

  ***

  The judge was an old friend, which made Lewis’s humiliation more complete. The Honorable George G. Lester appeared to have spent a sleepless night himself. His hair stuck up on the back of his head and he sat with his chin resting in one hand as the local prosecutor read the long list of offenses of the various prisoners, looking at each of them over the rims of the filthiest eyeglasses Lewis had ever seen.

  The judge listened to the offenses, moving his head back and forth as though keeping time to music, and then cut the young defender’s speech short with a wave of his hand and grumbled, “Approach the bench.”

  Lewis shoved his companions toward the high, narrow desk that served as the “bench.”

  “Your Honor,” the young man began, rubbing his little patch of chin-whiskers.

  “Hold on there, Mr. Samuelson. Save your fine elocutionary powers. I know this man.”

  He gave Lewis a sardonic little smile and said, “Hello, Lewis.”

  “Hello, George. The robe suits you.”

  Judge Lester made a little shrug. “Gets hot sometimes, but it’s what the job calls for.”