All the Broken Things (31 page)

“Can we pet her?”

“Better not,” said Bo. He thought his teeth might crack from clenching them. “Maybe later.”

Bear knew Bo was upset, and her gait suggested she was agitated too. Bo didn’t want to risk her misbehaving, her weight a danger to anyone who might get in her way. She did not seem to even notice the boys, except to lift her snout briefly to scent them, mark the fence with a long splashing piss, and continue in the direction of the ring. She wore her sequined leotard, which Bo had struggled to clothe her in. It sparkled in the afternoon sun. She looked both beautiful and
ridiculous. It was sure to get a laugh, even if it clearly upset her to wear it.

“It’s okay, girl. Shh.”

“She looks like a lady,” said Peter.

“A hairy lady,” Ernie qualified.

“Yeah. Nice.”

And then they were inside the wrestling tent, and Bo had the creature sit, watched Gerry push through the crowd to him.

“Where the hell were you?”

“Gerry, I need to talk to you.”

“Yeah, okay. Later. Let’s get this going.”

Gerry knew what he wanted to talk about. Bo could see it all over his face, the guilt, the excuses, the tiresome human weakness. So weak he would avoid it all if he could, and then he did. Gerry turned and spread his arms and shoved the people back, strung up velvet ropes to demarcate the ramp. Little kids tried to climb into the ring and Gerry shooed them away. Bo saw the telltale black bowler at the back of the room. Max was watching. It wasn’t over, and Bo was on edge.

Bo signalled Bear to rise onto her back legs and then he walked backwards up the ramp, facing her, while she bounced from one foot to the other in a wayward dance, her sequins glinting, drool rolling from the corner of her mouth. He could see how concentrated she was, but also how vacant her eyes were, as if she were not really here
at all but rather sunk deep in the glory of the crowd’s scent—sweat, fear, excitement, and whatever else he hoped she might be able to locate: the lake, earth and its wormy prospect, clean air under it all, nature.

A part of Bo begged whatever powers there might be, God, gods, goddesses, that Bear could smell that too. That she could still smell the real of it, High Park, the past. Then they were in the ring.

Bo let Bear drop to all fours. There was a trike at centre ring for her, which she mounted without being told. Bo helped her paws find the pedals. He led her around the ring, around and around. She looked like any huge kid, rotating clumsily, fighting gravity and winning, and losing, and winning.

The crowd roared but Bear didn’t care. She kept pumping around and around. When Gerry gave him a look, Bo slowed her down by lowering the lead, reminding her he was there. She glanced over at him and seemed to remember where she was, then shut down the pedalling. She fell off the back of the bike like a fast crap. That had them laughing. The referee pulled the trike out of the ring and sent it scuttling down the ramp to a carnie who was waiting for it.

“Bear!” shouted the announcer over the PA. “Bear and Bo! They found each other in a village in Vietnam and have never been separated. They are the most unlikely siblings. They understand each other perfectly, Bo having
mastered the tongue of bears, and Bear learning enough English to make her the smartest bear in captivity. But, folks? This does not make her tame. Notice, if you will, the nasty wound along the boy’s cheek!”

Bo flashed his face in each direction, to show them a tiny cut from the scuffle with Ernie, a scratch. He had learned to roll with the white lies in the carnival circuit. The announcer embellished the wound a hundred ways, all of them inflicted by Bear. “Sixteen stitches, inside and out.” Any moron would know it was a lie, but any crowd was less than a moron. The crowd had paid, it leaned in, it wanted a story, wanted to be lied to.

He saw Ernie and Peter at the ring edge, their eyes on Bear’s paws as she hopped. Bo gave them the thumbs-up, and first Ernie and then Peter gave a thumb back to him. The referee moved toward Bo and leaned down to fake-whisper. Then he turned and crouched to talk to Bear. Muffled laughter. Bo held his hand up in the air and Bear’s paw rose. She linked her claws through his fingers. He could hear the crowd sigh—a breath of disbelief—as they collectively fell in love with the animal.

The ref held his arms out angled skyward like a priest readying for a sermon. Then he dropped them, indicating the fight should begin. Bear did not hesitate, and caught Bo off guard. He flew backwards onto his head as she hit him, to great audience approval. It was possible to see stars—Bo saw them now. Bear ambled
over and licked the salty sweat from his knee. To the crowd it looked empathetic. But they had not practised this. It was all Bear.

Bo let her lick him long enough to catch his breath and get himself up again. He swayed there, a drunk puppet, barely conscious, trying to find his balance, his vision, himself. The fight with Ernie hadn’t done him any favours, he thought, and saw Ernie smiling at him, mouthing,
Wake up
. Was it that simple? The bear was mid-ring, sitting, scenting up into the air, off in some smell reverie. Blissful.

Bo fell into her, cupped her under her armpits, made it looked like he had half a chance of jostling that great thing. Her hundreds of pounds were immovable, but her mind was agile, surprised by his sudden move.

She threw him again. He was a rag, but one that hung onto her for dear life. She shook and he was shaken. The audience thought this was pretty funny. His sweat arced into the crowd. Bear stilled, and licked him some more. There was some screaming at this, and in his peripheral vision, Bo saw Gerry looking concerned. He wondered whether this was, in fact, dangerous, decided it wasn’t, and clutched Bear tightly. She was his mother, he thought. He was delirious.

“Go. Go. Go,” the crowd was shouting.

His body wanted only to obey. To go forward. To do something. But what? He let Bear decide. His body
became hers as he just held on, the bear trotting around the ring with him lurching alongside, clinging to her. The ref looked concerned too.

This was not right. He was having a hard time keeping a hold, had to press down under the leotard. There might have been a rip, he could not be sure, but one thing he did know for certain: the crowd was mesmerized. He might be in trouble but it did not matter. He watched their faces shirr by, a blur of colour, this one and then that one, pink, red, brown, and they were rapt.
Go. Go. Go
.

“Bear,” he whispered. “Bear, save me.”

But she did not stop. She kept on and on, even when Gerry shouted and the referee shouted, and the audience rose to their feet in alarm. Something was going wrong, he knew. Bear would save him from it. Gerry was crouching with a can of soda but Bear did not seem to notice. She was following something. A smell. A need.

“Goddammit,” Gerry said.

“Stop her, for Chrissake.” Was that Max?

“Jesus,” said Ernie.

Around and around. Now they were opening the ramp, and there was screaming. His body thumped up and down as she ran down the ramp and he smelled the sick-sweet smells of the carnival, shit and bodies. Then it was only green, swaths of grass slipping beneath them, and then she stopped and he fell, hard, onto the ground. Above him, Bear was panting, a line of spittle
running from her tongue to his face. And then Gerry was behind her.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

Bo grunted and turned. It felt like a truck had driven over him.

“Well, she sure as hell wasn’t ready for that bout,” Gerry said.

“She was scenting something.”

“She could have killed you.”

Bo let the gorgeous smell of the earth go in and out of him. He had never known how varied the earth was in its odour. It held decay, and wetness and dryness, and next year and last year. He breathed it in and out while Gerry muzzled Bear, who shied away from his roughness. Bo watched him lead her away, but he did not move for a while, waiting for his mind to come back to his body.

“You okay, Bo?” It was Ernie. Peter and Max loomed behind him.

He closed his eyes.

“Shit, man.”

“Yeah,” Bo said.

“We brought you something.”

The boys set it down in front of his face, too close for him to really focus on it, and so it took him some time to see what it was.

“A beer. How’d you get that?” He reached for it, his neck muscles pulsating.

“Some guy who watched the fight felt sorry for you.” The boys plunked themselves down in front of him. They each had one, and were laughing at their luck.

“Can you sit up?” Peter asked.

“Yep.” He tried and got halfway there. “Nope.” And sank onto his back again. “I’ll be okay.”

“Your bear,” Ernie said.

“I trained her myself.”

“That’s a good one.” They all laughed.

The boys joined three straws together, tucking the end of one into the end of the other to make one long straw, then bent it from the beer into Bo’s mouth. The fizz and the cold felt good going in, and he sucked it back.

He hadn’t wanted to look but he did. Max still stood there, worried.

H
E WOKE UP IN
M
AX
’
S TRAILER
, lying on a little couch opposite the table. He looked around, recognized the photographs, the geek show—a plump girl biting the head off a snake. His head hurt—everything hurt. He knew some days had gone by, that he’d been in and out of it. And now he was awake, his whole body wanted to run.

“What time is it?”

Max was sitting at the table. “The freaks are just waking up, kid.”

He tried to shake his head but it was like his brain was going to and fro with it, clanking up against his skull, so he stopped.

Max got a mirror and held it up to him. Not good. It looked like things had been rearranged. “You must have hit the ground on that merry-go-round about twenty times,” Max said.

He hadn’t noticed hitting once, but he saw it must be true. There were welts and cuts all over his face.

“Bear,” he said.

“
She’s
fine.”

“I mean, where is she?”

“Back in your tent. Morgana has taken over feeding her until you’re better. There’s nothing broken and, as you would surmise, the show—”

“—must go on. Yeah, I know.”

“Here—” Max dangled an ice pack in front of him.

He pressed it along his cheek and gloried in the cold seeping in, nullifying the throb there. An ice bath would be perfect. There was a banging, which he mistook for his head at first and then realized it was coming from the room down the hall. Orange was smashing the door, trying to get out.

“She wants to see you, I expect. You’ve been mostly out of it.”

“I want to see her too.”

So Max went to get Orange and she waddle-dragged her body toward him, her smile skewed but her hands
flailing, her throat making grunts not unlike Bear’s chirring when she was happy. He’d never heard Orange make any sound before.

You happy
? He signed it for her, his wrist painfully rotating at his chin. He knew all of ten words by now.

She stopped, did a double-take, and made a face like squealing, though no sound came out—just an open mouth, all the energy of it playing out in her eyes.

“How’d you learn that, pal?” Max asked.

“That book. I’ve learned a few words.” The book poked out of a bag of his things someone must have packed and brought over. He gestured to it. “Can you hand me that?”

Max slid the bag over, and smiled.

“We’re not friends now, by the way,” Bo said, not looking at Max.

“I don’t expect so.”

Orange plunked down in front of them, so she and Bo were eye to eye. My, she was ugly, he thought. He thought it with no judgment. She was. She was signing
Out
and pointing to the door.

“I’m taking her out,” Bo said.

“People will look at her.”

“That’s odd coming from you.”

“Your mother,” Max said.

“Are you serious?”

“I promised she’d stay in.”

“Look,” Bo said. “She’s signing she wants to go out.” He was thinking how this guy lied all the time—his entire life was about lying—so why was he keeping such a promise?

“Tell her people will stare at her. Ask her if she minds.”

Bo just glared at Max. “Why should you care?” meaning the Toad Girl exhibit.

“That’s different,” said Max. “She has no idea.”

“Really?”

“The Airstream is soundproofed. And there is always music playing for her, to muffle whatever sound might penetrate. I call it the daytime trailer. She loves it, hardly ever bangs around in there.” Max shrugged and added, “Though the gawkers love it when she does—the spectacle of it.”

“Eventually she’ll figure it out.”

“I prefer not to imagine that time.”

Bo pulled out the book and flipped through.
People
, he signed to Orange, then, flipping some more,
stare
, a lunging V, his head bobbing toward her.

Out
, she said.
Out
.

Bo pushed himself to sitting, ignoring the pounding head. “See?” he said to Max. “She wants to be normal.” Then to Orange he said, “Okay, hold your horses.” He signed,
Okay
.