The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (12 page)

Soon I became one of the better known Little Egypts in a circuit
full of Little Egypts, the Great Parker Carnival posters all stating I was
110 per cent authentic and that you shouldn't be fooled by imitators. My
first taste of stardom, it was, and not in any way disagreeable. I started
getting compliments, fan mail, boxes of chocolates, invitations to dinner and articles written about me in the local papers, some saying I was
an artistic addition to the burlesque tradition and some saying I was the
square root of all things evil and some even tracing my act back to the
divan shows of the ancient Silk Road. And, oh, the flowers. Rhododendrons in St. Louis. Daffodils in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Gladioli in Albuquerque. Roses in Bismarck (though how they got
them up there I'll never know). Lilies of the valley, bunches and bunches of them, from an industrialist in Jefferson City, Missouri. And
those're just the ones I remember. I'd finish a show and if it was an
evening performance and we were in a town where times were good
they'd be there, bouquets as big as yours truly, usually with a love note
from some rich guy smitten not with me but the idea of me.

They'd ask to meet me. Stoughton, in that rich larnyx-bobbing
voice of his, would tell them to beat it. I wasn't supposed to talk to anyone as Little Egypt, or admit to strangers I was none other, or otherwise
display any intimate awarenesses of the Serpentine dance, the reason
being it wouldn't take much more than my opening my mouth for people to figure out the famous Little Egypt was a pint-sized hick from the
flat end of Kentucky. Your job, Stoughton would say, is guarding the
mystique. My job is helping you do that.

Unless of course money was involved.

Here's how it worked. The interested gentlemen would pay
Stoughton whatever Stoughton thought he could get from him, which
would be anywhere from six bits in a state like Mississipi to upwards of
$6 in a high-rolling state like California. Later on we'd split it. Was our
extra little bonus, what troupers call cherry pie. For the first time, I
started saving money.

Once the introductory fee was paid, Stoughton would lead the
man into a feed tent we'd emptied of sacks and festooned with divans
and veils and huge silken pillows and other store-bought items made up
to look Arab. I'd be lying on a bunch of cushions, in harem pants and a
veil, eating grapes straight from the bunch, and the man would stammer
something like "Why yes Miss Egypt I just wanted to say how much I
enjoyed your performance and how much I enjoyed your dancing and if
you were free for dinner this evening I was just wondering...."
Meanwhile I'd be doing nothing but pouting, head supported by my right hand, left hip jutting suggestively in the air, and it was the sight of
this hip up close that usually caused the rube to get so short of breath he
could barely get through what it was he wanted to get through.
(Amazing, how easy it was to rile a man back in 1911.) After a minute
I'd ease one of my eyebrows upward, as if to say, Me? With you?

This was Stoughton's idea and the result of Stoughton's understanding of John Q. Public: not once did a man react poorly to my
rudeness, or do anything but bow his head and thank me for my time
and back out muttering apologies. Stoughton explained this was
because the rubes actually wanted me to do this, for it was in keeping
with the general aura of Little Egypt. If I'd accepted an invitation,
they'd know the great siren of Cairo didn't really exist, so in fact I was
doing them a favour treating them like yesterday's breakfast.

After slipping into the state of Texas via Louisiana and doing our
first show in Port Arthur, I heard from Stoughton a man wanted to
meet me. We quickly threw together the Egypt tent. A few minutes
later the flap lifted and in came none other than the Texan. We stood
looking at each other. (Well, he stood and I lay, but given the air of
superiority I generated while dressed as Little Egypt it felt like the other
way around.) He had flowers with him, a dozen roses, and all he did
was put them down and nod and leave. Didn't say a word. I guess he
thought it was more dignified that way.

He came back the next day, his act more or less the same: he put
the flowers down and took a good long look at me, only this time before
tipping his hat and leaving he said, "I sure do enjoy the way you move
up there, Miss Egypt," to which I fluttered my eyelashes and sent him
on his way. The next time he came it was exactly the same routine, only
he said, "I sure do enjoy watching you dance, Miss Egypt," and the time
after that it was, "I sure do wish I could get to know you a bit better,
Miss Egypt," (though with that one he dropped his dimpled chin, like a
man guilty of strong emotion). I looked at him haughtily, raising my
eyebrows and saying with my whole expression, Well, no kidding.

He left, only to show up the next night, wearing one of his expensive suits and a bolo tie and handing over another bouquet of flowers.
We moved on to Baytown, and he kept coming, the jump to Houston
doing little to dissuade him either, which is saying something seeing as
travel between cities wasn't nearly what it is today.

His first proposition was something along the lines of "I was
wondering, Miss Egypt, if you and I could get together, outside the
circus I mean," a suggestion that was moulded the next night into "I
was thinking, Miss Egypt, if you'd like to visit me in Beaumont, I own
a real nice home and I know lots of nice people...." And then, near the
middle of our Houston stand, he hit me with it in that slow solid Texan
way of his.

"Might as well out with it, Miss Egypt. I'm here to declare my
intentions."

Now I could only game-play for so long, especially once I started considering how much money that poor man was spending for the
privilege of watching me eat grapes for a minute at a time. Fact is, he
was wearing me down (or setting me up, he being a man) and on the
night he actually got down on one knee and proposed, what could I do
but break out laughing and say, "Lookit, mister. First off my name's
not Miss Egypt. It's Haynie, Mary Haynie, from the ugly end of
Kentucky no less. This is all just getup, a costume. There is no Little
Egypt-she doesn't exist. I'm something they dreamed up. Oh, and by
the way, we met last year but you just can't tell on account of this veil."

Well. You know what that big dummy did? He looked at me with
those somber Texan eyes-like grey skies, they were-and he rotated his
hat in those big leathery hands and he said, "I understand that, ma'am."

I won't claim this didn't have an effect on me, for it did, the ability to surprise being something women have trouble ignoring. At the
same time I had no intention of running off and marrying, no matter
how rich the suitor, given my general lack of interest in men and the
bad taste I had in my mouth concerning the holy state of matrimony. So instead I thought, What the hell, and walked over and got up on my
tiptoes. This got me high enough to give his cheek a quick, dry kiss, like
one a sister might dole out at a wedding.

"Don't come back, all right? I mean it. This is silly."

He looked at me sadly, for about as long as it takes to blink slowly three times. Then he promised he wouldn't, if that's what I wanted,
but before he left he handed me a card and told me if I ever changed my
mind I could cable him, day or night, let him know I was coming and
no matter what he'd be waiting when I got there. Then he gave me a
pitiful little nod of the head and left me eyeballing a gold-embossed
business card. It read

James Williams III
Investments and Annuities

and it was one of those moments a thought you're not proud of pops
into your head and you examine it with surprise and more than a little
self-contempt before chasing it away.

Keep the card, Mary.

It was so hot and dusty that year by the time we made it to our last stops
in the panhandle it'd started to feel like we'd been condemned to wander Texas for the rest of our natural-born lives. Everyone was bored
and mad and restless, which is what happens to troupers when you force
them to stay in the same state for an extended stretch-it feels like confinement and it cheeses them off. The animals were nervous and losing
hair, and a lot of the workingmen were drinking and the ones who
weren't had taken off, Con T. having to recruit more stake drivers and
roustabouts from local men's hostels so of course they were drinking
nonstop as was their nature.

Now. You take a group of sober men and place them next to a
bunch of drunk men and the sober ones'll feel deprived, and believe me the thing men hate worse than anything on earth is feeling deprived.
It's their greatest weakness. Go all crybaby, they do, probably from
being spoiled by their mothers. So of course the drunkenness spread to
the wranglers and the sideshow freaks and a goodly number of performers, the upshot being by the time we pulled into Lubbock we were
all feeling crusty and in no mood, and in addition most of the men were
suffering from headaches and the shakes.

Lubbock. Christ. Was practically biblical in its awfulness, and I'm
a woman who's read the Bible more than once so I know what I'm talking about. When the China call went up and we all looked out the train
window ... well, a sigh went round. The town was low and it was ugly,
sitting in a dust cloud the colour of dried blood. When we detrained it
got even worse, for Lubbock appeared on the schedule the same time of
year the panhandle got eaten up by locusts, and as we moved our bags
to the wagons those big old bugs set to work, flapping in our hair, running over our clothes, getting inside our shirts, their fat little frog-sized
hindlegs rubbing together to produce an evil, gloating hum. Every
towner who could be indoors was, meaning we pretty much had the
place to ourselves. It was like a ghost town. Main Street was perfectly
still, or would've been were it not for a hot wind blowing in from the
plains, stirring up paper and scrub and brown-red dust. It got in your
mouth and hair, choked the back of your throat and sent even the teetotallers on the show running for the nearest beer.

So I went with them. The place was called the Town Inn, a big
old saloon with only a few locals inside drinking when the entire cast of
the Parker Carnival funnelled in. Whatever conversations had been
going on stopped, townfolk generally regarding carnies as unwashed
gypsies who dress themselves by stealing shirts off townie clotheslines,
an idea incorrect only in the gypsy part: in all my years of trouping I
never once met an actual gypsy though it's true we lived like them. No
matter. When the barkeep saw we had money the draft beer started
flowing and soon the room filled with chatter. I sat with the other Dancing Girls, even though their chumminess had worn off considerably since I'd been named Little Egypt. Still, was a day we girls needed
to stick together, for of all the people drinking beer in that bar to forget their glumness we dancing girls were by far the glummest, Lubbock
being known as a town where the dancers more often than not got
called on to help square the grift. Even as we sat there gulping, we knew
Con T. was meeting with the chief of police to work out the details, the
police in Lubbock being so mean and drunk and full of themselves they
refused to barter with the advance agent, insisting on speaking with the
boss man himself.

An hour later the call went out: Con T. needed to talk to me. As
I walked over to Con T's tent it felt a little like the time I walked toward
a bloody heap on an untitled tobacco field and nothing would make me
believe it was my mother until I saw it all up close. I was going to have
to fuck some fat greasy southern cop. That much was obvious. Yet as I
went over there my mind took a little breather. If you'd asked me my
name I probably would've looked at you blankly and said nothing more
edifying than "Huh?"

It was when I walked through those tent flaps and saw Con T. sitting there, smoking a cigar and looking guilty, that reality came storming
back. Started to tremble, I did.

He motioned for me to sit. I kickstarted the tete-a-tete.

"What's it gonna be, boss?"

"Usual stuff. Money. Whisky. Free tickets. A girl. I'm sorry,
Mary. Seems Little Egypt's reputation has spread far and wide."

"His name?"

"Owen Lakes."

"What's he like?"

"Can't say he's a charmer."

"What do I have to do?"

"Go to his house. Be there at five. Have dinner. Dance with him
if he asks. Wear your costume, of course."

I stared back, blinking, all the while searching my brain for a tactful way of handling this. One didn't come. In Hopkinsville, I'd sworn
I'd never deal with someone trying to take advantage by acting nice and
cute and hoping they'd take pity. But seeing as I was sitting in the office
of Con T. Kennedy himself, brother-in-law of the great C. W. Parker
and therefore a man with clout, I tried chasing it away and landing on
a strategy a little more compromising.

Sure enough it didn't come, leaving me no choice but to do what
I did. Got tired of waiting, I suppose.

"Nope," I said.

His face fell. His mouth looked like a pair of dropped pants.

"Whaddaya mean, no?"

"I mean what I say, Mr. Kennedy. This being the panhandle and
the rough bit besides, I can picture Owen Lakes and what I'm picturing
is fat and rude and sweating buckets, and I bet he's unkind to children
and animals to boot. Under no circumstances will I go to his house, eat
his food, listen to his music or in any way help him feel like a man. The
answer is no. En Oh. You like Lakes so much you give him foxtrot lessons.

It was obvious no one had ever talked to Con T. Kennedy this
way, much less a lowly dancing girl. He got up and circled round his
desk and came toward me. I stood to meet him, and we both made our
eyes go snake-like.

"Now you listen to me you little piece of West Kentucky trash. If
it weren't for me you'd still be making wallets in the nuthouse so I'll say
this one time and one time only. Tonight you will be entertaining the
chief of police of the town of Lubbock, Texas, and you will be charming and you will be polite and when he asks you to dance you will say,
`Oh, wonderful I saw your cylinder player I thought you was never
going to ask.' Am I making myself clear, Miss Mary whatever-you'recalling-yourself these days?"