Freaks: Alive, on the Inside!

“Puking is good. It gets the disease out.” Mink strode gawkily to the giant’s wagon, where the others had gathered. Through the wheels I could make out the hands and knees of the giant as he knelt retching. Perhaps this amounted to more puke than even Mink thought tolerable, however. He smacked Billy Sweet on the shoulder. “Ride back to that settlement and see if they have some sort of medical man. This better not cost a fortune,” he growled at Bess.

I left Miss Lightfoot and Bess to help the giant in what little ways they could and retired to my blanket on the stony ground.

I awoke to sunlight and yells, and crawled from under my wagon.

“You quack,” Mink accused. I followed the voices up to the giant’s wagon. Bonfiglio and Ceecee were positioned behind Mink like bodyguards. Miss Lightfoot bowed her head into a handkerchief, and Bess had her arm around Miss Lightfoot’s hips, which was as high as she could reach.

“I dosed him with bismuth,” said a dark-suited man I assumed to be the doctor, “but his heart couldn’t stand the stress of the vomiting.”

Coldness gripped my gut. “What’s happened?”

Billy Sweet shook his head. “The giant’s dead.”

18

YOU’RE CHARGING ME NINETY-FIVE cents a mile to come out here and kill my giant?”

“If you’d prefer I come back with the sheriff, that suits me, Dr. Mink.” The medical doctor emphasized Mink’s honorific sarcastically. “And I’ll charge you for those miles too.”

Mink and the doctor matched glares in a silent duel, and Miss Lightfoot wrung her handkerchief between her scaly hands, but Mink pulled out his purse and smacked some coins into the doctor’s palm, and I remembered to breathe. “Get that shovel out of the back wagon,” Mink said to Billy Sweet. “You’ve got an all-fired large grave to dig.”

“Hold your horses,” said the doctor. “You can’t plant him on someone’s property uninvited.”

“What do you suggest I do with him?” asked Mink. “Stuff him?”

Was it my imagination, or did the glint of an idea flash through Mink’s eyes at the sound of his own words. I swallowed. He wouldn’t, would he?

“I suggest you bring him into town for a decent burial,” said the doctor, “else the sheriff will be out to find you after all. I’ll write you up a death certificate at my surgery when you come in.” With that, he boarded his buggy and clicked the horse into motion.

“You know, we could boil him down for his bones. That would make a good display,” Mink said to no one in particular.

Miss Lightfoot let out a distraught squeak, and I gulped for words.

“You bastard!” Bess cried, and stuck out her jaw, beard bristling.

The children ducked back behind wagon wheels and bushes.

“Now, now!” Mr. Ginger, heretofore silent, spoke up. “He will do no such thing.” The second face on his forehead twitched rapidly, revealing the stress Mr. Ginger tried to conceal. “I suspect the good physician will be true to his word and send the law if we are not in town soon.”

“Not to mention, we don’t have a pot big enough,” muttered Billy.

Town consisted of Main Street and not much else. A sign at the first wooden building announced its name as Horizontal. What that referred to was anyone’s guess. We traveled the length of the single thoroughfare as people stood in their doors to watch—they were silent and clutched the collars of boys who would follow. We stopped at the far end of town behind a graveyard attached to a clapboard Lutheran church. Two men were digging a grave. A wave of melancholy swept over me. Did the giant have kin who would never know where he lay buried?

The performers kept to their wagons while Mink went in search of the doctor. He came back fifteen minutes later with the undertaker in tow. The undertaker peered in the back of the wagon, then had a few words with Mink, and they proceeded to argue. “At that price we’ll knock together our own box, thank’e,” concluded Mink, and Billy Sweet was set the task.

Since we dared not carry the giant far in a homemade coffin, we laid the giant out directly in his grave, rather than in the church. We drivers wrestled the coffin there with the help of the two gravediggers, plus the undertaker, the doctor, and a sheriff with a walrus mustache, all of whom had arrived for the formalities along with their wives.

The children stayed in their caravan with Apollo and Mr. Bopp on Mink’s orders. Of course, Minnie had already said good-bye to the giant, hadn’t she? The idea gave me gooseflesh.

Miss Lightfoot and Bess disguised their looks with dark veils so they could attend, and Mr. Ginger wore an oversize soft cap pulled low over his eyebrows. It bulged in front in a quite peculiar way. I changed into my best suit of clothes, and Mink donned his top hat for the occasion and added a shirt under the tailcoat he wore for shows. Ceecee had on an elegant evening suit and makeup. The town women glanced sideways at him and at one another.

Earle sat in his cart by the graveyard fence. No disguise could hide him. Townsfolk gathered there too, reluctant to come close for the service, yet unwilling to give up the spectacle, either.

As Miss Lightfoot spoke quietly to the pastor, Dr. Mink surveyed the crowd. “A pity I can’t charge,” he said.

My mouth dropped open, and he had the nerve to laugh.

Prayers were spoken, and the representatives from the community led the hymn singing with dour determination, as if they had to make up for our sins. The pastor said a few words about our giant: “He was a big man, in heart as well as body, but even a big heart fails in the end. He will surely join his dear wife and child in heaven and find comfort there.” I hadn’t even known he had a family.