“Why on earth did you leave?” asked Miss Lightfoot.
I couldn’t answer that without sounding like a selfish child. “Will you come, Mr. Ginger?” I asked.
He cleared his throat and wouldn’t look at me. “Oh, I don’t think I could stand the strain,” he said. “I’m in delicate health.”
Ruby Lightfoot paid considerable attention to fanning herself.
“There’s room for you both if you change your minds,” I said. Part of me was relieved. I worried that the more people we took, the harder it would be to get away.
“You are most kind,” Miss Lightfoot said, and honored me with a gentle smile. I thought her done, but she took a deep breath and continued urgently. “Sugar, you’d best retrieve those papers from Dr. Mink’s wagon,” she said. “The ones that give him guardianship of those children, else he’ll have the law on his side when he comes after you.”
The curtain parted and fear of discovery jolted my guts, but there stood wide-eyed Minnie. She took her corn dolly out of her mouth long enough to speak. “I’ve got a story,” she said in her wispy little voice.
“Well, come tell us, sugarplum,” the alligator woman invited, and reached out her scaled arms.
“Thank you for the advice, ma’am,” I said to Miss Lightfoot. “Have you a hairpin I might borrow?” Without questioning, she fumbled in her chestnut curls as I shook Mr. Ginger’s hand. I left Minnie with them and went back to my duties in the exhibit tent.
After the shows were over, the center tent packed, and the horses hitched up, I gave Apollo his orders. “Get the children into the wagon and tell them to settle down and be quiet. Ill meet you there.”
Daylight had almost gone by the time I wrestled my suitcase from behind my driver’s bench in the other wagon. I strapped the bandolier that held my throwing knives over my shoulder— I couldn’t lose them, whatever happened—and I threw my jacket over the top, despite the heat. I hadn’t gone far in the summer dusk when Billy Sweet called my name. I tossed my suitcase into the shadows under a wagon and waited, heart thumping.
“Hey, Dandy,” he said. “I’m goin’ to town to visit the ladies. Want to come and make yerself a man?”
I stammered my refusal, and he brayed like a donkey.
“Well, stay and read yer Bible, then,” he said. “I’ll be back before the late show ends to help you pack up the babies and the beef jerky lady.” As soon as he left, I breathed a sigh of relief and retrieved my bag.
“Listen,” I told the children as I stowed my suitcase under a bunk. “We’ll travel to where we sleep between towns, like always, but once the others are asleep, we’ll move on by ourselves.”
The children exchanged excited looks. Bertha pressed her wide hands over her mouth as if she was suppressing an explosion of glee.
“Moses,” I said, “you’re in charge.” The frog boy pushed out his chest.
“Hey!” Apollo yelped.
“Come on, Dog Boy,” I said. “We’ve got a job to do.”
Apollo’s protests died in his throat.
The summer night was sprinkled with distant, careless stars. Flickering torches cast uneven light and caused the shadows to constantly mutate. The crooked shades of men jerked into the latenight show, and I knew that Apollo and I were out there alone.
“You’ve been inside his wagon, where does he keep his papers?” I asked, and Apollo told me what he knew. I appointed him watchdog and climbed the creaky steps to Mink’s front door.
One learns many skills when one lives with show folk, and it didn’t take me long to trick the lock with Miss Lightfoot’s hairpin and a technique I’d learned from a world-renowned escape artist. Once I’d lit an oil lamp and turned it down as low as I could, the hairpin gained me entrance to the lockbox I found chained to the frame of the wagon.
Inside were papers aplenty, rolls of coins, and a fat wad of bills. I squinted to read the documents in the sooty light, and I finally spotted a familiar name—Moses Quick. I sucked in a breath. The guardian named was not Lazar
us Mink, as I had expected, but Ruby Lightfoot. I dropped the papers as if they had burst into flame, and glanced over my shoulder. Had she duped me? Could this be a trap? All I heard was the distant sound of sinuous pipe music. I picked up the spilled papers again with trembling hands and examined them. There, at the bottom, was scrawled Miss Lightfoot’s signature, shaky and childlike, and Dr. Mink’s name as witness. Why had she said these papers gave Mink guardianship?
I didn’t waste time wondering. I tucked every paper with a child’s name on it into my jacket—and, after hesitation, some of the cash, too. A quick survey of the wagon found me a sheaf of writing paper. I padded the documents left in the box so the theft wouldn’t be evident right away. I hoped that Mink wouldn’t notice when he stowed the night’s receipts.
I extinguished the lamp and groped my way to the door. I peeked out, and when I got the nod from Apollo, I slid through and fiddled the lock closed. As we crept by Mr. Bopp’s wagon, elation surged through me. We were on our way home.
“I reckon it’s lucky that I stepped outside for a piss,” said a voice from the shadows. “Yiss indeedy.”
Mink! My stomach shriveled to a knot. Had Miss Lightfoot betrayed us?
“What were you sneak thieves up to in my wagon?” he snapped.