Freaks: Alive, on the Inside!

I couldn’t help but grin. All I had wanted was to be carefree, but everywhere I’d gone, I’d had to take charge of something or someone. Apparently I couldn’t be irresponsible even if I tried, but I had certainly found adventure because of it and I may have found my fortune after all. Maybe being dependable wasn’t as boring as I had believed.

“I always thought you had management qualities, lad,” said Colonel Kingston. “We’ll have to develop that.” He ruffled my hair and made me feel like a boy again—safe. “A show’s not a show without a good manager.”

I had management qualities? I had left home because I felt I didn’t belong, and now I learned I had had a needed talent all along. I had found my fortune indeed. It was right where I’d left it.

I looked around and saw love on the faces of my friends.

Yet Mr. Bopp’s eyes were focused far away. He had lost his love. No skill of mine could change what had happened. Life wasn’t that simple.

I stood with Tauseret under an August moon on the road in front of a Maryland train station, the air as lush and moist as a jungle evening. Laughter rang far off as the camels and baggage were unloaded, but here we were surrounded by the tiny chatter of the night.

“Abel, I don’t have anyone but you,” said Tauseret, and for the first time I understood that under her bravado lurked fear.

I put my arm around her. “Everyone will love you,” I said, “and what an act we make. I can see it now—you as my target on a spinning wheel in your mummy form, and as the wheel spins and my knives outline you, you change into the beautiful girl you really are. It will be a sensation!”

“I’m afraid all this happiness will be taken away again,” she said. “That I will never be mistress of my own fate.”

I took the ring from my finger and pressed it into her hand. “This is all that controls you,” I said, “and now it is yours. Once, in another life, you gave it to me to bind us. It brought us back together across the centuries, and now I give it back. You can be bound to me or not, as you choose.”

Tauseret touched my cheek. “In that there is no choice,” she said, and kissed me. “And who’s to say that the ring by itself has any power? Perhaps it needs to be worn by you.”

We stood silent with our own thoughts for a while.

“Will I age now, do you think?” Tauseret asked after a long sigh. “Will I grow old with you?”

“We don’t know anything, do we?” I answered. “We must just live our lives and find out.”

She pressed the ring back into my hand. “I will trust you with my new life.”

I cannot describe how I cherished her in that moment. “I suppose I am an oddity after all,” I said, “to have the love of a beautiful woman three thousand years old. How many can say that?”

“Hey, Abel! I’m riding a camel home.”

Apollo sat atop a camel led by Eddie Bridgeport, and the children ran at the creature’s heels.

“He’s a natural,” said Eddie.

“Me next,” cried Moses. “I’m the oldest next to him.”

“No, you’re not. I am,” said Bertha.

“But you’re a girl,” Moses countered, and popped his eyes at her.

“Minnie’s next, and she rides with me,” said Apollo, settling the matter.

Frank led the other camel around the station. The colonel followed on horseback; Earle drove a cart borrowed from the stationmaster, with Lillie, Mr. Bopp, and Archie Crum aboard. Mr. Ginger and Miss Lightfoot brought up the rear, hand in hand.

“I’ll run the show one day, you know,” I told Tauseret, and I took her arm. We fell in with the others for the journey down the road to Faeryland.

If any children peeked out their windows on that summer night, they might have seen the strangest parade—all of us oddities, all of us going home.