Dizzy Miss Kitty and Her Death-Defying Act!
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Dizzy Miss Kitty and her Death-Defying Act!
By Patrick de Moss
Copyright 2012 Patrick de Moss
No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Tanya Linnegar, the cover design artist, would like to credit the following people for use of their images:
The pirate ship is is a 19th century painting which belonged to the McClearn family of Liverpool Nova Scotia and now part of the W. Woods Collection.
It depicts the Liverpool Packet and is now part of the public domain.
The photograph of the fictional characters Barnabus and Barrabus are in fact from a photograph by Микола Білорус ( Mykola Bilorus) and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
The map of the Misssissippi river is by Finn.( no other information could be obtained).
The steamboat is part of an image of the Cairo by an unknown artist from 1850. Now Public domain due to its age.
Anonymous photograph of the entrance ("Big Show") to a circus is from the early part of the 20th century.
For Tanya, whose dream it was.
Dizzy Miss Kitty and her Death-Defying Act!
by Patrick de Moss
“Omne Ignotum, pro Mirifico”
-P.T. Barnum, The Humbugs of the World
I.
A Rather Anxious Passage to New Orleans. A Curious Companion.
“The last time, Barry, promise this will be the last time,” a gentleman said to his companion, pouring himself a tumbler of Walcott’s. There was a rather greenish grey cast to his skin as he took his seat, eyeing the pain reliever warily. “I can’t bear it, not much longer.” It was not the first time he had made such an ominous final statement, and he had long ago given up saying he would never say so again.
His companion only nodded sweetly, turning the brim of his top hat round and round on his knee, and looked out the window once more.
“Barry. I say, Barry….” Barry, whose name was actually Barnabas, broke from whatever reverie had taken him and looked at his friend.“You have to promise me I won’t be embarrassed again.”
“I promise, Barry,” Barnabas said, going back to the window and his incessant hat turning. Barry, whose name was, in fact, Barabbas, frowned. He knew in his heart that he surely would be embarrassed again, but hoped providence would relent just this one time and honor his traveling companion’s promise.
The steam whistle cried out its five notes of the early hour, and Barabbas moaned, putting his fingers to his temples to stop his brain from exploding from the sound. He relented, and drank the tumbler quickly down. Of late, he had taken to drink far too eagerly for his own liver, and this early morning was suffering all the more for it. As he drank he swore that this would surely be the last time he would give in to his foul humours and taste for liquor. But this promise, he also knew in his heart of hearts, was one he would probably make again at some later date, as early as tomorrow morning if possible. He let a moment pass before attempting to draw his companion out more.
“You’d better hope they will see us,” he said. “There isn’t much more we have to sell.”
“They’ll see us,” his friend replied, but his hat-turning said otherwise. “They’ve got to see us.”
Barnabas J. Moody, Esq. had the sort of face that was perennially youthful, almost infantile in its innocence and smoothness. His unruly hair was quite the color of polished mahogany as it spilled over the collar of his dark jacket in effortless curls. In all, his countenance was downright cherubic, as if the young man had somehow fallen from the very ceiling of that biblical panorama painted by Michelangelo. His every expression could be said to be sweet, and so he would appear sweetly melancholic, or sweetly furious. He was sweetly anxious at the moment, his foot tapping on the wood floor of the stateroom as he turned his hat, watching the riverside slip by them in the humid morning mist.
His companion Barabbas Flynt had no such softness to him. On the contrary, but for his bowler hat he was a study of corners and angles and straight lines, and even that he wore straight and square. To further the impression, he had taken a fancy to a rather sharp moustache and goatee that when waxed seemed potentially fatal to anyone caught in his infrequent embrace. He would stroke the line of one blade with the edge of his thumb from time to time, when he was deep in thought, further sharpening his facial epee. He was doing so now as he took poured another tumbler of Walcott’s miraculous medicant, contemplating the creature which lounged between the two gentlemen.
He could never have imagined something so small would wreak such havoc and tempest as she had in his life. And still, inexplicably, she was here, lounging, her back legs crossed one over the other and her head raised, eyes closed, purring as she drank in the morning sun like the best Napoleon brandy. Not for the first time was he struck with the violent urge to open the stateroom’s window and have done with her once and for all. What had happened in Cairo still stung.
It stung, say, less than what had transpired in Vicksburg, but more so than what had happened in Madison. Cairo came to mind only because he had been so completely certain that their little ingénue would rise to the occasion that time. She had seemed so keen to perform that he had paid for the rental of the theatre there, and had actually gone out into the streets of Cairo with pamphlets printed up, handing them out to every passerby extolling the creature’s qualities and the evening’s promised entertainment, heedless of the looks on their faces, all of which betold a marked fear for his sanity. They couldn’t be blamed, of course. He would doubt it himself if he hadn’t seen the cat perform with his own two eyes. But it was exceedingly difficult to put that performance into words that would draw a crowd, and so he had resorted to mute gestures and exclamations of awe. By Cairo (which now was more than two weeks behind them) he was in such despair that all it took was a shift in their eyes from wariness to reasonable doubt for him to go back to his meeting with the theatre manager satisfied. Had all of this happened, say, before Madison, he would have demanded the five cents on the spot, so convinced was he that the house would be packed. Just their willingness to half believe in Cairo had been enough, pathetic as it was.
Their meeting with the manager was a grave disappointment, as always; however this time it had been near calamitous. Not only did the little beast not perform, it had actually attempted to swat the eye out of the theatre manager’s head, a poor greasy fellow named Morrison. Morrison had dared to pick her up in order to jostle her into action. Barabbas had had to slip the man a full dollar for his troubles, then they’d left the theatre quickly before they would be humiliated further.
Cairo, then, had been a failure, as Evansville, Louisville, and Marietta had been failures, as every stop down the Ohio and along the Mississippi had failed. No matter how much hope or promise the creature showed on the evening before each stop, they’d all ended the same, with Barnabas and Barabbas fleeing town clutching their hats, their pride, and the damnable pillow.
The pillow was her idea. It was certainly too gaudy and too lavish (and not to mention expensive) for Barabbas’ taste, but while he had been out trying to secure an interview with a certain circus manager near Albany, she had sauntered away quite rudely, and the interview had ended with her found perched on this rather awful creation, and he had been forced to buy it to save a little face in front of the manager and his staff. By that
time, her intrusion into his life had cost him quite dearly. While he was sure Barnabas and his nature were sweetly not taking down any accounting of this venture whatsoever, he had begun his own tally. To date, the little beast had cost them no less than five hundred dollars, less than, say half, for their own expenses. This meant Barabbas himself was only one-quarter the cost of this little enterprise, while the cat had the lion’s share. Yet he was still sure that, despite everything, it would take but one public appearance, one grand opening to set everything to rights, and so he reached out and scratched her ear with one slightly waxy finger.
“Miss Kitty,” he murmured, “sweet girl,” though he didn’t believe it, and she nipped at his finger as if to say she didn’t believe it either.
It was Barnabas who called her that. Barabbas thought it was a terrible name, not in keeping with showmanship at all. But Miss Kitty had come to Barnabas first, and the two of them had later thrown in with him, so Miss Kitty it had stayed. Barabbas was forever trying to find a better name for the creature, though, a name more exotic, a name more dangerous. He had finally decided upon Shasta, and tried it out on the cat whenever Barnabas wasn’t around. She seemed to prefer either, to be perfectly honest, and Barabbas felt that once he had rid himself of Barnabas in New Orleans, she would learn to like Shasta that much better. Her little perch suited a Shasta much better than a Miss Kitty anyway.
The perch was all brown leather and embossed on every corner with gold painted images from far-flung Egypt. Beneath her swinging tail was depicted a sphinx, beside one paw a fading pyramid. On the top of the pillow where she lounged was an image of Cleopatra, that Nubian queen who so seduced great Alexander and Julius, and a deal more besides. Miss Kitty seemed to like that image best, and as she leaned down to press and clean her long black gloves, purring all the while, she seemed much like a monarch herself, full of fine manners and strange cruelties.
Barnabas thought of the pillow as a gift, as appreciation for all the delightful displays she had shown them night by night. Barabbas saw it as an investment, a bribe, to be blunt, in the hope that she would eventually feel some small remorse and finally perform before the eyes of a third party. As of yet he saw no such guilt. The creature seemed to think it was just her due.
“Hopefully they haven’t heard of Cairo yet,” he said aloud.
Barnabas sighed. “Sometimes, Barry, I think you just want to get rid of little Miss Kitty,” he said, stroking the top of her head.
“I’d be in my rights to think so, Barry,” Barabbas spat back. “But I’m a humanitarian.”
“Five cents a show doesn’t seem very humanitarian.”
“Well, damn it, Barry, one of us needs to see us survive until the next act.”
Barnabas hung his head, sweetly ashamed, which only made Barabbas’ head throb even more.
“Seeing as how she’s done nothing but purr or sleep or hiss, you’d better hope this ... this new circus hasn’t heard about our past debacles. You’d better hope so, because, I swear to you this is the very last time.” He reached for his pocket watch, wondering not for the first time why Barnabas had chosen New Orleans for their next stop, before remembering he had sold his father’s watch in Vicksburg for their passage down river. “The last time.”
“It’ll be different, Barry,” Barnabas said, tapping his friend’s knee and getting up from his chair. Miss Kitty followed, rubbing against his leg as he opened the door. “Have faith.”
“In God I trust, Barry,” Barabbas said. “Only that.” Barnabas sweetly shook his head and left his companion alone with his anxious thoughts.