A Lesson for the Cyclops

Chapter 4

The Cyclops made excuses to pass by Marco’s tent the next day, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stranger. He had been asleep for nearly a day and his fever had not yet broken. Marco had the haulmen attend to the stranger in shifts, sitting beside him with buckets of frigid water drawn from the nearby stream. When the stranger began to sweat more than usual, the haulman would mop his brow with the cold water in an effort to keep his fever under control.

On her sixth pass, the haulman on duty called out to her.

“Hey, freak!” he shouted, his voice sounding anxious “Get over here, willya!”

She hesitated, caught between her desire to get a closer look at the stranger and fear of what the haulman might want her for.

An implicit hierarchy existed at the circus. Marco was at the top of this pyramid by virtue of being the owner. Below him were the circus’s headliner acts, such as Alfredo and Conchinara, as well as the brother and sister trapeze act Stefan and Sophia. Beneath them were the other popular attractions such as Stihl the Strong Man and Dale the fire-eater.

Next came the hucksters. Below them were the haulmen and ticket-takers. Finally, at the bottom were the Freaks, and the Cyclops, the lowest among them.

Being at the bottom of the hierarchy made the Cyclops an ideal victim for the bullies in the circus, particularly those among the haulmen who felt the work they did was beneath them. They sometimes shoved her, or insulted her until she cried, and, very rarely, hit her. They were cautious about causing her any visible injury, since they considered her Marco’s property. Nobody wanted to damage the boss’s property.

On one particularly bad occasion, one of the haulmen had almost raped her. They had been celebrating the end of a successful run in Venucha, and the drinking and dancing had gone on late into the night. The Cyclops had remained by the fire long enough to be polite before heading back to her tent. Oddly enough, she felt more alone when she was surrounded by people who thought her lower than a dog than when she was by herself, with only her dreams of a happier world to keep her company.

As she had weaved through the stalls, all in various stages of disassembly, a man staggered toward her and clamped a hand over her mouth.

“Don say nuttin’,” he had whispered. His breath smelled sickly-sweet, like rotten apples.

She had tried to flee, but his iron grip dragged her to the ground. She lay there, sobbing and still half in shock. She couldn’t make out his face in the darkness, but she saw that he wore the overalls of a haulman. As she watched, her attacker began to unfasten those overalls.

“… been wondering what yer like down bottom without that fucked up face of yers…” he mumbled. He fumbled at her skirt with his large, drunken, and useless hands.

Then he pulled a knife.

She had begged him, pleaded with him, to stop, until he slapped her so hard her ears rung. She cried softly as he slit the fabric of her skirt.

“… gonna give you sumthin’ special …” he said, climbing on top of her. One of his hands clutched her breast like a vise. Then he reached back and eased his breeches down.

“Please,” she begged. “Please, stop…”

“… gonna give you something goooood …” he said.

He grabbed her breast again and leaned in to lick her face. His breath was so foul that she gagged.

The gagging was contagious. After she started gagging, he did, too. Then he looked at her face as if for the first time. His eyes widened in disgust. Abruptly, he leaned to the side and threw up by her head. When he was finished, he half-heartedly returned his attention to her.

Then he threw up again.

That must have killed the mood for him, because after he vomited the second time, he climbed off her and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Stupid freak, look what you gone and done,” he mumbled. Then he kicked her once in the thigh and staggered off, leaving her half-naked beside a pool of vomit.

She never was sure which haulman had tried to rape her, so in her mind they all were potential rapists. That's why when the haulman called out to her from Marco’s tent, she felt the familiar dread she'd felt since that horrid event whenever any of them took note of her.

She considered pretending not to have heard him, but he called out to her again, louder.

“Dammit, freak! Get in here!”

She lifted the flap with a trembling hand and entered the tent. The attractive stranger lay shirtless and pale on a cot, his brow dotted with perspiration. The dark-haired haulman stood beside him, hopping from foot to foot.

The Cyclops stared at him in confusion. “Why are you—?”

The haulman rushed at her. She flinched, anticipating a blow to her face, but he knocked her aside.

“Out o’ me way, dammit!” he said. “I’ve had t’ drop a load for over an hour now and the guy who’s suppossa relieve me didn’t come.”

He pointed at the bucket and then at the stranger. “You, stay here. Keep him cool until I get back. If any asks, I tole you to do it.”

Before she could reply, the haulman hobbled off in an odd crablike gait, cursing and pleading with his bowels for patience.

Now she was alone with the shirtless stranger. He lay on the cot, seemingly dead to the world. His chest rose and fell rapidly—too rapidly, it seemed—and his body was perspiring profusely. Anyone else would've looked terrible, under the circumstances.

The Cyclops approached him hesitantly. “Hello?”

He did not respond. She extended a shaking hand to his forehead and winced. He was so hot, it hurt to touch him!

She settled into the chair beside the cot and located the rag that the haulman had been using to dampen the stranger’s face. She wrung it out over the dirt floor and dunked it into the pail, drenching it thoroughly. She applied the dripping rag to his forehead, blotting the wetness out of his eyes with her sleeve.

The stranger moaned once, almost a whimper.

Encouraged by this, she wet the rag again. This time, she ran it along the sides of his neck and under his chin. He had what looked to be a week’s worth of stubble on his face, and it scratched the back of her hand.

She stole a timid glance at his chest. At first, it had appeared to be hairless, but she now realized it had a light fuzz of nearly blond hair. She thought about touching that hair with her index finger, but decided that would be too brazen.

However, he was still sweating, so she wet the rag again. Feeling giddy at her boldness, she ran the rag over his chest. She marveled at the shape of it, the way it rose and fell so powerfully. The image of one of the circus’s lions came to mind.

She noted an assortment of scars on his chest. The quantity and variety led the Cyclops to believe he had lived a very interesting life for someone so young. She could only speculate as to what sorts of adventures might have produced the individual scars.

Now she glanced at his belly and was astonished to see how developed those muscles were. He hadn’t seemed very strong when he had stumbled into camp half-dead, but she imagined that muscles like those didn’t develop by chance. This man had used his body for something difficult. Could he be a laborer? But then she would have expected his chest, shoulders, and arms to be bigger.

She was acutely aware of the sheet that covered him from his belly button on down. She took a furtive look at the tent opening, and then with a mischievous smile, she lifted the sheet for just long enough to take a good, long look. She inhaled sharply and felt her cheeks grow warm.

She decided she had better stick to cooling his face and chest.

She dunked the rag into the pail again, but her mischievous smile remained.