The Fair States
Sunday was the one day nearly all the camp slept in. But Carwin had volunteered for the morning watch at the most unpleasant hour, just as he had for the last six days since he made the discovery.
Just beyond the last upstream post he saw movement, and heard a pair of tinny bells trace along the line of trees.
And then, the clearing.
The dark female figure led a pair of cows to the river and never once turned his way. The ringmaster would have called her a LOVELY GHOST, a GLORIOUS APPARITION, and charged any adult man a nickel to see her. Carwin nicknamed her Brooke, after the only sound he heard when she stopped at the water’s edge and the cowbells dipped into it along with the bovine necks. It was too far away to hear the cows drink, or the water running into the two buckets lashed to either end of her yoke. Only after the cows and buckets had had their fill did the woman herself kneel and dip her cupped hands into the tumbling eddies. If there was one sound he most wanted to hear over the din of the current, it was any sound connected to the slaking of her thirst.
The circus watch didn’t exist to spot cows or cow herders, no matter how comely and graceful they might appear at seventy yards. Carwin was one of the many able-bodied men who raised tents and hauled supplies when the show first arrived. Without a performance specialty, his muscles continued to define his worth as a guard against the local men. So far they had managed to limit interaction in this town to four shoving matches and a cut from a broken bottle, none of which had occurred after the last townsman had staggered off the fairgrounds at midnight.
The nightmare scenario of an early morning incursion was practically unheard of, but the possibility so frightened the entire troupe that they never failed to keep someone awake and sober every night. Of the many reasons a local man could have to justify sneaking into the camp, Carwin could think of none that was noble. This circus had a cash box, exotic beauties, freaks and barely trained animals.
After fire, the Carney fears nothing so much as the customers who keep them alive. Veteran Carnies advised against doing anything that might encourage local mischief, and interest in Brooke certainly qualified.
And who was Brooke? Would he recognize her at the circus in the afternoon if she didn’t have her cows with her? Did she ever go to the circus anyway, or did she only regard its visit as fourteen days of a slightly greater distance to walk to the water’s edge?
Today Brooke would find two full buckets and twelve dried flowers that he’d bartered from Madame Psyche. He didn’t know what he’d do after this turned her head, but he was sure he’d think of something.