Sweet Stephen Shepherd’s Cross-Country Cavalcade of Curiosities!
The article said:
Being a tour of all things Wondrous and Obscure. S.S.S.C.C.C.C. has been to All Corners of the Globe, and the Farthest Reaches of the Mind to bring You:
Jugglers from Milan
The Colossus of Rhode Island and his shows of Strength!
Mighty Mite Mitchum and his Flea Coterie!
The Musical Strains of Vocal Virtuoso Sirene — Mistress of the Mississippi!
Twin Sisters Angele and Agrathe — Joined at the breast since birth. Witness their Heart-rending Ballet!
Spend time in the Arcade of Janus!
Witness in awe the mechanical curios of a modern-day DaVinci, and view his latest and greatest creation — Adam, the Dancing Man of Bronze!
Thrill at the Fire-Eater’s Masquerade!
All things Wild and Wonderful. Sweet Stephen Shepherd promises a Show unlike any other, of such Delight and Strangeness it defies the very Age of Reason!
It was a curious article, to be sure.
“Names, please.” The manager, however, had nothing to him that seemed to defy the age of reason. He was a slight, mean-countenanced individual, his French shirt, clearly straight from Paris, was rolled at the sleeves and very rumpled. The white had faded quite to ivory, and was on its way to yellow, as if it bore only a passing knowledge of a washboard, as one might of a distant cousin, say, twice removed.
His eyes, however, were tight and clear behind a pair of round spectacles, and his pen was poised at a perfect angle above his ledger — the pose of a hand that was very used to figures, facts, and all things in need of record. Barnabas shifted a little in his chair. Barabbas, as always was to do the talking. This had been agreed on since they’d met in Albany, where Barabbas had been selling various ointments and medicines to the druggists across the state. This, of course was his strong suit. Barnabas was to simply watch the cat. It was no small job. Miss Kitty, whenever it came to these little meetings, needed constant watching, as the nearly eyeless Morrison, manager of the Safford Theatre in Cairo would surely agree.
“Barabbas Flynt. Barnabas J. Moody, Esquire,” Barabbas said promptly. August, the manager, looked over his spectacles and sighed.
“And the cat?”
“Oh yes,” Barabbas said, and seemed about to say something before surrendering. “Miss Kitty.” August grunted, and scratched into the ledger with surgical precision.
“Well, Barry and Barry is it?”
“Yes and no, sir,” Barnabas said, sweetly. August put his pen down and stared at him. Barabbas turned as well, his eyes wide with shock and not a little fury.
“I’m sorry?” August said.
“Well. Yes and no, sir. I’m Barnabas, and this is Barabbas.” August let a silence fall between the three of them, pinning Barnabas to his seat with those blue eyes. He picked up his pen, scratched something out. Put something else in.
It was a small, cramped little room on Decatur. An anteroom, to be honest, the actual room proper was pointedly locked in their faces. While the day without had started so blissfully warm, in this little, dark wood paneled room Barnabas could already feel himself starting to sweat.
“Mr. Mudley,” August said, after some time had passed.
“Moody, sir. Moody.”
“Mr. Moodle.” August pulled out a startlingly white handkerchief, took his spectacles off and continued as he cleaned them. “Will you by any chance be swinging this cat?”
“I? No sir,” Barnabas said.
“Will you or ... or Flynt here—” he gestured with his small round spectacles “— be shooting the creature out of, say, a cannon?”
“A cannon?”
“It’s been done.”
“No sir. No. Not at all, sir.”
“I see.” He put his spectacles back on. “No cannon,” he said aloud, as he wrote, before gesturing between the two men in front of him with his pen, not looking up from his ledger.
“Now are you or your colleague here in any way involved with the performance of —” he skimmed back a page “— Miss Kitty?”
“I….” Barnabas looked down at the pillow, then shifted his legs, face flushed. “Well, I suppose I will ... I’ll be taking good care of her, sir. Feeding her. You know. And water. Well, she sleeps next to me sir, and is quite pleased with my comings and goings and—”
“But you yourself will not be in the performance, is that correct?”
“Yes sir. Well, no sir. Well ... moral support—”
“Damn your moral support,” August said, his head snapping up once again, his eyes shouting, though his voice was quite calm. “And damn your correct names. If they won’t be on the billing, then a misspelled word here and there doesn’t matter much, now, does it?”
Barnabas turned even redder. “No sir,” he said.
“Then let’s continue.” August looked down at the creature on Barnabas’ lap once more. Miss Kitty looked back, completely undisturbed by those glacial eyes. “Now what, exactly, does Miss Kitty do?”
This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. Barabbas opened his mouth, ready to launch into his well-practiced speech, one that Barnabas had heard in every hotel and circus and theatre from here up to Albuquerque, and yet somehow, some dreadful how, Barnabas seemed to get there first.
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” he said, sweetly, smiling. August blinked. Barabbas’ mouth hung open, frozen.
“Is it, now?” August said. Barnabas looked to Barabbas, whose face, sharp and angular, was locked in a rictus of shock and slowly going white. A small sound escaped his lips but that was all. Barnabas tried as best as he could to cover, his voice as bright and sweet as he could manage.
“Oh, but it is quite extraordinary,” he said. Then he remembered a little more. “And entertaining.” How was it Barabbas put this all together? “I’m sure you’ll agree—”
“I’m sure I will,” August said. “But we need to start somewhere, don’t you think?”
“I—”
“I want you to close your eyes.”
“My eyes?”
“On your face, yes.”
Barnabas closed them. He heard the sound of the push of the desk in front of him as August got to his feet.
“Now,” August said, standing quite close to him now. “We are in a tent.”
“A tent?”
“A tent. There are hundreds of people with us. They have seen unicorns. They have seen fire-eaters and fire-throwers and fire-spitters and God knows what else using fire. The man in the moon himself has come down and given a recitation of the damned sonnets of Shakespeare, complete with fireworks and bloody exploding mermaids for all I know.”
August stopped to catch his breath. He was behind Barnabas now, speaking almost into his ear, every consonant clipped and precise. “They have eaten popped corn.”
“I’ve never liked the stuff myself,” Barnabas said. “Too salty and—”
August ploughed on. “They have eaten popped corn. They are full. They are tired. They are thinking of going home soon, to their families and their homes and their own little busy lives.” Barnabas felt two very small, very hard hands descend onto his shoulders and grip them tightly. “But they have paid five cents to see a show. They want to see a show.” August clenched his hands even tighter still. “Your show. Now. What. Does. Your. Cat. Do?”
“Well,” Barnabas ventured.
“Yes?”
“Well. She. That is….”
“Go on....”
“Well.” Barnabas stopped, took another breath, and opened his eyes. Sadly, all that came out was yet another “Well....”
“We’resorrytohavetakenupyourtime,” Barabbas said all in one breath, getting to his feet, his bowler square and set on his head ready to flee.
“Sit—” August said, a whip cracking across the little room “—down.” Flynt stood still for a moment, then gave up the ghost of dignity and sat, fumbling with his hat, not sure whether
to keep it on or take it off once more.
“Now,” August said, “I am quite a busy man. There have been twenty appointments before yours this morning, there will be thirty more before the day is out,” Barnabas risked a look at the little man’s ledger, which seemed strangely unused, and quite empty. “Everyone,” August said, ”would like to join the Circus. I would like everyone to join the Circus. But then who would come to see it? Dogs, probably. You say you have a cat. Very well.” He went back to his seat. “Let us divine how your cat entertains by finding out how it does not entertain.” He picked up his pen once more.
“Does it sing?” he began.
“Well, no.” August nodded, and made a scratch in the ledger. “Actually, she is very quiet by nature. Keeps to herself mostly.” Barnabas looked down at Miss Kitty, who was blinking up at him with her jade eyes. “I daresay,” he went on, “that a singing cat wouldn’t be very entertaining at all. They don’t have the ear for it, I’d think. The tones would be all off.”
“I’m sure,” August said.
“Sort of a wailing.” Barnabas smiled, and gave a little, nervous chuckle even as he felt the trickle of sweat down the back of his freshly starched shirt. “A caterwauling.”
No one laughed.
“No singing,” August said after another moment. “Does she dance?”
“Perhaps if she had a partner,” Barnabas ventured. “It would be rather lonely dancing by herself. Although,” he mused, “better for her to dance alone than with someone she didn’t agree with, my mother used to say.”
“Did she?” August said, making a note in his ledger.
“Oh yes. She said a great many things, sir.”
“I’m sure you take after her,” August said. “No dancing.”
“Me? Not a step, sir.”
Another silence followed. August bit his lip.
“No dancing.” He made another note. “Is she gifted at mathematics, then?”
“Well, sir, I’m not sure as to that. I’ve never had her look at the books.” He frowned down at Miss Kitty. “And how would she hold a pen?”
“We had a horse once that knew multiplication,” August replied, making another note. “Had to keep him away from the mares.” He looked up to Barnabas and Barabbas for a moment. “He was a biter,” he said, and then got up from his chair.
“So what we have here, then, is a cat which doesn’t sing, doesn’t dance, and may or may not know its multiplication tables. Is that correct?”
“Well, yes sir,” Barnabas said, looking crestfallen. “She seems like any other cat, when you put it that way. Except….”
Just then, he heard the sound of a door opening into the room beyond. Miss Kitty heard it too, and sat up in his lap, ears forward. Barnabas tried to go on.
“Except … except for what she can. Stay, Miss Kitty. Except for what she can — Miss Kitty! She can do.” The cat was struggling to get out of his lap. Barnabas put a hand on her chest. If she did anything unexpected, this whole meeting could end in disaster.
The cat made a low growl at the back of her throat, and tried to leap off his lap once more.
“I don’t quite know what has gotten into her,” Barnabas said, and lied sweetly through his perfect teeth. “She’s always such a placid creature.”
“Mr. Shepherd has a ... a certain effect on animals,” August said. His eyes had turned to the locked door, and when he spoke it was as if the words were rote, and his mind was elsewhere. “Nothing to be worried about. It seems our time is up, sir. Thank you for coming, and I do wish you better luck in the future.” He swallowed rather loudly, and cleared his throat, not even looking at the two men or the struggling cat, but at the locked door into the drawing room proper.
From behind it came a rather natural sound, a sound heard many times a day anywhere in the world, from the grand halls in Europe to the barrooms and hotels of America. Even, I daresay, if they have chairs, in the heart of darkest Africa. It was the sound of a chair, scraping across a floor. Barnabas J. Moody, Esq., could never recall in his later years just what it was about this particular chair-on-floor sound that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise, or brought such a wave of unease akin to sea-sickness.
However, he would later on say it was this sound, this innocuous drawing-room noise that awoke in him a keen sense of true fear. His hand around Miss Kitty’s chest clutched just a fraction too tightly for her liking, and she bit him — her constant companion — and he had to let go, the creature squirming out of his lap at last.
“Miss Kitty!” he whispered (and didn’t quite know why all of a sudden he was whispering), already white with worry as to what might happen next. Barabbas was staring at the door, the locked door, and his hands, which had been tugging back and forth at his bowler, had gone very still.
Mr. August, who had been about to usher them out, was still as well. His eyes followed the cat as she sauntered past his desk, past his chair, and circled at the door. His face, so implacable over the course of the interview, had become the color of whey, his own lips pale.
He whispered (as well!), “Please,” and his voice, that whip-like lashing voice, was desperate and plaintive and small. “Please, come and fetch your cat.”
But Barnabas could not rise. He didn’t want to move, or even breathe for that matter, so attuned were his ears, his eyes and his very skin, to that locked door, and what other strange sounds of life might come from behind it. A thought rose, unbidden, with the senseless panic that a hare has under the shadow of a falcon — Please don’t let him notice me — the sound in his mind very similar to the squeal the hare makes, high and akin to a baby’s squall. Please don’t let him notice me.
The cat sat at the locked door, and then, horribly, got up on its hind legs and began to scratch.
Scritchscritchscritchscritch scratch-scratch-Scratch, Miss Kitty said against the door. Scritchscritchscritchscritch Scratch Scratch Scratch.
“Tell her to stop,” Barabbas whispered, not even daring to move his lips.
Scritch scritch scritchscritch Scratch scratch Scratch.
God oh Providence Angels in Heaven, Barnabas’ mind screamed, but his lips were still. Make her stop. Make her stop. Make her stop.
Scritchscritchscritchscritch.
“Hullo,” a voice said from within, half to itself, half knowing it had an audience without. “It seems someone wants to come in.” No one in the little anteroom dared draw a breath to respond. Miss Kitty, however, who was truly as dangerous a cat as the porter had remarked, was quite insistent. On her hind legs, possessed, ears flattened, she knocked in her little feline way on the locked door.
“August,” the voice said. And while it was not unkind (in fact there was a note of sorrow to it), August let out a very un-managerial squeak of terror all the same.
“August, I seem to have a visitor.” The infernal cat did not cease its scratching, and in fact meowed in response, an eager little bright sound in the cramped little anteroom. The dreaded voice chuckled behind the door, and then was sorrowful once more.
“I get so few. Do be kind enough to show them in, will you?”
August swallowed hard.
“August,” the voice prodded, and the manager got to his feet, his hand trembling. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door from the outside.
“Mr. Shepherd will see you now,” he said, and picked up his ledger, his pen, his spectacles, and fled out the front door.
“Come in, come in,” the voice said, and despite every fiber of his being, despite the utterances of his soul, despite the pleading of the angels in heaven or the cries of fear from hell, Barnabas followed the cat, and went in.
III.
In which the Author apologizes for the Grammatical Errors involved with the existence of a certain Owner of the Circus. A Performance for the Benefit of Sweet Stephen Shepherd.
It would have been better, Dear Reader, to not have included this particular part of the tale at all, instead to overlook it compl
etely and carry on. Miss Kitty joined the Circus, one could easily say, and leave it at that. However, the moment has passed for such an easy telling, and so the Author must take it upon himself to relate something of Stephen Shepherd, as those who are acquainted with this most curious of all curiosities will know some things of him that are half-truths, and some are outright lies, and those who have never met this strangest, saddest of all things will surely need a rough map. Though, in truth, how could one ever know such a pitiable creature as he?
I say pitiable, for in some respects no creature deserves more sympathy than he, and yet, many is the time, Dear Reader, when the Author has come to the page, and balked, and thrown his hands up in despair and wished this entire event had never occurred at all, that Miss Kitty (for it was she who did the choosing of the Circus, though her two companions prided themselves on their acumen) had instead picked another circus, any other circus. There has ever been a swirl of the fury of providence around Stephen Shepherd, as the winds of a hurricane hurtle around a calm, dreadful center. But, can the center be blamed for the fury without? One only knows in one’s heart to get as far away from those black winds as quickly as one can, and so the center passes on alone.
It has been said of Shepherd that he is cursed by God Himself for some long ago disagreement with the firmament, and that his eternal condition is a just punishment for the harshest words ever spoken against the Lord; and so he has been damned to see the will of God in everlasting motion.
It has been said that Shepherd found his way into immortality out of love, that a woman so bewitched a man that he crossed the very boundary of life and death, that immovable line, for her, but she could not follow. There is some little truth to this, for he does mention a name in his sleep — a strange and unpronounceable name for tongues so used to our own ways. But he was as he was before that name ever meant anything to him.
I believe, however, that the truest story of the origins of Stephen Shepherd (as he calls himself these days) came to me from a very odd little man I met once in the wild woods north of Portland. He had a far-away look to him, his clothes did not seem to fit properly, and his English was mangled and mottled with great unfamiliarity. However, truth be told, I do not think the man’s French or German or any other language of this world would have been more comfortable, he had such a foreign look to him.
That rough gentleman and I were sharing a drink or two, and at some point in our conversation we turned, as conversation often does with such foreign folk, into odd alleys and peculiar subjects, of places lost, and memories untranslatable, and he seemed so desolate that I attempted to console him, strange as he was to me.
“The moving finger writes,” I said, hoping in some way to shake him from his cups.
“But if it mistakes?” And he drank. “If it forgets?”
And that, to me, is the sum of Shepherd. The moving finger of the Author Royal, in its haste and joy in first laying out the divine plot, left one or two of its minor characters behind. And when it remembered it had forgotten, the best thing, the only thing He, or it, could do was to plunge on regardless, leaving those few forgotten pieces to their own devices on the edges of the great primeval story. So it was with Shepherd — that when Death was introduced into the world, Shepherd was overlooked. Not out of cruelty, or reward, but simply because he and his kin had somehow wandered out of the garden of God’s eye, and in the rush and excitement of the will of the divine, were simply not noticed. Therefore, having wandered out just before that saddest and yet most powerful of moments universal, Shepherd was exempt, and perforce could not die.
So, not only is Shepherd a divine frustration (protected as he is by the very laws that forgot him, for to go against one’s own Word is something the Lord Himself will not do), he is also a grammatical one. For how can one relay a story in the past-tense which includes a personage who is truly unchanging? One cannot say, for example: “He was a tall man, slight of build, and perfectly made,” for Shepherd still is somewhere in the world, and has grown no taller or shorter, fatter or more slender than when the story occurred.
And so the Author must apologize to you, Dear Reader, for the cat has led us here, and will lead us out of Shepherd’s drawing room shortly, but it must fall to others, who pass on in their time, to be the eyes by which we view the one who must always remain. I will add only this — that on the one occasion I myself met the creature in question, I was reminded of the eye of the hurricane myself, standing in which one sees the tragic wreckage of time through the clarity of a cold, placid blue sky, and I could not stay longer than a few minutes in his awful company without weeping for myself, for mankind, and most of all, for him.
Barabbas saw him as a statue through a window of a museum, protected by the pitting of the cruel rain of decay and the rough chisel of the tick of the clock, and his fear of such a thing was tinged all through with loathing and improper covetousness.
Barnabas, who had felt quite seasick before even entering the room, felt it more keenly there, as if, in looking at Shepherd in his chair he could see the world turning, while Shepherd himself stayed perfectly still. “Under his feet,” he was fond of saying much later in life, “you could almost see the earth slide past.” And so he felt more nauseous still in that scarlet room with no windows, and did his very best not to stare.
Shepherd was seated in a very large and well-padded chair and, at the time, was rather fond of silk pajamas, and was wearing them, as well as a deep red smoking jacket he felt suited the ensemble best. It was, fortunately, one of his mask periods — when Shepherd feels charitable and spares the universe from having to see his eerie, unchangeable countenance.
The mask was gilt in pure gold, a replica of one he knew quite well, though foreign to you or I, and covered all over in designs queer and unfamiliar to those not from Far or Away. At his side was a glass of claret on a little table, for though Shepherd will live until the trump of Judgment Day and all the possible days beyond without ever needing to eat or drink, he sometimes takes a fancy to food and liquor for their tastes, only to tire of them and leave off in time. This then, was one of his more human moods.
“This is quite new,” he said, in that voice of his which is ever a perfect tenor, though tinged with the tired melancholia of his nature.
“I’ve never had anyone wish to come in. The door is generally scratched to pieces the other way,” he said, and neither Barnabas nor Barabbas was sure he was speaking to them or the cat. Miss Kitty had slipped into the room quite casually and was rubbing herself against those unchangeable ankles of his with a loud purr that felt at odds with everything about him.
Barnabas looked away to the strange tapestries along every wall, and swallowed down his breakfast several times before finding the strength to speak.
“It if ... if it pleases you, sir ... I ... I’m Barry — Barnabas, I mean. This. My friend. Barry — Barabbas! It is….” Words tend to fail quite frequently around Shepherd, though he is quite used to it, and has the patience to wait until they find themselves again. He was still looking down at the cat, and when he spoke it was (as it always is) half to himself, for he has spent unknown millennia alone with his thoughts.
“And who is this?” He reached a very tentative hand down at the edge of the chair, half expecting to be bitten, and gave a queer little noise as he is not often surprised anymore, when the creature actually nuzzled his palm. The fearless cat closed her eyes and purred all the more.
“Miss Kitty,” Barabbas spat, his voice bubbling up with green envy and bilious fury at the everlasting. “She is our pet.”
“I daresay she is more than that,” Stephen replied, catching the rancor in Barabbas’ voice and discarding it with a vocal shrug. “I wonder if she has a real owner at all. Goodness!” he exclaimed as she sat up, paws on his lap. He looked up then, quickly, the motion so full of ageless grace and queer precision it made Barabbas flinch even as he fumed about that perfect head and neck.
“She has claws!” Stephen said,
delighted.
“She is a cat,” Barabbas said with a sneer. “Cats have claws.”
“I’ve never felt the like,” Stephen said, bemused. He looked down into her tuxedo painted face. “Wherever did you come from?”
“Connecticut, sir,” Barnabas said, anxious to find a place to go and be noisily sick.
“Oh,” Stephen replied, in that infuriating way of his that seems to mean names and places are quite unnecessary to him, for they will change, or vanish completely whereas he will not. “Connecticut” he said, listlessly, “I haven’t been there in some time. Has it changed much?” He knew full well that it had. The Mayflower had come and gone, and revolution had come and gone, and secession and restoration had come while he wandered on his ways. But from time to time he is as fond of small talk as he is of claret, and he sipped it then, his eyes going back to the cat staring up at him, his smile below his mask as strange and sad as his long thoughts. The silence went on for some time. Barnabas was quite ill with it.
“If it … if it please you. Sir. We have a ... a proposition. A performance. Interest you.”
“Very little interests me, sir,” Stephen sighed. “But do try.”
“Well, your Circus, sir—”
“My. Oh yes. I do have a circus, don’t I?” He scritched behind Miss Kitty’s little ear.
“We have a show.” At that point Miss Kitty finally leapt into the undying one’s lap.
“Goodness!” Stephen cried, and since it was one of the few times in his long life that he was ever truly moved, one could perhaps use the past tense here, for who knows when such a thing may happen again to him? Once in ten lifetimes, perhaps.
A tear slipped out from beneath his mask, as Stephen hung his head, looking down at the cat, and his lips trembled without him making them do so.
“This,” he said, his voice rather hushed, “this is unprecedented.” And he meant it in the most profound way, coming from one who knew almost every precedent. He looked up at the two men cowering in the red corner of his drawing room, and struggled for control of his unchanging self.
“Were you to ask anything of me, it would be yours,” he said. “For the—” he groped “—for the kindness you have shown me here. Unprecedented,” he said again, fully to himself, looking down at his lap where no creature had ever sat before.
“Wherever did they find you?” he murmured to the cat, gingerly brushing the top of her head, as one quite unused to cats and their requirements for touch is wont to do, magnified by being one who never knew someone wanting him to touch them. “Connecticut,” he said to himself, another tear joining the first. “Connecticut.”
“We just ... we thought she would delight.”
“She has. So she has.”
“In your show,” Barabbas said, unmoved. “In your circus,” he sneered, but he wished to be gone, to be out of there and done with it all, but the man on the chair, so loathsomely perfect, drew him as much as he repelled.
“Well, I am not sure,” Stephen said, looking into Miss Kitty’s little face. “What is it you do?” The cat purred and nuzzled his hand once again. “Do you think you could show me?”
And even as Barabbas thought to say the cat could not speak, to put it as if to an imbecile, Miss Kitty leapt off Sweet Stephen Shepherd’s lap and for the first time in front of a third party, began to perform.
She started on her front paws, of course, her hind legs up in the air, and it went on from there. Sweet Stephen Shepherd watched, his smile so strange and rare a thing, growing wider.
“Goodness,” he said, as Miss Kitty continued in the middle of the room. “Welcome to the Circus.” He looked to Barnabas then and spelled out the most dreaded part.
“You will need a trapeze.”
IV.
What happened on an August night in Biloxi