Circus of Secrets 11/13
Jared glanced around as he made his way along the railbed and back along the train, but no one seemed to notice him. Most everyone was across the field setting up for the show that afternoon. He jumped aboard the carriage that Agnes shared with other performers. Rather than a sleeper car, which less senior members shared, this car had compartments, and Jared entered Agnes’ without meeting another worker.
Every surface was covered with scarves and shawls with fringe or spangles - truly the living space of a lifelong fortune teller. He turned the light on to see properly as the window was covered with layers of cloth. Beaded necklaces and gold chains hung from light fixtures and door hinges and pooled on flat surfaces. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, maybe a journal or some correspondence, but surely Agnes had something here that would answer some of his questions.
He spotted a small trunk pushed under the edge of the built in bunk that also served as a couch. He knelt, pulled it out and began to go through the contents, which turned out to be everything from old playbills to sequined shoes. What he didn’t find was any kind answers. He dropped the lid of the trunk closed with a thump and leaned back against the bunk.
“Shit,” he breathed and let his forehead fall to his knees.
“Maybe this is what you’re looking for.”
He looked up, and Erma was standing in the doorway holding an envelope. Jared took it and saw that it had his name on the outside. It had been torn open.
“Have you read it?” he asked.
“No,” she said and shook her head. “I was tempted, but no. It was already open when I found it in the trunk last night after I heard she didn’t come back. She had borrowed a lace blouse, and I wanted to make sure I got it back.” She stopped and twisted her hands together. “I really didn’t expect something with your name on it, but ... when I did, I thought I should hold onto it for you.”
“I’m glad you did,” he said. He recognized his uncle’s jagged scrawl. “Thank you. Did you find your blouse?”
“Yeah, I did.” She moved as though to leave but stopped herself. “Jared, I don’t know what happened in New Orleans, but ... be careful, both of you.”
“Yeah, thanks. We will.”
“Okay, good. I hope you get whatever answers you’re looking for in there.”
He just nodded as she walked away. Jared turned the unsealed envelope over in his hands and wondered how Agnes had gotten it and how long ago she’d opened it. He pulled the sheet of writing paper out then.
Jared,
If you are reading this, then I am gone. You have already read the letter I have left in the safe for you concerning the running of the show and why I chose you. This letter is different; it is personal. It concerns the most important thing in my life - more important you must understand than the circus - and I have left it with my most trusted confidant, my wife, Agnes.
Jared stopped and re-read the last line. Wife? She hadn’t said anything about being his uncle’s wife, but then the fact that she opened the letter and kept from him was cause enough for him to suspect that she was as deceptive with her husband as she had been with him.
I trust that by now you have met Jensen. If I know you as I think I do, you are fascinated as you should be. He is brilliant and beautiful, but he is vulnerable as well. You must protect him at all costs. If there is one thing that you do - even if you can’t keep the circus together for some reason - please, see to it that he is cared for.
Part of protecting him involves making a payment yearly to a man in New Orleans. Agnes has the money and can give you directions to the place. It is vital that you do this, Jared. He is my son, your own family...
Jared stopped cold because he hadn’t considered this. On top of everything else, it was true - Jensen was his kin. At least, to some extent he was. The boy he’d been before had been his first cousin. Now, it was hard to say. Jared rubbed his forehead where a headache was beginning to set in.
... He wasn’t born the way he is. He was born early, and he didn’t thrive. He was small and often sick. His body and mind lagged behind the other children’s. Aggie was devastated. The doctors said she couldn’t have more children, and she poured her heart into Jensen. She did everything she could to make him better, but he continued to fail.
It may come as a shock to you, and it isn’t something I’m proud of. In desperation we sought out a man who we were told could help him - make him something better - but God help us, we burdened him with a body that was as much curse as blessing. If he had been horrific, ugly, we would surely have turned back, but he is lovely. And we didn’t understand the consequences. He is strong and healthy, but his beauty is a burden as well.
And, it isn’t just his body that was changed. It was his mind, his very character. He isn’t just intelligent as we hoped; he’s calculating and passionate and uncompromising. Aggie loves him in her way, but she is heartbroken by how he has changed. Much as I have argued with her that some of the change in him is natural, the normal growth of a boy into a man, she won’t believe it. Whatever you do, don’t let her color your opinion of him. Make your own assessment.
We have never told Jensen that he is our son. We felt it could only cause him pain to know what we did, and I don’t see how it could benefit him. I can’t prevent you from telling him now, but think it over carefully. We did it out of love - to save his life and make him strong - but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that it has made his life difficult as well.
I know it is a lot to ask you to take on the care of someone as special as Jensen, but I think you will find pleasure in it - he is interesting and his company is a rewarding. Give him a chance, and I think he will be like a brother to you. Open your heart to him and he will respond in kind. He is capable of great love - do not listen to Aggie on this point. She is wrong.
With the utmost gratitude,
Your Uncle Cyrus
Like a brother, Jared thought, fuck. Well, that was spilt milk. Much as his uncle might be shocked by his relationship with Jensen, there was no going back. He certainly didn’t need his uncle’s assurances about Jensen. He would do all the things his uncle asked, but he couldn’t change the nature of their relationship. He knew that Jensen would have no more desire to do so than he did. He wondered how differently things might have turned out if he had received the letter when he first came.
Jared carried the letter in his pocket all day - through a quiet lone lunch in the food tent as well as matinee and evening shows - until it was dark and he was in Jensen’s carriage in the soft golden light. He leaned back in the armchair and watched Jensen preparing absinthe at the bar. He wondered how often his uncle sat in this room with what had been his son, this amazing being. He wondered how he’d lived with the trade off.
Jensen brought his drink to him and sat on the fainting couch. Eyes the color of the green liquor watched him studiously.
“Okay, out with it,” Jensen said.
Jared bit his lip. “I’ll be honest. I didn’t know if I should share this with you. I thought of a number of reasons not to, but in the end it would be like lying if I didn’t.” Jared set his glass down and pulled the letter from his pocket, but he didn’t give it to Jensen right away. “The thing is, I’m afraid this may cause you pain; so, I’m sorry if it does. But it is about you, and you have the right to know. It’s a letter to me from Cyrus. Erma found it in Agnes’ things last night. She said it had already been opened, and I believe her.”
He held the envelope out to Jensen who just looked at it a moment without expression before taking it. Jared watched him slide the letter from the envelope and smooth it out. He couldn’t take his eyes off Jensen’s face as his gaze scanned the page. He sucked his lips between his teeth, and his eyes widened.
“Wife?” he said and looked up at Jared.
“Yeah, I know. I didn’t realize that either.”
Jensen nodded and continued reading. Emotions flickered over his features - anger and pain and then amusement.
“Brother, huh?”
Jared scoffed. “Yeah, I figure that horse done left the barn.”
Jensen smiled a little. “This doesn’t tell us much we didn’t know.”
“No, I know. I just thought you had a right to hear it in his words. I just don’t understand why she didn’t give me the letter.”
“She had to open it,” Jensen said. “She couldn’t give it to you without knowing what Cyrus might have told you. Once she opened it …” He shrugged. “She didn’t want you going to the Frenchman or telling me the truth.” Jensen tossed back his drink and went back to the bar. “What Jake said about her not being a nice person is true.”
Jared stared at his muscular back wondering what exactly that meant. If Jake was implying that she coerced him into a relationship, and Jensen was confirming that Jake was …
“Jensen?”
“No, I didn’t. We didn’t,” he said. He turned and leaned against the bar. He sipped his drink. “Yesterday, she said I wasn’t her son. She didn’t think of me that way. I guess, I was just supposed to be another conquest.”
Jared sat back in the chair. “But she said you were wanton.”
Jensen shrugged and came back to the couch. “That was about the men. She was angry when I said I wasn’t interested because she was a woman. I’m surprised she didn’t call me a pervert. That’s what she called me at the time.”
“I can’t believe … Wouldn’t she have been worried that Cyrus would find out about the two of you?”
Jensen put an arm across the back of the couch and stretched out. “She aged a lot in the past ten years or so. She was still quite attractive when I was … younger,” Jensen made a dismissive gesture, but Jared was doing the math, “and I doubt she was ever faithful to Cyrus - he as much as said so. I don’t suppose she thought I’d tell. I was completely dependent on Cyrus as I am on you.” Jensen held his gaze as though it was a challenge.
“Is that how you feel?” Jared asked.
“It’s the truth; especially now after what I did. Who out there do you think would take care of me as you do?”
Jared couldn’t argue with him. There might some folks who were sympathetic - Erma, maybe Jake, Damon perhaps - but it was unlikely that they would take Jensen on unless it was for the money they could make off him.
“I wonder how things would be different if you’d gotten that letter as Cyrus intended,” Jensen said. “If you had known that we were kin, about your mission in New Orleans, that I wasn’t such a mystery after all.” Jensen was watching him, and Jared felt itchy, as though he was being appraised.
“Tell me something, Jen. It wasn’t the first time you snuck out was it, the other night?”
Jensen’s eyebrows rose, and his pretty mouth twisted in a smirk. “No, I used to sneak out just to get out.” He shrugged. “It drove Cyrus crazy. I understand why now, but at the time I thought I’d go lose my mind in here.”
Jared nodded thinking of what Damon had said about a Cyrus making up stories of escaped cats. “Can I have another drink?” he asked.
“Mm,” Jensen rose, but instead of going to the bar, he straddled Jared’s lap. “You can have the rest of mine.” He put the edge of the glass to Jared’s lips and tipped it. As the green liquor spilled into his mouth, he looked up into heavily lidded, almost hungry eyes. He could have sworn he almost saw the green fairy flitting there in those depths.
When the glass was empty, Jensen set it aside, and he kissed Jared with little more than a brush of his lips. Warm, soft, sinful lips that had Jared’s tongue flicking out of his mouth to taste them. Jensen smiled and tangled his fingers in the hair at the back of Jared’s neck.
“He was right, you know. I can’t survive without you,” Jensen said.
Jared tightened his hands on Jensen’s hips and pulled him a little closer. “That isn’t why I’m here. I want to be with you. I’m not going to abandon you, Jen. Okay?”
Jensen bit his lip. “Yeah, okay.” He leaned in and pressed his face into Jared’s hair.
“He said you were the most important thing in his life,” Jared said. “I understand that. What we are is different, but that isn’t.”
Jared awoke sometime during the night, and the train had stopped. He heard voices - Jensen’s deep growl and another man’s voice - arguing he thought, and he rolled out of bed and pulled on his trousers. As he entered the sitting room, he saw Jensen slap a roll of money against Emile’s chest and shove him.
“Get out,” Jensen said. “Get lost.”
Emile’s face was red, a mask of abject hatred. “Don’t worry. If I ever see you again …”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jensen said with all the emotion he ordinarily expressed for a bowl of oatmeal. “I don’t care. That’s what you never understood.”
“Jensen,” Jared said then, “what’s going on?”
Jensen gave Emile another shove. “Get out,” he said again with an edge of threat, and Emile slid out the door like a snake diving for a hole in a log. “Emile’s leaving us,” Jensen said as he locked the door.
Jared crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
Jensen leaned back against the door looking tired. “I couldn’t sleep. I was up reading.” He gestured toward the fainting couch where Titus Groan lay open. A partial glass of bourbon sat on the table beside it. “He came to the carriage threatening to make trouble for us over Agnes. I just …” He let his eyes fall shut, and Jared couldn’t help uncrossing his arms and closing the distance between them. When Jared touched Jensen’s arm, jade eyes met his. “He’s been a thorn in my side for so long. I just wanted him to be gone. I offered him money to leave us alone.”
Jared pulled Jensen into his arms and kissed his temple, inhaled his sweet scent. “I hope it works, Jen.”
Dawn revealed a sky that was heavy and gray. The show wouldn’t be setting up, Jared quickly concluded as he looked out the window. There was nowhere to set up. The surrounding fields were covered in standing water, and a check with locals revealed that few people could get there anyway as the roads are blocked by downed trees.
Jared wondered if they’d slept through the freak tropical storm that had swept through or if it had blown north and missed the train entirely. He walked back to talk to the cooks who were setting up camp stoves in a small tent on a lone island of solid ground near the tracks. They could manage oatmeal and fried egg sandwiches, they assured him. He approved the plan and made his way back to Jensen’s carriage.
He stripped off his clothes and crawled back into bed. He felt sleepy, but not as much as he felt aroused at the sight of Jensen’s sleeping form. He put one hand on a furred hip and pulled them together as he brushed feathers from Jensen’s face and kissed his sleep slack lips. Jensen’s eyelids fluttered open.
“Hi,” Jensen said.
“Hey,” Jared replied and leaned in for another kiss.
Jensen smirked. “Before coffee?”
“Maybe you could make coffee.”
Jensen frowned then. “You woke me up to make coffee?”
Jared grinned. “No, Jen, coffee can wait.”
“Wow, I thought nothing waited for coffee.”
“See,” Jared kissed him again, “that’s just shows what you do to me.”
They spent the day in bed, making only occasional forays out to the main room for coffee or beer or to raid the emergency provisions and luxury consumables Jensen kept in his carriage - bread, cheese, salami, chocolate, fruit - and by evening they were on absinthe and novels. Jared was lying naked on his stomach, and Jensen was propped up against the headboard. There were little streaky halos around the letters on the page, and Jared finally snapped the book closed. Jensen peered over the top of his novel.
Jared looked down at his book, at the blond in the pink spangled bikini on the cover. “A Shocking Revelation of Passion and Evil” was emblazoned across the top. Gritty as Nightmare Alley was with its tale of an exploited sideshow geek, it didn’t come close to the world that Jared had stepped into.
“Jen, when I asked you about coming to the circus; first, you told me you didn’t remember anything, but then you, and Agnes too - not that I believe anything she told me anymore - but you both suggested that you had been hurt somehow, that you were injured.” He stopped. He didn’t know what else to say. He wanted the truth and feared more lies or half truths.
Jensen shut his book and laid it aside. “The first time you asked me, Jesus, Jared, I didn’t know you. It seemed like a small lie, a deflection. Then …” Jensen pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. “Have you ever had a really bad fever where you have weird dreams or, I know, you’ve been so drunk that you only remember bits and pieces of what happened?”
Jared scoffed and nodded. “You know I have.”
Jensen smiled. “Yeah, I guess so.” His gaze dropped to Jared’s tattooed arm. Releasing his arms from around his knees, he leaned over and pulled a tobacco pouch, rolling papers and a box of wood matches from the nightstand drawer. He took out a rolling paper and began to fill it from the pouch.
“It was kind of like that,” he said. His eyes were on his task, and Jared noticed that the dried herb had an unusual greenish coloration and odd smell.
“I’ve never seen you smoke before,” Jared said.
Jensen looked at him a moment before raising the cigarette to his lips and licking the paper to seal it. “It’s not tobacco, Jared.” He raised the cigarette to his lips and flicked a match alight with a claw. Putting the flame to the end of the cigarette, he inhaled deeply and squinted his eyes against the pungent smoke.
“What is it?” Jared asked with a feeling he already knew. He’d heard of the plant that some of the Indians and Mexicans smoked; although he didn’t know anyone who did. “Is that marijuana?”
Jensen nodded and let the smoke flow from his parted lips. “Cyrus started getting it for me when we were in New Orleans. A lot of the musicians smoke it. It helps calm me when I feel … Anyway, what I started to tell you is that my memories of that time are kind of like being that kind of drunk. Everything is broken up and distorted. I remember that room and the stone altar, the feel of it, cold and rough, and I remember his voice, the Frenchman, the chanting in Latin, and pain.” He stopped and bit his lip. “God, Jared, I can’t begin to describe the pain - not just physical, but ...”
Jensen drew another drag off the cigarette and closed his eyes as he held the smoke. Jared took it from his fingers and put it to his lips, inhaled deeply as he’d seen Jensen do, and it burned his throat. The urge to cough was almost overwhelming.
“Don’t cough or you won’t be able to stop,” Jensen said as smoke trailed from his mouth. Jared had sudden need to kiss him and rose up, moved toward him. He couldn’t take his eyes off Jensen’s mouth, which twitched into a smile. He took the cigarette back from Jared’s hand and met his lips. Jensen’s mouth was so soft and wet and welcoming, but Jared didn’t feel the need to go to the next level. They’d been enjoying one another’s bodies off and on all day, and he really did want to hear the rest of Jensen’s story. He leaned back but didn’t move away.
“Go on.” His voice sounded strange to his ears, and his head felt like it had expanded.
“Well, I was in a bad way when they brought me here. They had a different carriage then. They lived together, I think. I just remember being in a big bed like this, in pain - my skin hurt and itched like a son of a bitch - and I sort floated in and out of consciousness. One of them was always there beside me, usually Agnes. I didn’t realize what was happening at first, but I remember one time they were both with me, and she was showing Cyrus my hand and arm. They were talking quietly with sort frightened looks.”
He paused and took a drink of absinthe.
“When they left I remember looking at my hand and being kind of bewildered because my fingernails looked funny. See, it didn’t happen overnight, Jared. This, what I am, it was slow and painful and, for them, frightening.”
“You weren’t frightened?”
“I didn’t remember what I looked like before. I know that I’m a freak, that other people don’t have fur and scales and feathers, but I don’t remember what I looked like with skin and hair. For them … honestly, I remember Agnes being there a lot at first, almost every time I opened my eyes. Then, one day …” He took a deep breath. “My hair started to fall out. She pulled her hand back from my head, and she had a handful of hair. I remember it was blond and the look on her face.”
Jared didn’t say anything, but he stroked Jensen’s arm. It felt like satin, and Jared couldn’t seem to stop rubbing his hand up and down it. His head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton wool, and he had to divide his attention between the feel of Jensen’s arm and his words. Jensen released a shaky breath.
“I started to be conscious for longer periods, and I remember the pain and itching subsiding - the relief of that - but the changes too - the fur getting thicker, the scales spreading. She came less and less, and when she did, she was so nervous, so cloying. I couldn’t stand it, and I snapped at her one day. I told her to quit hovering. I swore at her. She looked like I’d slapped her. I supposed I’d never talked to her that way before, but neither of them ever referred to the past, that I was their child or that they’d even known me before.” He slumped back against the headboard. “Why do you think that is?”
Jared shook his head. “I don’t know, Jen. I suppose they felt guilty. They didn’t want you to know that they’d …”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” Jensen ran his fingers through Jared’s hair, holding and tugging at the ends. “You have beautiful hair.”
Jared felt himself flush. “Jen …”
“It’s okay. I know I’m the only one with feathers.”
“They are beautiful feathers,” Jared said.
“I really didn’t mean to lie to you, Jared. It’s just not a simple story, and I didn’t understand it myself until the other day.”
“I understand.”
“Okay, good. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, of course.”
“We’re near San Antonio.”
“Yeah.”
“Where your family is,” Jensen said.
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to see them?”
“Well, before we got shut down by the storm, I figured they’d come out. I wrote my father to let him know when we’d be here. Now, I don’t know. Maybe, I’ll try to get home tomorrow to see them.”
“You should.”
“Yeah?”
“You know you should,” Jensen said. “They need to know that you’re okay, and you need to know they still love you.”
Jared looked up sharply. “I know that.”
“Your head does,” Jensen said. His hand was still on Jared neck and his thumb stroked the skin below Jared’s ear. “But you think you’ve let them down and disappointed them. You need to see that they’ve forgiven you.”
“What if they don’t?”
“They will, love.”
Chapter 12
Talk to me.