John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“The sheepdog is a female called Pastora,” Juan Diego heard Lupe saying. (The noun pastora means “shepherdess.”) Pastora was a sheepdog of the border-collie type; she was wearing a girl’s dress. When the dog walked on all fours, she tripped on the dress, but when she stood on her hind legs, pushing the child’s stroller with Baby (the dachshund) in it, the dress fit her correctly.

“What would Lupe tell people in a sideshow? What woman wants to hear someone say what her husband is thinking? What guy is going to be happy hearing what’s on his wife’s mind?” Soledad was asking Juan Diego. “Won’t kids be embarrassed if their friends know what they’re thinking? Just think about it,” Soledad said. “All Ignacio cares about is what that old lion and those lionesses are thinking. If your sister can’t read the lions’ minds, she’s of no use to Ignacio. And once she has read what’s on the lions’ minds — then she’s no longer of use, is she? Or do lions change their minds?” Soledad asked Juan Diego.

“I don’t know,” the boy admitted. He felt frightened.

“I don’t know, either,” Soledad told him. “I just know you’ve got better odds of staying at the circus if you’re a skywalker — especially if you’re a boy skywalker. You understand what I’m saying, Boy Wonder?” Soledad asked him. It all felt too abrupt.

“Yes, I do,” he told her, but the abruptness scared him. It was hard for him to imagine that she’d ever been pretty, but Juan Diego knew Soledad was a clear thinker; she understood her husband, perhaps well enough to survive him. Soledad understood that the lion tamer was a man who made mostly selfish decisions — his interest in Lupe as a mind reader was a matter of self-preservation. One thing was obvious about Soledad: she was a strong woman.

There’d been stress on her joints, no doubt, as Dr. Vargas had observed of the former trapeze artist. Damage to her fingers, her wrists, her elbows — these joint injuries notwithstanding, Soledad was still strong. As a flyer, she’d ended her career as a catcher. In trapeze work, men are usually the catchers, but Soledad had strong enough arms, and a strong enough grip, to be a catcher.

“The mongrel is male. I don’t think it’s fair that he’s called Perro Mestizo—‘Mongrel’ shouldn’t be the poor dog’s name !” Lupe was saying. The mongrel, poor Perro Mestizo, wasn’t wearing a costume. In the act for the dogs, Mongrel was a baby-stealer. Perro Mestizo tries to run off with the stroller with Baby in it — with the dachshund in the baby bonnet barking like a lunatic, of course. “Perro Mestizo is always the bad guy,” Lupe was saying. “That’s not fair, either!” (Juan Diego knew what Lupe was going to say next because it was an oft-repeated theme with his sister.) “Perro Mestizo didn’t ask to be born a mongrel,” Lupe said. (Naturally, Estrella, the dog trainer, hadn’t the slightest idea what Lupe was saying.)

“I guess Ignacio is a little afraid of the lions,” Juan Diego said cautiously to Soledad. It wasn’t a question; he was stalling.

“Ignacio should be afraid of the lions — he should be a lot afraid,” the lion tamer’s wife said.

“The German shepherd, who is female, is called Alemania,” Lupe was babbling. Juan Diego thought it was a cop-out to name a German shepherd “Germany”; it was also a stereotype to dress a German shepherd in a police uniform. But Alemania was supposed to be a policía — a policewoman. Naturally, Lupe was babbling about how “humiliating” it was for Perro Mestizo, who was male, to be apprehended by a female German shepherd. In the circus act, Perro Mestizo is caught stealing the baby in the stroller; the undressed mongrel is dragged out of the ring by the scruff of his neck by Alemania in her police uniform. Baby (the dachshund) and his mother (Pastora, the sheepdog) are reunited.

It was at this moment of realization — the dump kids’ slim chances of success at Circo de La Maravilla, the fate of a crippled skywalker juxtaposed with the unlikelihood of Lupe becoming a mind reader of lions — when the barefoot Edward Bonshaw hobbled into the dogs’ troupe tent. The tender-footed way the Iowan was walking must have set off the dogs, or perhaps it was the sheer ungainliness of the smaller Señor Eduardo clinging to the bigger transvestite for support.

Baby barked first; the little dachshund in the baby bonnet leapt out of the stroller. This was so off-script, so not the circus act, that poor Perro Mestizo became agitated and bit one of Edward Bonshaw’s bare feet. Baby quickly lifted one leg, as most male dogs do, and peed on Señor Eduardo’s other bare foot — the unbitten one. Flor kicked the dachshund and the mongrel.

Alemania, the police dog, disapproved of kicking; there was a tense standoff between the German shepherd and the transvestite — growls from the big dog, a no-retreat policy from Flor, who would never back down from a fight. Estrella, her flaming-redhead wig askew, tried to calm the dogs down.

Lupe was so upset to read (in an instant) what was on Juan Diego’s mind that she paid no attention to the dogs. “I’m a mind reader for lions ? That’s it ?” the girl asked her brother.

“I trust Soledad — don’t you?” was all Juan Diego said.

“We’re indispensable if you’re a skywalker — otherwise, we’re dispensable. That’s it ?” Lupe asked Juan Diego again. “Oh, I get it — you like the sound of being a Boy Wonder, don’t you?”

“Soledad and I don’t know if lions change their minds — assuming you can read what the lions are thinking,” Juan Diego said; he was trying to be dignified, but the Boy Wonder idea had tempted him.

“I know what’s on Hombre’s mind,” was all Lupe would tell him.

“I say we just try it,” Juan Diego said. “We give it a week, just see how it goes—”

“A week!” Lupe cried. “You’re no Boy Wonder — believe me.”

“Okay, okay — we’ll give it just a couple of days, ” Juan Diego pleaded. “Let’s just try it, Lupe — you don’t know everything, ” he added. What cripple doesn’t dream of walking without a limp? And what if a cripple could walk spectacularly ? Skywalkers were applauded, admired, even adored — just for walking, only sixteen steps.

“It’s a leave-or-die-here situation,” Lupe said. “A couple of days or a week won’t matter.” It all felt too abrupt — to Lupe, too.

“You’re so dramatic!” Juan Diego told her.

“Who wants to be The Wonder? Who’s being dramatic ?” Lupe asked him. “Boy Wonder.”

Where were the responsible adults?

It was hard to imagine anything more happening to Edward Bonshaw’s feet, but the barefoot Iowan was thinking about something else; the dogs had failed to distract him from his thoughts, and Señor Eduardo could not have been expected to understand the dump kids’ plight. Not even Flor, in her continuing flirtation with the Iowan, should be blamed for missing the leave-or-die-here decision the dump kids faced. The available adults were thinking about themselves.

“Do you really have breasts and a penis?” Edward Bonshaw blurted out in English to Flor, whose unspoken Houston experience had given her a good grasp of the language. Señor Eduardo had counted on Flor’s understanding him, of course; he just hadn’t realized that Juan Diego and Lupe, who’d been arguing with each other, would hear and understand him. And no one in the dogs’ troupe tent could have guessed that Estrella, the old dog trainer — not to mention Soledad, the lion tamer’s wife — also understood English.