The Black Rose Legacy Ch. 03
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All characters engaged in sex (both Sasquatch and human) are over 18. Thanks as always to my writing coach RiverMaya, my editing guru AzureAsh, and my mystery beta reader.
This chapter takes place 15 years after Chapter 02.
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1937 -- Pacific Northwest/Seattle, Washington
Eight years after the Great Depression started, times were still hard in America. Hard times notwithstanding, people, rich or poor, craved entertainment to get their minds off their worries, so the carnival business was good. The carnival I was with, 'Professor Love's Profusion of Nature's Anomalies & Animal Wonderment' -- basically a travelling human freak show, a small zoo, a few hoochie-coochie dancers and some games of chance (as in, 'no chance for you, sucker') thrown in along the midway -- was raking it in wherever we went in the Washington/Oregon/Idaho area.
I came to work at the carnival when my folks and I were living in in the forests of Canada; I was lonely and bored. One night, I caught the smell of popcorn, (I love it to this very day), and I followed it into a clearing where I found Professor Love's carnival temporarily camped between shows, on their way to Seattle. Nobody there seemed particularly alarmed at the sight of an 8'6" tall, 585-pound Sasquatch covered with black fur, in fact, the Professor was delighted to see me and offered me a job on the spot! As I was ready to leave Mom and Dad and strike out on my own, I went back to my parents and told them I was taking the job.
I was billed as the Missing Link Giant, although my real name was Gus. Or, more formally, Augustus Haggerty. I was the son of a human/Sasquatch man, Julius Haggerty, and a one-quarter Sasquatch/three quarters human woman, Daffodil Karpiak, both children of mixed couples themselves.
My grandmother Daisy was half Sasquatch, and my Grandfather Adam was a human. Although half-human himself, my pop Julius had inherited his looks and physique from my totally Sasquatch great-grandmother, Black Rose. He was well over 10' tall, and weighed probably 700-plus pounds. The only human-looking part of him was his blue eyes. I never met my great-grandfather Andrew, but my mother told me he was a kind man with the same blue eyes as my father's.
Professor Love's carnival was hugely successful because I mean, let's face it, it was more bang for the buck. One ticket into a movie cost 25 cents. That same 25 cents could get two people into one of our big tents: the tent containing the zoo, or into the tent containing the freak exhibits. A dime more would get two people into both. A nickel at the games might win a little kewpie doll for your girl; another nickel would get you a big bag of popcorn to share, so you'd get entertainment and a snack and still be a nickel ahead of going to the cinema.
Poor Fred Astaire or Shirley Temple on film didn't stand a chance against being in the animal tent, seeing Hercules the Elephant or Androcles the Lion; or on the freak side, seeing The Bearded Lady, or The Alligator Boy. The attraction that really kept the local rubes coming back, though, was the Missing Link Giant - me.
The way the act worked, was, the barker out front would go on about all the freaks of nature within, including the missing link between gorillas and humans. Once the rubes were in the tent, they'd view the exhibits of the other freaks prior to seeing me. First was Anna the Bearded Lady, who was a kind and lovely woman, even with her full black beard. She'd sit in her rocking chair and simply do her knitting while the locals gaped. If a child said she was fake, she'd offer them a chance to give her beard a little tug. (Kids were gentle, whereas teenagers and adults would deliberately try to hurt her.)
Then there was Freddy the Alligator Boy. He'd been a dirt-poor lonely farm boy with what the doctors refer to as ichthyosis, which gave him a covering of thick, scaly skin all over his body. Next to Freddy was Teagan The Tattooed Lady, whose tattoos covered her body from head to toe, including her face. Wearing only the skimpiest of clothes to cover her private areas, she was very popular among the men who passed through the tent.
These were the regulars, although some seasons we'd be joined by acts like fire eaters, sword swallowers, and knife throwers, or by people like Annie the Penguin Girl, a young woman with stubby arms and legs who was born with her fingers and toes fused, making her extremities look like flippers. The acts tended to vary, depending on the year. Road life wasn't for everyone. Two years into it, for example, Annie retired, marrying a farm boy who'd fallen in love with her after meeting her backstage.
After staring at the static acts, the rubes were ushered into a small arena of 30 seats with a small stage. First up was Polly The Pint-Sized Pianist. Polly Hays was lovely dark-haired little thing; she was what was referred to as a proportional dwarf, which meant all parts of her body were small to the same degree. Imagine the movie star Dorothy Lamour, except 3'8" instead of 5'5", and 40 pounds instead of Miss Lamour's 117, and that was her. I really liked looking at her, she was so pretty. Polly's act was to come out dressed in a tiny evening gown and sing while playing a tune on her miniature upright piano.
Then came Sergei the Russian Strongman. He was 6'7", with huge muscles in his arms and legs. He'd come out and lift various things, including a baby grand piano. The suckers didn't know the piano was just a shell, with nothing inside. I knew for a fact Sergei had nothing on me strength-wise, because when we were loading and unloading the carnival, I'd carry the tentpoles while he'd barely pick up anything. For all of his blustering, I suspected the Russian feared me as well.
The final event was me being rolled out clad only in blue denim pants with the lower legs torn off, entrapped in my 'iron' barred cage - actually lightweight hollow gas pipes, painted black to look like iron. As I paced back and forth like I was unsettled, the barker would come in and ask the audience to please remain calm and make as little noise as possible so as not to agitate me further. Rubes being rubes, there was always a wiseass or two in the back who'd make monkey noises - hoots and howls, that sort of thing -- and I would rear up to my full height and pound my chest, as if it made me angry. The barker would warn them, to no avail, of course -- it was all part of the act. They'd hoot and holler, and sometimes throw rocks or pieces of fruit or vegetables.
This was when I'd give out a long deep howl that gave goosebumps to anyone who heard it, (my dad taught it to me) and begin to act enraged; if someone actually hit me with something they threw, the rage might even be genuine. I'd roar, grab the bars of the cage door and shake them violently, and the deliberately shaky latch would pop open, allowing me to jump out at the audience. A carny shill in the audience would shout, "WATCH OUT HE'S LOOSE", whereupon the now-terrorized audience would flee towards the exits.
If I found a slow-moving small adult (never a child, they're far too fragile and too easily to emotionally scar), I'd grab them and hoist them over my head, roaring again. Once the crowd had fled the tent I'd put the shocked person down, and most of the time they'd flee as well, with a fine story to one day tell their grandchildren.
