"Ho, Sasha! Haaa!"
Lekya cracked the leather lash of his lariat against the packed
ground. Sawdust flew up into the air. Sasha looked at him with bored eyes,
then sprang through the burning hoop.
"Haa!" Lekya yelled, grinning, as he gave Sasha a heavy, friendly
whack on the flank. Sasha strolled down the aluminum steps on the far side
of the hoop and hopped back up onto his stand.
"You see that?" Lekya shouted to the tigers, a half-dozen big
brutes who surrounded him in a semi-circle. "Thas how is done! Thas how a
professional does his job!"
The tigers looked at him with surly indifference.
Green cats. Always fun. Never know what could happen. But it was a
part of any new gig. The hands were outside with a hose at the ready in
case things got hairy... but by the time those hung-over muscle-boys
reacted, he'd be meat. Good thing he had Sasha to watch his back.
This seemed like a good bunch. Kid McCrae had done well in gettin
'em. Not a psycho in the lot. Didn't mean they were pets, no way, they were
tigers. But normal tigers could be counted on to generally behave in
certain ways. Just keep an eye on 'em, let 'em know what you want 'em to
do, everything's hunky-dory. Every once in a while one of 'em will catch a
mood; Lekya could usually tell when one or another was feeling ornery, and
what he missed, Sasha caught. Likewise, if someone got the idea to tangle
with Sasha, Lekya would put a stop to it right away... unless Sasha wanted
to scrap. Lekya could tell. They knew each other.
He was taking Sasha through the paces so that the other cats would
see what they were supposed to do, so that they would get used to
associating a behavior with a command or a tone of voice. It wasn't
necessary for Lekya to yell the commands at Sasha; he could tell Sasha what
he wanted him to do with nothing more than a nod (and Sasha would tell him
whether or not he felt like doing it in as subtle a way), but the new cats
had to learn. They were over the hardest part already, acclimating them to
the Big Cage, a week's work in and of itself. Strange tigers don't
automatically take to each other, nor to humans or especially lions. It had
to be done in a series of small, dangerous steps.
One by one the tigers had to learn that Lekya was boss in the cage,
followed by Sasha. It was up to them to develop their own feline clawing
order, which they swiftly did. Sasha aside, Lekya preferred tigers to
lions, in the ring at least. Tigers were loners, they wouldn't gang up on
you (he remembered a close call with two lionesses in his early days); and
their loose social structure made them less stubborn, less lazy. Some
trainers said they were smarter than lions; Lekya tended to think it was
the other way around, lions were smarter, but far more stubborn. Either
way, it was much easier to work with tigers.
The tigers were mostly youngsters; only one had previously done any
circus work, the tall male, Bruno. The two smaller males, muscular Atlas
and slender Shermie were brothers, barely more than cubs. The three
females, Molly, Ida, and Anna were all about the same age as the younger
males, and if anything more spirited and suspicious than the boys. They
watched Lekya with sullen deference.
"Up, Sasha, up!" Lekya gestured with the lariat, and Sasha raised
up on his haunches, batting his front paws imposingly.
"Speak!"
The lion let loose with one of his famous roars, the kind that
rattled the seats of the back row and sent little children cowering into
their mothers' jackets.
Ahh, Sasha, Lekya thought, how well you remember your moves. You
are truly a star of the ring.
But you weren't always so...
Cold April, 1974. The new lion glared at Lekya with surly
determination. "Haa, Sasha, haa!" Lekya cried again. The lion didn't move.
Patience, Lekya thought to himself. Always with lions, patience.
He turned to Peaches, the most trusted of his tigers. She was
temperamental, but she knew her tricks to a "T". He tapped the aluminum
stand with the handle of his lariat, then cracked it in the air above her
head. Though this move looked to the rubes like a show of force on the
trainer's part, the lash as an extension of Lekya's will, the implied
threat of pain if the animal didn't comply, it was, in fact, merely a
signal, the equivalent in tiger-sized terms of a snap of the finger. No
tiger feared the lash; the big cats were so thick-skinned they would have
barely felt it. Tiger skins are built to withstand the claws of other
tigers, what is a lash to that?
And, were Lekya to accidentally snap the lash against a tender or
vulnerable spot of cat anatomy? Well, as his own trainer, his uncle Vendya
Kolyanz had told him once, long ago, "Graveyard is full of men who made
cats mad."
Peaches leaped atop the round stand and stood on her hind legs, in
the lazy manner of the big cats.
Lekya looked the new lion in the eye and spoke with confidence.
"See? Is easy! Now do for Lekya!"
Lekya cracked the whip in the air above Sasha's head. The young
lion lowered his head and showed his teeth.
"None of that!" Lekya spoke up instantly, with all the command he
could muster. He didn't get the sense that this new lion was trouble, but
Lekya had no doubt that the graveyard was equally full of trainers that
trusted their instincts too much.
The lion looked away from Lekya and scratched behind his ear with
an enormous paw. "phh!" Lekya spat, exasperated. A few yards away the
other lion roared, from his cage.
Sasha let loose an incredible answering roar, the colour and timbre
of thunder. Lekya almost staggered under it's force.
"Ho, you're a loudmouth, you stubborn, stubborn kitty. Try again."
While Lekya attempted once again to coax Sasha into the simple
trick, Peaches began to groom herself. She and Sasha were the only ones in
the big cage today; this was an in-depth, up close and personal training
session for the new lion. Sasha had already become acclimated to the ring;
in fact Lekya had used him in the last few shows, but merely to fill out
the cage. Sasha had yet to learn a single trick.
"But not 'cause you're stupid, my giant friend," Lekya said to him,
"No, because you are stubborn. You are the mule of lions. But I'll make a
star of you yet."
Lekya hated breaking a new lion in on the road. It was the worst
possible situation. But there had been no choice. When word had reached Old
Steve McCrae that a local circus had a young lion for sale cheap, he was on
it like a cat on a ball of yarn. Lekya told him he didn't need any more
lions, especially while the circus was on the road, but the price was right
and here was Sasha.
On the other hand, Sasha was an impressive cat, large even at his
young age, barely out of kittenhood. And smart, too; Lekya could see the
fire in his mind reflected in his shimmering eyes. Once he was trained, he
would be an impressive addition to the Big Cage.
But the price, the size, even the intelligence; these were not the
most important reasons Lekya was glad McCrae had bought the lion, even
though it meant extra work for Lekya. Not the most important, not at all.
The welts on Sasha's flank were all the reason Lekya needed.
Sasha had been cheap because the idiot that had owned him had been
unable to torture him into submission. Good thing Lekya hadn't been along
on the shopping expedition! Cats would dine on mushed idiot tonight. No
wonder Sasha was sullen, stubborn, suspicious. By all rights he should have
turned vicious. Most abused animals become timid or vicious or both.
Not Sasha. This cat had Will. What a circus cat he would be!
"Haaa, Sasha! Haaa!"
Sasha glared at him, but didn't move.
"Shh, man, someone'll hear you." Sasha heard the voice coming
toward him in the darkness.
"So what, man, I'll kick their friggin' ass," a second voice
answered, then broke out laughing.
"You're too drunk," the first voice replied, "You'd just fall
over." And he laughed a braying, spraying chuckle.
"I'm sorber- I'm soberer than you are, Thas' why I'm going first."
"You're drunker than I am. Thas' why you're going first. Now, shh.
I think we're near the cages."
Sasha scowled. They were right outside his cage. They smelled foul.
Like bad fruit.
"There he is," the first one said.
"He'sh cute."
"Hello, kitty, kitchy-coo!" The drunken kid put a finger near the
bars and waved. Sasha could have probably reached right out with an
extended claw and had the kid's arm in the cage before he even knew he was
missing it. But why bother? He wasn't hungry or anything. He decided to
ignore them.
"He's asleep."
"No, we need him awake. Wake up!"
The second kid picked up a piece of board that was laying against a
nearby tent-peg. "Hey cat! Wake up!" And he struck it across the bars with
all the force he could muster. Sasha stood up and roared.
The frat boys staggered backwards at the force of sound blasting
into their faces; one of them almost fell over. Then they burst out
laughing.
"This is is the one! Man, he's a cat and a half!"
"So come on, Hercules, let's do it!"
The frat boy knelt and put a hand on the cuff of his right pantleg.
He tugged the material up his calf to reveal a long, mean looking serrated
knife duct taped to the instep of his leg.
"Wooo-hoo!" cried his companion, "That is one hell of a goddam blade!"
"You be your ass it is," the first fratboy answered. "Genuine Green
Beret V.C. Slicer. Hacks, stabs, slashes. You can even cut a friggin' tin
can with it -but you wouldn't want to." Both boys burst into fresh gales of
laughter at the reference to the TV commercial.
"But now," the first boy continued, once they had managed to lock
down their hilarity, "We'll find out how well it slices jungle beast."
"Go git 'im Tarzan! Woo-hoo!"
The boy approached the cage cautiously. Sasha watched with interest
but not alarm; he had never acquired any experience with knives. He had
been around humans most of his life; they neither frightened nor
intimidated him.
"Hey! Hey cat! Come on over to the bars," the kid said, waving the
knife through the bars in quick jabs.
Sasha yawned.
"Ahh, Christ, he's never coming over."
"Can you reach him anyway?"
"He's too far away."
"Well, dammit, we are gonna get ourselves a lion-skin today." A
dull light dawned over the second fratboy's head, making his face look
almost cro-magnon. He bent over and started grabbing small rocks.
"This'll wake his ass up." He pelted a small rock into the cage at
a high speed. It missed the lion but did hit the floor with a loud whack.
Sasha looked up, perplexed and more than a little miffed.
"Here, have a taste of this, ya friggin' cat." The second stone
caught Sasha on his hip. It stung like a wasp. He stood up with a roar of
displeasure.
"That got him! Hee hee hee!"
"Come on, big boy, come to the bars..."
The knife glistened ominously in the cold moonlight. Sasha walked
over to the bars to investigate.
The lash of Lekya's lariat struck the boy's hand, tearing open
flesh. The knife fell to the ground. Drops of blood dotted the strewn
sawdust.
"Jesus Christ!" the boy cried out, seizing his stricken hand.
"What the hell you doing?" Lekya barked, ferociously. "You put
knife in my lion's cage? You going to CUT my lion?"
"Hey, mister," the second kid said, nervously. There was no
mistaking the fire in Lekya Vetrayna's eyes. "We was just foolin' around.
We wasn't gonna hurt the lion..."
"Bullshit!" Lekya said, bluntly. "Drunk friggin' kid, gonna kill a
lion in a cage." He spat on the ground. "You want I should put you in cage?
Try it that way? What you think?"
But by then the two fratboys were backing away. In a second they
would turn tail and run. Lekya cracked the lash in the dust at their feet .
That did the trick. They turned and ran, faster than sober men can run.
"Run! Run like baby cowards! Cower to mommy! Pieces of crap." Lekya
spat on the ground again.
Sasha looked at him, bewildered. What had just happened here?
Lekya walked up to the bars and looked in at the big cat. "You
okay, big guy? Sure, they didn't get you. Lekya'll look out for you, okay?"
The lion looked at Lekya, expressionless.
"Yeah, I look out for you. You look out for me, too, okay?" He
tapped the lariat against the bars of the cage, lightly, almost absently.
Then he turned and walked slowly back to his bunk.
Sasha watched him go, thinking.
The next day was bright and hot. The chill of the previous few days
had given over to a hazy sort of summer preview, more like August than
April. As a result of the sudden shift, and of his interrupted sleep, Lekya
had awakened with a clouded head and rasping throat. A spring cold. Misery
on top of misery.
Ahh, well. Work had to go on. If he had to stop the training to
blow his nose, the cats would just have to be patient.
"Let 'em in, Harry," he said to the roustabout on top of the tiger
cage. Harry nodded and slid the gate away from the front of the first cage,
allowing Peaches and her cage-mate, Sprinkles, into the Big Cage with
Lekya. He cracked the whip and they immediately took their places, atop the
circular aluminum stands, in the assigned places where they always perched.
Harry slid up the next gate and the next two cats ran through the first
cage into the Big Cage. This was repeated on down the line, cage to cage
until all of the cats were in the big cage.
"Hokay, cats," Lekya said, "Let's get to it." He raised the lariat
in the air and barked a command, in Romanian. All of the cats stood on
their hind legs and batted their paws in the air.
All except Sasha.
"What is it, Sasha, you don't sleep well so you gotta take it out
on me? Ahh, well, I work with you later. You just watch everybody else for
now."
He took the cats through their paces, through the hoops, through
the somersaults. His nose gave him some trouble, and he felt a headache
building. Halfway through one trick, he sneezed.
The sudden noise startled the cats, and Sprinkles and Victor, never
the best of friends, began fighting, snarling and lashing at each other.
Lekya stepped toward them, yelling, to break it up, as he had many, many
times in the past.
That's when Peaches pounced.
All trainers that work with the big cats single out one animal to
be their "trust" animal; this cat, generally raised from kittenhood by the
trainer, has a personality and rapport with the trainer that enables him
to trust that cat, when all the others in the cage should always be
regarded with caution. This cat is the only one the trainer will fully turn
his back to.
Circus lore is full of tragic tales of trainers who trusted the
wrong cat.
Peaches had been Lekya's "trust" cat for the past few years. She
was a bit temperamental, but she was certainly the most trustworthy of his
rather motley crew. She was the brightest of the tigers, and more inclined
to become distracted or bored than to make trouble with her fellow cats,
let alone her trainer.
Still, he should have seen it coming.
She'd been unusually surly lately. Never lashing out or growling,
but scowling far more than usual. He'd seen her panting for no reason twice
(third time would have meant a visit to the vet). In hindsight, these
should ha been warning signs.
But hindsight would come later, when it would do no good. In the
instant that it took him to realize he had a sudden and serious problem, he
had no time for hindsight.
Only reaction.
He must have seen a flicker of motion behind him through his
peripheral vision. Or had a psychic flash (he was a Gypsy, after all).
Whatever the reason, he had made a sudden dart to his left.
It saved his life.
Because the teeth that closed in on his soft flesh only managed to
grip onto the outside of his shoulder. He went down under the weight of the
tiger, propelled forward by the impact of her paws on his back, borne to
the ground by the pressure of the teeth in his shoulder.
He felt no pain at first; only shocked confusion. What was
happening? He felt the dank breath against his neck, the weight on his back.
Peaches.
He went limp, which is the best thing to do in the situation;
sometimes the tiger loses interest.
Other times, she doesn't.
Lekya heard the nearby roustabouts shouting to one another. He saw
them flailing about, panicked, searching chaotically for something,
anything, to use to break up the struggle in the cage. They looked like
clowns, Lekya would remember thinking. Clown rushing to put out a fire.
Lekya felt Peaches' teeth being removed from his shoulder (and
right then he started to feel the pain). Peaches had realized that her
grip was faulty. She had meant to grab the neck.
She would rectify that now.
She raised her head, opened her jaws, and tensed her neck muscles.
Lekya shut his eyes.
Lekya felt a sudden rush of movement to his right, a shaking of the
ground as something heavy leapt to the earth.
Even through his closed eyes he saw the shadow cast as a great
shape passed between him and the sun overhead.
Even through the haze of pain that was rapidly enveloping him he
felt the thud as two large bodies collided above him, felt the rending
flesh of his back as long cat claws were forcibly torn from their purchase
in his shoulderblades.
Even as he felt his consciousness buckling under the stress of the
trauma to his body, he turned his head and opened his eyes.
Sasha.
Sasha had pounced upon the tiger, hitting her with all the force of
his massive body, propelling her from Lekya's back into the side of the
cage.
The lion had saved Lekya's life.
The two cats stood facing one another, growling. Lekya could see
the tendons in Peaches' flank twitching. He knew she was about to strike.
Sasha was big, but he was young. Peaches was older, seasoned.
Whoever came out of the coming fight the victor would suffer a tremendous
toll in blood.
The vanquished would doubtlessly be killed.
Lekya stood up, ignoring the pain, the dizziness, the stream of
gore he could feel dribbling down his back.
"Peaches, ho!"
The sudden command startled both cats. Peaches looked at Lekya and
roared defiantly.
Lekya met her eyes. "Peaches, ho!" he repeated.
The tiger looked at Lekya, then over at the scowling lion. She
looked at Lekya once again.
Lekya met her gaze and held it.
With a roar of frustration she whirled around and slunk over to her
pedestal, which she climbed and sat atop, watching Lekya to see what his
next command might be as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Lekya looked at Sasha. The cat met his eyes then walked over to and
climbed onto his own pedestal.
Fortunately for all concerned, the rest of the cats hadn't decided
to use the chaos as an excuse to settle their own private grudges. They had
all stayed in their places, watching with catlike disinterest.
Lekya staggered over to the Big Cage's exit, where a sliding door
led into the series of linked smaller cages. He tapped the door with his
arm and barked the command, "Peaches haaaa!"
A quick-thinking and very relieved-looking roustabout slid the door
up. Peaches leapt down from her pedestal and ran across the cage and
through the door.
A cheer went up from the roustabouts as the door to the last cage
slid shut, separating Peaches from any further mayhem. Lekya signaled the
other cats that it was time to go, and they poured through the door into
their cages. "That's all for today. You get rest of day off."
Then he slumped to the ground.
It had been two days since the Crazy Tiger had attacked the Big
Man. Sasha didn't think in terms of "days", of course, only in relative
time-frames, "just now", "a while ago", "long ago". He felt the passage of
time, but it was just something that happened, nothing he understood or
even thought about.
He had seen that the Big man had been severely injured, but he had
not sensed imminent death around him when the Many Little Men had arrived
to carry him away. So Sasha had expected to see the Big Man again, when he
had recuperated. Sasha expected that this would take quite a while; he had
noticed that the stronger the sick-smell or wound-smell around an animal,
the longer it would take before that smell had dissipated and the animal
was up and around. As a lion he was highly attuned to the sick-smell and
the wound-smell; both meant food.
Not in the barred world, of course. Food here had a dead-smell but
also a man-smell. He realized that the food, which was tasty and easily
come by, had something to do with the men... they procured it somehow, for
him, but in doing so gave it the scent of their enterprise. Much as the
food his mother had brought him had tasted of her. This didn't make the
man-food food any less nourishing or satisfying (though he missed the fun
of catching his own), just different.
So he was surprised, in the off-handed way of lions, to see the Big
Man coming toward the cage. His senses had told him that the Big Man's
wounds were serious enough to keep him down for a "long while". It had only
been a "short while", and the wound-scent was still strong upon him. Still,
here he was. Sasha watched, interested, as the Big Man spoke and gestured
to one of the Other Men. Gestured toward Sasha.
The Other Man came over to Sasha's cage pushing one of the little
cages. Sasha disliked the Little Cages; they were cramped, constricting.
But they usually meant time in the Big Cage, which Sasha did enjoy, if only
because it was interesting. Always things to see in the Big Cage.
Sure enough, the Other Man hooked the Little Cage up to Sasha's
cage, then slid up the doorway between the two. Sasha looked at the little
cage and yawned, then stood and walked into the Little Cage.
The Other Man secured the door to the Little Cage, then began to
push it across the compound toward the shiny mesh of the Big Cage. Sasha
sat and waited as the two cages were joined together. There was a moment,
then the sound of a sliding gate. Sasha sprang through the opening into the
wide-open space of the Big Cage.
Lekya was waiting for him.
The Big Man did not have his lariat with him, nor an upturned
chair. He stood alone in the center of the cage, staring at Sasha, his
right shoulder drooping slightly.
Sasha paced a bit, swishing his tail. What did the Big Man want?
Where were the rest of the cats? It was very mysterious.
The Big Man stood still, watching him.
It was annoying. Sasha paced past the Big Man, turned his head, and
roared. Just a small roar. Almost conversational.
Lekya grinned but did not flinch.
"Rarrrooor! Right back at you," he said.
Sasha cocked his head slightly, bewildered. He sat on his haunches
and stared at the Big Man.
"Thas' better," Lekya said. "You sit down, Sasha. You and me, we
gotta talk."
Lekya looked at the big cat. He had noted the gleam in Sasha's
eyes, aware and intelligent. He had suspected that the cat's inability to
learn tricks was due to a willful nature, not slow wits. And now, this cat,
for no reason he could fathom, had stepped in to save his life.
He had seen trainers go down before. He had seen what could happen.
He had seen one cat strike, then another join in. More often, he had seen
the rest of the cats either ignore the attack or use the breakdown in the
regular order of the Big Cage as an opportunity to settle scores with one
another. And he had broken up many a fight himself. But he had never seen,
nor heard of (except as Circus Lore, which was always absolutely true but
never so true you should believe it) a cat stepping in to protect his
trainer... to save the life of a human who was practically a stranger.
What was the story here?
Lekya had given it a good deal of thought over the past few days.
It was possible that the events were in no way connected... that Sasha had
been intending to attack Peaches all along, and saw her assault on Lekya as
a perfect chance. Or that Sasha was unstable, and some chance combination
of circumstance had set him off, causing him to lash out at the first thing
he saw, Peaches (and it wouldn't be the first time he'd seen a lion behave
like that). It co have been any of a number of things.
Except...
Except Lekya didn't believe that it was. If he wanted to be
logical, he could ask himself, "If any of that was true, how come Sasha
backed off as soon as the threat to Lekya was over?" But he didn't need to
be logical. He knew why Sasha had chosen to defend him.
"You big cat," he said to Sasha, conversationally. "I think you
maybe goin' to work with Lekya a bit better from now on."
The lion just looked at him.
"Why d'ya do it, Sasha? Why you save Lekya from killer Peaches?"
The lion didn't respond.
"You don' need to say. I think you decided to throw your lot in
with Lekya. I think you decide to make best of a situation. What you say?"
Sasha yawned.
"Good decision! Now, up! We do routine!"
Lekya raised his arms and gestured, Sasha's cue.
The lion looked squarely in Lekya's eye.
Lekya held the gesture, waiting.
Sasha raised himself into the air on his hind legs, batting the air
with his front paws.
It was magnificent.
In that moment a bond between the two of them manifested and
coalesced. They both knew it. There, in the chill morning air, man and lion
linked themselves in a friendship that would last for decades.
Sasha curled his lip, and roared.
Lekya remembered that hazy morning as he took the cats through
their paces in the Big Cage, the very same Big Cage, over twenty years
later. And he smiled.