Circus Parade by Jim Tully Page B

body graceful, her face beautiful.
    She read a great deal, and often loaned books to the Strong Woman and the Baby Buzzard.
    The Moss-Haired Girl talked to me often. Her life was as empty as an unused grave. But, with many opportunities, she seemed to desire no change. She did her washing twice a week. She always left silk underclothing and dresses to be cleaned and expressed to her in the next town. She would arrange each week about the buying of beer, which she allowed to grow stale. She bought many different magazines.
    Looking back on her now I realize that she was repressed but deeply emotional. She loved all that pertained to life and hated philosophy. “It’s all rot,” she used to say. “None of them know a bit more about things than I do.”
    Now that the fogs of twenty years have cleared away, I see much that I have lost and little that I have gained. Then, I was but a day or two from hunger and destitution. Now they are years away. But something else has happened. The brain has grown tired. The ennui of life is everywhere. Adventure lurked around every corner then, and life was wild and free. I often went to my canvas bunk with muscles that ached and legs that dragged wearily. But each morning opened on a new world—and many tales were told.
    The Moss-Haired Girl, the Strong Woman, Aimee, the Beautiful Fat Girl, The Lion Tamer, Whiteface, Lefita and Jock are people that I shall never meet again. But I would trade the empty honor of a writer’s name to be once again their comrade.
    There was something in the girl which I was not mature enough to fully appreciate at the time. Her eyes squinted often, as the eyes of people will who have spent early years in a desert country. She had reverted to the lethargy of the Indian and loved to live in a tent. Her cleanliness of body must have been derived from her Swedish mother.
    The Moss-Haired Girl had been born in a little desert town of Arizona. Her father was a railroad engineer who fell in love with a brakeman’s wife and ran away. He was never heard of again. Alice was five years of age at this time. Her mother struggled through and managed to live by running a small restaurant.
    When Alice was seven her mother became converted to Catholicism, and within a year the small daughter began her life at a convent.
    An old nun, part Indian, became fond of her. The little girl fell in with the routine of the convent, and with stoical silence absorbed everything. The aged nun was in charge of the linen department, and Alice spent hours with her in the sewing room. It was her duty to thread the needles for her old friend, whose eyes were watery and weak.
    The nun’s black habit hid her sparse grey hair and projected two inches out from her forehead. Her mentality was hardly above a child’s. She owned five rosaries and spent much time in shining the naked brass bodies of Christ which hung upon them.
    Always she talked of Christ as though he had been an Indian. She called him the Great Fire-builder. Some day he would come and burn to cinders all the Irish in the world. For they were the people who in her opinion had crucified Christ. There were several old Irish nuns in the convent who gossiped a great deal. Sister Marie did not like them.
    Often, when the little girl had threaded the needle, the decrepit black-hooded woman would hold it aloft and talk of the Great Firebuilder.
    â€œHe come down—way down—and stay on top o’ San Francisco mountain—he throw a torch and burn all up but you an’ me an’ Indian people like us … he give us back America an’ all the fish in the sea—an’ never no more houses and things, but like birds we be free. An’ Gabriel’ come back o’ Jesu’ and blow big horn an’ all people go right in fire an’ they’ll all go. ’Oh blesse’ Jesu’ she burn an’ burn—an’ the big voice roll down the moumtan an’ scare the