April 11, 2008...5:39 pm
Chapter 3
Sitting in the car outside the mansion, Atman fingered the talisman, safely tucked under his ascot around his neck. His eyes were clinched shut. He would not let his eyes take him to those days spent with Phillipe. His mind constantly conjured up thoughts of Phillipe, but he only wanted to relive them as a memory in his head.
He opened the back door of the Cadillac and stepped out into the muggy Midwest air. Lingering steam clung to his face and hands like a sweaty-palmed child. With the house behind him, he turned to look at the car. Beads of rainwater on shiny black, Atman saw a thousand reflections of himself and inside him. 1946 was a damn good year.
No passenger cars had rolled off the assembly line since February, 1942. Instead, more than 50,000 Cadillac V8 engines and hydra-matic transmissions had been built and served with distinction in every theater of war. They emerged toughened and hardened to new standards of efficiency and dependability. According to Cadillac, their development during the war was far greater than what would have been possible during four peacetime years.
When peace returned, there was a high demand for new cars from all over the country. There were long waiting lists for the new Cadillac models. The first new, 1946 Cadillac came off the assembly line on October 17, 1945, less than two months after the last wartime tank. In appearance it was not much different from the Cadillac of 1942 that it had replaced. The front grille had six heavier bars, and new bumpers wrapped around the front and rear of the car. Also for the first time, the hood and trunk both displayed Cadillac’s famed “V” and crest. The name “CADILLAC” was spelled out in stubby, block letters on the front fenders.
Atman loved the Cadillac and had stolen it years ago to use for him and Phillipe to flee the circus forever. However, when the day came to leave, he’d be the only one in the car. It happened a few years after Joyce Heith died. Phineas Taylor collaborated with a man named Cameron Coup and together they started a circus called P.T.’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Circus and Hippodrome. Coup’s innovations were the circus train to transport the materials across the country from town to town.
The reluctant Pennsylvania Railroad provided the railroad cars for this venture. Coup’s method involved pulling wagons up a ramp located at one end of a string of flatcars and down the length of the train. He bridged the space between the cars with crossover plates. Coup also rented sleepers for the performers and musicians and coaches for the workers.
Coup had significant problems with this endeavor. The railroads did not have a uniform width and height for their cars, and brake wheels were mounted at the end sill of each car which obstructed the wagons as they rolled from car to car. These brake wheels had to be removed in order to load and unload the train, and then put back on before the train could move. With all the difficulty Coup was having with the Pennsylvania Railroad cars, he soon took the final step in developing the circus train. He contacted a Louisiana Railway company that built custom designed railroad cars for the circus.
So, when the circus traveled to New Orleans for an event, their 65 car, brightly painted new circus train with uniform flatcars, sleeping cars for the workers and performers, boxcars for extra storage, and palace cars for the livestock awaited them. The show could now travel 100 miles in a single night, avoid the smaller towns, and play only the larger cities which provided greater box office receipts. Coup had created the railroad circus that would go basically unchanged for the next 100 or so years. But it was on that train that Phillipe and Atman stowed away, leaving the Breschard family circus behind them forever.
They had gone in search of knowledge; they had questions Joyce had left unanswered. Still in their early twenties, both boys were very young at heart. They lived and breathed the circus, and knew not a day they had not spent together.
Phillipe was a lean flexible acrobat in his royal purple leotard which he often wore as a second skin beneath his street clothes. He had dirty brown straight hair clipped short to stay out of his eyes. His skin was pale with a milky smooth complexion. His legs and arms were not overly muscular, but they were hard as metal poles from his acrobatic training. His bright green eyes reminded Atman of a cat.
Atman had an hour glass figure with a tiny waist and broad shoulders. His dark Venezuelan skin and shoulder-length skillet black hair made him appear to be much older and more mature than Phillipe. He had huge arms and legs, the product of hard labor from having to feed and care for the wild animals and help raise the circus tents.
Atman could vividly remember their first night together on that circus train because he had relived that memory many times since he lost Phillipe. They had hid in an open train car filled with hay, burying themselves deep in the straw to sleep and to keep out of sight. The screeching brakes of the train, announcing the midnight arrival of the circus in some neighboring town, woke Atman from a deep sleep. Phillipe had nuzzled close to Atman for warmth. His hand was tucked under Atman’s shirt and gently wrapped around his waist. Atman liked the warm soft feel of Phillipe’s touch, and he left his hand there. With a bit of hesitation, Atman wrapped his own arm around Phillipe’s back and pulled him closer.
Leave a Reply