By: Joachim Forman
If there was such a thing as a compassionate American, Augustin “Gus” Mbuyu had never met one. According to U.S. law, Gus was not a slave. After all, slavery had been illegal for forty years, and The Majestic Big Top Circus maintained that he was always free to go. Lured by promises of a New England boarding school, Gus left the Belgian Congo at age twelve. The nice priest didn’t bring him to an elite academy. Instead, Gus became the latest attraction in one of Western society’s many shameful legacies: The Human Zoo.
For years, he toured the United States as a “Savage From The Dark Continent.” His assigned stage name was the nonsensical “Oogah Batukee.” His captors dressed him in a leopard skin loincloth and made him hold a spear. He was kept in a cage with monkeys during showtime, and fed scraps at night. He traveled in a wooden freight car while the other performers lounged in sleeper cabins. One would think Gus’ treatment would appall decent people, thus relegating human zoos to the much maligned “high grass” carnivals. But, this was not the case. Gus’ dark body and “primitive ways” had been ogled in the nation’s finest venues, including the 1904 World’s Fair.
At the turn of the century, every town treated the circus’ arrival like a holiday. Brightly painted trains and horse-drawn convoys brought the wonders of the world to everyday people. An uncanny potpourri of peanuts, manure, and sweat hypnotized the crowd. Performers stretched the limits of human ability. The animals were exotic and terrifying. If Gus had been free, he would have loved it. Instead, the smell of wood shavings and cotton candy was the odor of a prison, a prison he would labor for years to escape.
Gus contemplated freedom every day, but he was endowed with an analytic mind. Having learned about Americans through their most heinous behavior, he understood the things he would need for a permanent escape. First, he needed to learn English. Being Congolese, he spoke perfect French and Lingala, but mastering the yankees’ tongue required much effort. It was difficult to study while being gawked at in a cage. Gus slowly learned the language despite being kept separate from the other performers. Edgar Rowe, the circus’ owner, made a point to isolate Gus in order to keep him from “getting civilized.”
Secondly, Gus knew he had to flee while in the correct American city, wherever that was. There was no point in running from the circus, only to end up in jail for being an unchaperoned black man. From his cloistered vantage point, Gus made no distinction between “Northern states and Southern states.” He had witnessed several lynchings while touring what he called “the hot parts” of the country, and he saw vicious racial attacks while touring what he called “the cold parts.” Frankly, Gus couldn’t tell if it was the law to hunt black men, or just good sport.
Finally, at age seventeen, Gus felt he was ready to make a break for it. He planned to slip away the next time they stopped in New York City. He chose New York for its dense population, which would aid in his disappearance. From there, he would take the first steam ship that was crossing the Atlantic. After that, he would have to improvise. It was a rough hewn, but doable plan. He only needed one more thing to execute it…money. Alas, being treated like livestock was not a profitable venture. And, if a man is broke in America, he might as well be in a cage.
When Gus pondered this reality, it was easy for him to get depressed. But, on July seventeenth, 1907 at nine P.M., he had the dubious luxury of forgetting these concerns. At that instant, Augustin “Gus” Mbuyu was hanging upside down, dangling precariously over a mountain gorge.
An orange inferno was ravaging the cliffside. The Goliath flames blazed a trail hundreds of feet to the whitewater rapids below. The only thing keeping Gus from plunging to his death was a frayed cargo net, which was wrapped around his right leg. The net was bolted to a mangled rail car, which was held in place by a cluster of burning trees. Blood fell from a gash on his face. The grape-sized droplets hurtled toward the kaleidoscope of destruction below. He swayed in the net’s grasp like a forgotten fish.
The crash had twisted the Majestic Big Top’s train so thoroughly, it was as if the steel had been braided by a giant. At the bottom of the gorge, less than a quarter mile from the wreckage, was a waterfall. Dozens of corpses floated to the edge of the deluge and vanished into oblivion. Boulders and body parts dotted the rushing water like a sentence written in Braille. That sentence stated, “You are fucked.”
In a feat of adrenaline-fueled strength, Gus pulled himself right side up. He got his bearings as the blood left his head. He untangled himself from the spaghetti-like tethers. It was painstaking work that felt more like disarming a bomb. Gus surveyed the forest hellscape. He didn’t know what part of America this was, but it was mountainous with infinite trees.
A god that had largely ignored Gus suddenly threw him a bone. He spotted a pine tree that was roughly twenty feet below him. It had a thick trunk that protruded at a forty five degree angle. If Gus could gain enough momentum, he could hit the side of the gorge and use the trunk of that tree to stop his descent. Once stopped, he could scramble up the cliffside by gripping the dense foliage. His confidence was growing.
Gus lowered himself to the bottom of the net and held the ends. He kicked his legs out repeatedly until he was swinging like a Bantu trapeze act. Once he had gained maximum momentum, he released his grip, tumbled down the rock side, and slammed to a stop at the base of his targeted tree. It was the kind of brilliant maneuver he’d wished the folks back home had witnessed. His relief was short-lived, however. Now that he was relatively safe, he could digest the true horror that surrounded him.
Gus hadn’t seen carnage like this since the “Rubber Terror.” Human bodies, animal carcasses, and shattered rail cars were strewn about like a child’s toys. Roustabouts, clowns and acrobats were splayed ribbon-like across tree branches. Everything from monkeys to zebras peppered the terrain. An elephant named Rosie was torn asunder by a falling locomotive. Her mate, Fredrik, had panicked and drowned himself in the river. All that remained of Artie, the beloved chimpanzee, was a severed hand and some teeth. Scattered bloody sequins reflected the dancing flames. Out of four hundred circus personnel, Gus had yet to spot a survivor.
Like most “perfect storm” disasters, the Majestic Big Top crash was a mixture of terrible luck and preventable tragedy. The circus normally traveled on two trains, but budget cuts and contract disputes had reduced their traveling amenities to one. As a result, they packed every car well beyond capacity. The engineer initially protested the unsafe conditions, but when Elmer Rowe threatened to blackball him, he acquiesced. The train winded its way through hairpin turns in the Appalachian mountains. Heavy rains brought sporadic flash flooding, which gave the railway a slick, deadly texture. The overtaxed locomotive was screeching down a steep mountain grade when its brakes finally failed.
The runaway train reached speeds in excess of eighty miles per hour—far beyond its design limits—and came upon a mountain pass known locally as The Devil’s Gullet. Passengers and animals were tossed from the train as twenty four of its carriages jumped off the track into the side of the mountain. The kerosene lamps ruptured, causing the wreck to erupt into a grisly pyre.
Gus had awakened to blinding light and the stench of fire-split steel. Flames ate through the wooden walls of his quarters. The hay he’d used for a bed ignited. As Gus fought to escape, he envisioned The Almighty’s hand reaching down and plucking him from certain death. His prayers were answered with cruel irony. A twenty car freight train was traveling on the same track at sixty miles per hour. The engineer was fast asleep and never woke up.
The Freight’s engine skewered the Majestic Big Top’s wooden sleeper cars, splattering untold performers across the mountainside. The impact sent both trains plummeting into the rapids below. Survivors climbed out of the submerged railcars only to be swept away and tossed over the waterfall. Stampeding livestock broke through their flaming pens, trampling people and plunging to their own deaths. The birds flew off to freedom. The reptiles wandered off with complete lack of interest.
Only one car besides Gus’ remained cradled in the trees. That car had contained Sadie, the circus’ crown jewel. Sadie was a living, twelve foot long, five hundred pound bull shark. Not even PT Barnum had successfully toured with a live shark. Sure, Barnum had been able to exhibit Whales in his New York aquarium, but nobody had been able to pull off a live shark show.
The Majestic Big Top featured an enormous glass tank that stagehands wheeled into the center ring. Rowe himself would feed Sadie, transfixing local crowds with his control over “the prehistoric man eater.” He even devised a routine where the acrobats would do tricks over the shark’s tank…without a net, of course. By keeping Sadie alive, Rowe’s ingenuity had put him on the path to be bigger than Barnum, or even the Ringlings.
Sadie’s transport tank was an engineering marvel. It was a fully functional glass aquarium stored inside a custom railway car. Rowe had devised a steam-powered air pump/water circulation system. Since sharks could only breath by moving forward, Rowe pumped oxygenated water through the shark’s gills, allowing her to remain breathing normally while in transit. The other brilliant innovation was Rowe’s choice of a Bull Shark. Not only were they impressive “man eaters,” they could survive in both fresh and saltwater. That meant Rowe could fill up a tank with local water sources and have his shark exhibit function all over the country. Using local water meant that he didn’t have to transport sea water. It was truly astounding. Of course, none of that mattered now. As far as Gus knew, Sadie had either been boiled in the fire, or was dead somewhere down in The Devil’s Gullet.
Underneath his threadbare coat, Gus was still clad in his obscene “traditional” garb of loincloth and animal skin. While searching for survivors, he cherry-picked clothing from the deceased. A dead roustabout was roughly his size and thankfully covered in minimal gore. Gus removed the man’s duck cloth jacket and pants. He found a crushed elephant trainer with boots that fit. He grabbed an acrobat’s collarless shirt and found a set of suspenders on an eviscerated clown. Gus also found an olive green fedora in pristine condition. He considered its presence a sign and placed it on his head. A headless wildlife wrangler had a bowie knife secured to his belt, and a .375 Remington rifle slung around his chest. As Gus grasped the wood of the Remington’s stock, the feel and smell of it gave him hope. A firearm has a funny way of reassuring a man, even in the most hopeless of situations. He looped its sling around his shoulder and continued to search for survivors. Due to the remote location of the disaster site, no rescue team would arrive until morning at the earliest. If anyone was alive, their only hope was “Oogah Batukey.”
Unfortunately, the search was proving to be futile. There might have been other survivors besides Gus, but with the destruction he was seeing, it was doubtful. Hell, he was only alive because of where he had been forced to sleep. Gus did find something almost as welcome as a breathing body. He had stumbled upon a cloud of paper money that was fluttering along the steep sides of the gorge. The train’s ticket car had split open during the initial crash, leaving much of the circus’ payroll to float away from the flames. Gus stuffed his pockets with all the bills he could find. It must have been a few thousand dollars, which was more than enough to finance his trip home.
As the night wore on, the hopelessness of the crash convinced Gus to abort his search. He was hiking back to the train tracks when he heard gurgling cries of anguish. He didn’t spot Elmer Rowe at first, because the man was pinned under a bisected reptile car. Mr. Rowe couldn’t see beneath his waist, which was fortunate for him. He also couldn’t feel his legs. That was understandable, because Mr. Rowe’s lower body was lost somewhere in the rapids below. His entrails were flapping like old tournament pendants. The weight of the reptile car was the only thing keeping blood in his half-body. Gus readied his rifle and drew a bead on Mr. Rowe, whose dime-eyed confusion reminded Gus of the animals he’d hunted as a boy. Gus fired, and Mr. Rowe’s head was mist. It was a mercy killing, a favor. Although, if Hell existed, that man already had a bright red pitchfork up his ass.
Gus followed the charred train tracks, and it became clear that not everyone had been killed by the crash. Several of them had been killed with big claws and sharp teeth. One of the men, whom Gus only knew as “The Sad Clown” lay with his face crushed by powerful jaws. The bird husbandry expert was shredded worse than leftover birthday cake. Gus knew what had done this. The circus’ two lions had escaped, and they were very upset. They didn’t kill these men for food either. They had murdered these men in an act of vengeance. Gus knew from his youth that lions killed for spite when provoked. He also felt a sick pang of empathy with the cats.
The train conductor fell victim to the lions as well. They had removed the front of his rib cage and gobbled his organs for a quick energy boost. These lions, a male named Kodjo and a female named Amra, were now running loose in the forest. Every fiber of Gus’ survival instinct told him to run and never look back, yet he was preparing to hunt. Gus knew lions in a way these townsfolk wouldn’t…couldn’t. Having grown up in a Bantu herding family, lions were a familiar threat. He’d been part of several hunts. He understood just how deadly an angry lion could be. He also knew what it took to kill one.
With this knowledge, Gus had gained a moral responsibility. The only right thing to do was dispatch them himself. He knew the next child those cats saw would become a meal. To make matters worse, lions that big and that scared would hunt everything in sight just to cheer themselves up. His conscience demanded he take action. Despite how he’d been treated in this savage land, he was still a man, and he would act as such. An inopportune nostalgia warned him. He was going hunting for the first time since the innocent days spent with his father.
Kodjo’s distinctive roar echoed in the distance. He was marking territory. Gus trekked through the woods for hours. He eventually found an illuminated cluster of wagons and tents in the distance. The spectacle was too small to be a circus. It was a “high grass” carnival. It was a crowded place full of potential lion prey.
Judging by how empty the streets were, Gus could only assume that the roaring lions had scared the attendants into a panic. The discarded bags of snacks and abandoned game prizes confirmed his suspicions. There was no time for tact. He approached the nicest looking wagon, intent on speaking to the boss man. The instant he made it to the door, he could sense a presence behind him. Gus turned around to find two men pointing shotguns.
He shouldered his rifle and put his hands up. He was hyper aware that he was an armed black man in a hostile nation. Gus made the split second decision to act as “African” as he could. Perhaps he could convince them that he was an exotic prince, an expert lion hunter sent to save them. Before the men could utter their first slur, Kodjo roared again, prompting a cacophony of screams from inside the “Rose Larue’s International Girly Show” tent. The armed men, who’d just seemed so intent on questioning Gus, abandoned their mission and fled into the night. Apparantly pants-pissing terror was the one thing that trumped racism.
Gus sprinted into the tent and found utter bedlam. Kodjo and Amra rampaged as the crowd parted like startled geese. Scantily clad women hid behind muslin flats and climbed up tent poles to avoid the killer cats. Men stampeded to the exits, shirking all pretense of chivalry. Not even the sight of an African man with a gun startled them into shifting course. Gus had to dive out of the way to avoid getting trampled. Amra seized a slow-moving man by his neck. Kodjo sunk his teeth into the man’s chest. Without the burden of thought, Gus fired two shots into Amra, putting her down right at the foot of the striptease stage.
Kodjo saw his beloved killed and lunged at Gus in retaliation. Gus fired three rapid shots. The third hit Kodjo in his leg, exploding the muscle and rupturing his lower intestine. The force of the slug sent him flopping to the ground. The lion struggled to regain his footing, but his damaged leg slithered behind him like an unruly snake. Kodjo ripped through the tent and retreated to the solace of the forest. Gus grabbed a kerosene lamp, followed the fresh blood trail, and pursued Kodjo into the night.
By two in the morning, Gus had tracked Kodjo to a cave that was teeming with rats. He found Kodjo cowering inside, reduced to a puddle of bewildered misery. The lion’s moans were human-like in their despair. Gus winced as he realized the rats had burrowed into Kodjo’s bullet wound and were eating him from the inside out. Kodjo was trying in vain to bite and claw the rats, but they were too wily and too numerous. The lion was so completely covered in rodents, it looked like he was under a blanket that had spontaneously come to life. Gus exhaled slowly and fired two rifle shots into the lion’s heart, temporarily deafening himself in the process. The rats continued to feast unabated. Gus felt indignant rage. How dare they desecrate such a fabulous beast? He smashed the kerosene lamp and covered the rodents in liquid flame. Kodjo received a Viking funeral, and the offending rats were burned alive.
Gus returned to the carnival shortly before dawn. The horse drawn wagons were packed and ready to move on to the next city. Gus had experienced these load-outs hundreds of times, but he’d never witnessed one from the outside. He knocked on the girlie show’s wagon. He assumed he would have the best luck asking them for safe passage to New York City. .
Delphine Pourciau answered the door. She was tall, olive skinned, and radiated gravitas. She was not necessarily beautiful, but exceedingly striking. Gus knew she was the boss because her dark eyes were ringed with responsibility. He spoke his best English and made the kind of niceties a desperate man really doesn’t have time for. Delphine heard his accent and responded in friendly creole French.
“You saved my girls last night. Not to mention the rubes.”
Gus had to appreciate the irony. He’d spent years honing his English only to end up asking a French speaker for help. He spoke with unaffected humility.
“I know lions from my boyhood.” His face grew serious. He began the painful process of explaining who he was, but Delphine stopped him.
“Every kinker and bally broad knows who you are.”
“I need a safe ride to New York, and I need someone of status to arrange my passage on a steam ship.”
“Someone of status?” Delphine laughed at the idea that she fit the description.
“I want someone white to do it. I’ve been through too much with these Americans to take chances.”
Delphine was unphased by Gus’ desperation. “I respect your pain, but I cannot help you.”
Gus’ face tensed as he said, “Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear.”
He reached in his jacket pocket and produced the money he’d collected from the train wreck. He handed it to her, knowing that having the money in her hand would make the proposal real.
Delphine counted the bills. Gus knew he had her.
“You’re paying me, but I am taking a risk. We go through many towns that would punish us for helping a man like you.” Delphine winced at her own obviousness, then continued, “You will stay hidden when I tell you.”
Gus nodded his agreement.
Delphine’s eyes lit up with a sudden flash of showbiz inspiration. “You know, I could use you in my show. You’d play a Mandingo chief seducing my girls with your savage charm. I could even make a deal with each town’s local cops. We could have them break up the show every night before the girls ‘violate their honor.’ The rubes would love it’”
Gus took great pains to keep his voice steady. “I am not doing that.”
“I’d make it worth your while. Top billing. You’d make a mint. Once the show has run its course, I’ll put you on a steamer back to the dark continent. I’ll send you first class so you don’t get shanghaied again.
“Absolutely not.” Gus was showing his anger now. He reached to take the money back. Delphine stuffed the bills in her bra.
“I understand. Although even you must admit, the act would do gangbusters, despite being a tad bit gauche.” Delphine sighed. “I don’t control what sells tickets.”
Delphine handed Gus a cigarette. She lit his before lighting her own.
“We have a deal. Are you hungry?”
“Very much so.”
“Wait inside the wagon. I’ll find you something decent to eat.”
Delphine offered a nurturing smile.
“What is your name?”
“Augustine.”
“Ah, that is much nicer than Bookah Bunga or whatever they were calling you.”
Delphine left the wagon. Gus smoked, inhaling Turkish blend and exhaling cautious relief. His respite was short lived. He heard commotion outside. He saw the acetylene headlights of several cars approaching. Flanking the cars were men on horseback. Gus knew what that group was. He had seen this type of thing in places called Alabama and Mississippi. That cluster of light and dust was carrying a lynch mob.
Gus caught fragments of shouted conversation. The men who had fled the lions earlier were now drunk. They’d decided to teach Gus a lesson for bringing his “African pets” to their good clean town. Now that the lions had been dispatched, these men sought to redeem their sullied honor. Gus’ hide would be an ointment on their scraped egos.
Instinct took control. Gus sprinted out of the doorway and untied the nearest horse from its wagon. He leapt on the horse’s back and kicked it into action. Within seconds, Gus had it in a full sprint. These men were ashamed they had acted like cowards, but Gus certainly didn’t blame them for running. Running was the only sensible thing to do when Lions were in the area. But, Gus had conquered the king and queen of the jungle. That very act threatened these men, because it meant that such a display of courage was possible by an “inferior” being. These men would not, could not, allow such an insult to their superiority go unchecked. Gus was apparantly reaping a punishment whose severity was commensurate with the size of his good deed.
The horse galloped up the mountain path. Gus was annoyed that Delphine had all of his money, but he couldn’t dwell on that. Those bills wouldn’t stop a bullet.
Although late night had become early morning, the trees on the mountain path kept the terrain quite dark. The lynch mob was gaining on him. Gus could hear the car’s engines and horses’ hooves. He soon saw that acetylene light beam slicing through the trees. Gus made the fatal error of looking back to see if the men had a clear shot on him. They didn’t, but the low hanging tree branch approaching him certainly did. Gus turned just in time for the branch to connect with his chest and send him flying. Gus tumbled down to the whitewater river bank. He climbed a maple tree and found shelter in the lowest branch, which jutted over the rushing water. The densely packed leaves provided a decent hiding spot. Gus readied his rifle, aiming at the road he was just on. The lynch mob would be arriving momentarily.
The hunters passed through Gus’ rifle sights. They stopped when they saw Gus’ abandoned horse. Gus saw the men fan out in formation. He contemplated his options. If he fired, he could pick a few off, but there seemed to be at least a dozen of them. They were armed to the teeth. Gus couldn’t have had more than a few shells in his rifle. Gus could try his luck in the river, but the speed of the water and the jagged rocks looked as deadly as a bullet. The men were approaching. Gus shouted, “Stay back! Stay back, or I’ll shoot!”
His warning was strong, but the men were full of liquid courage and gravitated toward their prey.. They conspired to fan out around the tree. Even if Gus had a hundred rounds, he would have been in trouble. Rage boiled inside him. He hadn’t been free for twenty four hours, and he was once again trapped like a scared animal. Gus wouldn’t go back into a cage, and he wouldn’t allow another American to make a spectacle of his body.
Gus clutched his rifle. He would fire his remaining bullets. He would then unsheath his hunting knife and cut the closest man to ribbons while they gunned him down.
He had lived for years planning to escape squalor. His “good sense” had told him to bide his time. His “good sense had told him for years that he would find the perfect opportunity and the perfect ally for escape. His good sense told him to be patient. Gus checked in with his good sense, but this time the good sense was gone. In its place was a singular desire to die with dignity, dignity in the form of devastating violence. He was going to take as many of those bastards with him as he could. He would punish them for the cowardice they displayed when they decided to lynch a good man.
Gus looked down to reassure himself that he still had the knife. That was when he spotted a shadow approaching from under the water. In the time it took for his eye to register the shape, Gus saw Sadie, the twelve foot bull shark, jump out from the river rapids and bite down on the branch that held him. The branch snapped under the shark’s weight. Before Gus could fully appreciate what was happening, he emptied the contents of his bowels and plunged into the water. The class five rapids took him into a slalom of sharp rocks. Sadie’s dorsal fin rose and dipped above and below the surface. Gus gripped the branch and held on, throttling down the river rapids with a killer shark pursuing him. Sadie breached the surface. Gus flipped the rifle around and fired at Sadie’s flank. The bullet punched into her hide and she temporarily wriggled away in pain.
Gus slammed into a submerged boulder. He was forced to drop the rifle as he struggled to maintain his grip on the branch. He resembled a small child clinging to a wild horse. The side of his torso opened. His blood made a slick in the water surface. Rocks bounced him back and forth like a cat does a struggling beetle. Sadie was behind him in hot pursuit. The sharks chomping jaws once again emerged from the water. Gus used this knife to stab Sadie’s nose, keeping her at bay. Their high speed chase came to an abrupt end as the river collided with the Majestic Big Top train wreck. The mangled cars formed an ad-hoc dam, pausing the river’s breakneck pace.
Gus squeezed into a smashed railcar. He climbed behind pieces of wreckage in a pitiful attempt to shield himself from Sadie’s razor mouth. He avoided looking at the dozens of pale, bloated corpses scattered around him. His blood in the water gave Sadie a hard, lipless grin.
Gus squeezed further behind the tangled debris. Sadie wriggled towards him. The smell of Gus’ blood pulled her like a hooked fishing line. With his back against the rail car corner, Gus cowered. Sadie’s snout grazed his chest. He could feel the cold sandpaper skin. Sadie sniffed him like a curious dog. Gus fought the realization that he would leave the earth through a prehistoric beast’s asshole.
The two of them lay in the punishing rapids, locked in an interspecies stalemate. Sadie’s thrashing deteriorated from primal blood lust, to panicked writhing, to a listless series of tremors. Gus realized what was happening. The water was rushing over her gills from behind. It was flowing in the wrong direction for her breathing. The whitewater was suffocating her. Sadie tried to find her way out of her predicament, but sharks cannot swim backwards. Gus had unwittingly led her into the perfect trap. Sadie’s onyx eyes quivered in panic. She was as good as dead, but she was still alive enough to be very afraid. In a final attempt to free herself, she slammed her body against the iron teeth that had claimed her. She was tearing herself to ribbons. It was pathetic. Gus studied the scene with a mix of pity and grim satisfaction. All Sadie had to do was back up, but she couldn’t do it. Gus watched the queen prisoner expire. Her body went limp and she joined the menagerie of circus cadavers.
Gus made the agonizing climb up to the top of the train. He took a deep breath and fought for control over his shaking limbs. Before he could get his bearings, a bullet ripped through the flesh of his right shoulder. Gus fell off the train car and plunged back into the water. If he hadn’t fallen forward, he would have drifted down to the waterfall. For a moment, he found himself staring into Sadie’s tranquil, deceased eyes. Gus swam beneath another submerged train car to make himself a harder target. He took breaths from a sliver of air that existed between the water’s surface and the car’s floorboards.
Gus was able to peek through a crack in the car and spot where the bullet had come from. The lynch mob was at the river bank and taking pot shots at him. Those vile sons of bitches were actually laughing and back slapping. One would think they were shooting clay pigeons. .
The men hooted as they fired another volley of shots. They missed Gus, but peppered the car with holes and unintentionally blew off a piece of a giraffe’s head. Thank god their aim was as drunk as they were. Gus clutched his knife. A hell of a lot of good that would do now.
Gus needed to make a quick and decisive exit. If he didn’t get to a doctor, he would bleed out. If the men saw him, they would kill him. There was also a waterfall less than a quarter of a mile away. With the whitewater’s speed, Gus wagered it would take him just over a minute to reach the waterfall, which was his only conceivable escape route.
He dipped back under the water and surveyed Sadie’s corpse. Now that the shark was dead, he had to see how stuck she really was. If he could somehow dislodge her and use her thick body as a shield, he could avoid getting shot and use her as a shock absorber while plunging down the waterfall. People had survived going down Niagara falls in a barrel. Perhaps he could exit The Devil’s Throat in the belly of a shark.
While pausing occasionally to take breaths, Gus cut open Sadie’s belly, and pulled out her viscera. Once the shark was gutted, Gus sucked in a final lungful of air, dove under, and backed into the cavity. The shark now fit him like a five hundred pound cartilage suit. He pushed his legs against the train wreckage, and moved the shark corpse backward just enough to dislodge it. After that, the current of the rapids worked as a force multiplier, pushing him and Sadie into the rushing water. The shark’s body bobbed slightly above the surface. Lynch mob bullets whizzed into the grey flesh, but the thick hide protected Gus. Within a minute, Gus found himself in free fall. He was able to see through the open dead jaws as he tumbled down the waterfall and crashed against rocks. Sadie absorbed the impact, but Gus banged his scalp against her back teeth.
The waterfall spit Gus out, and he struggled to surface. His ripped torso and shattered shoulder aided in keeping him under the swirling water. Suffocation tempted him to accept a watery grave. He was out of air and floating in the no man’s land beneath the surface.
That was when a long, hooked pole dipped under the surface and pulled Gus by his jacket. Two burly men fished him out of the water. Gus’ first sub-sentient thought was “They caught me. They are going to hang me.” But, as he vomited water onto the riverbank, he saw the hook that dragged him out. He recognized the type. It was a vaudeville hook, the kind used to drag shitty performers from the stage. Holding that hook was Delphine, who was flanked by two musclebound carnies. Delphine spoke with her now familiar lack of pretense.
“We’re leaving now. I know a doctor two towns over.”
Gus blinked in disbelief. “You came for me?”
Delphine lit a smoke and shook her head. “No. This is the road out of town. Your timing was fortunate.”
Gus stuttered his gratitude. He suspected she was lying about the coincidence to preserve her hard mystique.
Delphine patted her bra, where several thousand dollars safely rested. “Don’t thank me. We had a deal, and I honor my deals.”
Delphine’s muscle men picked up Gus. That morning, he slept in the bed for the first time in years.
