Big Cat Circus
Big Cat
Circus

    Sometimes, late
at night, when all the kids had gone home but the scent of hot
popcorn and fried onions was still heavy in the air, Pa would
arrange for a special show, and I’d stand on the tent stage and
take all my things off for the folks that paid their ten cents.
    They were
mostly men as came, silent weather-beaten farmers that stood and
stared, their eyes hard, seeing me like a side of bacon or a
beefsteak, the opposite of their skinny wives and haunted-eyed
daughters. Some of them came to ogle, I could see that from the
bumps their big cocks made in their britches, but most just came to
see what plenty could look like. Times was hard and that’s what I
was to them. Plenty.
    Right from when
I was a little girl Pa had picked me out as special, fed me meat
when we could get it, lots of fried dough, potatoes, oatmeal. My
favourite was fried dough with molasses or syrup poured over it
till it soaked it all up, just a mess of hot fat and sugar, warm
and sticky. Pa got that for me when he could.
    But things had
been bad ever since I could remember and my brothers were often
mean to me because I’d get to eat when they’d be expected to go
without. But Pa always said there were two things as were to be at
the forefront of our existence. Priorities, he called them. First
was gas for the truck, so that we could always be on the move to
the next town, and the second was sweet starchy food for me. Pa
said that I was our future. It was kind of a big
responsibility.
    Ma and Pa ran
the cooch dance tent in the De Marco carnie. De Marco’s wasn’t much
of an outfit, just the usual rides and some bug-eyed dead fish in
jars of alcohol, and of course, my Ma, naked every night. In the
dark it all looked pretty special, though, the oil lamps putting a
warm glow on the tattered red and yellow striped tents, the scents
of canvas and trampled grass mingling with cooking food and
popcorn. And, let’s face it, the kind of towns we played weren’t
really used to much, so what we had to offer was pretty special in
their poor-house eyes.
    Not that Ma
could really dance or was much to look at, mind you, but she stood
on the front stage with her little titties out every night, right
there in front of all the farmers and preachers and their wives and
kids, and she took her pants down pretty quick for those that paid
a nickel to come inside, so everyone left happy, but we were never
more than a cheap sideshow attraction. That’s why we were stuck
with De Marco.
    But my Pa,
well, Pa was a visionary, a dreamer. He said that we could easily
make the big time, Ringling Brothers or even the great Barnum
himself, if we just planned and invested in our future, and that
future was me. Most of the hick town boys, Pa figured, could see
their skinny Mamas or sisters in the raw if they peeped through the
holes in the barn walls, and, let’s face it, Pa said, though I
loves your Mama dearly, she’s not the kind of woman that a man’s
going to dig deep into his pockets to pay to see, now is she?
    No, Pa would
tell us, when a man pays out to get his dick up hard, it’s because
he’s seeing something that he can’t find at home, and that’s what
I’m going to give him. I’m going to give him a woman of plenty, and
that’s what our Babe is going to be, a woman of plenty, so you boys
just tolerate your lot just now, ‘cause one day Babe’s going to
keep us all in luxury, you see if I’m wrong, boys, you just see if
I’m wrong.
    So Pa fed me
sweet and sticky food and the pounds piled on. I had bigger tits
than my Ma by the time I was twelve, and they were close on huge
when I celebrated my eighteenth birthday, and Pa brought out the
length of silk he had been saving up for me, all those years. He’d
been hoarding a dog-eared picture that he’d cut from a magazine
too, of Lottie Grant the Barnum fat lady, and he had old Grandma De
Marco make up a copy of her costume just for me, figuring that it
was time to cash-in on his

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