Madame Dunne

They called her the Queen of Trash, the beautiful tatters of her lace gowns crumbling to ruin and her bright arabesque make-up always dusty and faded, soft focus as a rain weathered then sun bleached show bill. In public she was never seen without a hoop skirt and high collar, which rumors had concealing the evidence of an attempt on her life by one of her collection of distraught and discarded lovers. She wore a top hat with a menagerie of straight pins stuck through the band, children famously cried for her to show the inside of it to prove it was not loaded with her magical tricks. The rolling of the hat between her hands, the demonstration of its' contents, and reseating it on her head was done with a juggler's flourish and became her calling card. She made it dexterously tumble with the vivre of an acrobat, the dirty gloves she wore causing no impediment, and the children squealing. The whole of the carnival bowed before her, like the garish sovereign of spectacle, she was Madame Dunne, and they called her caravan the Sword of the Dirty.

Her trucks cut a wall of rising dust that could be seen over the many flat miles in any direction. The towns she visited had no other warning of arrival, ad the Madame put no stock in advance men. It was the outlaw times and ambush was the favored tactic, every experience would seem a windfall too good to pass up, and it stymied the organization of the inevitable "moral league." With luck and a smooth operation they were holding their fist shame faced rallies on the morning after Madame Dunne fled town, with only the empty pockets and spent glitz of the midway to stand defense against those upright and frigid women. The revelers watched longingly after the wormscrew bore of smoke in the wake of her storm, dreaming of the fantastic and intangible day the harbinger would appear to the East, like Madame Dunne had at last circumnavigated the globe in motley calamity and delivered her oriental treasures to their quiet lives again.

Her second law of the showman was to never lose touch with your product. The Madame personally approved every act and played every game, gave notes on each show and examined each dancing girl. She let the strong man move her furniture. Madame's fist law was to never leave the show, both literally and figuratively. Even though she traveled thousands of miles each year in her caravan, to every corner of this land and over the great disastrous Alaskan Land Bridge to the next, she never set foot outside of her grounds, choosing to dwell solely within its' shifting borders since she was a little girl at the pioneering knee of her grandfather, who first took the fabulon into the nucleated wasteland.

It was the weird acts that got her in the most trouble. Of course they had a hunger artist, and when he died they had a "Lair of the Hunger Artist," where you could have your picture taken. They had geeks and freaks, physical mental and emotional anomalies. They had a bleeder who never stopped bleeding, even in his off time, and a vaguely incestuous Siamese twin suture act in which one alleged brother and sister stood naked before the crowd and sewed themselves together. Madame's note was that it was too sexist if the sister did all the sewing.

Eventually they put Madame Dunne on trial for her obscenities, and she turned it into the circus that only she could. Her bloom was significantly wilted from the hard years on the road, and she claimed health issues to bring the tribunal to her because she would not explain the first law to them. She appeared after a procession of her best oddities each morning, dressed in her finest decay, her gypsy hair now white and her eyes burning like the bloody sun. The austere judges disapproved of the presentation Madame Dunne made because it was inappropriate for the court. She reminded them that they were not in the court, and after all she had her uniform just like they had theirs. The Strong Man, her closest confidant, smiled. She had once told him, "I know I look like a dusty old couch. These rubes see you look like some crazy old whore they cant wait to spend. It's a promise of what's to come. You gotta tell your own legend." But when she leaned down to place her hand the book and take her oath her high collar shifted, and he swore he saw the white line of a scar ringing her neck like a sinister string of pearls.