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Fiction Excerpt

"I ONCE KNEW A GIRL"

By Steve Osburn

I love the smell of elephant dung in the morning.

A lot of people were stunned by the aromas the first time they walked into the menagerie tent but I loved it. I always took a deep breath the first time I'd go in to start work in the morning. It smelled like a lot of healthy animals to me. Actually, I took care of all the smaller critters but the elephants dominated the scene, if you know what I mean. It was amazing what eighteen elephants could do standing in one spot all night long.

I liked to go down their side of the tent and say howdy to each of them. Most of them would reach out for a little trunk-to-hand shake. They liked that.

The last in line would always be Minnie, as far from the big cats at the other end of the long tent as we could get her. They made her nervous. Born in Burma, she was sixty-four years old and I think she remembered them as enemies in her youth.

Her favorite treat was watermelon and I'd grab half of one and get next to the right side of her head. She'd lost her left eye to a drunk trainer's whip back when she was young and didn't like to be snuck up on.

She would raise her trunk and I'd slide the melon into her mouth and she'd start to munch. I'd fold her big ear forward and stick my head behind it and she would reach around with her trunk and curl it so I could actually sit on it with my feet off the ground. She would rock me back and forth and I'd reach down and grab hold of her withered old teat and tug gently while I pressed my face into the base of her ear and sing: "Minnie, Minnie, Minnie, Minnie..." and she'd squeak and squeal. Then I'd stand up in front of her good eye, she'd stick out her tongue so I could scratch it and I would stare into that deep, black orb and wonder what stories she could tell.

She was the queen of the animal tent and for years she led the Big Parade around the Big Top at the beginning of the show. The show kept getting bigger, she kept getting older and slower and the parade kept taking longer and longer but she would not accept any position but first in line.

Minnie was finally retired from the circus and she died a year later. I've always believed she died of a broken heart.

I love the smell of elephant dung in the morning. Really.

copyright © 2000 by Steve Osburn

Steve Osburn is a chef in Las Vegas who once worked for a circus in the late seventies. Originally from California, he has also lived in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska. He has also worked as a carpenter, aircraft mechanic, schooner deckhand and limousine driver. He is currently enrolled in the F2K fiction writing class.

Steve hopes the class will help him to develop his circus stories into a collection called: "ROUSTABOUTS AND TOWNIES A Year With The Circus". "I ONCE KNEW A GIRL" is an excerpt from a work in progress.