One night members of the Moose Lodge gathered in a sleepy herd on metal fold-out chairs in the high school gym in Ponca City. Outside, a strong wind rippled across the plains and shot red dirt under the doors coating the bleachers and floor in a fine layer. During the show I felt a grainy residue on the cards and saw it on the rumps of the men who brought me their handkerchiefs. I began the last act already thinking of the drive ahead, and the long, dotted, white line through the dirty crimson windows. Clearing my throat of the settled dust, I began my closing patter:

"In modern times men are making incredible discoveries in science that advance humankind," I said. "I want to duplicate such advancements, so step into my laboratory ladies and gentlemen and watch me conduct my own experiment and create something that will amaze you—I call it my Woman by Chemistry ."

The curtain opened. Next to the cylinder and platform was a stand holding several vials of colored liquid. I put on a white doctor's lab coat. Climbing the steps to the platform, I tipped forward the bowl to show it empty and then began to mix the vials back and forth, as though measuring amounts, and poured them inside. As puffs of white clouds filled the cylinder, I waved my hands over the rim.

Then I saw Erza, her hands first, so still and pale they seemed disembodied from the rest of her. Then her face tilted up through the white fumes like the engraved faces on the sterns of explorer ships cutting through fog, except her face was neither that of a conqueror, nor queen, nor angel; it was that of the sacrificed, a face of someone on the run. Raw and chalky with fright, she jerked her eyes around her, into the wings and blinding lights. The trick had her spooked.

*

Cowboys lined the bar at the Angry Armadillo in Orkarche. We heard their boots stomping above as we set up the show in the basement, hanging big foulards from the ceiling for a makeshift backstage. Erza opened the door of the dove cage and reached inside. Whenever I reached for the doves they dodged me. Doves smell magician sweat. They know magicians stuff them in their pockets. Each time I produced them on stage they fluttered to the floor on their clipped wings and scurried out of my reach. But that evening they hopped on Erza's index finger. She carried bird seed in her pocket. She took one out and stroked its white silky back. Rowdy hoots and howdys from the farmers slowly filled the basement as they rambled to their seats. I opened the drawer of my beat-up wardrobe trunk and loaded my pockets: one balled-up red silk in my right trouser, an extra load of cards in my inside dress jacket and down my tail pouch a skinned rubber chicken—I'd yank that out of some poor dupe's pants.

"Mr. Malcomb look," Erza said.

I froze. Doves lined Erza's outstretched arms, cooing and flapping their wings. She was a feathery cross, a holy perching post. Claws pranced, beaks nibbled and feet scratched; one feather floated to the stage floor. She bent back her head, her ams like beating dove branches, and smiled. Her teeth were so small and round-edged, they could never tear flesh, never harm. Erza enlarged before my eyes, not her body but something inside her, soft and clean.

I sank down on the stool behind my trunk, packed with one flask of whiskey and old stiff-bosom shirts from my vaudeville days, struck by an awful loneliness. Who was I really, but the Magnificent Malcomb—Man of a Million Miles . It had been me and the road for so many years, I didn't have a home or belong anywhere and now I was no longer a young man. The truth hit me hard, as hard as a Friday night crowd in a mill town on pay day. Erza lowered her dove-lined arms and cupped her hands together as though cradling the white birds like a child. They became still and quiet, coaxed into a kind of peaceful stupor. Erza—the rascal dove tamer. She comforted my old, cold bones. Life on the road had turned former wives bitter and squeezed my heart into a dry sack, but Erza filled the old pump. The two of us on the road together—always. It was not an unpleasant notion. The trailer hitched in the back, a fixed rightness in our places. Me at the wheel, and Erza next to me, on our way to a show for rhubarb farmers. My heart warmed—just like I'd stepped into one of those farm houses, Erza's house. Besides, matrimony with an assistant was show smart—wives worked for free. As she set each dove in the cage, she met my newly-illuminated gaze and smiled. A shy smile, but without distaste or repulsion, perhaps even welcoming. My heart leapfrogged out of my chest. I snapped a tux suspender and winked.

"You're a real nice girl."

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