Category: Russian River

Hormat was having trouble. The baby was stuck. When Bilko got there just the head was showing.

Light came from candles all over the room and one lantern at bedside. The bed and floor were strewn with thick blankets and bedcovers. There was a pan of water on each side of the bed.

“Turn over, Mattie,” Leila instructed, “get on your knees and push!”

Hormat awkwardly, effortfully turned, got up on her knees and buried her head in a pillow.

“Push, Mattie, push!” Leila shouted, then to Bilko, “if you can see the shoulder help her a little bit, but be careful of her head! Hold her head,” she grabbed Bilko by a shoulder and pushed him toward Hormat’s feet, shocking him out of his drop-jawed confusion.

Bilko got on his knees between Hormat’s legs and supported the baby’s head with his hands. His eyes were wide open, he was scared, his body tensed with every move Hormat made and he didn’t know what to do.

“Come on, honey, push! She will come.”

Hormat gave a loud cry, Bilko thought he could see a bit of the baby’s shoulder and slipped his finger into Hormat’s vagina next to it.

Suddenly, the baby slipped right into his hands followed by the umbilical cord. Bilko lifted the little creature up to look. Hormat let out a rush of air and the placenta sloughed out into a pan Leila had in her hands. Hormat collapsed on the bed.

It was a girl. Leila put a damp cloth on Hormat’s brow and handed Bilko Farid’s straight razor. Clinching his teeth, he reluctantly and quickly cut the cord.

While Bilko held her, Leila tied a knot in the cord. Then she took the child, patted her on the soles of her feet until she roused, cleaned her in a shallow pan and handed her back to Bilko.

While Leila helped Hormat with the rest of the afterbirth, Bilko sat in a rocker with his new daughter, looking into her eyes and making silent promises. Hours had passed.

Right after the wedding, Farid Ortrar and Vafa Dilmac went out and purchased a new trailer for Hormat and Bilko. They parked it next to Aata, Saleh and Orguz.

By April, Hormat’s complexion had acquired a subtle warm blush, and Bilko fell in love all over again.

To cover her swelling stomach, she added veils to her costume. But by June she could no longer work the crowd as she had and took Leila’s place in the fortune teller’s tent.

On August 22 of that year, Leila came by, while Bilko and Hormat were playing backgammon, to ask if Hormat could spare a minute.

Hormat wasn’t feeling very well, so they cut the game short, Hormat followed Leila to the fortune teller’s tent and Bilko went to bed.

Early morning on the 23rd of August, Farid came pounding at the trailer door.

“The baby…,” were the only words he could get out, as he pointed furiously toward the fortuneteller’s tent. His graying handle bar mustache was shaking visibly.

Bilko ran.

Four months later, when it was dry enough to put the big wheel up, Bilko and Hormat took the first ride, while their parents watched. Three clockwise turns. They were engaged.

When Jubilee! completed its first season on the west coast and returned to Russian River, Bilko and Hormat were married in the municipality of Russian River. Hormat was already pregnant.

After the civil ceremony, they returned to the Jubilee! encampment for a traditional wedding like Aata and Saleh had. That night, all the lights were on and the river glowed like it did on ghost night.

Bilko and Hormat started to plan and save.

If you asked Bilko about carnival life, he would have said that it was just like anything else. Towns were just carnivals that didn’t move. Stick joints and concessions. Come-ons, plush and slum, thrill rides and fantasy.

But this person. There was no stain of makeup on her face or in her words.

He had just met a Hormat he had never known and was overwhelmed by her innocence and lack of complexity.

“What is it you want?” He asked quietly.

She smiled, “I don’t know, I want to feel full,” she said nodding, “I don’t want to feel like a chewing gum wrapper blowing around in the straw anymore.

“I want it to be real, no carnie angle. Simple, with a future, you know? A future, like you can plan. And kids that had friends that went to school. No more bally talk, no come-on.

“I want to feel I am some place and I can look out across whatever land it is and feel part of it,” she looked embarrassed, ”Its hard to explain, it sounds stupid,” She drifted away and looked down at the river.

“I understand,” he said, silently committing himself to do whatever he had to do to make her happy.

Then, Bilko allowed himself to touch her. He put his hand on top of hers and said, “I want that too.”

Most of the cabins built on the edge of the Russian River were on stilts set into concrete embankments at the river’s edge to support the wooden structure. The entry ways had long staircases leading from the doors to crude driveways and gravel roads.

Seeing a dingy hanging by a rope just below the top of the stairs next the front door was a common and quaint sight, this was Russian River.

Jubilee! arrived at Russian River in late November, during the rainy season.

When the rains came, the river swelled over its banks and rose up the wooden stairs to the doors of the cabins. The dingies floated next to the front door and were the only way for people to get to the store or town or where ever their car was parked.

Part of the back lot at Jubilee!’s headquarters was underwater, and there were a couple of rubber rafts tied to the trailers right at the water’s edge, but most of the carnival was above water and safe.

When it wasn’t raining, it was cool. The days were crisp, and the water was rough or rapid, pushing and shoving, unconscious of any human activity.

On a clear night, the stars were many, bright and piquant: fantastic. Eerily veined by the bare trees and shoots that stood in the air.

Bilko and Hormat were in jackets sitting on a blanket at the edge of a steel bridge that crossed the river not far from the Jubilee! encampment.

They were talking about New York City.

“Because I didn’t want this to be real, Billy.” she said in a simple, naked appeal for understanding.

Bilko did understand. “This” was the carnival life. “This” was living town to town out of trailers and cheap hotels, always a foreigner, never at home.

There were Carnies and there was everyone else.

There was a powerful bond among the Carnies that allowed them to survive and separated them from everyone else.

Hormat and Bilko played backgammon every night for four months as Jubilee! made its way through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, the lower part of Nevada and into California.

She had changed. She no longer accepted the Bilko that she had known and it took time for them to re-build a relationship. And that relationship was different than before.

But Bilko was persistent. He could not let her go and arrived every night after work for their game of Backgammon.

Hormat didn’t talk much at first. It was usually just Bilko relating things of interest that had happened that day and asking Hormat about her day; asking questions that often received no answers.

That was followed by a period of time, in which the games were played in almost complete silence.

Eventually, a sort of spontaneous chatter evolved based upon what was going on at the carnival, the news, their childhood memories and other things common to them both.

After a while, things changed again, when Jubilee! crossed into California and Bilko was reminded of Brion Gysin. He told Hormat, for the first time, about his friend and his feelings of guilt over his death.

Shortly after this, Hormat began to open up about what her life was like in New York, eventually, talking about Alfonz.

Bilko had never liked Alfonz, but the picture that Hormat painted of him was very different than the cartoon goof he had in mind. Hormat called him a talented man, capable of many things.

She described him as a boy who was trying to escape his father’s awful life by going out on his own. She told Bilko that Alfonz’ father had actually named him ‘Alferd’, as a joke. Alfonz hungered for a bright, a brilliant life and called himself Alfonz, instead.

When he was 16, with the help of his mother, he had his name legally changed, irritating his father.

But in the end, Alfonz was not his own man but a creature controlled by a body part. Men, whatever they say, are slippery, vulgar liars. At best, they know little about themselves and cannot be trusted. Hormat never said this, but it was evident in what she did say.

Bilko knew he was going to have to prove himself, somehow, to get close to her again.