Evra did the milking himself - to my great relief - then we brought the snake outside and laid her on the grass. We grabbed buckets of water and scrubbed her down with really soft sponges.
After that, we had to feed the wolf-man. His cage was near the back of the campsite. He roared when he saw us coming. He looked as angry and dangerous as he had that night I went to see the Cirque with Steve. He shook the bars and lunged at us if we got too close - which we didn't!
"Why is he so vicious?"I asked, tossing him a large chunk of raw meat, which he grabbed in midair and bit into.
"Because he's a real wolf-man,"Evra said. "He's not just somebody very hairy. He's half human, half wolf."
"Isn't it cruel to keep him chained up?"I asked, throwing him another slice of meat.
"If we didn't, he'd run free and kill people. The mix of human and wolf blood has driven him mad. He wouldn't just kill when he was hungry; if he was free, he'd murder all the time."
"Isn't there a cure?"I asked, feeling sorry for him.
"There isn't a cure because it isn't a disease,"Evra explained. "This isn't something he caught, it's how he was born. This is what he is."
"How did it happen?"I asked.
Evra looked at me seriously. "Do you really want to know?"
I stared at the hairy monster in the cage, ripping up the meat as if it were cotton candy, then gulped and said, "No, I suppose I don't."
We did a bunch of jobs after that. We peeled potatoes for the night's dinner, helped repair a tire on one of the cars, spent an hour painting the roof of a van, and walked a dog. Evra said most days were like this, just wandering through the camp, seeing what needed doing, helping out here and there.
In the evening we took a garbage bag full of cans and broken pieces of glass to the tent of Rhamus Twobellies, a huge man who could eat anything. I wanted to stay and watch him eat, but Evra hurried me out. Rhamus didn't like people watching him eat when he wasn't performing.
We had a lot of time to ourselves, and during our quieter moments we told each other about our lives - where we'd come from and how we'd grown up.
Evra had been born to ordinary parents. They were horrified when they saw him. They abandoned him at an orphanage, where he stayed until an evil circus owner bought him at the age of four.
"Those were bad days,"he said quietly. "He used to beat me and treat me like a real snake. He kept me locked up in a glass case and let people pay to look at me and laugh."
He was with the circus for seven long, miserable years, touring small towns, being made to feel ugly and freakish and useless.
Finally, Mr. Tall came to the rescue.
"He showed up one night,"Evra said. "He appeared suddenly out of the darkness and stood by my cage for a long time, watching me. He didn't say a word. Neither did I.