The Thunder of Giants Read online

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  PROLOGUE

  The Real Thing

  IT WAS RUTHERFORD who discovered her, Rutherford the Thin, Rutherford the Sallow, Rutherford the man whose unhappy face bore the ravages of his life. He was forty-six, had wire-rim glasses, and wore his great failures like a scar. Rutherford Simone, who had been too small to fight in the war. Who had lost the film rights to the Dionne quintuplets to Twentieth Century Fox. Who had never given his wife a child. Rutherford the Unfortunate.

  He worked for his wife’s brother, a Hollywood producer who had exiled him to the rest of America until he could find the Next Great Thing. He found actors and made screen tests that he jettisoned back to the coast. In church, when he went to church, he prayed that one of these discoveries would be the next Barrymore or Garbo, a prayer that was never realized because Rutherford the Scout had a tremendous eye for opportunity but none for talent.

  No man ever forgets a failure, and in the seventh year of the Great Depression this particular man came to Detroit with redemption on his mind. His newest plot was to write a stage play about the Dionne quints and then sell the movie rights to that, a clever strategy that would allow him to circumvent the exhaustive clauses in the children’s contract and wreck vengeance on his enemies at Fox. But he could not cross the Ambassador Bridge right away. Almost broke, he burrowed into a room at the Wolverine Hotel to await his Hollywood stipend. By now, this salary was little more than a pension, and he always suffered a terrible agony waiting for it to arrive.

  This was his condition when he saw her. Pacing outside Western Union, clenching his butt cheeks to keep the anxious farts at bay, he noticed the grand goliath towering high over the populace.

  She’s at least eight feet tall, he thought. If not more!

  He decided she was a mirage, produced by the same anxiety that had forced his stomach into knots. But the next day, while plugging the holes in his shoes with a clever combination of newspaper and gum, he saw her again. This time, Rutherford sprang to life. She should have been easy to follow, for her head and shoulders swam above the masses. But she was a glacier on the move, and he had to run to keep up. Eventually she came to rest outside a shop window, where she stooped to examine a display of men’s shoes. At the exact moment he caught up to her, someone in a nearby music shop played a fanfare on an old trombone, and so it was that Rutherford the Desperate managed to make a dramatic entrance. The temperature at that moment was forty-eight degrees yet he was drenched in sweat, his heart wild, his Clark Gable moustache throbbing from the chase.

  “Tell me you’re an actress,” he panted.

  “I’m definitely not an actress,” she said.

  “Then tell me you’ve dreamed of being seen by the world.”

  He knew by her face that he was not the first to ask this question.

  “I won’t be a sideshow freak,” she said.

  “Good. You’re far too unique for a sideshow. But you’re perfect for the movies. How would you like me to take you away from Detroit?”

  He leapt around her and tried to block her path. This should have had the effect of a weasel trying to stop an elephant. But she paused in midstep. He could not have known this, but inadvertently Rutherford the Lucky had said exactly what she had been waiting to hear.

  * * *

  SHE FOLLOWED HIM into a small café, where he impressed her by paying for two coffees and a pair of doughnuts laced with powdered sugar. He watched her in wonder. Her size had made her ageless, in the way the subjects of great art are immune to the passage of time. Her accent was exotic—a smattering of Spanish blended with a twang of working-class Detroit. At the table, she fought to eat like a lady. She clearly wanted to devour her doughnut. When had her magnificent stomach last known a full meal?

  He asked for her name.

  “Andorra. Like the country.”

  “There’s a country called Andorra?”

  “It’s a principality. It’s where I was born.”

  “What’s the difference between a principality and a country?”

  She rattled off the answer, which she had clearly given many times before. “A principality is a sovereign state officially ruled by a monarch from somewhere else. Andorra sits on the border between Spain and France. My tata lived there, and my mama walked halfway across Spain to be with him. Andorra was her salvation.”

  “I know the feeling.” Rutherford Simone drew a small notebook from his shirt pocket. It was as tattered as the rest of him, but the pages were covered with a neat, almost-feminine script.

  “I’m really not a performer,” she said.

  “At least let me tell you the idea.”

  “I know the idea,” said Andorra. “I’ve spent my whole life listening to the sorts of ideas you people have.”

  Rutherford realized she had seen it all before; men just like him had probably been mistaking her for their salvation for years. Vaudeville, burlesque, sideshows, carnival tours: the whole wide world of show business had almost certainly pursued this behemoth her entire life. He imagined the stream of men as a flood, her very existence unleashing every scout, agent, producer, huckster, con artist, and pitchman in the world. He held his breath. What was there to do but hope? Maybe, at the very least, his dramatic entrance would set him above the rest.

  “I want you to star in a movie about Anna Swan,” he said.

  “Who’s Anna Swan?” asked the Principality of Andorra. Having not even finished the first doughnut, she was already eyeing the second. Rutherford motioned toward it as he opened his notebook.

  “Anna Bates, née Swan. Born 1846 in Nova Scotia. Height: somewhere around eight feet—it tends to vary depending on the source. She was one of P. T. Barnum’s star attractions in the nineteenth century. Married another giant. Traveled across Europe. I think they even dined with royalty.”

  “And you want to make a movie about her?”

  “It isn’t me. It’s my wife and her brother. They knew her, you see. Anna was very close with their father.”

  Andorra stirred her coffee, rattling the spoon against the side, making the sound into a short tune. Dat. Dat-dat-dat-dat-dat. Dat. Rutherford recognized the song: it was the first line in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

  “So why haven’t they made their picture yet?” said Andorra.

  “They’ve never had anyone to play the lead. Until now.” He grinned, revealing two broken teeth and one missing one. “They’d bring you down to Hollywood. All expenses paid, of course.”

  “It’s impossible,” she said. “I told you I’m not an actress.”

  He waved his hand. “You’d be a giant playing a giant. You’re better than an actress; you’re the real thing.”

  “I’d have to think about it.”

  Rutherford did some calculations in his head. He totaled the amount of spare change and crumpled bills in his pocket and subtracted the cost of survival: hotel, food, a telegram to t
he West Coast. There was barely enough to last the week.

  “Think very fast,” he begged.

  * * *

  SHE STAYED TO NURSE her coffee. Nothing of the doughnuts remained: even the powdered sugar had been licked away. Rutherford Simone had been right about a great many things, including the fact that her eighteen-inch stomach had been empty for years. The smells around her were the cheap ones of toast and coffee; they were intoxicating, as dangerous to her inhibitions as a snort of cocaine. She forced herself to escape, hands trembling as she stole the shaker of salt to add to the stockpile at home.

  She lumbered back into the street, absently massaging the pain in her lower back. Again she floated across the top of the crowd until she had returned to the shop where Rutherford the Dramatic had made his appearance. He had been right about that too: of all the men who had mistaken her for salvation, none—not even her husband—had ever arrived in such an incredible way. Rutherford had appeared like a hero thrust from a storm.

  There was a glare on the shop window, and she had to lean in close to see the thing that had caught her eye. The boots were brown and lined with fur. Too expensive for a casual purchase, too expensive even as a gift. Too expensive for anything, really, except for catching the eye. They couldn’t possibly be the right size, she thought, only to realize that she didn’t remember what the right size was. And why would she? Her husband’s measurements had never been as memorable as her own. She continued to stare and soon became lost in the illusion: in the joy of buying shoes, in the fantasy of bringing them home, in the great yearning dream of sliding them onto her husband’s feet. Her beautiful husband. The husband she had lost. The husband she had killed.

  A scream in her back brought her back to the world. Rising to her full, incredible height, the widowed principality made her way to the library so she could read everything she could about the life of Anna Swan.

  PART ONE

  Birth

  ONE

  The Stone That Swallowed a Stone

  Tatamagouche, 1846

  TO BEGIN WITH, she was born in a log cabin in New Annan, Nova Scotia, on the shores of the Northumberland Strait. The region was once inhabited by the Micmac Nation, but by the day of her birth—August 6, 1846—the area’s name was the only part of the Micmacs to survive. Even this was a corruption. Those Native Canadians had called the region Takeumegooch, a word that means “at the place that lies across.” Unable to pronounce this word, the Scotch settlers revised it so it sat much easier on the tongue: Tatamagouche. This would be Anna Swan’s first encounter with revisionist history; much more would come.

  Neither of her parents resembled the sort of people who could spawn a baby twenty-eight inches long. Alexander Swan was an average-sized émigré from Dumfries while his wife was a tiny thing whose largest attributes were the dimples on her knees. Their first child’s single peculiarity had been his complete disinterest in the world, as if he had known he was destined to live less than fifteen months. He died in the crib, and his grave was still soft when Alexander came to his wife in the middle of the night. “The best cure for grief is hope,” he whispered; ten months later, his wife was so swollen with his hope that she found herself restricted to bed.

  Ann Swan was so large that Alexander believed they were having twins. Boys, he decided, as if his authority was all it took. Two mighty oxen to help with the farm. The theory gained spiritual endorsement from the Reverend Blackwood, the white-haired clergyman who had recently taken residence at the Willow Church. Educated in both medicine and vanity, it was assumed he would be called to oversee the birth—and until that moment, the arthritic reverend had only overseen the births of men. Anna’s mother did not believe she was having either boys or twins—but no one was listening to her. No one was watching her at all as she lolled in bed: it was expected that she suffer in silence.

  “Pregnancy is a blessing,” said Alexander. “To complain is to be ungrateful in the eyes of God.” So even though Ann Swan knew something was very different about her second baby, she kept it to herself. By April she felt she had swallowed a stone; by May she imagined the stone had swallowed a stone. In June she wondered if the baby, like Athena, would spring from her fully grown. In July she became convinced she would never survive the ordeal. She should not have given birth until September, but by the middle of summer she knew she could no longer endure the weight of her husband’s hope. On the sixth day of August, while attempting to make herself porridge, her water broke and ran like a river down her leg. The subsequent cramps were so cruel that she fell against the rough timber walls of the cabin. Clawing at the logs for support, she drew jagged splinters that stuck into her palm. Yet even then she remained silent, gripping the pain between her teeth as a horse chews on a bit.

  “I’ll get the Reverend!” said Alexander, and he raced from the cabin. Ann Swan didn’t object. She couldn’t. If she opened her mouth, she was certain to scream. On hands and knees, those hard splinters still in her fist, she crawled to the bed on her own even as she listened to the sounds of Alexander riding away. The cramps whipped her insides into a froth. Her jaw began to ache. Her poor teeth, weak from a bad diet, jiggled in her gums. As she wrapped herself in her quilt, her head knocked against the wall. Barely a tap really, but in her torment it felt like a great crash. She lost her stamina. Having locked away her fury for seven months, three weeks, and five days, she finally released a howl that gave voice to the storm.

  She was still screaming when the men returned. It curdled the blood. The Reverend hobbled inside, but Anna’s father remained with the horse. He would stay outside the rest of the night.

  The moment he saw the pregnant woman, the Reverend understood he had come to the moment when God would test his skill. Sprawled on her back, her great belly bubbled. With trembling hands, the Reverend boiled water, sterilized his tools, and poured warm whiskey down the mother’s throat. He tried to pray but suspected God wouldn’t hear him over the screams.

  Ann Swan began to push. For a few moments, it seemed they were in crisis: the baby had crowned, but her shoulders were too wide for the narrow opening of the womb. Then the world fell silent as Ann Swan lost her scream.

  She lay unconscious while Anna herself sat halfway into the world. Forceps would be needed to yank the baby free, but the arthritic reverend could barely pick up the tool. With nothing but his bare hands, he grabbed Anna by the head and wrestled with her stubborn womb until, at last, in a miraculous moment, the stone that had swallowed a stone finally shot free. The force knocked the Reverend onto the ground; he was so prepared for twins that he peered into the empty womb, convinced something vital had been lost.

  Ann Swan remained in poor health for days. Afraid she might die, Alexander gave her name to their daughter and steeled himself for the widower’s life. But he had no talent for prophecy: he had been wrong about having twins, and he was wrong about this. Ann Swan was back on her feet by Thanksgiving; by the following fall, she was swollen with another stone. She would have ten more children, but none would ever make her cry with the same fury as her first daughter, eighteen pounds and twenty-eight inches in length. Ann Swan gave birth to the rest of her children in silence; it could be said she never found her scream.

  * * *

  THE REVEREND BLACKWOOD had lost his unblemished record of male births, but he had gained something of greater worth: the certainty that, in the course of drawing Anna into the world, God had guided his arthritic hands. Or rather his formerly arthritic hands: he swore that his arthritis had completely disappeared. It was this that convinced him of divine involvement, and when he spread the word of the birth, he went so far as to suggest that Anna might someday prove to be a saint.

  The mere suggestion of this meant that as the months passed the Swans found themselves under attack. Everyone wanted to see the Future Saint, as she was known, and they bought their way inside with gifts of butter, preserves, and jugs of moonshine. People came to the farm and waylaid the family in the streets. Not one
person who lived on the shores of the Northumberland Strait thought it strange to pay a visit to a family they had never met. This was a corner of the world where a barn raising was cause for delight; the appearance of a Future Saint inspired apoplectic joy.

  Private by nature, Alexander Swan hated the attention, and at the start of Anna’s fourth summer, he went down to the gates of the farm with some lumber and paint. There, in the swelter of the June sun, he erected a sign whose message was as short as it was blunt:

  ALL PILGRIMS WILL BE SHOT

  “Not very charitable,” remarked Ann Swan.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said a voice. While Alexander had been erecting his sign, a witness had appeared on a dappled horse. Elaborately bearded, he was nearly bald everywhere else. “Nope,” he decided. “Not very charitable at all.”

  “I’m giving them fair warning,” said Alexander. “You ask me, that’s charity enough.”

  “People are traveling a great distance to see her.”

  “Only ’cause their heads are muddled. I don’t need them tramping through my house.”

  The stranger leaned in closer. “Maybe you need to put her somewhere else. Give her a proper venue so your house can stay in peace.”

  Ann Swan examined the man a little more closely. His beard wasn’t the only thing that was elaborate. His clothes, while dusty, were finer than any she had seen. Even the horse seemed to have a regal countenance, as if it were used to carrying kings. “You aren’t from around here,” she declared.

  “H. P. Ingalls,” said the man. “I’m from New York.”

  Alexander tapped the sign. “You obey signs in New York?”

  “Nobody obeys anything in New York.” H. P. Ingalls grinned. “I represent a man who has interest in promoting human curiosities. Word is, that’s a good way to describe your daughter.” He winked at Ann Swan. “Given that you survived her birth, I’d say it describes you, too.”