A Girl and Five Brave Horses

by Sonora Carver

  “I even put on my own make-up,” I went on. “But when I’ve finished I usually ask someone how I look. No smears, smudges, or what not. As a matter of fact, dressing myself and caring for my clothes has become one of my easiest tasks.”

  By the time Mother left a week later I think she was convinced that, bad as it was for a twenty-seven-year-old girl to be blind for life, it might have been much worse.

  If I persuaded her to this point of view, I did so without faking. And I sincerely agreed: my situation might have been much worse. It seems to me that everyone has to make adjustments to life, that we all have our limitations, but that if we are wise we do not make other people miserable by concentrating on these limitations. One of the fundamental responsibilities of every human being in his relationship with others is to create happiness, not destroy it. We also have responsibilities toward ourselves. The prime one is not to make ourselves miserable by dwelling on something we can do nothing about.

  The full flower of this philosophy was not mine at the time, but the roots of it were there, and day by day I made myself act as I wished to believe. I never allowed myself the luxury of mourning over the loss of my sight, nor, indeed, had I any inclination to. I was too busy learning to live in a world entirely new to me and usually managed to think of it as a kind of adventure. Only one time in all the days and weeks and months after I lost my sight did I cry over this loss, and that was not because I was grieving but because I was frustrated.

  One evening Lorena had some people over to play cards. I sat in the living room where they were, listening to the radio. As the evening wore on, the crowd grew noisier and I could not hear over their voices, so I turned the radio up. So high, apparently, that it annoyed Lorena. The outcome was a quarrel between us that was both deep and biting and in which both of us said things we shouldn’t have.

  As I ran out of the living room and up to my bedroom I began to cry. More than anything in the world I would have liked to be able to walk out of her house and never come back, but I couldn’t because of my blindness. In this case it was my incapacity to behave as a normal person that caused my tears rather than any mourning over the loss of my sight.

  Spring came finally, and when it did Al began to get ready for the new season. As he made the usual preparations I found myself growing more restless than I had been at any time since losing my sight. Thus far I had managed to fill my time with learning the basic essentials of living in a new world, but now I had mastered these essentials and was ready to move ahead. I needed something definite to occupy my mind and time; in fact, to justify my very existence. The mechanics of existence were no longer enough.

  I was experiencing what most blind people experience sooner or later. They want—but “want” isn’t strong enough; “need” is a better word—they need to belong to the world around them. All of us, while apparently separate and distinct individuals, are but the molecules of which the body of humanity is composed, and each of us feels a compulsion to function as a part of the whole. Consciously or subconsciously we long to be useful and accepted, regarded with favor. Loss of sight does not change this, I discovered; I needed to find a way to belong.

  What could I do? What did other blind people do? Some of them were musicians, lawyers, and journalists, but I lacked the necessary training for these professions. I understood and could perform secretarial work, but I knew that now that I was blind my chances of finding employment in a busy modern office were practically nil.

  I turned to the consideration of other kinds of work done by the blind—making mops, brooms, and brushes; weaving rugs, bathmats, pot pads; simple sewing, such as pillow cases; mattress making and piano tuning. The list was long, but not one of these jobs interested me even remotely. Yet I had to have something to do. Frantically I pawed at the bottom of the trunk containing my personal resources, looking for some remnant from which I could make a future. But there was none.

  Then one day Al came in with a contract for another season’s work at the pier, and I was seized by a feeling of such frustration that it seemed I couldn’t stand it. A contract meant summer heat, crowds, laughter, and the fun of riding, and now blindness was denying me my right to take an active part.

  I strained at the leash, remembering all these things, and as I remembered I began to wonder. Was it necessary for me to give it up? After nearly eight years’ experience I had a thorough understanding of my work, and surely continuing to do something which I understood would not be so difficult as trying to learn a new skill.

  For two or three days I mulled over the prospect of diving off the higher tower, because I thought I would need an overwhelming array of arguments before broaching the idea to Al. When I brought it up, however, he didn’t even seem surprised. He merely said I would have to get the doctor’s permission before attempting any riding.

  Throughout the winter we had been driving to Atlantic City every two weeks for an examination. I never knew exactly why. It was an arrangement which Al and the doctor had settled between themselves—mainly, I think, to satisfy Al that no stone had been left unturned, although it was probable also that the doctor hoped to learn something new by studying the various stages my eyes were going through. Aside from the routine examination, nothing was ever done. The nurse put some drops in my eyes to dilate the pupils, then we went to the dark room where the doctor explained that he was staring into my eyes with his little gadget. He usually concluded the examination with “Hmmmmm.”

  I always referred to these trips as “jic jaunts”—“just in case”—but I didn’t mind them because I liked my doctor and enjoyed our informal chats with him. Apparently he had learned a thing or two about me during our months of doctor-patient relationship, and he too exhibited no surprise when I described what I wanted to do. Instead he replied that he thought it would be a wonderful thing for me both mentally and physically if I could bring it off. As matters stood, he could see no reason why I shouldn’t at least try, provided I wore some sort of helmet with unbreakable lens. This sounded like locking the barn door after the horse had been stolen, but he explained that, after all, it was possible that some doctor might discover a method of treatment which might help me, provided my eyes were not subjected to any more abuse.

  On our way back to Quakertown we went through Philadelphia to Spalding, the sporting goods manufacturer, about designing and making a helmet for me. The man to whom we talked promised I would have it by the middle of May, possibly a little before. This was very good timing, for it would give me an opportunity to practice in it a few times before the pier opened officially on the seventeenth. That was now only about six weeks away.

  I went back to Quakertown in a completely different frame of mind. I was tremendously excited over the prospect of returning to the thing I loved best. As far as being successful at riding was concerned, the main problem would be, I knew, mounting. Once I was on, I would have nothing to worry about; then the horse would take over. There was just that all-important split second when I must mount him as he went by. If I missed I would fail completely. The idea of failure was very nearly unbearable to me, but I didn’t express my fears to anyone, least of all to Al. I put my fears aside temporarily and concentrated on getting in shape.

  I had not gained any weight during the winter but had lost a lot of strength, so Al hung a trap bar up in the barn for me and I began a daily routine of strenuous calisthenics and trap-bar exercises that reminded me of that first training period in Durham. Between daily sessions with the exercises and nightly sessions with a liniment bottle I managed to get in pretty good condition by the time we left for Atlantic City on May 1.

  When we arrived we found that Mr. Gravitt, the new manager of the pier, had signed almost the same cast as had been there the year before. The roster included our friends Orville and Roxie LaRose and Irene Berger. We decided that this year we would all take an apartment together and get Mrs. Van Myers to do the cooking.

  We wanted a place within walking distance of the pier, w
hich wasn’t easy to find for such a large group, but we finally located one that would do. It had two bedrooms and a living room, a dining room, kitchen, and bath. Al and I would have one bedroom, Roxie and Orville the other, and Irene and Arnette could fix the living room to serve as sleeping quarters.

  After we got settled I spent most of my time at the pier, still working at getting my strength back. One of the performers had an extra pair of rings, and he hung them on a crossbrace underneath our tower so that I could continue my exercises. Each day I climbed the Hawaiian ladder, which was 105 feet high, and I also climbed our ramp periodically to get the feel of it. I counted the cleats as I went up. This was my method of judging how close I was to the top. I tried climbing once without holding onto the rail but found that I veered from side to side.

  I had a tendency to pull to the right when walking alone, which caused me to get lost if the distance was more than fifteen or twenty feet, so Al stretched a rope from the door that provided the exit and entrance backstage to the foot of the ramp of the tower. Since this door was directly opposite my dressing room, by walking straight out I could touch it almost immediately and be guided by the rope all the way to the ramp. It wasn’t necessary for me to hold onto it with my hand. The feel of the fringe of my shawl brushing it was all the guidance I needed.

  Thus I managed to conceal my blindness, not out of sensitivity, as some people suspected, but out of pride and dignity. I felt that if I rode well I needed no excuse and that if I needed an excuse I had no business riding. I tried in every way possible to play down the melodramatics, refusing to allow any publicity. As far as I was concerned, when the time came for me to make my first ride the audience would not have the least idea I was blind.

  With these details taken care of, costumes claimed my attention. I had some two-piece spangled suits which I wore for evening performances, and the difference in cut assured an easy selection, but the suits I wore for daytime shows were all the same style. Their only difference was in color, which of course I couldn’t tell without asking someone. I solved this problem by using small buttons for identification. A button on the right shoulder marked the red suit; a button on the left shoulder, the blue one; a button on the inside of the right leg, the yellow suit, and so down the line.

  Now I was ready to ride. Outwardly, anyway. Inwardly I was beginning to feel more and more turmoil as to whether I could mount the horse or not. One moment I seemed to be certain that I could; the next, that I could not. So the pendulum swung back and forth and back, though I still did not voice my fears aloud. Al must have been able to see that I was worried.

  One day he said, “I don’t like to be the one to bring it up, but there’s something I want you to know. If it makes you feel any better, keep in mind that I wouldn’t let you ride if I didn’t think you could do it.”

  This gave me some momentary confidence as I awaited the arrival of my helmet, but on May 14, in place of the helmet, we received a letter from Spalding.

  We regret to inform you that we have had difficulty with the design and will not be able to deliver it to you until about June 1.

  “Oh no!” I wailed.

  “Yes,” Al answered. “I’m afraid so.”

  “But I’m all primed! I’m ready! Waiting will be bad!”

  “Not any worse,” he said, “than the time Daddy made you wait a week to make your first dive. And, as I recall, you did just fine.”

  “But this is different!” I said. “It’s very important. It’s important that I get the first time over with. After that it won’t matter.”

  “I know,” he said, “I know.”

  There was nothing either of us could do, however. Fortunately we had someone who could ride in my place until the helmet came. Elsa, the girl who rode for Lorena, did not have to be on the road until the first week in June. Al wired her, asking her to ride for us until then, and she wired back that she would.

  Waiting was not easy—it never is—but I managed, and when May 28 rolled by, this nerve-racking period was almost over.

  Seventeen

  Our act was the finale of the show that year, as it had always been. The one just ahead of ours was “The Fearless Falcons,” and the one before theirs the comedy horse act “Spark Plug.”

  The night it happened I was sitting on a bench backstage, near the wall that separated the audience from the performers, talking to Mrs. Cims, a trapeze performer, conscious at the same time that the music being played out front was “Barney Google with Those Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes.” Sparkey and Kelsey must be waltzing, I thought, because the audience was roaring with laughter. Soon they would make their ridiculous bow with all four legs going different ways and go running offstage at a crazy gallop.

  We continued talking for a short while, and then Mrs. Cims left. As she did so the Barney Google music ended and there was a big hand for Sparkey and Kelsey. As soon as the clapping died away the music for “The Fearless Falcons” began, and I knew that Roxie and Irene and Orville were going on. Theirs was about a twenty-minute act. Soon Elsa, who was going to ride Klatawah, would be coming from the dressing room on her way to the ramp, and since I had something I wanted to talk to her about I walked over to the guide rope Al had rigged up for me and leaned against the wall, waiting for her to pass.

  As I stood there listening to the music, I could follow the progress of the Falcons out front. I had watched them so often in previous years that I knew almost to the instant what they were doing. Orville would be working from the cradle between the two poles holding the trap bar and rings for the girls to perform on. His feet would be hooked between the two parallel bars of supple metal that ran from one perch pole to the other, and from these bars he would be hanging head down, flexing, unflexing, doing a few tricks while the girls climbed the ladders up to him.

  Both girls’ lives depended on him completely, for if he ever lost his grip on the trapeze or the rings they would plunge down onto the deck 104 feet below. They worked without a net, because if they fell from that height the fall would kill them anyway.

  After a few minutes the sweep of “The Skater’s Waltz” swung onto the night air and I pictured Roxie in trap-bar routine. She had several tricks—a bird’s nest, a foot-and-hand change, and a split in the rings. After each of these the audience clapped, and then there was heavy applause and I knew she had stepped back onto her pedestal, giving Irene a chance to perform.

  Up until the past week Irene had been doing an especially complicated foot-and-hand change, which is difficult to describe but so dangerous that Orville had cut it out of the act. The danger lay in the fact that for a split second she was completely free of contact with anything at all, and if in coming from the poles to the rings she didn’t catch hold of Orville’s hand she would fall free. Irene loved that particular routine because she loved flirting with death. When Orville forbade her doing it any more she threatened to quit but finally settled for a belly roll, which got more screams from the crowd anyway because it appeared more dramatic. The foot-and-hand change was too subtle and too quick for most people to follow.

  The belly roll was performed on the trap bar and was a real chiller. Irene would put her stomach on the bar, swing back and forth on it a minute, and then fling herself forward and scream. As she shot down she would appear to have lost control, but at the last minute she would catch herself with her feet and hang swinging head down. When I heard “Springtime in the Rockies” I knew Irene had begun and that she would soon have the audience standing up in their seats.

  I smiled to myself as I stood against the wall, still waiting for Elsa to come. The audience exhaled their usual gasps and “Ohhhs” and “Ahhhs,” signaling the end of that part of the act. Now while the girls climbed to the top of the perch poles, Orville would descend, ready to help the four men who paid out the rope which brought the girls down to the ground at the end of the performance.

  In my mind’s eye I could see Irene and Roxie as they climbed, their little bodies moving upward, one a bright f
lash of silver, the other a heavy glitter of gold. Swiftly as twin spiders they would climb up and up until they reached the top, 125 feet in the air. There they would pause to wave to the crowd below, and as they did so the little bits of glitter they wore in their hair would catch in the spotlights and wink down at the crowd. Then they would fasten their feet into the slings and begin their gymnastics, swaying back and forth on the poles, half flinging themselves out and up and down and with their exertions bending the poles to almost forty-five-degree angles.

  This part of the act usually took about ten minutes, and during that time, except for occasional gasps, one could hear a pin drop. Every face, I knew, was glued to the girls on the poles and a good many mouths had dropped open. Then the brazenly jubilant strains of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” broke on the night air; the act was finished and the girls were coming down.

  The audience burst into wild applause. I had a clear mental picture of the two girls: Roxie, with her auburn hair tossed back, clamping her teeth tight on the rubber bit in her mouth, arms flung behind her body like some beautiful silver bird; Irene, above her on the same rope, frozen in an arabesque, a golden butterfly, her body forward, one leg thrust out in a graceful arc. Then suddenly there was a terrible scream, not from one throat, but from eight thousand.

  I was accustomed to hearing the audience scream when the girls did their tricks, but this was different. It was long and drawn out and laden with terror. I turned cold at the mass scream, and almost simultaneously there was the sound of a dull thud on the deck outside. It made me physically ill.

  Behind and a little to the left of me a dice game had been in progress, and I was dimly aware of incoherent, animal-like noises from the players as they scrambled to their feet. Above the seemingly endless sounds of screaming I heard the slow creaking and grinding of metal, as if it were being twisted and bent. Then another heavy thud. I waited with a feeling of terrible suspense for the sound of a third body, forgetting momentarily that Orville was already down.