by Bruce Feiler
For the next several months Sean drove out to Elvin’s house every afternoon at 4:30, took a couple of shots, and slowly learned his way around the cannon. Elvin guided him through the mechanical operations part by part, piece by piece. “It’s kind of Neanderthal,” Sean said, “but it’s brilliant.” Elvin also guided him through the mechanics of flight: keep your back stiff, your legs straight, your toes pointed. Shoot straight ahead, look where you’re going, reach for an imaginary track. Gradually they lifted the cannon higher, Sean flew further. Now his head was straight, his back was firm, but his legs were still lagging behind. “For most people who aren’t gymnasts it’s hard to control your legs,” he recalled. “When you watch somebody dive off a diving board, they can usually control their upper body—their arms and their head—but their legs are always sagging. They have them apart or their toes aren’t pointed. In the air you have to stay perfectly straight, then at the last second, in order to get over, you have to squeeze your butt and point your toes so you rotate over onto your back.”
Within several months opening day arrived. Sean’s parents came to DeLand for the show. His ex-girlfriend was there as well. Sean marched in the opening parade, then almost immediately came out for his act, which at the time followed the tigers. Elvin was frantic with nerves: Sean had never done a shot in the tent, only in the open air. Everyone else was nervous as well. Sean, however, was a beacon of calm. “Elvin said to me, ‘Are you sure you’re not going to freak out? Are you sure you’re not stiff?’ I said, ‘What’s there to be afraid of? Let’s just do the shot.’ So I did the shot. It was perfect, beautiful. Elvin was so excited. ‘I told you I could do it,’ I said to him. He just started to cry…”
Sean went silent for a moment. We had stopped for lunch at a Chinese takeout—chicken with peanuts, Oriental vegetables. He put down his fork. “I can’t say Elvin’s like a father to me because my dad’s an incredible father. Elvin’s different. My dad’s like my best friend, a real-guy kind of father. Elvin’s more like a Leave It to Beaver type of father. My dad was never really strict with me. Elvin’s very bossy. When we left DeLand last year and drove to Brunswick, Elvin asked me to call every day, but I never did. He gets mad, but I tell him I have it under control. He says, ‘That’s why I worry about you. You only call when there’s a problem, so when the phone rings and it’s you, I know that there’s a problem.’”
For Sean’s first several months on the show Elvin’s phone never rang. There were problems, but nothing Elvin could solve. For Sean, cocky about his body as well as his virility, the primary problem was dealing with his colleagues. “I wasn’t from the circus,” he said. “My family wasn’t from show business. They all knew that. I had to be accepted. That was hard, especially on this show where everybody has grown up together. They all said he’s not a performer or anything and now he’s automatically the star of the show. He’s always on TV, he’s got girls in his trailer every night, and he’s got a full page in the program, which, ooh-ooh, is a big deal to these people. To me I couldn’t give two shits, but to them…”
Everyone thought Sean was a snob because he did the cannon. To make matters worse, they thought he was English. “They just wouldn’t speak. I would say, ‘Hi,’ and they would just be cold. It’s that snobbery thing. You know how it is.”
“So how did it change?”
“I kicked a few butts. There were a few rumors around, and finally one day I got mad. If I’ve done something and you’ve seen me do it, tell the whole world, I don’t care. But if you don’t see me do something and you make it up, then I’m gonna get some revenge.”
The first rumor involved drugs. At the beginning of the year Sean made the bang that accompanied the cannon shot by pumping acetylene gas into a balloon. He would turn on a torch, snuff out the flame, then inflate the balloon with the gas. One day he snuffed out the flame incorrectly, and when he went to squeeze the gas the balloon exploded in his hands, shredding his shirt and burning half the skin on his stomach. Nellie Ivanov gave him some baking soda to put on the wound. That night he was sitting in his trailer when some of the workers came by. “They saw me with this pile of baking soda on my table and said, ‘Man, sell me some of that.’” The following day Kris came up to him and said, “Sean, you better watch what you do. Word travels fast around here.” “What are you talking about?” Sean said. “I heard you were selling cocaine to the workers.”
A week later the rumors had him in jail. In Utica, New York, Sean went to watch a Chicago Bulls game on television with Jerry, the clown. In front of the lot they asked a policeman for directions and he offered to drive them himself. “The next morning I got the manager knocking on my door,” he recalled. “Boom, boom, boom! ‘Sean, Sean, are you in there?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Really?!’ he said. ‘How did you get out of prison?’ As soon as I got out of my trailer everybody was going ‘Hey, jailbird. We heard you got arrested. Big cannon man had a little too much to drink.’” One of the young workers on the front door told everyone Sean had been arrested. “I wouldn’t have been mad,” Sean said. “But word goes back to Elvin. You get one of these shit-ass workers who goes to another show. Say these people want me to work there. ‘Oh, man,’ they say. ‘That guy’s a troublemaker. He’s a bum.’”
To prove he was not a bum Sean decided to beat the guy up. Unfortunately for Sean he never got the pleasure. The man, sensing danger, blew the show first. Sean responded by beating up the man’s friend who had earlier confessed to spreading the rumor. In the prison mentality of the circus, Sean was now considered a man.
“Suddenly people started talking to me. ‘So, how did you get into the business?’ they asked. ‘Tell us, how did you get hold of Elvin? Are you family with the Bales?’ First I couldn’t get a ‘Hi’ from them and now they’re asking me questions. It’s just like they’re doing with you now. ‘So, why did you join the circus? What do you think of life around here?’ As soon as that starts happening you know you’re one of them.”
By the time Sean had finished his story we had finished our lunch and decided to check out the one remaining possibility for shoes, Boscov’s department store. As we cut through Women’s Clothing on our way to Sporting Goods we overheard two women who worked at the store, which was located directly next to the lot. “They must be really weird…,” one of the women said. “You better believe it,” her friend added. “Just wait until they come in here and start washing their babies in the sink.” As soon as we heard this, Sean stopped in place and walked back in their direction.
“Are you two talking about the circus?” he asked.
“Yes,” they said.
“Well, ladies,” he said, yanking up his sleeves, “have you looked out the window? You see those trailers out there? In the circus we live in those, and, for your information, they all have bathrooms. So we don’t need to wash our babies in your sink.” He hesitated for a moment. His skin was becoming flush. Should he stop, he considered, or should he continue? But by now he realized these women weren’t talking about them anymore. They were talking about him. “You see this watch?” he said, now getting caught up in the hyperbole of the moment. “It costs three thousand dollars. This bracelet costs five hundred. That’s more than you make in a week. In the circus we all live in three-hundred-thousand-dollar homes on the beach. We work nine months of the year. In fact, we make more in a week than you make in a month. We don’t need to wash our babies in your sink, and we don’t need to buy anything in your store. And if I were you, I would just shut up.”
He spun in his tracks and stormed out the door. I followed him outside. Later that day a man from the big top department walked into the store through the exact same door and shoplifted two cassette tapes.
Danny Rodríguez knew why someone would steal. Sitting up late the following night in a plastic beach chair near his half brother’s trailer, he was complaining about a lack of money. Hardly starving, he was wearing blue-jean shorts that reached to his knees, black high-tops that climbed to his ankl
es, and a red Chicago Bulls tank top that hung halfway to his thighs. Basically he looked like a rapper, albeit an immobile one, for underneath his oversized duds he was still wearing a neck-and-shoulder brace from his tumble off the swing.
“Do you know what time it is?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“No?” he mocked. “You’re not supposed to say, ‘No.’ Don’t you know anything about the circus by now? You’re supposed to say, ‘What do I fucking look like, Big Ben?’ or ‘What am I, a fucking watch or something?’ That’s the way to be a member of the Clyde Beatty family.”
Actually Danny Rodríguez wasn’t feeling particularly close to the family these days. Since the accident it had turned on him full force, starting when his immediate family had rejected his explanation for his fall. Feeling beleaguered, Danny was considering splitting the show. For him it was a matter of money.
“I tell you, this show is rolling in cash. Everyone gets it except us. They have to pay all the marketing people, the cookhouse, and don’t forget the band. Also, it costs over a thousand dollars every time they fill up the trucks with diesel. And all that hay and shit for the elephants. The performers don’t get anything, man. Sean makes less than five hundred dollars a week.”
“A friend of mine came to see the show,” I said, “and I was telling her how much work there is. ‘And of course you make ninety grand a year to do it,’ she said.”
“Shit,” Danny said. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her the clowns make one hundred and eighty dollars a week.”
“Tell her I wish I made that…” As he spoke, a loud crash came from No. 63, where the workers were having a payday bash. Meanwhile one of the bears was wailing in his cage because his brother had been donated to a zoo. “Do you know the only people who make any money on this show? The butchers. One guy made three hundred dollars last Saturday selling hot dogs. You can make six hundred dollars a week selling peanuts. Just look at the trailers. The concession people—Larry, David—they’re the ones with the expensive trailers. Look at what the performers have, driving around in these pieces of shit.”
“But those jobs are hard to get,” I said.
“My cousin is assistant manager of concessions on Ringling. He could get me a job selling Sno-Kones or something. You can make good money butchering, I’m telling you. Somewhere between forty-five thousand and a hundred thousand a year.”
“But why would you leave your family?” I asked.
“Because I want to buy a house, a car. I don’t want to raise my kids on the road. Let’s just say I get married—” Danny halted himself in mid-sentence. Maybe the rumor was true, I thought. Was Danny not telling me something? He returned quickly to his tale. “I couldn’t afford it. My father gets okay money, but it has to support four families. He couldn’t afford to give me more right now, and the truth is, he’ll probably never be able to. There used to be a lot of large families around the circus. But look around, we’re one of the only ones left. Nobody else can afford it.” He sat up in his chair and straightened his brace. “Look, man, I want my children to go to school. I wish I had gone. I wish I could have played football, baseball. I might have sucked, but at least I would have had the chance. Here, you work every day, you live on the road, and for what? You wake up every morning hurting, all sore and shit. You’re ruining your body. When I first arrived here I bruised my body and couldn’t work for a month. Last year I tore all the ligaments in my shoulder. This year I broke my collarbone. My brother broke his foot. This is a dangerous business.”
Shelagh Sloan came out of her trailer in a bathrobe and slippers and asked the workers to turn down the music. For a moment the sound of rap disappeared, only to return as soon as she left. The smell of exhaust from Big Pablo’s generator permeated the air.
“But you’re good at what you do,” I said. “How can you give it up?”
Danny slumped back into the chair. His arms dangled between his knees. Since his accident several weeks before he had let his ponytail grow raggedly uncut and his postadolescent fuzz grow spottily unshaved.
“I might have been good,” he said. “But I’m too tall. I used to do the three-and-a-half in the flying act. I might have done the four, or the four-and-a-half, but for what? They don’t give you more money or shit. Let’s face it, people don’t come to the tent to see the quadruple somersault. I don’t mean to put anybody down, but look at the program. When you open it up, who are the stars: Kathleen Umstead and Sean Thomas. Kathleen is finished. Nobody remembers her. And Sean? He has a good act, but all he does is get into a cannon and get shot out every show. Anybody can learn that. All it takes is several months.”
“So why are they the stars?”
“Because they’re blond, because they’re American, and because the owners don’t want this place to look like a lettuce farm.”
It took me a moment to realize what he was saying. “They’re stars because the show says they are stars. And because the public likes flashy acts. Yet to be a flyer, to be an acrobat, even to be a juggler you have to practice for many years. But the owners don’t care about that, and the public doesn’t either.”
“So how are you going to decide what to do?” I asked.
“My cousin already said I could come join him. I’ve been thinking about it for the last several weeks. I spoke with my parents about it and they really don’t want me to go. My brothers tell me it’s up to me, as long as I serve out the contract. Basically I don’t know what I want to do, but I do know I have to decide soon…” Danny drifted into silence. He was staring at the ground. After a moment he looked at my feet.
“Those are ugly shoes,” he said.
This time I didn’t hesitate. “That’s an ugly face.”
Danny looked up from the ground. “Well done,” he said. “You’re almost there.”
“So what happened?”
“What do you mean what happened?” Big Man said. “I stole some tapes, and I got caught. Cost me three hundred dollars and eight days in prison. I didn’t get any help from the show. It all came out of my pocket.”
Actually his mother’s pocket. The man they call Big Man was standing in front of the side door of the tent making sure no one along Route 1 in Princeton decided to sneak into the circus. In truth there weren’t any seats available inside the tent even if anyone did get in, and in any case they didn’t stand much of a chance of getting by Big Man. Big Man was, as advertised, big—close to three hundred pounds, in fact, with dark black skin, off-white eyes, and one prominent gold incisor. Somewhere around thirty years old, he had first joined the show when we were in North Carolina. Before that he had been working at a warehouse and living in a mission in Orlando when Bill Lane, the man known as Buddha, made his monthly run of homeless shelters, halfway houses, and Salvation Army hostels in South Florida looking for potential workers. Receiving one hundred dollars for every man he delivers to the circus, Buddha promises his prospects a world of travel and adventure in order to get them into his van. Once they arrive at the tent, however, many find themselves only halfway over the rainbow. Some quit on the spot, some hang on until the first rain, but a few manage to enjoy the routine. They get a job, a bed, three meals a day, plus seventy-five dollars a week. And for better or for worse, they also become part of one oversized, slightly racially segregated traveling soap opera and circus sideshow.
Big Man had been one of the few newcomers in the course of the year who openly enjoyed the camaraderie of show life. After one of our gags he would usually comment on some detail we had changed on a whim. He loved the big-breasted nurse in the stomach pump. He laughed at my painting the burning house. To me he seemed to be making an effort to feel a part of the circus.
“What happened was, they caught me on one of those overhead cameras. I had my Clyde Beatty T-shirt on. The one that’s a little too small.” I smiled at the thought: wasn’t everything he wore too small? “Anyway, they brought me into the station. I agreed to come to court, but t
hat night the show moved to Vineland. I had no way to get back to Voorhees. I thought they would just let it slip.”
The police didn’t see it that way. The next day, minutes before the 4:30 show in Vineland, the local sheriff rolled onto the lot, walked up to Doug’s daughter, Blair, who was selling elephant ride tickets, and demanded a halt to the show. Someone on the lot was in contempt of court, he said, and the circus could not go on until the fugitive was apprehended. All this seemed a bit histrionic for two cassette tapes, but five minutes later Big Man was guarding the big top from the backseat of a patrol car. By that evening he was dreaming about it from jail. From this vantage point, even Truck No. 63 seemed like paradise, and a week later, having served his time, Big Man walked out onto Route 1 in South Jersey and began hitchhiking north. The next morning he arrived in Princeton.
“I actually never lost my job,” he said. “When I got back the manager told me I couldn’t go into malls anymore. Later Mr. Holwadel gave me permission. He told me next time I want something I should just go ahead and pay for it.”
“So how long are you going to stay this time?”
“Until I get some money. I only make seventy-five a week, you know. I try to save as much as possible, but that’s hard. Now if I could sell popcorn or something, that would be easier. But they won’t let me.”
“Why’s that?”
“They might tell you something else. But put it this way: I’m the wrong color.”
“The wrong color?”
“White people don’t want to buy popcorn from a black man. Look at the butchers, all of them are white. I don’t have anything against the circus. I like it, but it’s a prejudiced place. The only black man who makes any money is New York, the crew boss, and he has to work for it…” Big Man straightened his glasses. “Look at you,” he continued. “You’ve got it made.”