Under the Big Top: My Season With the Circus

by Bruce Feiler

  “I got this sudden urge to get up in the middle of the night,” she remembered. “It doesn’t happen to me often, so I knew something was wrong.” She threw on her clothes and went running toward the horse truck. Since the night was abnormally cold, the horses were sleeping inside to keep warm. As usual, the mares were on one end and the geldings on the other. The black and white stallions were closest to the door. “As soon as I approached the truck I saw clothes on the ground. I thought something had fallen from the roof. I got closer, waving my flashlight all around, and then I saw the man on the ground. His head was directly underneath the crotch of our largest stallion. He was naked except for a bandanna around his neck. He was a hippy. He was a drunk. If nothing else he was a pervert.”

  But how did she know this for sure? I wondered. Maybe he was just sleeping through the night. Perhaps he was trying to stay out of the cold.

  “I hate to say this,” Dawnita said, “but a horse’s penis is dirty. When it’s clean we know something has happened. Either they’ve been mating with the mares or they’ve been played with. We know they haven’t been mating with the mares.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “As soon as I realized what had happened I dragged him out of there as fast as I could and beat the shit out of him with a rubber whip. I would have beat him to death if someone hadn’t pulled me away. Luckily the guy was gone by the next morning. I told him I would kill him if he ever stepped foot on the lot again. And do you know why? Because if he would do that to an animal, he would do that to a child…”

  Circus people will tolerate a lot in private—drinking, drugs, even profligate sex were all part of the daily life of the show—but if somebody either inside or outside the community threatens to spoil the public face of the show—the basic elements of the dream—reaction is swift and lethal. The circus, at its core, is a fantasy: you can look but you cannot touch.

  As the act nears its end, Gloria calls all the horses to the center of the ring with the simple command “Chez!” With a giant sweeping gesture of her arms she signals for all eight of her horses to stand on their hind legs. The first attempt is valiant, but short. The second lasts a little longer. It is not until the third try at the trick that her full platoon of Thoroughbreds rears back on its sixteen hind legs, punches the air with its line of hooves, and holds its pose for an impossible span that seems to defy not only gravity but time.

  “The truth is, not all of the horses like to do that trick. It’s hard, and they’re getting old. These animals are around seven. If they’re taken care of they can work for another few years. But then they’ll get tired; they’ll lose weight. They’re like old people. Sometimes they just don’t want to go out and perform anymore.”

  Sitting behind her trailer between shows, with the wind skipping up from the early-evening sky and the lights first appearing on the top of the tent, Gloria realized the irony of what she was saying. All good acts must come to an end. All performers have their time. In his book Wild Tigers and Tame Fleas, famed clown Bill Ballantine writes about living on the Ringling train in the 1950s next door to the newly arrived Trevor Bale and his family. In the book Gloria (age eleven) and Elvin and Dawnita (age eight) are seen giggling around the circus lot until they are beckoned back by the commanding call of their father: “EL-VIN! DAWN-NITA! GLOO-O-O-RIA!” “Try to imagine an ocean liner whistle at six feet,” Ballantine writes, “a diesel locomotive at a crossing, and you approximate father Bale’s call of the wild.” Almost forty years later these names were still being bellowed around circus tents and their glory was just as strong. Still, hints of retirement were just beginning to be heard. Bonnie, who was a newborn at that time, had already retired once. Dawnita maintained that the Beatty show would be the last place she performed. Gloria, meanwhile, who since her days as a child on Ringling had performed in over eight different acts on at least ten different shows, insisted she wasn’t quite ready to quit.

  “Sure, I’ve done what I wanted to do: I’ve worked with horses, I’ve done the trapeze, I’ve traveled all over the world. But it’s in my blood. I’ll do it until I feel like I don’t look good enough and I don’t feel as if I can perform well. Then I won’t do it anymore. Then I’ll know it’s time to leave.”

  Tired, the horses are ready for their exit dance. Gloria sends them back into their original single-file trot around the ring, this time to the timely gallop “Homestretch.” When the last horse in the line gets to the front of the ring, the horse turns a complete 360-degree revolution and obediently steps out of the ring into the outstretched grasp of a handler. The process is repeated—eight, seven, six, five, four, three, and two—until horse number one, Blair, appears to sprint unexpectedly past the gate. “You forgot to turn,” Gloria calls in a public rebuke reminiscent of her father. Blair slowly backs up as if he were going to turn, then steps abruptly into the ring and, with Gloria at his side, bows his head to the audience. The simple gesture brings “aaaah”s from the house. The trick has worked to perfection. The horses have worked their charm.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Gloria Louise…”.

  The first half is coming to a close.

  8

  A Streak of Blood

  Douglas Holwadel walked alongside the tent and rehearsed the remarks he would soon have to make on the cellular phone in his rented motor home. In the twelve years he and Johnny had owned the circus, Doug had never had to make a call like this. His anxiety was intense. His face contorted. The air was thick around him with the dense odor of pine. He decided in the space between the office and his trailer that the best course would be to be direct.

  “Mrs. Mitchell, I’m calling about your son. I’m afraid I have some bad news…”

  Natick, Massachusetts, is a small community of 30,000 people on Route 135 west of Boston, full of deserted red-brick buildings placed around a central square and with several shallow lakes ringed around its outer core. With its rich evergreens, stone sidewalks, and gentle hills, the town is perfect for sleigh rides in winter and pickup baseball games in summer. Indeed, for years the circus used to play the baseball diamond behind Natick High School every year on July 4. The town loved the circus, for it provided a focal point for its Independence Day celebration. The circus loved the town because the lot was grassy, there was a basketball court nearby and just beyond that a rare treat, Dug Pond.

  This year, because business had been slow in recent seasons, the circus decided to move its date from July 4 to the last weekend in June. From the beginning the change caused concern. The people in town were upset that they had no place to go for July 4. The people on the show were disturbed because they had no fixed date around which to imagine their summers—a simple act of surprising importance in a traveling community. In short, the narrative of Natick was off to a bad start even weeks before we arrived.

  The morning of setup everything proceeded smoothly. The tent was up early, the rigging soon followed, and by lunchtime a gaggle of performers claiming to be Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal moved to the basketball court for the thrice-weekly exercise in miscoordination, self-deception, and Spanish verbal assault tactics that passed for sport on the lot. The start of the semiofficial circus basketball season in June brought a new level of intensity to the show. Personalities previously constrained by the ring were allowed to run unencumbered on the court. Sean, whose shortness hampered his ability to shine, would throw himself around like a giant pinball and regularly tackle people who drove past him with ease. Danny, who certainly looked the part of a basketball star in his NBA team jerseys, would glide through the air with unparalleled grace but usually manage to miss his shot (his shoulder, though better, was a convenient excuse). Big Pablo, hobbled with a bum knee, didn’t bother to run at all and relied on a nonstop barrage of abuse to keep himself in the game. In this ragamuffin ensemble I became something of a desired teammate, not because of any particular prowess on my part but because (a) I was six inches taller than everyone else and (b) I didn’t understand
a word of the Spanish insults continually hurled at me. “I can’t believe it,” I said to Julián Estrada. “I’ve gotten more compliments for several blocked shots than for anything I’ve done in the ring.” His response was unhesitating. “That’s because you suck in the ring.”

  In Natick some of the working guys wandered over to the court to scout out the competition for the much ballyhooed Big Top vs. Performers game that was slated for the following day. One man in particular, William, was laughing on the sidelines. He was new, having arrived with Bill Lane earlier in the week while the show was in Medfield, Massachusetts, on the grounds of a mental institution. He was so new, in fact, that he didn’t even have a nickname. After the game, when a few of the performers announced they were going for a swim, William and several other workers decided to join them and trekked off toward No. 63 to retrieve their swimwear.

  “How is the water?” William asked Danny as he was emerging from the pond twenty minutes later.

  “It’s nice,” Danny said.

  “Is it cold?” William asked. “I don’t like cold water. For me it has to be perfect.”

  “Nothing is perfect in this world,” Danny said. “Only God.”

  “Well,” William replied, “God made the water, so it must be perfect.”

  They both laughed and walked in their separate directions. William removed his shirt, stepped down the incline, and waded tentatively into the water. The water was chilly and smooth as glass. The level stayed shallow for about twenty-five yards, but then dropped off precipitously.

  “I heard him cry,” New York remembered. “I was just preparing to go into the water. By the time I located the sound all I could see was his arms flapping in the water and his head bobbing up and down.”

  New York and several of his men went running into the pond. Luke, one of the few white men on the big-top crew, ran to get a rope. Darryl, from props, hopped a nearby fence and ran to call the police.

  “By the time I got out there he was struggling real bad,” New York recalled. “His arms were slapping against the surface and he was screaming. Oh, Lord, I can never forget that scream. We tried to calm him down, but he didn’t listen. I put my arms around him but he pushed me off. I finally grabbed him around the chest but he just slid through my arms. Before I knew it he had sunk to the bottom of the lake.”

  By that time a rescue team had arrived. Several divers put on their tanks and plunged back-first into the water. For several tense moments the circus held its breath. The performers, most of the crew, and several of the women from the office waited anxiously on the bank. An ambulance crew made its way to the water’s edge. Finally, at eight minutes after two, forty minutes after it first disappeared underwater, the body of William Mitchell reappeared in the arms of the divers. Moving quickly, they pulled the body headfirst to the shore and lifted it onto the crisp white sheets of the stretcher. His hands were purple; his lips white. Several paramedics began pumping his stomach. For a moment there was a surge of hope.

  But that moment quickly passed. After several minutes with only the faintest pulse from the body, most of the performers turned toward home. A few people started to cry. At half past two the stretcher was placed in an ambulance and driven to Metro West Medical Center. At 3:22 P.M. on the last Saturday in June, William Mitchell was officially declared dead. An hour later Doug placed his call.

  “Before I called his mother,” he recalled, “I decided to call the police department in his hometown. They said they have a chaplain who helps with these duties. He went out in a squad car, checking back into the switchboard. I called several times trying to coordinate with him. I waited until he was in front of the house and then I told the family.”

  The shows went on as scheduled that afternoon. Kris Kristo, Danny, and a few other performers placed black tape around their wrists. Some women in the front office started up a collection. That afternoon his remaining clothes were packed in a box, along with a check for six days’ work made out to the estate of William Mitchell, and forwarded to his family in central Florida, not far from DeLand.

  The moon should have been full in Abington. Jimmy had the gout. Dawnita had a headache. And just two days after the incident in Natick a tornado came out of nowhere and hit nearby Boston in the middle of the high wire, thereby prompting Doug to run around frantically looking for Sean, provoking Jimmy to blow the whistle too early, and causing Willie to turn off the lights while Mari Quiros Rodríguez was performing a split on the wire, an action that sent Rodríguezes of every shape and size raging at the electrician, the ringmaster, and even the owner himself. No sooner had the cannon fired than Jimmy said, “Please exit the big top as quickly as possible,” and a torrential downpour dumped several inches of rain on the abandoned field behind Abington Junior High and on the uncovered heads of several thousand patrons who had just exited the big top as quickly as they could.

  A little over an hour later I walked out of my trailer and found Kris Kristo sloshing through the mud. “Hey, where’s the party?” I asked. “I gave Danny five dollars.” He gestured for me to follow him and headed toward Sean’s, a true honeymoon on wheels. About the size of a small dormitory room, Sean’s trailer had a small bed in the back, a small table in the front, and a distinctly malodorous brown shag carpet on the floor. Once relentlessly gloomy with artificial paneling on the walls and a beleaguered screen door in front that never quite opened or closed, the room had been undergoing a domestic revolution of sorts. First, in Pennsylvania, Sean had purchased a set of frames so he could mount numerous photos of himself on every blank wall in his room. Next, in Connecticut, he had purchased an economy-sized bag of potpourri and sprinkled it around the room. Finally, in southern Massachusetts, in a sure sign that he might be falling in love, Sean went to a Kmart and purchased an assortment of pillows (“They’re mauve,” he corrected, “not pink”), which he carefully distributed on every surface of his room, so that it was impossible for him or anyone else to lie down, drink beer, or exchange sexual fantasies without being covered in lace.

  As long as Sean was still a bachelor, though, his trailer was still the location of choice for parties on the lot. When we arrived a soiree was underway. Half-open bottles of Amaretto, Bacardi, and Rumpelminze were strewn across the floor. Muddy shoes were piled beside the door. Kris offered to fix me a rum and Coke, a process that involved picking up a mostly empty can of Coke from the floor, pouring it mostly full with rum, and urging me to drink it more quickly. All the usual suspects were present—my friends the circus hunks. Danny was lounging around on the floor asking people to go to the cookhouse with him to fix a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Marcos, his cousin, was dancing the samba in front of one of Sean’s three full-sized mirrors. Kris was soon dancing as well, but also pouring the drinks, directing the party, and pressing the button on the CD player so that we heard only the first few notes of every song, followed by the first few discordant lyrics as sung by Sean.

  The last person in the room was Guillaume, a scrappy fifteen-year-old with a ponytail on his head, a scar on his cheek, and a chip on his shoulder. Since the beginning of the year I had been having minor run-ins with Guillaume, who was Mary Jo’s son, Fred Logan’s grandson, and a member of the elephant department. In Ladson, South Carolina, he poured taco sauce into my root beer. In Havelock, North Carolina, he tripped me when I went to catch a fly ball during a softball game. And in what seemed like every other town he harassed me with another juvenile trivia question. While the others at the party were dancing or joking, Guillaume was lying back on the bed, complaining about the music, and periodically whacking me on the head with a plastic sword he had picked up from one of the circus novelty stands.

  After about an hour of low-grade malaise, Danny announced he was going to the cookhouse to fix his sandwich. Guillaume stood up and said he would follow. But before he did, he bent over to grab his sneakers, pivoted his rear end toward my head, and with a dreary manly grunt let forth a blast of vile-smelling gas directly into my face.


  Instinctively I shoved him out of the way. “Get out of here,” I said. “And grow up.” Guillaume did not take this suggestion to heart. Instead he threw down his hat, leapt onto my back, and began shaking my neck as hard as he could. “Take it back!” he demanded. “Take it back.”

  This certainly caught me by surprise. Here I was, at a little before midnight on a rainy summer night in Abington, Massachusetts, with a rum and Coke in my hand, a plate of leftover Chinese spareribs in my stomach, and a raving mad, underage, totally inebriated elephant handler on my back, gripping my neck and pounding his fist into my face. My first impulse was to turn around and smash his head against one of Sean’s many pictures of himself on the wall. But at the risk of seeming like a weak-kneed writer, I thought better of this. Instead I pulled his hands from my throat as Danny yanked at his shirt, and the two of them stumbled out the door.

  As soon as they left I was dumbstruck. Then confused. It was the kind of feeling I felt often in the circus when my own book-learned beliefs conflicted with the culture around me. This happened on my first day on the lot in DeLand. During practice for the firehouse gag, Marty suggested that it would be hysterically funny if Jerry, the dwarf, would disappear into the house for a moment and emerge wearing a kimono, slanting his eyes, sticking out his teeth, and pretending to be a demented Japanese. They all laughed uproariously at this idea. I winced at all the stereotypes it would be perpetuating. Luckily the idea was dropped.