"He's come a long way for a little excitement," I said. "It must be better than four hundred miles from Lambeaux to here."
Harper shrugged. "Who can resist a circus?"
After the dogs came a trapeze act, and then a company of clowns took over, working the sawdust track and the aisles as a gang of roustabouts proceeded to throw up a huge, double-walled steel cage that would contain the Bengal tigers listed as the next act in the program. The double-walled cage was the same one Phil had used, but it now had a curious modification: an extra set of doors had been cut into the enclosure, and they extended all the way to the top of the cage, twenty-five feet in the air. I wondered what they were for.
The rigging completed, the small band struck up another fanfare; Luther, dressed now in black leather pants with matching vest and black boots, came bounding into the caged-in ring out of the mouth of the tunnel leading back to the penning area. As the music abruptly ended and the applause died down, Luther turned back toward the dark tunnel and casually clapped his hands together once. Instantly, a huge, sleek Bengal tiger emerged from the tunnel as if shot from the mouth of a cannon and raced toward the man standing in the center of the ring with his hands at his sides.
My initial reaction was that a critical mistake had been made-a missed cue or a mistake in timing by the handlers working the tiger cages backstage at the other end of the tunnel-and I sat bolt upright in my seat, sucking in my breath. Animal trainers rarely used blank-loaded guns any longer, but Luther had nothing in his hands, no whip, chair, or cane baton, and no sane man faced a grown tiger with nothing but his bare hands. Luther had absolutely nothing to interpose between himself and the savage missile of fangs, muscle, and claws hurtling toward him. The tiger bunched its hind legs beneath it and leaped at Luther's head as it extended its great paws.
At the very last moment, Luther put his hands on his hips and bowed slightly, no more than five or six inches. The tiger sailed through the air over him, its furred belly actually seeming to brush against Luther's shaved head, and landed on the padded platform directly behind the trainer. It immediately leaped down to a slightly lower platform to the left, sat on its haunches. Even a slight flick of the tiger's paws during its flight could have torn Luther's head from his shoulders, and then these few hundred people inside a circus tent in a desolate area of the Midwest would certainly have seen a lot more for their money than they'd bargained for.
Even as the first tiger was settling onto its perch, a second tiger burst from the dark mouth of the tunnel, and then a third. Each of the tigers executed the same maneuver, leaping through the air only millimeters over Luther's slightly bowed head to land on the platform behind him. As the tigers reared up on their haunches and pawed the air, Luther turned around to bow to them, then raised his arms to acknowledge the applause of the crowd.
Neither Harper-who, like me, knew more than a little about the difficulties and dangers of working with tigers-nor I was clapping. We'd both half risen from our seats in expectation of grisly tragedy, and only now, as the applause began to fade, did I realize that I had been holding my breath. "Jesus H. Christ," I said as I exhaled and slowly lowered myself back down onto my seat. "That is one fucking crazy animal trainer."
Harper said nothing as she too sank back into her seat. She didn't have to. When I glanced sideways at her, I could see that her face was flushed, her maroon, gold-flecked eyes gleaming. I wondered whether it was Luther himself that so excited her, or his masterful handling of the cats, and decided that it was probably both.
Spellbound, I watched Luther work his tigers, using only voice and hand signals. Damned if the man might not actually be the world's greatest animal trainer after all, I thought. Up to that point, the greatest I had ever seen was the justly celebrated Gunther Goebbel-Williams, now retired from Ringling Brothers, who'd worked with an elephant and up to a dozen tigers in a ring. Statler Brothers Circus hadn't had that kind of a livestock budget, nor did this one. Luther might only have three cats, but one tiger can kill you just as easily as a dozen, and I had never, ever, heard of a trainer going into a cage with tigers empty-handed. A whip or a baton might be a puny defense against a Bengal tiger, but the point was that the tiger didn't know that. The whip, chair, or baton was an important psychological barrier between man and beast, the man's scepter of authority. Luther managed to work without anything.
To the unpracticed eye, the tricks Luther did with his tigers would appear simple. In fact, they were anything but. He worked them very slowly, in elegant routines requiring perfect control and concentration on his part, and absolute cooperation and split-second timing on the tigers' part. It was the group equivalent of a top expert skier "walking," virtually in slow motion, down a precipitous mountainside while athletes of lesser abilities schussed past him to the plaudits of onlookers who did not understand that slow can be much more difficult than fast-in skiing, in working animals, and in life. It struck me that, alone among the World Circus performers, Luther would probably have the most difficult time being accepted by a larger circus-at least this particular animal act. The act was simply not sufficiently flamboyant to excite audiences used to faster routines. Luther had opted to turn animal training to an art form that could only be appreciated fully by the cognoscenti.
When he finished, he casually waved his cats, one by one, back into the tunnel leading to the penning area. There was only a smattering of applause by now, but I knew that Luther was the greatest animal trainer I had ever seen, and I found that I was deeply moved by this display of skill, courage, and absolute rapport between man and animal.
Now, standing alone in the center of the large ring, Luther produced a tiny whistle from a pocket in his black leather vest. He raised the whistle to his lips, blew into it. The resulting sound was inaudible to human ears, but the immediate response was the great, trumpeting bellow of an elephant somewhere backstage; the sound seemed to fill the tent with an almost physical presence, making the bleacher platforms vibrate. Luther spun around, then ran across the ring and disappeared into the tunnel.
"And now …" the announcer intoned over the public address system, ". . the monster elephant!"
There was another trumpeting bellow from backstage.
"Neat," Harper whispered in my ear. "He's taught Mabel to speak."
I agreed that it was neat; getting Mabel to do anything on command, with consistency, was neat.
A few moments later, Mabel, outfitted in full, clanging "war elephant" regalia of steel-studded leather harnesses, marched regally through the parted curtains of the entranceway, with Luther riding atop her, while the band enthusiastically blatted out a souped-up version of the Triumphal March from Aida.
Whether or not Mabel was fully earning her keep, she was certainly looking real good; obviously putting away her vitamins and truckload of hay a day and getting her beauty rest. I felt a surge of emotion as I gazed up at the magnificent, multi-ton beast that I had nursed back to health and started to train when she weighed barely three hundred pounds. My little baby had made good. I felt like a proud parent, and I found I had tears in my eyes.
Luther stopped her when she was in front of the first bleacher section and she immediately began to turn in a circle, lifting her knees high as she did a kind of elephant prance I had never seen before. I could see that he was controlling her with a mahout stick, a mahogany pole with a steel hook at the end, prodding and goading her behind the ears to get her to go forward or to turn. As with Luther's performance with the tigers, I was more than a little impressed by his control of Mabel. The proper function of a mahout stick, despite its nasty hook, is not to hurt, for it's never a good idea to get an elephant angry at you, but to more or less focus the animal's attention on what it is you do or don't want it to do. I'd had an aversion to the mahout stick, so I'd used a baseball bat-a Louisville Slugger, Henry Aaron model. After Mabel had started to put on weight and pose a very real threat to my life and limb, I'd found it quite effective to get her attention by whacking her
on the tusks with the bat if I was on the ground, or around the head if I was on top of her. Luther, however, seemed to be doing just fine with the hooked mahout stick-but I comforted myself with the thought that Luther was bigger than me.
Mabel finished her curiously dignified pachyderm pirouette. She obviously knew-and accepted-the routine, for with no further prompting from Luther she straightened out and came down the sawdust track, heading for the next bleacher section, opposite Harper and me. As the animal and her rider came abreast of the box, I raised my hands above my head and applauded. This was not a good idea. I'd no sooner raised my arms than Mabel's incredibly powerful yet delicate, sinuous trunk whipped around under my arms, encircling my chest, and plucked me straight up out of my seat.
"Sheeit!" I screamed as I was lifted high in the air and then deposited unceremoniously on my stomach, arms and legs splayed to the sides, in the valley between Mabel's two huge skull mounds, virtually in Luther's lap. The trainer looked even more startled than I was. "Jeeesus Christ!"
So much for my skepticism regarding the acuity of an elephant's long-term memory.
The fact that Mabel had decided to shanghai an old friend during the course of her performance obviously wasn't going to keep her from completing her star turn. Without missing a step, and with me bouncing around and with only a precarious grip on a strap of her head harness to keep me from falling to the ground, she reached the next bleacher section and immediately went into another pirouette.
The people, naturally assuming that this hilarious spectacle of the plucked-up dwarf dangling from Mabel's head harness was all part of the act, were out of their seats, screaming, stomping their feet, and clapping with wild enthusiasm. Mabel, of course, was loving it too, and she proceeded to raise her feet even higher as she "pranced." I could feel my fingers beginning to ache as I held on for dear life.
"Hey, look!" I said to Luther, shouting to be heard over the roaring cheers of the crowd. "I'm really sorry about this!"
Luther had gotten over his initial shock, and was studying me, his glacial blue eyes bright with amusement. "Frederickson!" he shouted back in a voice laced with a heavy German accent. "Mabel's first mahout! Obviously, you imprinted her! She loves you! You are her only true master! I must say I'm quite jealous!"
I looked into the hard features of his face to try to see if that was his idea of a joke, decided he was at least half serious. "Yeah, that's great!" I yelled, tightening my grip on the harness with my left hand and extending my right. "How about helping me get up in the saddle?"
He grinned, then reached out and gripped my right wrist with fingers that felt as strong as steel cables. He effortlessly dragged me on board, then helped me turn around so that I was sitting cross-legged, just in front of him, with a secure grip on Mabel's harness.
"Are you okay, Frederickson?"
"Yeah," I replied over my shoulder. "It's been some time since I've taken an elephant ride, but I think I can manage not to fall off. What happens now?"
The crowd noise was beginning to subside as people settled back in their seats to enjoy the spectacle of the "world's greatest animal trainer" and a foolish-looking dwarf sitting atop the "monster elephant," and Luther was able to speak in a normal voice.
"I'll let her finish the routine," he said evenly, "and then I'll take her back so that you can dismount with some dignity. It's a pleasure to meet you, Frederickson. I've heard and read a good deal about you. I regret that we never had a chance to work with each other. I understand you're now well known as a private investigator, but I must say I was most impressed with what you managed to achieve with Mabel here. People also told me you worked with Bengals when you were with the circus."
Mabel had reached another bleacher section and was going into her curiously dainty pirouette. I half turned so that I could look into Luther's face, his startlingly blue eyes. He still had a look and air of amusement about him; despite his compliments, I had the feeling that he still couldn't quite believe there was a dwarf riding along with him on Mabel.
I said, "I never got in a cage with any Bengals, Luther. I just played with them. I used to like to help raise them from the time they were cubs."
"Always the best way."
"With me, working with animals was always just a hobby. Strictly amateur hour." I paused, added: "There was a time in my life when I pretty much preferred animals to people-most people."
"Oh, I still feel that way," Luther said easily. "Did you ever think about working tigers in the ring?"
"No. I never felt like getting eaten."
Luther grunted. "I believe you would have made a very good professional animal trainer."
Mabel, still running on automatic pilot, finished her dance, moved on to the last bleacher section, started turning once again.
"I was having enough trouble getting people to take me seriously as a tumbler and aerialist, Luther. I just don't think too many people would have taken to a dwarf tiger tamer."
"The tigers must have taken you seriously. That's all that counts."
"What about you, Luther? Why is it that nobody ever heard of you until you came to work for World Circus? And why do you stay when you're so obviously ready for bigger things?"
He paused a few seconds before answering. "I'm quite happy with World Circus, Frederickson."
"Are you? Now that Goebbel-Williams has retired, you'd have top billing at Ringling, or with Clyde Beatty. Here you're just another act listed in fuzzy print in a cheap program. As a matter of fact, that's true of every performer with World Circus, and you've got top-drawer acts. It's almost as if the owner wants to keep the circus going-but just barely, without too much publicity. What's going on here, Luther?"
"It's a long story, Frederickson," he said carefully. "I wouldn't want to bore you."
"Oh, I'm sure I'd be interested. Where did you people come from, and why is it nobody seems interested in moving on to the bigger arena shows?"
Mabel finished her pirouette and started back around the sawdust track.
"Ho!" Luther barked, reaching over my right shoulder and rapping Mabel smartly on the top of the head with the blunt end of his mahout stick.
Mabel stopped dead in her tracks.
"Back!" Luther commanded, rapping her two more times. "Ho! Back!"
Mabel stayed where she was. Luther waited a few seconds, then rapped her twice again, this time harder.
"Back, Mabel! Ho! Back!"
Mabel still didn't move. The crowd began laughing again, hooting at the trainer and the dwarf atop the recalcitrant elephant. Luther reversed the stick in his hand, used the steel hook at the end to goad her as he repeated his command for her to reverse direction. There was still no response from Mabel. The crowd began to laugh even louder. They were loving this unexpected clown act.
I again glanced back at Luther, who now looked a good deal more surprised and frustrated than amused. I said, "I used to use a baseball bat on her; Louisville Slugger, Henry Aaron model. You wouldn't happen to have a baseball bat tucked away up here, would you?"
"No, Frederickson," Luther said somewhat tersely, "I don't have a baseball bat. If I'd known Mabel was going to arrange to have you join me up here, I'd certainly have brought one."
"Mabel was always such a prima donna, as I know you've discovered. She likes the crowd response, and she doesn't want to give up the limelight."
Luther shook his head. "That's not it. It isn't the crowd, it's you. She wants to finish out the act with you, to show you what she can do."
"The act isn't finished?"
"No. I told you: I was going to take her back and let you off before we continued."
"Well, Luther, what the hell? I'm already up here, so why don't we all just go ahead and do whatever else it is you do so that we can keep Mabel happy?" The fact of the matter was that I was thoroughly enjoying myself in this, my first return to my circus alma mater. I was enjoying the limelight. It was exhilarating to be riding this great beast, and I wanted to prolong the experience
for as long as possible.
Luther, an enigmatic smile on his face, didn't answer right away. Finally, he said, "I thought you might prefer to get off."
"Nah. I'm fine, Luther. Go ahead and finish the act."
"You're sure?"
"Hey, it's not as if this is the first time I've ever ridden an elephant. Let her rip."
"As you wish," Luther said, and then prodded Mabel behind the left ear with the hooked end of the mahout stick. "Go, Mabel! Ha!"
Mabel went; she reacted immediately, heading up the track at a good pace to the accompanying cheers, laughter, and applause of the crowd. She started to make the turn around the caged-in ring, abruptly stopped in front of the huge, steel double doors. Luther reached over my shoulder and used the hooked end of his stick to release the safety latch on top of one of the gates. He pushed with the stick, and the portal swung inward. Mabel moved forward.
I was beginning to have serious second thoughts about my casual decision to stay aboard Mabel for this particular ride.
Mabel turned sideways in the relatively narrow corridor, and this enabled Luther to lean back, hook the top of the open gate, and pull it shut. Mabel moved again, and Luther opened the inner gate, which automatically closed behind us as Mabel, without any prompting, stepped smartly into the enormous cage. Two tigers bounded out of the tunnel and began to race around Mabel, through her legs. The third tiger joined them, and all three bounded to their leather-padded pedestals where they sat and-I was convinced-proceeded to eye me hungrily.
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