I returned to Flathead, who sent me to a canvas crew that was short a pair of hands. Trucks circled the field, stopping at precise points aligned with iron stakes driven into the ground. Several men dragged the folded sections of tent from the back of the truck. I was a runner. When pulled fast, canvas becomes slightly airborne, not so heavy, and easier to handle. Another man and I held a corner of the canvas and ran as hard as we could to the extent of the fold, went back, grabbed the next corner and ran again. The canvas sandpapered my hands to blood.
When the sections were laid out, we laced them together while the more experienced men fastened the canvas to bail rings. Walking on the tent risked tearing it, so everyone crawled like bugs, even Flathead. Next came the complicated process of raising the top, one section at a time, to keep them even. My chore was to hold a guy line until Flathead yelled to tie it off. It reminded me of water-skiing—incredible exertion while standing still.
After nine hours, Peaches hoisted the final pole with ropes tied to her harness. The entire tent strained upward while everyone watched, feeling the increased tension in the lines. Flathead tied off the main pole. In the dim interior, we set up three tiers of collapsible bleachers, cursed by electricians and sound people. Flathead announced we were finished and everyone began asking if the flag was up. We staggered into an afternoon sunlight so brilliant we bumped against each other. The entire mass of exhausted men hurried away and I trailed behind, following the herd. Since I hadn’t understood that an upright flag meant dinner was served, I was late. The only thing worse than the dregs of the stew was knowing that everyone else’s sweat had fallen into the pot.
A cook sent me to the sleeper truck for canvas boys. Four levels of bunk beds lined each wall, with a thin corridor running the length of the truck. Our collective bedroom was a mobile lightless hall, extremely hot, that reeked of unwashed bodies. Snoring echoed back and forth between the metal walls. I found an empty bunk and lay on a mattress the width of a bookshelf.
We stayed three days in town, long enough for me to prove myself a fierce liability as a taffy seller. The candy was cut into tiny plugs that could pull fillings from a molar. I was unable to hawk it aggressively enough to please the head of concessions, a bitter man who limped. He’d been an aerialist until a fall ruined his ankle. His performing monicker had been Colonel Kite but everyone called him Colonel Corn. After my dismal failure as a candy seller, he decided he liked me since I was less suited to employment than he was. The Colonel rather graciously gave me the lowest job of folding waxed paper around the candy.
The circus possessed a hierarchy with the complex simplicity of the military. Those who rode horses in a standing position were on top of the heap, followed by aerialists, live animal performers, clowns, and the ringmaster. Sideshow freaks made up the middle level. Everyone else drifted at the bottom, producing their own pecking order based on convincing their peers of personal prowess. Canvas boys were the lowest. We had no one to despise but minorities and homosexuals. Since circus people hated them already, the canvas boys were left with honing bigotry to a fine edge.
The technicians seemed to have the simplest job, and I approached Krain, the light man, about work. He led me up a precarious ladder to the booth. Protruding from slots in a metal board were several levers that controlled the intensity of the lights. Krain pulled an electrical wire from beneath the board, separated the two strands, and tucked each one in his jaws, clamped between his teeth. He gradually pushed the lever forward. His eyes got very wide and his lips pulled back in a macabre grin. At quarter power, his head and shoulders began quivering. He brought it back to the zero mark, calmly pulled the wires from his mouth, and offered them to me. I climbed down the ladder.
The aerialists and horse performers never deigned to speak with anyone. As Europeans, they considered themselves superior to the rest of us. The two clowns were hilarious in performance, making me laugh long after I knew their gags. On the occasional free day, they went fishing. I followed them once, hoping for some intangible insight into the private world of professional clowns. I watched from the bushes. They carried tackle boxes and baited their hooks like normal men. They cast and reeled and did not converse. When one caught a fish, the other nodded. The only shift from standard behavior was their method of removing a fish from the line. With a ferocious motion, they ripped the hook free, usually trailing bits of the fish’s interior. Often it was bleeding from the gills.
No one liked the dwarfs because they made more money than anyone else, and in violation of circus tradition, they didn’t squander the loot. At each new town they inquired after the stock market.
In addition to Peaches, the circus boasted three bedraggled tigers that reared on their hind legs as if begging, perched on stools, and crowded together on a large box. A man dressed as a woman snapped the whip over their striped flanks. I was leery of him until the Colonel explained his clothing—an audience was more awed by a female tamer than a male. The tiger man’s great enemy, due to her withering disdain, was the Parrot Lady. The dwarfs called her “an upper crustacean.”
She was part of a sideshow that included a perpetually drunk magician, a trained walrus, and a skinny man, double-jointed at every junction, who could fold himself into knots. There was a strong man who was dying from steroid intake. His brother was a fire eater who told me the hardest part was controlling a sneeze.
The most popular act was the Parrot Lady. She’d begun as a common sword swallower, but like everyone, had wanted to increase her earnings by diversifying her act. Five years later she was the biggest sideshow draw. Women and children were not allowed in her tent. The huge MEN ONLY sign fostered quite a crowd, and on slow nights, teenage boys were admitted for double the price. I watched her performance every night. The tent was always packed, hot, and hazed by cigarette smoke.
She entered from stage left wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved, white formal gown, looking like an aristocrat. The audience gradually hushed beneath her unwavering stare. After a long spell of silence, she began speaking in a voice so low that everyone strained to hear. Each night she told the dirtiest joke imaginable, speaking of cocks, cunts, and fucking as casually as the men’s wives might discuss children and meals. A palpable sense of guilt congealed with lust in the tent, and the men refused to look at one another.
The Parrot Lady stood very still. Her eyes fluttered to stage right and she lifted a hand to her ear. Faint chamber music drifted through the tent. With the grace of a fashion model, she rose from her stool and began an excruciatingly slow strip—from the inside out. She removed a slip first, a petticoat, her shoes, stockings, and two more petticoats, each frillier than the last. She took off her bra and panties last. No one moved. Everyone knew she was naked beneath the dress, a fact more arresting than if she’d actually been nude.
She faced the audience and began to unbutton her dress, beginning at the top of the chin-high collar and working down. Holding the front closed, she continued to her lower belly. The men were leaning forward without awareness of their posture. When her arms could no longer reach the buttons, she turned her back. The long train concealed her legs. Nothing was visible except her slightly bowed head and the long dress that everyone knew was open in front. She remained standing this way a long time. Instead of building to a crescendo, the music faded to silence. The spotlight narrowed its focus. She let the dress fall from her shoulders. Breath came pouring from the men as if each had received a powerful blow in the guts.
Tattoos of brilliant tropical birds covered every inch of her body. Two parrots faced each other on her buttocks, beaks curving into the cleft, tail feathers running down the back of her legs. A swirling flock of bright plumage fluttered up her back and across her shoulders. Parakeets perched among toucans and birds of paradise. Lush jungle foliage peeped around the birds.
Slowly she turned, revealing a shaven yoni from which a pair of golden wings fanned along her hips. On top of each breast sat two enormous and lovely parrots. She rotated a
gain, moving at a slow pace until she faced the men once more. She now held a long fluorescent light tube. An electric cord ran behind the black curtain. She spread her legs for balance and tipped her head back. Only her neck and the point of her chin were visible. She lifted the light tube above her head and very slowly slid it down her throat. She took her hands away, and pressed a switch on the cord that turned on the fluorescent tube. The spotlight went black. Her body glowed from within, illuminating the birds in an ethereal, ghostly light, like a jungle dawn. She flicked the switch off and the tent was dark save for sunlight leaking beneath the canvas flaps. The houselights came on very bright. The stage was empty. She was gone.
The dazed men stumbled outside, blinking against the sun. I never missed her act and always tried to maneuver myself near the front. After ten or twelve shows, I was sufficiently familiar with the birds to begin watching her eyes. I expected a blank look but she gazed at the men with a blend of fury and desire. Eventually she saw me watching. I was embarrassed, as if caught peeping, a curious reverse of logic. The following day I stayed in the back but she found me. Her vision locked on me during the entire act. I left with the crowd, feeling devastated.
My tear-down job was pulling stakes, a chore relegated to the most useless worker. The stakes were car axles driven very deep into the earth. To pull them, I first had to loosen the dirt by pounding the ground with a sledgehammer. At times I worked in a rhythmic blur, grateful for the simple repetition. Other times I wore myself down in rage at my occupation.
I abandoned my bunk after a wave of lice spread among the workers, making us scratch like junkies. If our hands were full, we wiggled and shifted in vain attempts to relieve the itch. I boiled my clothes and the sight of swollen nits in the seams made me sick. Since I was being fed and housed, my pay was not enough to buy new clothes. When my toothbrush snapped at the handle, I decided to quit.
I told Barney, who said he’d speak to Flathead about my working as an all-purpose animal helper. For the next two weeks we traveled across the Deep South. In many of the smaller towns attendance at the circus included a black night and a white night. The Sunday matinees were the only integrated time, but the groups didn’t mix. I swept manure, hauled feed and water, and hosed down Peaches twice a day. Barney lent me money against my raise. I bought clothes and a toothbrush. Luckily, I’d been keeping my journal in the glove box of Barney’s pickup. Everything else had been stolen from the sleeper truck.
The new job gave me greater privacy. I slept under the truck and had time to write in my journal. I never reread an entry. They represented the past, and my journal was proof that I existed in the present. As an event unfolded around me, I was already anticipating how I’d write about it later. A new entry began where the last one ended, continuing to the immediate, to the current act of writing. Each mark on the page was a gesture toward the future, a codification of the now. Through this, I learned to trust language.
The animal trainers were an odd lot who argued constantly, smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, and possessed only one friend apiece—their animal. Soon I began to roll my own cigarettes. During off-hours we sat in a circle debating the merits and dangers of various animals. Everyone teased Arnie, the gorilla trainer, about the simplicity of his job. Gabe the Gorilla was ancient and nearly blind.
One night the show was canceled due to a fire in town that destroyed four blocks. The entire circus left except the trainers who stayed to guard their animals. We passed a pint of whisky and began our usual bickering.
“Don’t go getting the big head, Barney,” the tiger man said. “Elephant ain’t the worst to work.”
“More of mine kill folks than yours ever did,” Barney said.
“Killing ain’t the mark,” the man said. “Go a season with zebras and you’ll wish you had a rogue. Zebras is the meanest there is.”
“Bull smoke,” said Arnie.
“Fact before God. Over in Africa the zebra’s worst enemy is a lion. That makes them a mean fighter.”
The others pushed a lower lip out and raised their eyebrows in the animal trainer’s sign of acknowledgment.
“My opinion,” the horse man said, “the all-time worstest is a camel. I purely loathe a camel. There ain’t no safe place to work them from because they kick sideways. I never seen a sideways kick that didn’t bust a leg to a compound. Humpy bastards are stubborn as a mule.”
Barney drank from the bottle as it went past him.
“The elephant is the closest animal to a man there is,” he said.
“Bull smoke,” said Arnie.
“Telling it true,” Barney said. “Its back legs bends forward like a human. They got tits up front, not in the back. They go off on their own to mate.”
“Gorilla’s ten times closer to human,” Arnie said.
“Well, a cat ain’t,” said the tiger man. “I’m put right out of this talk. The only thing a cat’s like is a damn cat.”
“Horse is gabbier,” the horse man said.
“Bull smoke,” Arnie said. “Me and Gabe talk plenty.”
“I heard something on a gorilla maybe you can clear up,” Barney said. “But I ain’t advising you to ask Gabe on it.”
“What?”
“A gorilla’s got a harem, don’t it?”
Arnie nodded. “In the wild.”
“Then it don’t have to work too hard for company, if you know what I mean.” Barney tipped his head to me. “I’m trying to talk nice in front of the squirt.”
Everyone laughed and the tiger man handed me the bottle. “That boy knows what” he said. “He ain’t missed the Parrot Lady since he joined on.” The men chuckled again.
“Way I hear it,” Barney said, “the gorilla’s got the littlest balls of any creature on earth. They shrink up from not having to hunt no nookie.”
“Bull smoke,” Arnie said. “They’re big as a man’s.”
“Damn cat’s got his snuggled up to his butt-hole,” the tiger man said. “I got to find me another animal to work if I want to keep up with this outfit.”
“Is that true?” the horse man said. “About the gorilla?”
“No,” Arnie said. “Gabe’s balls are big as mine.”
“That ain’t saying much.” Barney grinned at the men. “We might just have to get some proof on that.”
“We got eighty proof right here,” the tiger man said.
He opened another pint of local rotgut, took a hard drink, and sent it on its rounds.
“Might be tough to see Gabe’s balls,” Barney said. “Little as they are.”
“All you got to do is get him to stand,” Arnie said. “We can squat low and put a flashlight on him. They’re a good size, you can take my word for it.”
“Chris, there’s a flashlight behind the truck seat. Get the elephant prod, too.”
I walked through the warm summer darkness, rummaged for the light, and returned. The men were swaying on their feet.
“Gabe ain’t going to like this much,” Arnie said.
“He won’t know,” the horse man said.
“He will. He’s smarter than any nag you run.”
“All right,” Barney said. “We’ll make it so Gabe don’t know what we’re up to.”
“Nobody better say nothing,” Arnie said. “Promise?”
“Deal,” Barney said.
The men nodded. We walked to the gorilla cage, which was bolted to a flatbed truck. Arnie fastened a banana to the end of the elephant prod.
“Gabe,” he whispered. “You awake in there.”
Gabe’s tiny close-set eyes showed red in the flashlight’s beam. Arnie waved the banana. “You hungry? I sneaked you a snack.” He lifted the elephant prod until the banana was above the cage, just outside of the bars. “Come and get it, big boy.”
Gabe moved to the front of the cage. We squatted for an up-angle view while Barney played the flashlight on Gabe’s crotch. The gorilla used the bars to pull himself erect on legs that seemed permanently crooked. His big thighs wer
e matted with fur.
“Up, Gabe,” Arnie said. “You almost got it.”
The gorilla stretched higher. He shifted his weight to one leg and reached his hand through the top of the cage, inches from the banana. He thrust his other leg out for balance. Clearly illuminated was a pair of testicles the size of chestnuts. The men collapsed on their haunches, laughing and hooting. Gabe quickly dropped to a crouch and backed into the shadows. The men laughed harder.
“Goddamn it!” Arnie yelled. “You promised to be quiet.”
“You win,” the horse man said. “By default.”
He handed the bottle to Arnie, who knocked it aside. He snatched the flashlight and aimed the light through the bars. Gabe sat hunched in a corner, head bowed. He glanced at us with an expression of terrible humiliation, then hid his head. The men hushed and slowly moved away.
“You sons of bitches,” Arnie said. “You promised!”
He continued cursing into the night until his voice broke and we heard a sob. He started talking to Gabe in low tones. I crawled under the elephant truck to sleep, remembering my former roommates’ preoccupation with the heft of Marduk’s lingam. Men’s tendency to take an interest in one another’s genitals is not so much sexual as simply wondering how they stack up against everybody else. Most men need confirmation that someone’s equipment is smaller than theirs, even if it belongs to a gorilla.
After lunch, Flathead always strolled the grounds to ensure that everyone was ready for the afternoon show. Sometimes the clowns or the magician were so hung over they needed an injection of sucrose and Dexedrine. Flathead carried a small case of prepared syringes. That morning Gabe refused to eat breakfast, keeping his back turned in the cage. Flathead wanted to give him an injection but Arnie refused, promising to have his gorilla ready for the matinee. Gabe missed both performances and Flathead was furious. If Gabe didn’t perk up, Flathead warned, they’d sell him to a Mexican zoo.
The animal trainers avoided each other all day. They took care of the animals and went to sleep without talking. Sometime late in the night, Barney woke me by rapping on my feet. The trainers stood in an awkward circle. The horse man pushed his shoes against the earth while the tiger man paced back and forth. Barney was very still and Arnie stood by himself, facing away.
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