“Red!” Sunshine calls, running to him across our lot and throwing her arms around his neck. Everyone says hello, and then Red thumbs at the small man who has just climbed out of the passenger side of his van.
“This is Snickers,” he says.
“Snickers T. Clown,” Snickers says, tipping his fedora. He’s wearing a suit vest with no shirt underneath, and some very worn slacks. He doesn’t smile.
“Came recommended through a friend of a friend,” Red says. “He’ll be our working man and ticket guy.”
“And performer,” Snickers interjects.
“We just need a working man for now,” Tommy says.
“I’ve got a lot of acts. I’ve been performing for years,” Snickers says. There’s a long pause.
“We’ll see,” Tommy says, turning away. “Anyway, good to see you, Red. We’ve got your stage unloaded and an extension cord ready for your van.”
“Where did you guys come from?” I ask Snickers, who gives me an exaggerated smile that reveals two dimples so deep, they must be scars.
“I met up with Red in Philly. Spent a few days there. Got a kitten from his mom. Then we headed this way.”
“A kitten?” I ask, looking around.
“She’s in the van, with Red’s cat,” Snickers says. I look over to the van, but the windows are covered with tan curtains on the inside.
“They don’t get too hot in there?”
“There’s an air conditioner in the back window,” he says. “One of those big ones. My cat’s name is Wednesday, like from the Addams Family. I’ve been performing for years,” Snickers says, looking around the tent as he lights up a cigarette. “It’s in my blood. They’ll put me onstage as soon as they see what I can do.”
“What can you do?” I ask. The others have wandered off, back to their various jobs.
He grabs his left pointer finger with his right hand and pulls it all the way back so it touches the top of his hand. He does this for each of his fingers, pulling and pushing them back, then switches and contorts the fingers on the other hand.
Story goes: Snickers was born triple jointed in every joint. He had thirty-six birth defects. Spent his first four years in the L.A. Children’s Hospital. “I was their poster child,” he says, unbuttoning his vest. “I mean, really. You drive down the 101 and you’d see my cute-ass face on the billboard. They loved me.”
He takes off his vest, folds it neatly, and sets it on a stool. Across the right side of his chest and shoulder is a tattoo of a thick, thorny vine, as if one of those popular tribal tattoos had been sharpened at each point. His torso itself is crooked, with a few bones protruding in places I haven’t seen bones protrude before, a single point sticking out from just below his ribs, like something inside is trying to escape his skin.
After a deep pull on the cigarette, he tucks it into the corner of his mouth. An exhale, and then he sucks his stomach until it’s as thin as a cereal box, with the two wings of his ribs protruding. He contorts his torso, twisting, and something pops with the kind of sound that usually makes people seek medical attention, and he twists further, his ribs moving closer together and his hips going the opposite direction, bones protruding from places I don’t understand. He straightens and throws his shoulders back, and there are more pops, and one of my hands covers my eyes except for the slit through which I can’t not look and the other hand covers my mouth. He asks if I have a stringless tennis racquet that he can contort his body through. I do not, I apologize.
“My ribs are made of rubber. It’s been my dream all my life to be on this show, and I’ve been performing now for twelve years, so I’m good at what I do. I don’t mean to brag, but I’m really good. I’m gonna get a spot as a performer here. I have to,” he says.
“Back to work,” Tommy calls from the back end. I go.
* * *
“Don’t be upset,” Tommy says, “if Red yells at you.”
We’re tying canvas straps to the metal stakes, which will bind the circus tent to the earth. “I’m gonna put you on his crew. Just don’t take anything personally,” he says as Sunshine walks over.
“Are you putting her with Red? Poor thing,” she says, stroking my shoulder. “He knows everything and he’s amazing, but don’t be offended when he insults you.” Cassie overhears and calls from where she’s building the stage curtain’s frame.
“He’s gonna call you a dummy. He calls everyone a dummy,” she says. “Dummy means he loves you.”
“Dummy means he thinks you’re a dummy,” Sunshine says. “But it’s okay. Everyone’s a dummy compared to him.”
I look across the tent to where Red sits, shirt off, belly round and hard out front. He’s bent over an electrical box with a tool in one hand, frowning.
“Red! Tess is on your crew,” Tommy calls down to him. He nods and looks away. I walk over, tentative, eager, wanting to show him that I’m the real deal. Tattoos line his arms and chest, an anatomical man bending back with three swords down his throat. Stars surrounding the man. In yellow letters over a red circle on his forearm: STRANGE. On the other arm: FREAK. A cigarette hangs out his mouth while he fixes a lightbulb with his hands.
“Hi!” I say. “I’m Tess—”
“Bring me a spreader,” he says.
“I’m not exactly sure—”
“Go!” he yells, so I start running in the general direction he’s pointed, grab Cassie’s arm as I hustle to ask what a spreader is, then keep running. Spreaders, it turns out, are long, rectangular metal bars covered with red and blue bulbs that attach to the long banner-line poles to make the frame where everything else hangs. We’re testing each section and piece of the banner line’s lights, readying to raise it twenty-five feet into the air.
The night before, I’d heard something about Red. An explanation, maybe. Story goes: he married young, had a wife and baby whom he loved ferociously. The kind of love that can only be felt by a person who gets the things he never thought he’d get. Then his baby died. And then his wife died. He was alone again.
“Test the spreaders from the main junction box,” he yells. I run toward a huge pile of electronic boxes on a metal cart, hoping for sudden insight about what a junction box looks like, say, but the stack of buzzing transformers and loose cords remains an enigma. I grab at a plug, thinking the prongs might give me a clue, and when they don’t, I try to follow the line with my hands to its origin. I glance back at Red, hoping that he might be watching and help, and also hoping he is not watching and has moved on to something else and forgotten about me. He’s nowhere in sight. I turn back to my scrambling, untangling cords, and trying to guess how things might power one another, when suddenly he’s right behind me.
“No,” he says, grabbing a cord out of my hand.
“I don’t really know—” I start, but he jumps back in. “Find the flag bag and tighten the slip-ties.” I stare blankly. “Fine,” he says, looking around for a job simple enough for an idiot. “See all these bulbs in each spreader?” I nod. I do. “Plug the spreader into this junction box,” he says, and I realize this is the same job I failed at just moments before. “Check each bulb to make sure it works. If it’s a dud, or if one of the bulbs is broken, stick these pliers into the socket, unscrew the base of the bulb, and get a new one in.” I look at the pliers he’s just handed me. Metal. I know nearly nothing about electricity, but I remember the early childhood lesson about not sticking metal into an electrical outlet.
“Is it okay if I unplug these spreaders before I stick the pliers into the socket?” I ask.
He sighs, turns to walk back to his table. “I guess,” he calls over his shoulder. Greenhorn.
I work on my task, moving as quickly as I can to make up for my lack of knowledge. As I hustle back and forth between the junction box and the spreaders, I watch Spif and Ben plug long extension cords into this box and yell at one another to test items in the show and our bunk. All lights and sound and even the little power we get in our bunks are coming from this complica
ted breaker.
Just as I’m about to finish my task, I hear Red yell, “Unplug the pigtail!” I continue unscrewing the bulb I’m working on and feel a little smug, a little proud for being such a good worker, for finishing this assigned task like a real carnie. “HEY!” he yells. “Unplug the pigtail!” and this time I glance over my shoulder to where he sits to see who is being berated and am surprised to see him looking right at me. “Yes, you!” he shouts. “Are you deaf? Dumb? Unplug the pigtail. Now!”
Again, I have no idea what this means. I jump around to the junction box, study the cords in front of me, hoping one might be—what?—coiled or curly or pink or something. “The pigtail!” he calls again, louder this time. I hold a cord up to him, ask if it’s the pigtail. “No! It’s real easy. Unplug the fucking pigtail!” he says. “The PIGTAIL! The PIGTAIL!” he shouts, and I’m frantic, pulling cords out one by one and occasionally calling over my shoulder that I do not know what the pigtail is. He stands up from his chair and begins marching over, his shadow approaching like a storm, staring me down, chanting, “Dummy! Grab the fucking pigtail!” and I can feel that heat building in my eyes, the emotional response I’ve been warned against, take nothing personally, but who can ever be successful at that, come on, who is divorced from emotional response, I want to know, as I keep unplugging and replugging and Red is hollering at me and the rest of the cast has stopped what they’re doing to stare at our scene, him screaming, me frantic on the ground, and yep, of course, my eyes brim with tears. When he is three or four steps away from me and I’m still crouched, ready like a stray to be kicked in the ribs and sent away, Tommy suddenly appears beside me, swiftly, kindly, with speed and firmness in his voice, points to one of the four pieces in my hand, tells me to twist until the lines meet, pull the plug apart, and then he disappears. I am saved. Just before he reaches me, Red turns around. He walks back to his chair and flops down heavily, as if I’ve exhausted him. The plug looks nothing like a pigtail.
In another version I hear of his story, Red’s baby died and he went mad with grief and so his wife left him, afraid of the monster he was becoming. In one more version, he left to fight in Vietnam, and when he returned, they were just gone. I hear four or five more versions during the season. Reasons why he lives in his van, why he’s been on the road for all these years. How he developed his ability to withstand pain. The number of people he’s lost. Whatever the beginning of the story, the ending to each is the same: a man always on the move, always alone.
* * *
The next night, when the work is done and fireflies spark, I see Snickers start to walk off between two cars. He catches me watching him and waves me over.
“I wanted to show you a video of an escape act I did,” he says, lighting a joint as he talks. “Want some?” he asks.
“Did Tommy tell you that we’re getting drug tested soon?” I ask. I don’t mean to be a total square, but the threat sounded real.
“Whatever,” Snickers says quickly, holding his breath with a mouthful of smoke. He looks toward our semi’s trailer, its white still easy to see despite the dark. He exhales. “I’ve been drug tested plenty of times. Never stopped doing any drugs. Never tested positive. I have my ways.”
“Fair enough,” I say.
“So?” he asks, offering me the joint again. “A few hits of this won’t even show up on a drug test.”
“No thanks. Thank you, though. Another time.”
“Cool,” he says, pressing Play on his phone to show me the four-minute video of his escape act. He narrates on top of the video’s narration. His wrists and ankles are tied up in ropes and his ankles are chained to two fifteen-pound dumbbells. He is shirtless and shivers, just a little bit, as he and his two assistants are preparing the act. The videographer giggles quietly a few times. Once he’s tied up, an assistant unfurls a black garbage bag over his body and ties the top, and he’s rolled into a river. Within ten seconds, he has torn through the bag and is out. Whatever the video lacks in quality is more than made up for by his enthusiasm. I imagine him as a little boy in the hospital, watching videos about Houdini, a man who can transform his body into a miracle. Past what anyone thinks he can survive.
“Well, I’m gonna go find some trouble,” Snickers says, winking to me as he wanders away from our truck and down into the deep heart of carnietown, the section of the fairgrounds where all the carnie bunkhouses are pressed together, where the real action goes down. “Unless of course you want to join?” he asks, stopping to look back. I do. Every part of me does. All the warnings I’ve heard from Sunshine in these first few days only whetted my appetite to get right down into the ugliest, nastiest part. Some piece of my brain thinks a meth habit might be a necessary part of the experience. Would be forgiven. But I see Tommy’s shadow walking between Tommy and Sunshine’s trailer and the show trailer, and I know enough to try to keep on his—and the rest of the cast’s—good side. I shake my head no.
“Your loss,” he says, and disappears down into the darkness.
* * *
“Tex,” Tommy whispers, breaking my stare. Red’s blockhead act with the nails up his nose is over, Snickers is sitting in the ticket box beside our front bally stage, and Tommy has spotted approaching marks.
“You ready for the snake?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, meaning no. Meaning, clearly, completely, no. Tommy uses two hands to lift the snake off his shoulders and set her onto mine. She’s shimmery and cold, eyes milky blue because she’s readying to shed. The meat of her middle rests on my shoulders and throat, sliding across my body as she squeezes my limbs. Approaching kids point and call out, specks of spit flying from their wet mouths. “A snake! A big snake!” one squeals.
A carnie shaped like an apple stops as he’s walking by. “Red-tailed boa?” he asks. I nod.
My heart is clomping and kicking with such ferocity beneath the snake’s heavy body that I’m afraid she’ll mistake it for the quick pitter of a rat’s heart, her dinner, and this very thought makes it pump faster and sweat bead on my hairline and upper lip and my wet fishnetted feet slip inside my heels.
The carnie takes a few steps back but keeps his eyes on the snake. “Had me a red-tailed boa for ten years,” he says. “Loved her. Had to kill her, though.”
“Oh?” I say, curious, but not sure I want to know why.
“I was at the vet buying her some medication, and just as I was leaving, I mentioned how strange it was that the last few weeks I’d been waking up in the night with her stretched out long beside me on the bed. I let her roam free in my house, but she’d never done that before. I was just telling the vet sort of as a joke, ’cause I thought she wanted to snuggle with me. But the vet stopped what he was doing and looked at me so seriously. You need to go home, put her in a cage, and bring her back in right now, he told me. I asked him why. Because, the vet said, she’s measuring you to see if you’ll fit in her body. She’s planning to eat you. I have to kill her. And he did.”
Tommy starts laughing his high-pitched cackle that sounds too performer-perfect to be real. I’m about to pee myself.
“Just know that when she stretches out long beside you, it’s time to say your goodbyes,” the carnie says. “Anyway, boas are sweeties. Aren’t you, baby?” he says to the snake. “Better get back. See ya,” he says as he walks away, throwing a peace sign over his head as he leaves. I have a lot of questions for Tommy, but before I can get any of them out, he ups the ante.
“You think you can do the dollar-bill trick and still keep hold of that snake?” Tommy asks.
“Sure,” I say, gulping, and try to force a smile.
The night before, Tommy had asked for one of my dirty socks when I was getting ready for bed. I’d dug one out of my stash of dirty laundry, a sock I’d worn during a long, sweaty day of setup, and he’d dropped it into the snake cage for the night. So they can get used to my smell, he said. So they’ll be comforted by it. But all I can imagine is the sock gripped in one’s coils while it is shredded
completely by the fangs of the other, the snake’s best attempt at a dead animal warning on a doorstep.
Tommy reaches into the ticket box for a dollar and hands it over. Both my hands are on the snake’s body, and it takes me a few seconds to rearrange them enough to free a hand to take the bill.
“Know what? How about you just get used to the snake a while,” Tommy says. “We’ll add the bill later.”
It occurs to me that there is no real reason why they should keep me on. And then, as suddenly, that they might not. That they could decide that I don’t have much skill or strength or experience or whatever the things are that everyone else seems to possess. They could ask me to leave.
I take a deep breath and resolve to dig deeper. To make myself necessary. To stay.
The big beauty lies across my neck.
I feel the snake’s tongue flick against my earlobe. I feel it on my cheek. I’m smiling, I’m waving. The kid is pointing at the snake. We are luring them into the tent. I try to focus on that feeling—my job as a conduit of wonder for this kid. I feel the snake’s face slide onto the hand I have beside my neck, my fingers pressing against her coil to keep her from strangling me, calm, calm, peaceful and calm, I chant to myself. People do this every day. Some people, somewhere. The snake does not want to hurt me because she thinks I’m a tree, I think, and then I feel a sharp pain on my finger. I yank my hand back, hold it up in front of my face. It’s bleeding.
The snake bit me.
Now, I die.
I am standing onstage, waiting to die.
Tommy continues ballying. I hold my finger in front of my face for two, three seconds, watching the droplets of blood bloom from the flesh, sure someone will notice and start screaming, but Tommy is getting ready to swallow his sword, and nobody is looking at me. I use the back of my hand and wrist to push the snake’s face as far from me as I can get her.
The Electric Woman_A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts Page 7