Under the Big Top: My Season With the Circus Part 11

"Okay, boys, here's the deal," he said, leaning up against the entrance pole in anguished resignation. "When you make the bangs, no more shooting the shotgun behind the seat wagons. You must shoot it behind the fourth center pole, closest to the band. Plus, no more playing with the kids during autograph party. You can shake their hands. You can sign their books. But don't touch them anyplace else..."

Some of the boys started to complain, but their pleas came out rather muted. I could feel impending doom. One of the things that had saddened me most about being a clown was all the things I couldn't do: I couldn't hug a child or put an infant on my lap. If a mother asked me to hold her toddler for a photograph, I had, politely, to decline. What if that child goes home at night and tells his mother he was touched by a clown? What if that child begins to cry?

"And that reminds me," Jimmy said. "Who was playing tug-of-war with a kid during autograph party?"

The boys looked around and mumbled at one another, in the process hinting at what everyone knew. He was probably talking about Buck.

Jimmy slapped his hands together in despair. "Well, make sure it doesn't happen again," he insisted. "Somebody called the office and complained, and now we have an incident. I'll have to have a talk with him."

Jimmy left the Alley and the show began. Later that evening I pa.s.sed Buck walking back toward his van. His head was drooped and he was talking to himself. He was holding his clown wig in his hand.

"G.o.dd.a.m.ned parents," he said. "All they want to do is complain. I tell you, it's no fun anymore. Once you take away the contact with the kids, you take the fun out of clowning. If that's the way it's going to be, I certainly don't want to clown anymore."

I brushed off his remark as another one of Buck's low-grade grumblings. Later, when he took back his red, white, and blue barker's jacket I had been borrowing for the stomach-pump gag, I took his comment at face value that he wanted to have it cleaned. The next morning when I saw him just before we were paid and he had a frustrated grimace on his face, I took it as a sign of the upcoming "six-pack" weekend with three shows on Sat.u.r.day and three more on Sunday. That afternoon when I heard Buck had taken the day off and that I would be asked to fire the gun during the firehouse gag, it didn't even occur to me that his absence was out of the ordinary. But by that evening I began hearing comments from some performers. A few of the workers started asking questions as well. And finally, during the second show as I was sitting in the Alley with the other clowns, the unspoken truth finally sank in: Buck had blown the show.

Immediately I felt the loss. Sure, we had lost workers during the year. Sure, I knew that in the circus people come and go all the time. But Buck seemed like such a fixture to me. He had been with the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus off and on for close to forty years. He was one of the first people I met on setup day in DeLand, when he stepped into my camper, stretched his legs halfway across my floor, and told me the meaning of sluk.u.m juice-the syrupy precursor to Sno-Kones. And now he was gone. I wouldn't have anyone to recommend whether to eat in the cookhouse (Buck's favorite was the country-fried steak). I wouldn't have anyone to suggest alternate routes to the next lot that were shorter than following the arrows. I wouldn't have anyone who could direct me to the cheapest gasoline, the largest thrift store, or the best homemade pie in any city east of the Mississippi, and a few on the other side as well. I had no source for duct tape either.

And why? What drove Buck from the circus was not health, or money, or even a desire for a normal life. It wasn't even one of the many mysteries he had been eluding all his life. Instead it was the times. Buck Nolan was the epitome of an old-fashioned clown-indeed an old-time circus man. He joined the show because it kept him on the run. He could live his life and pursue his predilections through the immunity of travel. Outside the tent he might engage in indiscretions, but inside the ring he was always professional, despite his sometimes gruff demeanor and often corny jokes. Unfortunately the distinction between public performance and private life seems less possible in America today. These days every public act is viewed as an expression of private demons.

Ultimately this is what chased Buck from the ring: a pernicious climate of mistrust, a kind of s.e.xual McCarthyism that seems to be spreading across America. I had felt it from my earliest days on the show. In my first week as a clown a teenage boy came up to me during autograph party and asked me if I would sign his hand since he couldn't afford a coloring book. I happily obliged. A mother who was waiting nearby s.n.a.t.c.hed her daughter's waiting hand and said in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, "Never let a strange man do that to you." The girl looked up at me and burst into tears. Now, for her, clown equals pervert. In Virginia several weeks later, as Big Pablo was trying to coax his four-year-old son inside the trailer, the boy started throwing a tantrum. When Pablo reached down and started tugging his arm, several high school students who were pa.s.sing by started yelling, "Child abuse! Child abuse!" at the top of their lungs. Maybe it was just bad manners, maybe bad luck, but I feared it was a sign that we are starting to believe that behind every strange face-even the face of a clown-is a serial rapist waiting to pounce.

To make matters worse, no one outside of Clown Alley seemed to miss Buck at all.

"Good riddance," one band member said.

"He was a horrible clown anyway," said one of the performers.

"I saw him play that handshake game," one of the butchers complained. "Usually the kid fell down when it was over."

"So is that all there is?" I said to Jimmy, surely Buck's closest friend on the show. "No one seems to care that he's gone."

"Are you kidding?" Jimmy asked. "This is the circus. I warned you, Bruce. The circus just eats you up. It sucks your blood and spits you out on the floor. If I dropped dead right now from a heart attack, I would probably lie here for several hours and then they would carry me out of the tent and red-light me from a truck tonight."

"Red-light?" I repeated.

"Throw me from a moving vehicle. That's what they do to people they don't want. You've got to realize that. Even if we die they don't stop for a minute. The truth is, they don't really care."

The next day few people talked about Buck. Some of the clowns speculated he might jump to another show. One person suggested he might just go home. Before the first show Arpeggio found one of Buck's old size-sixteen vermilion shoes and hung it from the center pole in Clown Alley. After the firehouse gag he found a bunch of dead daisies and stuck them in the heel. Before autograph party he sketched a sign on the back of a magazine that said: WE WANT BUCK BACK.

The next day the entire effigy was gone. The World's Tallest Clown was not mentioned again.

A week later it happened again.

"You see, I told you the circus was killing its stars." Little Pablo was sitting on a beach chair in front of his trailer late on Friday afternoon. His dog, Jordan (named after Michael), was scratching and digging in the sandy gra.s.s behind the flea market in Commack, Long Island.

"What are you talking about?" I said. Several members of the Rodrguez family were gathered in a circle around the door, drinking iced tea and looking somber.

"Danny," he said.

"Danny?" I repeated. "What about him?"

"He left."

"Left?"

"In the middle of the night."

I leaned against the open screen door. His sister looked up from the ground. "Without even saying goodbye."

I sat down. For several moments the group was silent. A series of images from the last several weeks went skidding through my mind. Just a week earlier, after riding the ferry to Manhattan for our long-planned trip to the Statue of Liberty, Danny decided that he would rather be by himself and wandered off alone toward Chinatown. On Monday, during our first stop on Long Island, Danny and I went across the street one night for a snack and he took the unusual step of buying me a pizza. "I'm feeling rich," he said. "Soon I'm going to have lots of money." And then the previous night, after our first day in Commack, Danny said he was sick and stayed behind when Kris, Marcos, and I went out to a nightclub. Sean stayed behind moping over lost love.

When we came back at around two in the morning, Kris and I went to knock on Danny's trailer. There were m.u.f.fled sounds within, then clanging, and finally whispered shouts among Danny, his girlfriend, and her husband-who unfortunately had just discovered what all of us had known for the last several months. I hurried back to my camper.

"Of all the problems in the world," Little Pablo said. "If he had stolen some money. If he had hurt somebody. Then I could understand his feeling that he had the world on his shoulders. But a girl?"

A few hours after the incident in his room Danny was seen wandering down the trailer line looking for a ride off the lot. He asked Mary Jo, but she turned him down. Finally a member of the band agreed. Danny brought his suitcase, slipped into the truck, and, before the first blush of morning awakened the tent, drove off to the Farmingdale Airport. Several hours later Johnny Pugh was just dropping off his wife at the same airport when Papa Rodrguez and his wife, Karen, came rushing into the departure lounge. "Have you seen Danny?" they asked. Johnny hadn't. The three of them hurried to the information desk, where they learned that their worst fears had come true: minutes earlier Danny had taken off on a flight for Los Angeles. Standing in the middle of the airport, Danny's mother started to cry.

"You know what bothers me most," Antonio Rodrguez told me later. "Beyond what he did to his brothers, his friends. It's what he did to his mother. She's been crying all day." Antonio, Danny's cousin, was changing clothes in his room in the back of Big Pablo's truck. The flying act would be starting momentarily. "I'm not blaming the girl, or anything-she's married; she has her child to think about; she's been on this circus most of her life-but last night he told his parents he would stay. They offered to give him more money. But it was the girl who wanted him to leave so he could make more money, and it was she who was the last to see him. There was all that talk about their relationship after his accident. Everybody thought he fell because he was looking at her. But he was prepared to stay. He was just worried about his plane ticket. He had already paid for it. I told him I would buy it from him and use it to go to Mexico this winter." They had agreed that this morning at ten o'clock they would go to the travel agent and swap the ticket. "This morning he was gone."

"And he didn't say anything to you?"

"He left a note."

"A note? What did it say?"

"I didn't read it. I just put it away. If I see him at Christmas I'm going to hand it back to him. He never should have lied."

In silence the rumors quickly spread. By evening they had turned malicious.

"They say a p.u.s.s.y pulls stronger than an elephant," Big Pablo said. "Now I know why. But you know what? He can't blame it on her. He can't blame it on the circus. He can't blame anyone but himself. He's the one who got into this mess and now he has to get himself out of it. And he can forget coming to me for help. As far as I'm concerned, he's out of the family. Anyone who breaks a contract doesn't have any place here. And anyone who treats his own mother like that doesn't deserve respect. He told everyone in the family he was thinking about leaving but he never came and told me. He knows I wouldn't have tolerated the idea. I have no sympathy for crybabies. Now, I have no respect for him."

Reeling, none of us left the lot that night. I, like many, went to bed early. The circus seemed so unforgiving. The dream seemed out of control.

Where Are the Clowns?

Just in time the clowns arrive.

Walking now instead of running, I approach the center ring with Jimmy's microphone just as the Flying Rodrguez Family completes its final style. As they exit, Big Pablo tries to knock off my hat. Little Pablo feints a right hook to my face. The camaraderie gives way to a gulp of loneliness as I hop on top of the red elephant tub and spin around in my oversized shoes. For a second the tent is tense with silence. I'm all alone in the center ring. Jimmy blows his whistle from behind the back door and the voice that fills the tent is mine. I'm master of the moment. I'm lord of the ring. I'm a child again.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry..."

At the beginning of the year the sound of my own voice startled me. Blaring from the speakers and hurling through the air, it was painfully shrill-and way too fast. I couldn't hold the squirming crowd. I couldn't hold the silly accent I'd adopted for the part. I couldn't even hold the microphone, I was shaking so hard. Elmo advised me to drop my accent, lower my voice, and speak into the microphone as if I was talking to a room full of children.

"Step right up, boys and girls, and see the circus sideshow..."

Within a few days I had slowed myself down, and within a few weeks I had deepened my tone in an attempt to mimic the full-bodied ba.s.s that Jimmy used so well. A former clown himself, Jimmy had a way of hanging on certain vowels and soaring with certain syllables ("The Flying Rodrguez Faaaamily...") that gave his otherwise flat-footed phrases the ability to turn somersaults in the air. It was by listening to him over several months that I learned the central lesson of announcing, indeed the central lesson of clowning itself. The key was not to be myself, per se, but to be my clown. This notion, so simple, was surprisingly difficult to comprehend, though it ultimately proved pivotal to my ability to perform. It freed me from any embarra.s.sment I might otherwise suffer from standing around in silly shoes with a pointy cap on my head. It allowed me to transcend my otherwise critical mind and act on behalf of my instincts. Above all, it empowered me to override my superego-the constraints learned from society-and live according to my id-my deepest, childlike urges.

This is the genius of clowns, and for some reason only children fully understand it. An adult looks at a clown and sees a person in makeup. A child looks at a clown and sees something else entirely-a caricature, a cartoon, an invincible creation doing what that child always wanted to do: being silly and not being reprimanded, being reckless and not being injured, being naughty and not being punished. Not surprisingly, the child is right. The makeup, so central to the adults, is not an end unto itself; it's a means of escape. It's a two-way mirror: allowing you to see what's deep inside of me, and allowing me to reflect what's deep inside of you. I was not myself in the ring. I was you. I was everybody. I was a clown.

"Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, the world-famous fire-eater-Captain Blaaaze..."

At the moment, however, I am king of the roost, a sideshow barker with a straw hat and a sa.s.sy att.i.tude. As I start my pitch, Henry comes stumbling into the center ring, flinging behind him a Superman-like cape and waving in front of him a fiery torch. He staggers up to the elephant tub, and just as I'm about to brag about his "amazing feats of fire consumption...," he points to his stomach, groans in pain, and collapses onto the ground.

"Uh-oh, boys and girls! Captain Blaze can't work tonight. Heeee's got a stomachache. What are we going to do!? Is there a doctor in the house...?!?"

The words are barely out of my mouth before a screech comes from the back of the seats, the band converts to an upbeat romp, and Marty comes speeding into the ring with flaming red hair, a long lab coat, and a four-foot stethoscope. With his manic pace and agitated action he looks like an absentminded physician-Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He is followed closely by Arpeggio, wearing mud boots, a nurse's cap, and a giant white dress that sticks out two feet from his bust and b.u.t.t with oversized foam vital parts. The Playboy Bunny meets Florence Nightingale.

"Boys and girls, please welcome...Dr. I. Killum and Nurse Anna Septic..."

Stopping briefly to accept their accolades (Anna just can't resist applause; at one point she actually shoves aside the doctor to blow a kiss to her fans), the two professionals from Clown Town Hospital lift the patient off the ground and carry him to a two-piece stomach pump that is waiting in ring one. After a giant suction cup is attached to the fire-eater's stomach, the procedure is ready to continue.

"Boys and girls, we need your help..., help us count to three...!"

Standing at the front of the pump, a giant wooden box about the size of a washing machine, the nurse grabs the handle and pushes toward the ground.

"One."

With each push on the bar she sticks out her b.u.t.t and the patient's limbs go flailing.

"Two."

Until her final hefty push when the crowd has joined the call.

"Three."

At which point the doctor goes to the machine and reaches into its core.

"Doctor, Doctor, what was the problem...?"

He pulls out a giant gasoline can and squeezes his nose in disgust.

"Too much gas...!"

The audience groans as the pun settles in. The next patient staggers to the door.

Since opening day the stomach-pump gag seemed to epitomize all the internal rhythms of Clown Alley. At the beginning of the year the gag was a source of constant friction. Elmo had designed the routine to be what he called a "big bang" gag. "You go through a bunch of business, the object goes bang, and a big surprise pops out." As he saw it, the gag starts gradually, with each bit getting progressively funnier, until the big surprise at the end. "There's a rhythm to the gag," he explained. "You have to have three or four bits so the audience understands the routine." Jimmy, however, didn't like rhythm gags; he liked sight comedy-quick visual bits with immediate payoff. Caught in the middle, the clowns didn't much care about either theory. All we wanted was laughs, which the original gag wasn't getting. We set out making changes. First, the announcer was moved closer to the action. Next, the number of patients was reduced. Finally, the ailments that afflicted the patients were piqued to make the jokes punchier. By the time we reached New York the gag had been nearly halved in time and more than doubled in laughs. The playpen had performed successful group therapy.

Other changes in the Alley were evident as well. The early tension over my presence had given way first to begrudging admission that I was actually doing the show every day and then by the summer to a surprising brand of acceptance. One incident in particular epitomized the new atmosphere. After autograph party one night in Queens, I stopped by the side of the tent to speak with Khris Allen, who had come to discuss where we were having dinner after the show. As we were speaking, a woman in blue jeans with two small children started badgering me. "Hey, clown!" she shouted from her seat. "Come speak with my children." When I signaled that the second half was about to begin, her requests became more blunt. "What are you doing?" she blared. "Stop talking to that man and come talk with us." When I didn't respond she stood up and started yelling. "Hey, you sorry-a.s.s clown. Come over here and talk to my kids. That's what you're paid for. Entertain us!" I left without turning her way.

Back in the Alley when I described this outburst, the other clowns decided to seek retribution. During the stomach pump that evening, Marty, who was playing the fat lady, went to the woman's side during the act and started dousing her with popcorn. At first she thought it was funny, until the popcorn didn't stop. One handful in her face. Two handfuls at her mouth. And when she raised her arm to protest, another handful down her blouse. "We clowns have to stick together," he said when it was over, and this time his slogan had more meaning. The change was showing in our work.

Almost shouting now, I call toward ring one.

"Wait, Doctor, you're not through yet..., here comes another patient..."

As soon as I speak, four-foot-seven-inch Jerry steps into the ring.

"It's the circus short man..."

Pointing desperately at his stomach, Jerry staggers in the direction of the nurse and collapses in her arms.

"Looks like he's got a stomachache, too, Doctor. What are we going to do...?"

The doctor leads the short man to the examining table as the nurse heads toward the pump.

"Now, boys and girls, we're going to pump his stomach...Are you ready to count?"

The children wriggle with antic.i.p.ation. I raise my arm in the air.

"One."

This time the count begins much louder. The doctor encourages the roar.

"Two."

The entire audience enters the game. The nurse is primping her hair.

"Three."

Until all eyes inside the tent are looking directly at the machine.

"Doctor, Doctor, what was the problem...?"

Marty reaches into the pump and withdraws a metal pie plate piled high with shaving cream. The audience coos in expectation.

"Look at that, boys and girls." The doctor sneaks up behind the short man-"Too..."-lifts the pie above his head-"much..."-and steadies his arm for the final blow-"SHORTCAKE!"

Splat.

As soon as the words come out of my mouth Marty takes the plate of cream and smashes it into Jerry's clown face. The timing couldn't be more perfect. The audience couldn't be more thrilled. We clowns are working as well together as we have worked all year. Meanwhile the performers all around us are viciously tearing themselves apart.

By August I had a hard time remembering my early days on the show-the sense of excitement, the feeling of wonder, the idea that around every corner was an undiscovered dream. These impressions had been replaced with an almost oppressive feeling of familiarity with the circus, and with it a sense of isolation from the outside world. Various things marked this transition. At the start of the year the number of trucks and trailers on the show seemed too many to count; now on any highway in the middle of the night I could identify any vehicle by the shape of its taillights alone. At the beginning of the season the sheer volume of costumes was almost overwhelming; now I could pick up any spangle on the lot and identify whose costume it fell off of. On opening day I carried a watch and nervously counted the minutes between acts; now I no longer looked at the time but listened to the music instead. More than merely joining the circus, I had completely melted into the show.

To be sure, living in such an intimate community has its advantages. It's cozy, for one. There's a certain comfort that comes from living and working so closely with people, a kind of unspoken trust that comes from constant contact with your neighbors and from an encyclopedic knowledge of their most intimate noises. If nothing else, I had complete faith that after six months in this world everyone in the circus would defend me to the death from the threat of outside force. Circus people may tear themselves apart, but to the outside world they present a resolutely unified face.

Still, if this world felt so safe so much of the time, why did it seem so perilous to inhabit? Why did people flee in the middle of the night? The answer, I came to feel, exists in the nature of the melting pot itself. With such a wide variety of ingredients, the only way for this kind of community to thrive is by letting each individual component live according to his or her own rules. The circus, as a result, is fundamentally liberal. Its essence is its freedom. Its peril is its license. In this way, more than most, the circus is a startling mirror of America, presenting an image that is either a precise reflection or a gross exaggeration. Either way, it's definitely a world where bodies are primal, where people work with, express themselves through, and spend a remarkable amount of their leisure time worrying about their physical selves. And what about their minds? Some pray. Some read. Some sing. But many more watch Geraldo, read the Enquirer (that's how Kris Kristo, for one, learned English), and talk about their neighbors.

Above all, it was this lethal strain of gossip that so soured me. The sudden departure of Danny Rodrguez brought forth a seemingly endless stream of accusations and innuendo. This wasn't the tame sort of gossip about who got pregnant before they were married or who was knocking on whose trailer last night. Instead it was a more venomous breed, designed to weaken and destroy. When I first joined the show I was fascinated by all the tales of family intrigue around the lot. I was curious about the number of angles, affairs, and character a.s.sa.s.sinations that could be flown around one group of people. By August I was sick of them. Did I really want to know that a man I like, a man I admire, tried to make a pa.s.s at his own son's wife? Did I really want to know that another man I like, a man I respect, is married to two women at one time? These activities may be part of "real life," but if they are, then I know why people go to the circus, for their real lives are too much to bear.

"I knew this was going to happen," Jimmy James berated me when I told him about my frustration. "You've gotten too close. You've been at the fair too long. You can't get attached to these people. You can't think you're doing it for them. You're doing this, we're all doing this, for the ring. For the love of the circus. It's like a day-care center all around this lot. That's why I just retire to my trailer after the show and pull my curtains down. You can't let circus life ruin your love for the circus."

After thirty years of living in the same day-care center, Jimmy had tapped into one of the few consistent veins that joined people on the show: the only way to survive in the circus was to build a private world of one's own. Circus people, I realized, are like tigers: they have a tendency to devour their own. Those who survive do so by living in a tiny cage and only coming out when they have to perform. Right down the line of performers-Nellie and Kristo Ivanov; Venko and Inna Lilov; Dawnita and Gloria Bale-each of these people told me at one time that the only way they survived in the circus was by minding only their own business and n.o.body else's. They survived by reaching some mysterious vigilante nirvana, where they trusted no one else and worried only about themselves. They had their forty acres and a mule. They were free.

This is America, I thought to myself. It is the circus. Could I find my way home?

Beaming in my artificial smile, I stand in the middle of the center ring and prepare for the blowoff of the gag.

"Okay, Doctor, you've fixed two, but look who's coming now..." I point my glove toward the side door of the tent, where Rob appears in a flowery dress (with an inner tube hidden underneath it) and a tub of popcorn and a drumstick in his arms. "It's the circus fat lady..."