Under the Big Top: My Season With the Circus (17 page)

Back in his van heading home Buck was philosophical again. “There are not many thrift stores I leave without buying a book. Their selection was real bad. They had a lot of Bibles and blooper books. You can get rid of Bibles in the South, but not up here around New York. Also, you would think blooper books sell, but they don’t. It’s a real art to knowing what books’ll sell. At the store back in West Virginia where I work in the off-season I throw away a lot of books. Clear up the shelf space. I put the books in boxes and give them away as heating fuel. One guy came back once a week for several months. Finally, he told me he was feeling real guilty for heating his house with books, so he decided to read each book before he burned it up. People in West Virginia know how to get by with very little.”

“So do you miss that life?” I asked. “West Virginia. Home.”

“My mother’s still there. I go back a couple of times during the season to visit my doctor. But my life’s out here now. When you’ve been living on the road as long as I have you learn to like it. I have special parking lots I like to sleep in in every city. I have special treats I know where to find, like shoofly pie around here or clams in Boston. I know this great place that has scuppernong jelly with no added sugar in Columbus, Georgia.”

Soon the tent came into sight. Surrounded by a mall on three sides and a Roy Rogers and discount fabric store on the other, it looked as if it belonged to a bloated used-car sale instead of the world’s largest circus. “And for how much longer can you live like this?” I asked.

“I suppose I can do it till I die. I do want to go to a smaller show, though, with one or two clowns, and produce again.”

“Have you done that in the past?”

“Sure. I’ve done all sorts of things over the years. I’ve produced. I’ve done advance. I’ve even been in a few movies or so. I tell the boys in the Alley it’s important to move around a lot. If not, you’ll get stale. The worst thing you can do is be on the same show all your life. Hell, I myself have been on Carson & Barnes, as well as Hoxie Tucker. I put in a lot of years at Great American. But still, I think I like this show the best.”

“Why’s that?”

“I can get away with murder.”

I laughed. “What does that mean?”

“It means exactly what I say.” He didn’t seem to be laughing with me. “I always say, you haven’t lived until you’ve spent a week in jail.”

“And you’ve spent a week in jail?”

“Oh, sure. I’ve spent more than that. It’s not until you’ve lived in jail that you know what you can do without. Oh, you can run, you can escape a few times, but sooner or later they’re going to catch up with you.”

“Who’s they?”

“The police. The customers. The parents.”

“The parents?”

He pulled his van in front of Clown Alley and turned off the engine. “I’m afraid that’s all I can say,” he insisted. He stepped out of the van and slammed the door behind him, speaking to me through the half-open window. “I’ll just have to leave a little mystery in the air.” He turned and lumbered away, leaving the door rattling in its sockets and me sitting in the dark.

“You want to know what I really think of these clowns? They don’t put one penny of what they earn back into their art. I don’t know where the money goes, because they sure get enough of it. Their costumes look like they came from the Salvation Army. Their makeup looks like it came from the Clown College assembly line. And above all they don’t look clean. In my day every clown was required to have at least one white costume. These guys don’t know white from their ass. They’re dirtier than the workingmen, and that’s pretty dirty.”

Jimmy James was angry. Earlier in the day, during the 4:30 show in York, chaos had struck the firehouse gag. Joe couldn’t find the ax for the knockoff head. Brian fell on the first hop over the jump rope. Marty couldn’t get the fire going for the blowoff. And worst of all, Henry ran into Rob during the run-around and chipped off the bottom half of his two front teeth. Back in the Alley, Henry threw his helmet on the ground, examined himself in the mirror, then slammed his chair into the ground. Moments later Jimmy came storming into the Alley. It was his first appearance all year.

“Where is the fire?!” he demanded. “This gag is nothing without the fire. I want to see the funnel.” He examined the funnel that Marty was using to blow the lycopodium into the air. “It’s a wonder you don’t burn yourself,” he fumed. “Go to the store. Buy a tea strainer. Pour the powder into the strainer, then blow once into the lighter. A small flame comes up and the girl rubs her ass real hard. Then blow again, harder. She lets out a big faggot scream. There’s no need to pour powder into the funnel every time you blow. Then there should be a big bang, a big flame, and the girl should jump with her feet in the air like in a cartoon and land in the net. Nothing beats fire, friends. And nothing beats a girl dropping her pants. You boys are relying on slapstick and knocking each other’s brains out for laughs.
Sight comedy
,” he boomed. “Simple gags that everyone can understand. That’s the way you ought to work.” He threw his hands into the air like a trained actor making his grand farewell and marched out of the Alley. Once outside he turned quickly back toward Henry. “Get those teeth capped and send the show the bill.”

After the show, he came into the cookhouse. “Let’s see what culinary arts Pops has prepared for us this evening,” he said. Inside the sagging, sievelike tent, Arpeggio had spread his broccoli and cheese on a piece of white bread with margarine. Pops, the grizzled former Marine turned grease gourmand, had actually run out of cheese and substituted Nabisco Cheez-Its. It was broccoli and Cheez-Its for the boys. Jimmy spooned out his serving into a trash can. “But, Jimmy,” Arpeggio protested. “Those are vegetables. They’re good for you.” “I’m on a diet,” he said. The previous night, during a rare rehearsal to tinker with the finale, he had announced that he had lost some weight. “Your ringmaster, your
fat
ringmaster, has lost twenty pounds since the season started.” The cast applauded. Later he confessed he had actually lost twenty pounds since January. In the circus Barnum’s humbug does not stop with the show.

“We’d like to see a dessert list when you have a chance,” Arpeggio said to Pops, who stared back at him, baffled.

“And how about a glass of your house wine?” Jimmy added.

Pops wandered off shaking his head. Jimmy sat down across from me.

“I hate yelling at the boys,” he said. “But I have no choice. Sometimes they don’t have the proper respect for tradition. For most of them it’s just a lark. But for me it’s something else…” Jimmy quietly poured salt on his soggy corned beef, the only thing left on his plate except for vanilla pudding from a can. He was dressed as he always was between shows, in black formal trousers, ankle-high boots, and an open-necked white dress shirt. On the pocket of his black waistcoat was a barely detectable clip-on pin displaying a pink triangle. “My friends at home think it’s glamorous. If only they knew that for years I lived in a two-by-two room and poured buckets of water over my head for a shower. Like many people, I came here to get away, you see. From the witch-hunts of the 1950s. If I had it to do all over again I probably would have stayed in school. But I was never a good student. In high school I had so many other things on my mind I could never concentrate on my studies. I got C’s as a result. And by then it had started to ooze out.”

Jimmy ate a spoonful of corned beef and winced at the taste. He took a sip of Kool-Aid to wash down the food.

“For me it was an escape. Nobody here asks any questions. Look at Buck. Look at me. You haven’t learned many of the secrets yet, but you will. You’ll learn about the animals, the workers. Hell, a few years ago a clown was raped by the elephant department on another show. He came to work on Clyde Beatty but was never the same. I’m afraid to say it, but most people here are running from something. There’s mystery everywhere. Just look at the people around us. My mother would turn over in her grave if she saw the people I eat with every night. She used to always say, ‘James is away at school.’ My father used to say he could
introduce
me to someone, which was his way of trying to get me into industry. But I stayed.”

“I bet they’d be proud of you today,” I said. “You still have something, something from the outside…”

He looked at me primly. “Class.” His back was straight. His hair was neatly trimmed. Earlier that day I watched him get out of his pickup truck carrying pies to the office. I noticed that his hair was shorter, straighter, and, well, darker. “What are you looking at?” he said. “I’m admiring your haircut.” “You mean my dip job. I got up this morning, looked in the mirror, and said, ‘Jimmy, you look like a dead Communist leader,’ so I went into town and got my hair dyed.” Within a week it had begun to gray again.

“I was raised in a proper Southern home,” Jimmy continued. “I’m sure you know what that means. I was taught to say ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘No, sir.’ To this day I still feel that manners are appropriate. It’s because I was raised an Episcopalian. We were taught there was a place in hell for anyone who eats their dessert with a salad fork. And of course we had a servant. Lulu was her name. I loved Lulu. I went to her funeral and tears streamed down my face. She bathed me, rubbed my back, even touched my privates. After all these years, I have never used that word.” He gestured at the black men sitting at the table across the tent. “We were always taught they were
colored
men and women. And I still believe a person is nothing without compassion.”

After thirty years on the road, I mentioned, he still seemed to be, at heart, the same person he was when he left home.

“I sure hope so,” he said. “I love the South. I love my hometown. I can’t stand all these Northerners, these New England roads. I’m still my mama’s boy. At heart I’m still Agnes’s child.” He became silent and pushed away his tray. After a moment he looked up at me. “Bruce, have you lost your mother?”

“No.”

“Prepare for it, son. It’s the most difficult thing that has ever happened to me. I’ve lost my friends. I’ve lost my religion. But nothing was like losing my mother. We did everything together. We played games. We saw shows. She was my best pal.” We got up to clean our trays. “My father died when he was in his late fifties. He was a chain smoker. My mother died when she was in her early sixties. Heart disease.” We dumped the leftover food in the garbage and dropped our trays into the dirty metal tubs.

“I’ve got it as well,” Jimmy said, “a serious case of heart disease. That’s why I’m so passionate about this show. Did you know that my paycheck hasn’t gone up in ten years? They even stopped giving me contracts several years ago. I was upset about that. I used to get fifty bucks by selling them to circus fans.” Out of his modest weekly salary Jimmy had to pay health insurance, mortgage insurance, and the insurance on his truck and trailer. “As it is, I’m already cutting into what I have set aside for later.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because they don’t pay me enough money.”

“Then why don’t you leave?”

He smiled and lifted his hand in the air as if he were about to start the show. His tone was wistful, almost ironic. “Because I can’t…. And that’s the circus, my friend. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus. I wouldn’t care who owned it, a corporate sponsor, Mr. Pugh and Mr. Holwadel, the state of Florida. I love this show. But the fact is, it takes your life away. Sometimes the circus is a ball and chain around your legs.”

In the distance three whistles blew, indicating ten minutes before the start of the evening show. Jimmy blew three whistles in return, indicating he was on his way. Without speaking we both stepped back from our conversation and moved in the direction of our separate worlds: he to the big top, I to Clown Alley. And in that movement was the essence of the circus. Stop talking, stop thinking, stop trying to put it into words and get back to the show before it goes on without you.

Back in the Alley there was an envelope on my trunk. It was addressed to Ruff Draft, my official clown nickname given to me by the band. My other nicknames included Bruno, Rewrite, and, from one of the butchers, Hemingway. Inside was a card showing a duck on the front with his arms outstretched.
CONGRATULATIONS
! it said.
YOU DID IT
! Inside was the message:…
NOW AREN’T YOU GLAD YOU TOOK A QUACK AT IT?!
Below the printing was a handwritten message: “Happy 1st of May on the 1st of May.” It was signed: “Li’l Buck.”

Give the Bear a Dog

If there isn’t an old circus saying that after a while an animal trainer begins to look like his animal, then there ought to be. After Venko Lilov there probably will.

As soon as the allegedly Russian swingers go sprinting from the rings, the lights go dim, the bass drum thumps proud, and the spotlights come up on the back door of the tent, where a dour, doughy wrestling hunk of man swathed in an alarmingly bright yellow tuxedo is leading behind him a burly dragoon of actual Russian bears. Hardly Mexican wolves in sheep’s clothing, these bears are the genuine face-slashing article. Venko’s wife, Inna, who walks next to her husband in a lavishly low-cut yellow evening dress and well-styled burgundy hair, has a forty-stitch scar and a recrafted face to assign to the wrath of her love.

“
In the center ring, the children’s favorite, those lovable Russian bears, presented by the Lilov family
…”

Arriving in the center ring with his bears, the forty-six-year-old Venko looks like an overgrown stuffed bear himself, like a kid with a black eye and broken nose who had been plucked from outside the principal’s office, stuffed into an ill-fitting rhinestone jacket, and thrust onto the stage as Papa Bear in an elementary school production of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” Next to him, his wife looks like a luxurious Mama Bear with fingers slenderly stretched in the air, toes gracefully pointed toward the ground, and face shyly adorned with the beatific smile of an aging Bolshoi star. Between them, the person who leads the first bear into the ring is Danny, their fifteen-year-old stick-figured Baby Bear of a son who despite a hint of adolescent fur on his upper lip looks more like a chess prodigy than a wrestler. Earlier in the year he had earned the indelible nickname Danny Busch after drinking his first can of beer one night and walking stone drunk into the side of the tent. The Lilovs’ rather grim appearance may not be Hollywood in style, but their personal story is certainly fairy tale in scope.