Under the Big Top: My Season With the Circus (3 page)

As we sat for a fourth after-dinner drink in our next stop, the Neon Armadillo, I finally got around to asking if he was amenable to having me travel with his circus. Without hesitation, he said yes. After another round, I asked if he would let me perform. To this he bluntly said no. “If this is just a ploy to get a joyride in the ring,” he insisted, downing what would become his last drink of the night, “then we’re going to have to say no. We get hundreds of requests a year from people wanting to be guest clowns in our show. Some even offer to pay us. We are professionals. We don’t cotton to amateurs.”

The next morning Doug drove me to winter quarters to meet John W. Pugh, his partner and the president of the circus. By the end of the previous evening I had persuaded Doug to change his “no” to a “maybe,” but still he had made it abundantly clear that Johnny, who was responsible for the day-to-day operation of the show, would make the final decision. A short, stocky man with a boater’s tan and boxer’s handshake, Johnny Pugh was a former trampoline artist and stuntman who had served as Richard Burton’s stunt double in the film
Cleopatra
. He patted me chummily on the back, invited me into his roving office, then sat back and watched as a group of senior officers filed in to meet me—the vice president, the treasurer, even the boss canvas man, a former addict turned crew chief who was responsible for putting up and taking down the tent in every town. All of them were pleasant, considerably more informal than Doug, but still extremely skeptical. What if I saw the mess inside the cookhouse? they wondered. What if I heard that the workers did drugs? Johnny listened carefully to these concerns but didn’t say a word. He didn’t care what I had written in the past, he didn’t care what I might see in the circus. In over fifty years in show business he had dined with kings and wrestled with murderers, and he would read me for himself. At the moment he was mum.

It was not until later in the morning, with the arrival of the marketing department, that the mood began to change. “What a great idea!” said the national marketing director in a voice I soon recognized was taken as the word of God. “Just think of all the publicity we can get out of him.” Almost instantly I could see the idea gaining strength as it nodded around Johnny’s paneled office in the mobile ticket wagon, Truck No. 33. “I don’t see why not,” one said. “He does have a lot of performing experience.” Finally Johnny spoke up: “We consider this circus to be one big family,” he said with a faint English lilt in his voice and a defiant twinkle in his eye. “Everybody works hard, and nobody gets rich. And I warn you: once it gets in your blood, it never gets out.” He stood up and stuck out his hand. “Welcome aboard,” he said with a smile. “We start in two months.”

That evening I was invited to have dinner with Elmo, the show’s producing clown, and several of his friends. We were looking through books of famous clowns for inspiration in designing my face. I had a lot to do before opening day on March 25: find a camper; learn to fall; tell my mother. As I sat on a couch making notes to myself, Elmo was watching
Jeopardy!
and calling out the questions. Just before dinner the Final Jeopardy answer was flashed on the screen. The category was “Odd Jobs,” and the answer:

It was the profession of Lou Jacobs, model for a 1966 postage stamp, who died in Sarasota in 1992
.

The question, which all of the contestants and all of the people in the room got right:

What is a clown?

“Damn, her toenail sure is big.”

Once the scrubbing on Sue’s foot was done, one of the assistants rolled out a surgical tray with several sizes of scalpels and no fewer than twenty pairs of scissors. A team of doctors began gathering around Sue’s injured leg, commenting on the dimensions of her foot—approximately the size of a toilet seat—and the thickness of the black hair on her leg—about the consistency of a steel dog brush. Later, if she survived, the wiry hair all over her body would be burned off by a blowtorch just before the start of the season. Fred, unlike other trainers, chose not to primp his elephants further by painting their toenails white. His elephants, though well-trained females, were still dangerous, he seemed to be saying, a lesson one family—indeed one entire community—would learn all too well later in the season.

Dr. Heard interrupted the gawking session to begin the operation. He took a long spike about the size of an oven cake tester and poked it into the heart of the abscess just above Sue’s toe. A red, pussy substance oozed from the wound. Using a scalpel, he peeled away the flaky black skin and shaved off several layers of the toenail. As he slowly cleaned the wound and finished trimming her nail, the mood in the barn began to lighten. Several doctors began sizing up Sue’s teeth. A handsome male teacher posed for pictures next to her head.

Within half an hour, Dr. Heard had finished emptying the abscess and the doctors began rolling the equipment away. One woman remained, filling the banana-sized abscess with sterilized gauze and wrapping the entire bottom half of Sue’s foot with seven Ace bandages. At 10:30, after removing the respirator tube, Dr. Heard administered a shot of the reversal agent into the identical spot in Sue’s right ear where he had applied the sleeping drug. Almost immediately Sue’s eyes flashed open, she exhaled, and her entire body convulsed.

“Everybody clear!” Dr. Heard shouted, as the last several members of the team scampered behind the gates.

“She’s moving!” cried Doug, who had just returned. “She’s moving her hurt foot.”

“Sue, Sue!” called Fred in his steady cadence. “Steady, Sue!”

Sue nodded her head slightly and stretched her injured foot. Blood seeped from her wound and left a small stain on the bandages. Fred began to pace. Everyone else stood still. Sue issued a muted growl and slowly unfurled her trunk. In a moment she began to rock back and forth in an attempt to gain leverage. Then she collapsed, splashing hay on her face.

“This is where they can most damage themselves,” Dr. Heard said aloud. “It should take about fifteen to twenty minutes for her to get enough energy to rise up again.”

Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty, but still Sue was unable to right herself. After thirty minutes she stopped swaying, and at forty-five she closed her eyes. The room became tense again. Hoping to coax her onto her feet, Fred walked into the surgical area and unhinged the steel chains around her feet. Doug turned away in fear. Dr. Heard felt Sue’s ear for a pulse and wiped away the tears that were streaming down her face.

At 11:30, a full hour after the reversal shot had been issued, Dr. Heard administered a second dosage. Twenty minutes later, when Sue had still not roused herself, the doctors resorted to a set of home remedies. First they got out the broom again and began sweeping her sides. Next they threw several blankets on her back and three team members began giving her a massage. When that too failed, they stuffed a deflated truck tire inner tube underneath Sue’s neck and futilely tried to prop her up by inflating it. They even discussed tying ropes to the ceiling and leveraging Sue to her feet.

“It’s not going to work,” Doug moaned. “She’s given up. This is what I was worried about. She’s lost the will to live.” He asked me to take one last photograph of Sue so he could bring it back to his wife.

By now close to desperation, one of the doctors suggested Sue might be tired of all the humans in the barn and prefer other company. The room was cleared and a student trotted across the lawn to the recuperating barn and returned with a dashing Thoroughbred stallion who was under treatment. The horse was led slowly into the barn. He looked at Sue. She looked at him. Then she fell back asleep. The experiment had failed. The horse was led away.

When all of these old wives’ gimmicks had failed, Dr. Heard decided that he would give Sue one more shot of the reversal drug. Perhaps the dosage he had used on the African male in Albany was not enough for Sue, he speculated. If the third dosage did not work, however, Sue would soon be in serious trouble. After lying on her side for much of the morning, she was in jeopardy of filling a lung with fluid.

For the fourth time that morning Dr. Heard climbed on top of Sue and shot an injection into her right ear. Quickly he climbed over the railing and waited. He did not have to wait long.

Within seconds of the third shot reaching her bloodstream, Sue sat upright with a bold and startled jolt. Moving deliberately, but determinedly, she rocked her body back onto her hind legs and paused. The thirty people huddled against the railing around her paused as well. Then, at 12:37 in the afternoon of a chilly, rainy, late-January day, after three and a half hours of morphine-induced sleep, the forty-two-year-old Sue heaved her two-and-three-quarter-ton body onto her three still healthy feet, arched her trunk high into the air, and heralded the start of the circus year by filling the air with a ceremonial elephantine trumpet blast and flooding the ground with an equally unceremonious outpouring of elephant urine.

Let the season begin.

First Half

The Circus on Parade

Without warning a voice descends from the blue-and-white-striped heavens.

“
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the world’s largest traveling three-ring tented circus will start in
five
minutes
…”

Behind the back door of the packed big top, Jimmy James turns off his portable microphone, clips on his black pre-tied bow tie, and pulls the ruffled cuffs from underneath the sleeves of his royal red tailcoat. Without thinking, he pats down his hair, unavoidably white after three decades and three hundred thousand miles on the road, and pulls down his waistcoat, surprisingly trim as it settles around nearly three hundred pounds of all-American truck-stop cuisine. He smiles wanly, peers through the flaps at the three thousand people hurriedly assuming their seats, and reopens his microphone to a voice as deep and rich as the three primary colors of the tent itself.

“State law prohibits smoking in a public tented area. For your safety, and the health of our children, thank you for not smoking. Throughout the presentation of all animal acts, and through frequent blackouts, please remain seated. Thank you for your cooperation, and have a healthy, fun day at the circus
…”

With a quick wave to the veterans and an encouraging nod to me, Jimmy slides through the back-door flaps and steps into the darkened tent. As he does, the three dozen or so performers slip off their bathrobes, snap on their remaining spandex accessories, and ease their way toward the mouth of the tent. Finally, at precisely 4:30
P.M.
, Jimmy blows his silver-plated ringmaster’s whistle and a bass drumroll hushes the crowd.

“
Circus producers John W. Pugh and E. Douglas Holwadel welcome you to the Clyde Beatty—Cole Bros. Circus, entertaining generations of American families since 1884. Your overture, under the direction of James Haverstrom
…”

As I move into place my heart beats faster. I try to conceal my trembling hands. For several weeks I had been preparing for this moment, lurching between a feeling of suave bravado and a sense of utter fear. When I first told my friends I was joining a circus they had greeted my news with hollow stares, then disbelief. “You’re kidding.” “You’re doing what?” “No, really?” “And where did you go to school?” I got smiles. Rolled eyes. Squinched noses. Nervous laughter. And more than a few snide asides: “Grow up.” After a while their attitude would often take a turn. “The circus, huh?” “How fascinating.” “I had an aunt who joined a carnival.” “My uncle used to swallow swords.” But in the end they usually delivered the kicker. “So what are you going to do, be a clown?”

The circus, I soon realized, has an image problem. Many people have fond images of seeing one as a child, but they still think of circuses—and circus people in particular—as dirty, degenerate, and downright depraved. “Watch out for the lion trainer,” people told me. “Beware the bearded lady.” Even my mother recalled taking me to a one-ring show when I was a boy that was so filthy and stinking that she took me home at intermission and vowed never to let me return.

At first I scoffed at these concerns. How dirty could it be? I said. I’d done a lot of traveling. I’d slept on a lot of floors. I’d met a lot of greasy con artists on overcrowded Third World trains. In fact I secretly prided myself on my ability to get along with people who were not only vastly different from me but often out to rip me off. Still, as the time came closer for me to leave my apartment, my telephone, my cozy group of urbane, Ivy League, vegetarian friends, I began to have doubts. Maybe this world really would be dangerous. Maybe I was getting in over my head. Talking my way onto a show had been a challenge. Now, after I had done it, the circus seemed less and less like a game and more like a world full of professionals and artists into which I was plunging headfirst with a swagger matched only by my gall. Dear Diary: What the hell am I doing?

More than the mud, it was these petty concerns about the people (Will I make friends? Will I be accepted? Will I get invited to play on any teams?) that cluttered my mind that Thursday afternoon as I looked around at the host of performers preparing to enter the tent. On one side of me an aerialist was bending over to stretch her back. On the other a trapeze artist was reaching down to untwist his tights. One of the clowns was playing a game with the king and queen of the opening parade.

“One, two, three,” cry the boy and girl picked at random from the audience, “start the parade…”

As if by magic the ringmaster responds.

“
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, come with us to the days of yesteryear when children of all ages eagerly awaited the summertime fun of an old-fashioned circus street parade. With a little sawdust, greasepaint, and imagination you can consider yourself part of the Cole Bros. Circus family
…”