But the incident was hardly private. After lunch the next day I walked up to the ticket wagon to say hello to Mary Jo, a usually gentle and generous woman who is Fred Logan’s oldest daughter. “Are you parked next door to me?” asked Mary Jo. “Yes,” I said. “I believe so.” “Well, in that case,” she said, “no more loud farting.” Dumbfounded, I tried to ignore her comment: all of my years learning manners in Japan were not enough to prepare me for this situation. But Mary Jo was not to be denied. “Did you hear me?” she repeated. “No more loud farting.” And so I learned my lesson that day: in the circus even one’s privy behavior is part of the public domain.

Once the flyers complete their opening style, the act is ready to begin. In ring one, the Rodríguezes’ anchor man, Antonio, hops on the back of the swing, pushes off from the ground, and begins building a gradual momentum. With a triangular structure eight feet tall suspending a platform five feet long, a Russian swing looks like a cross between a giant medieval battering ram and an oversized version of one of those 1970s coffee-table souvenirs with a row of suspended silver balls that spring outward when boinked on the opposite end. In the act, the silver balls are the Rodríguezes themselves, and when one of the boys is boinked from the platform, he soars into the air and turns a series of somersaults, layouts, pikes, and pirouettes before landing in a vertical blue nylon net and sliding to the ground.

“With a Russian swing you can land your tricks in one of three ways,” Pablo explained in his definitive, slightly bombastic big-brother style of speech. “On someone’s shoulders, on a mat, or in a net. As high as we’re going, shoulders are out of the question. With a mat you risk ruining your legs. Let’s face it, you can come turning two somersaults from thirty feet high, but how many times are you going to land perfectly? Your ankles just aren’t meant to do that. Look at those guys in the Olympics, and they don’t even go that high. When Johnny told us he wanted a Russian swing, we said sure but we’re going to use a net.”

After an initial thrill in which Antonio rotates the swing 360 degrees around the central bar, the family is ready for the first trick of the act. The honor falls to Pablo the Big.

“Of all my brothers I am the one who knows how to turn the best somersaults. It’s really very simple. First of all, I concentrate on the height of the swing. When that’s set, I bend down in a crouched position so I’ll be able to shoot myself into the air. When the time comes I push off with my legs and try to create a tunnel, focusing only on where I’m going to land. I never look at the air, only the net, and if I concentrate correctly it just clicks, it comes to me. Let’s say I’m doing a forward somersault with a one-and-a-half pirouette. I do my forward somersault and as soon as I come out of it I’m already judging how high I am. If I feel I have to hurry my pirouettes I tuck my arms tighter, but if I feel like the trick is going okay I can go slow so the people can enjoy it.”

“And all you think about is the net? Not the audience, not your wife?”

“Nothing. I think only that I’m going to land right there, and if I do land right there I’ll have no problem. There’s no emotion, no anxiety. Just concentration.”

“Do you get dizzy?”

“Sometimes I get lost. But that doesn’t bother me. When I’m actually doing my somersaults my eyes are closed; it’s all feeling. If you close your eyes, the feeling never changes, but once you open your eyes—well, what if the lights go out, what if somebody throws a balloon, what if somebody moves and your eyes go with them?”

What if? Indeed. Talking to an acrobat is like talking to a pilot-either one can have his craft totally under control but lose it in an instant with an internal glitch or an external gust of fate. For Big Pablo, the cocky one, the number one son, this brush of fate happened in practice. He was trying to do a double. The push wasn’t right. He came out too soon and landed short. By the time he came to a stop at the bottom of the net the weight of his body had completely squashed his foot. “The bone was twisted all around,” Mary Chris remembered. “His toes were pointing back and his heel was in the front. It was New Year’s Eve, our first week of practice. We didn’t have any insurance to pay for an operation.”

“We knew at that moment we had to change the act,” Pablo said. “Even after I recovered, someone else had to do most of the jumps. We decided Danny was the one with the best timing. Little Pablo could do a few tricks he always did on the trampoline, but we looked at him on the swing and it was obvious that Danny had more technique. But you have to remember what I said: technique is not the only thing. Concentration is also important. Danny has never had that.”

The accident took place in Frederick, Maryland, on one of the prettiest, flattest lots of the year. The grass was smooth and green—a baseball paradise. The crowds were thick and loud—a grand-slam house. The rain didn’t begin until after the show started, and even then the spring shower was unable to soil the colorful grandeur underneath the tent. Danny climbed onto the swing for the second trick: a backward double somersault into the net. He had already done it perfectly over one hundred times since the start of the year. But unlike on the diamond, percentages don’t count for much in the ring. When you walk a high wire, or set foot in a cage with tigers, or jump off a Russian swing, you can’t afford to have a bad day.

With all eyes on his slender, well-toned body, Danny hung on to the front of the platform as it knifed relentlessly through the air.

“Take it easy,” he said to his siblings; the cue to prepare.

Danny bent his knees into the takeoff position as a wisp of ponytail swung behind his neck and distracted attention ever so slightly from his deep-set stare and slight overbite.

“Ready,” he called; the next time was the launch.

As the swing rose to its zenith for the final assault, his brothers and sisters pushed the swing on command and were readying to exclaim their traditional “Hurrah!” when suddenly…“Danny? Daniel! Mira.¡Cuidado!”

“As soon as my foot slipped off I blanked out,” he said. “My right foot went first, then my whole body followed. My legs lifted up like I had stepped on a banana peel and I went hurling through the air. When I came down I landed on my neck. It happened so quick all I could think about was moving out of the way so the swing wouldn’t hit me when it came back. Everyone was screaming at me, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I rolled toward the seats and closed my eyes. I knew something was wrong.”

Compared with his brothers’, Danny’s English is nearly perfect. Born in America during a family tour, he was raised in the lap of a Mexican family who had made it in the seat of gringo luxury. As proof of his upbringing, he liked to wear a uniquely American wardrobe: Deion Sanders high-tops, Michael Jordan T-shirts, Arsenio Hall baseball caps. He was only twelve when his family spent a year as pampered stars at Walt Disney’s EPCOT Center; his personal hero was Marvin the Martian from The Bugs Bunny Show.

“By the time I came to, my dad was there. He helped pull me out of the way. He tried to pick me up, but I told them not to move me. I knew something was broken. My body was all hot. I felt a lot of pain. He asked me if I heard something pop or break. I told him I didn’t hear anything at all.”

Danny looked limp lying on the ground. His slender body was writhing in pain. His fingers twitched at his side.

“It was just about then that I started losing control. I could hear everyone talking to me, but I couldn’t concentrate. My mom was holding my head. My dad was holding my legs. I opened my eyes once and it was all blurry. I couldn’t see straight. I was having a lot of trouble breathing. I couldn’t feel my fingers, or my toes. That’s when the doctor came from the audience.”