The morning of setup everything proceeded smoothly. The tent was up early, the rigging soon followed, and by lunchtime a gaggle of performers claiming to be Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal moved to the basketball court for the thrice-weekly exercise in miscoordination, self-deception, and Spanish verbal assault tactics that passed for sport on the lot. The start of the semiofficial circus basketball season in June brought a new level of intensity to the show. Personalities previously constrained by the ring were allowed to run unencumbered on the court. Sean, whose shortness hampered his ability to shine, would throw himself around like a giant pinball and regularly tackle people who drove past him with ease. Danny, who certainly looked the part of a basketball star in his NBA team jerseys, would glide through the air with unparalleled grace but usually manage to miss his shot (his shoulder, though better, was a convenient excuse). Big Pablo, hobbled with a bum knee, didn’t bother to run at all and relied on a nonstop barrage of abuse to keep himself in the game. In this ragamuffin ensemble I became something of a desired teammate, not because of any particular prowess on my part but because (a) I was six inches taller than everyone else and (b) I didn’t understand a word of the Spanish insults continually hurled at me. “I can’t believe it,” I said to Julián Estrada. “I’ve gotten more compliments for several blocked shots than for anything I’ve done in the ring.” His response was unhesitating. “That’s because you suck in the ring.”
In Natick some of the working guys wandered over to the court to scout out the competition for the much ballyhooed Big Top vs. Performers game that was slated for the following day. One man in particular, William, was laughing on the sidelines. He was new, having arrived with Bill Lane earlier in the week while the show was in Medfield, Massachusetts, on the grounds of a mental institution. He was so new, in fact, that he didn’t even have a nickname. After the game, when a few of the performers announced they were going for a swim, William and several other workers decided to join them and trekked off toward No. 63 to retrieve their swimwear.
“How is the water?” William asked Danny as he was emerging from the pond twenty minutes later.
“It’s nice,” Danny said.
“Is it cold?” William asked. “I don’t like cold water. For me it has to be perfect.”
“Nothing is perfect in this world,” Danny said. “Only God.”
“Well,” William replied, “God made the water, so it must be perfect.”
They both laughed and walked in their separate directions. William removed his shirt, stepped down the incline, and waded tentatively into the water. The water was chilly and smooth as glass. The level stayed shallow for about twenty-five yards, but then dropped off precipitously.
“I heard him cry,” New York remembered. “I was just preparing to go into the water. By the time I located the sound all I could see was his arms flapping in the water and his head bobbing up and down.”
New York and several of his men went running into the pond. Luke, one of the few white men on the big-top crew, ran to get a rope. Darryl, from props, hopped a nearby fence and ran to call the police.
“By the time I got out there he was struggling real bad,” New York recalled. “His arms were slapping against the surface and he was screaming. Oh, Lord, I can never forget that scream. We tried to calm him down, but he didn’t listen. I put my arms around him but he pushed me off. I finally grabbed him around the chest but he just slid through my arms. Before I knew it he had sunk to the bottom of the lake.”
By that time a rescue team had arrived. Several divers put on their tanks and plunged back-first into the water. For several tense moments the circus held its breath. The performers, most of the crew, and several of the women from the office waited anxiously on the bank. An ambulance crew made its way to the water’s edge. Finally, at eight minutes after two, forty minutes after it first disappeared underwater, the body of William Mitchell reappeared in the arms of the divers. Moving quickly, they pulled the body headfirst to the shore and lifted it onto the crisp white sheets of the stretcher. His hands were purple; his lips white. Several paramedics began pumping his stomach. For a moment there was a surge of hope.
But that moment quickly passed. After several minutes with only the faintest pulse from the body, most of the performers turned toward home. A few people started to cry. At half past two the stretcher was placed in an ambulance and driven to Metro West Medical Center. At 3:22 P.M. on the last Saturday in June, William Mitchell was officially declared dead. An hour later Doug placed his call.
“Before I called his mother,” he recalled, “I decided to call the police department in his hometown. They said they have a chaplain who helps with these duties. He went out in a squad car, checking back into the switchboard. I called several times trying to coordinate with him. I waited until he was in front of the house and then I told the family.”
The shows went on as scheduled that afternoon. Kris Kristo, Danny, and a few other performers placed black tape around their wrists. Some women in the front office started up a collection. That afternoon his remaining clothes were packed in a box, along with a check for six days’ work made out to the estate of William Mitchell, and forwarded to his family in central Florida, not far from DeLand.
The moon should have been full in Abington. Jimmy had the gout. Dawnita had a headache. And just two days after the incident in Natick a tornado came out of nowhere and hit nearby Boston in the middle of the high wire, thereby prompting Doug to run around frantically looking for Sean, provoking Jimmy to blow the whistle too early, and causing Willie to turn off the lights while Mari Quiros Rodríguez was performing a split on the wire, an action that sent Rodríguezes of every shape and size raging at the electrician, the ringmaster, and even the owner himself. No sooner had the cannon fired than Jimmy said, “Please exit the big top as quickly as possible,” and a torrential downpour dumped several inches of rain on the abandoned field behind Abington Junior High and on the uncovered heads of several thousand patrons who had just exited the big top as quickly as they could.
A little over an hour later I walked out of my trailer and found Kris Kristo sloshing through the mud. “Hey, where’s the party?” I asked. “I gave Danny five dollars.” He gestured for me to follow him and headed toward Sean’s, a true honeymoon on wheels. About the size of a small dormitory room, Sean’s trailer had a small bed in the back, a small table in the front, and a distinctly malodorous brown shag carpet on the floor. Once relentlessly gloomy with artificial paneling on the walls and a beleaguered screen door in front that never quite opened or closed, the room had been undergoing a domestic revolution of sorts. First, in Pennsylvania, Sean had purchased a set of frames so he could mount numerous photos of himself on every blank wall in his room. Next, in Connecticut, he had purchased an economy-sized bag of potpourri and sprinkled it around the room. Finally, in southern Massachusetts, in a sure sign that he might be falling in love, Sean went to a Kmart and purchased an assortment of pillows (“They’re mauve,” he corrected, “not pink”), which he carefully distributed on every surface of his room, so that it was impossible for him or anyone else to lie down, drink beer, or exchange sexual fantasies without being covered in lace.
As long as Sean was still a bachelor, though, his trailer was still the location of choice for parties on the lot. When we arrived a soiree was underway. Half-open bottles of Amaretto, Bacardi, and Rumpelminze were strewn across the floor. Muddy shoes were piled beside the door. Kris offered to fix me a rum and Coke, a process that involved picking up a mostly empty can of Coke from the floor, pouring it mostly full with rum, and urging me to drink it more quickly. All the usual suspects were present—my friends the circus hunks. Danny was lounging around on the floor asking people to go to the cookhouse with him to fix a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Marcos, his cousin, was dancing the samba in front of one of Sean’s three full-sized mirrors. Kris was soon dancing as well, but also pouring the drinks, directing the party, and pressing the button on the CD player so that we heard only the first few notes of every song, followed by the first few discordant lyrics as sung by Sean.