“We didn’t want it to happen this way,” Johnny said after he extended our stay in Staten Island for three days and then booked the same lot in Islip for the following year. “But in the end this case may bring us more good than harm. The truth is, I’d hate to see the animals disappear. Look at the audience. When they think of circuses, they think of animals. They can see acrobatics or gymnastics on television. They can see sports anywhere they want. But they have no chance to see trained animals. Even the ones at the zoo don’t do anything. That’s why they come to the circus, and that’s what they remember when they go home. A circus without animals is just not a circus.”
For all his breathless enthusiasm, Johnny knew those days might soon be over. Animal acts, like the circus itself, are being pressured out of business. Human acts, even the interesting ones, can hardly fill the void. People are much less reliable than animals…and much harder to control.
Second Half
9
The Star of the Show
Elvis came back to life in Queens. Big Man met him at the gates. For the two loudest crooners on the show—actually whiners is more like it—the great showdown finally occurred in New York when they battled each other grunt for grunt in the only ring that isn’t round. It was the brawl of the year on the blacktop lot around Shea: “Blue Suede Shoes” meets “Jailhouse Rock.”
In fairness, Sean and Big Man weren’t the only ones whose blood was boiling in New York. By late July we had reached that time of the season commonly referred to as “that time of the season.” Johnny was mad at Jimmy for paying Sean to usher (most performers were required to do it free). Jimmy was mad at Sean for implying his contract didn’t demand it. And Sean was mad at Elvin, who ultimately concluded that Sean should stop complaining and give back the money. The Rodríguezes, meanwhile, were mad at the Estradas for not letting the Quiroses borrow their tumbling mat, while the Estradas were mad at the Quiroses for not cleaning the mat when they borrowed it the first time. Everyone, of course, was mad at the clowns—for spilling water in the ring, for splashing water on the swing, and for getting so much applause without ever having to usher. “It’s called the midseason blues,” said Henry, the cryptic sage of Clown Alley. “You feel like you’re taking these long strokes and you don’t know if you’re closer to the beginning or the end. Then suddenly you realize you’re about to drown.”
Drenched in self-pity, the show arrived in New York at the same time as the most devastating heat wave in a decade. For most of our first week—in Forest Park and the Bronx—the seats were mostly empty as the performers struggled through a liquid assault much more deadly than mud: humidity. The temperature in the rings was well over 100 degrees: near the top of the tent it was closer to 115. Mari Quiros nearly fainted while doing a split on the high wire. Her husband, Little Pablo, nearly slipped from the trapeze when the chalk on his hands turned to milk.
The clowns, once again, probably had it the worst. With the number of shows now at seventeen a week, we were required to be in makeup nearly twelve hours a day, an exercise that is best likened to soaking in a tub of congealed perspiration consommé. Grease may be repellent to water, but greasepaint is not repellent to sweat. In fact, by the time I put on my stocking, skullcap, T-shirt, dress shirt, gym shorts, trousers, socks, shoes, bow tie, jacket, gloves, and hat, just the mere act of opening my eyes brought torrents of chalky white perspiration gushing from my powdered pores. That, of course, is when the white stays on. You can always tell a clown in heat by the rash of pink flesh peeking out of his white upper lip or the beads of red moisture dripping off his vanishing nose. Naturally the worst thing for a clown is to reveal to the world his true colors.
Besides the heat, we still had to grapple with the trials of producing a circus in the middle of the Big Apple. Arriving in New York dramatically increased the level of tension on the lot. One clown started sitting out every gag to watch over the Alley, while Sheri from concessions bought a two-way walkie-talkie system to communicate with her children, whom she kept locked in her trailer during the show. Dawnita even placed a sign next to her door that said: DANGER: BEWARE OF LIVE COBRAS. While some of this anxiety may have been misguided, much of it was well founded. Driving into Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge, crossing the Bronx on a two-lane, two-story pockmarked thoroughfare, passing into Queens over the thoroughly clogged and completely unmarked Throgs Neck Bridge, and driving down Flatbush Avenue through Little Havana, Little Haiti, and Little Sicily might be expected to produce a certain amount of stress even under ideal conditions. But imagine doing this in the middle of the night, on an empty stomach, with a child in your lap and a map on your dash, after walking on a high wire all day or playing the trombone for ten straight hours, all while driving a thirty-five-foot mobile home with a teeterboard in the kitchen, a tractor-trailer full of hungry elephants, or the world’s largest cannon. Even my twenty-three-foot Winnebago, which took most of the bumps in stride, responded to the relentless abuse by spewing out my paper towels in a knee-high serpentine mulch and tossing my microwave onto the floor. Anyone who dreams of running away to join a circus should take a test-drive first.
When we arrived at Shea Stadium at the end of our second week in New York, the collective tension was beginning to show. On Friday, Marcos and Danny were walking home from a movie and just missed being hit by two bullets fired at random from a passing car. On Saturday, Kris Kristo had a near-crisis with a woman he picked up in a bar. “We went back to her place and screwed, went for a walk, came back, and went to screw again. Only that time I couldn’t get it up. But the great thing is, around here when you get cable you automatically get the porno channel. So when I was lying on top of her and couldn’t get hard, I picked up the remote control, switched to the porno channel, jerked off, blew my load, and switched the channel back—all without her knowing it.”
By Sunday afternoon the silliness and sordidness brought on by the City finally came to blows. It happened in front of Clown Alley.
Sean stepped out of the tent just before intermission of the 4:30 show. His cannon suit was unzipped to his waist and pulled down off his shoulders. His hair was freshly combed with the new winged bangs he had recently adopted. “I never used hair spray before in my life,” Sean had remarked. “Now I can’t get enough of the stuff.” His hair spray was indeed glistening in the sun, which itself was careening off the lights in Shea Stadium, where the last-place Mets were due back for a home stand the following day.