“My feet are my life,” he said matter-of-factly. “When you walk on the wire, you can put your feet down straight on the cable, but when you run, the wire has to stretch diagonally from the inside ball of your foot to the outside of your heel. Plus, your toes always have to be pointing toward the ground. It’s almost like you’re a monkey: you have to grab the wire.”

Beginning with his feet, which he protects in white athletic socks and black ballet slippers, Angel carefully builds his act. His legs are noticeably sturdy and strong (“just like a soccer player,” he boasts), while his upper body is slender and trim (“all mush,” his wife complains). “I’m not the kind of person who uses force,” he said. “With me it’s all timing. If you use your feet well but not your arms, you fall. If you use your arms right but not your feet, you slip.” The balance is in the eyes. “When I run I look at the middle of the wire, never at my feet. If I look at my feet I’ll never see what’s coming. It’s like when you’re driving: you don’t look at your hands. You always look straight ahead. Your body will follow your eyes.”

Following in his family’s tradition, Angel is fearless on the wire. He’s bouncy, cheery, almost childlike in glee. As a child, though, Angel had little glee.

“I never had a chance to be a kid,” he said. “My father was a very tough man. We had to get up at eight o’clock every morning and practice, practice, practice until two. Then we would eat, sleep, and come back again for another two hours of practice. At night we did two shows.”

“And how long did that last?”

“Every day for five years. We could never go to the swimming pool or play soccer like other children. He wouldn’t even let us go to the beach because we would need a nap when we got home. He didn’t want us to be tired, because then we couldn’t practice with the same strength.”

“Why do you think he did it?” I asked.

“Because he didn’t want us to be scared.”

“Can you train someone not to be scared?”

“Sure. If the person is young enough you can slap him or scream at him and he’ll do whatever you tell him. But if the person is older, like twenty or twenty-one, it won’t matter. When you’re young you do it because you have to, because you’re more scared about what will happen to you if you disobey. That’s why you do what he says, because you’re frightened. Then you go ahead and do it—you cross the wire—and you think: Oh, I see. It’s not that bad.”

“And you never rebelled?”

“I never even cried. Once we decided we wanted to do it, we never changed our minds.”

Mindful and even a bit headstrong, Angel and his brothers quickly rose to the pinnacle of their profession. Their act was like no other in the circus. They were invited to perform all over the globe—in Australia, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, and ultimately the United States. They were, in many ways, on top of the world. Then came the unexpected collapse.

“It happened almost overnight,” Angel said. “One day we were a family. The next day we were hardly speaking.”

Sitting in his trailer surrounded by mirrors, Angel was much more somber at home than he was on the wire. His face was dark with a ten o’clock shadow (a circus day ends well after dark). His eyes were weary with the weight of a season that seemed as if it would never end. It was October by now. We were in northern Alabama. To lighten an otherwise unending autumn, the Quiroses had recently invited a Pentecostal priest from Denver to travel with them for several days and lead their rapidly expanding spiritual community in prayer. In addition to Sean, Jenny, Mari, and Little Pablo, several other people had converted to the Pentecostal movement, including another one of the Rodríguezes, one of the Estradas, and even the beloved pooper scooper from the elephant department, whom everyone called Pizza Man. And one of the Bale sisters, Bonnie, was considering converting and had begun attending the regular Bible study sessions in Michelle and Angel’s trailer.

Predictably, this type of mass conversion in such a small community triggered a certain amount of animosity. First there were problems with other families. When one teenage boy started attending the Quiroses’ meetings, his parents lashed out at the group, accusing it of splintering the circus community and brainwashing gullible victims. Next there were problems with different sects. A rival Bible study group was so alarmed at the spread of the Pentecostal movement that its members started an active recruitment campaign of their own, including baptizing people in New York Harbor. Finally there were problems with the neighbors. People up and down the trailer line complained that they were being harassed by proselytizers during the day, then kept awake at night by chanting, clapping, and the unmistakable sound of worshippers speaking in tongues. “I heard that one of them speaks in Chinese,” one neighbor said. “I hear they sacrifice chickens,” added another.

None of this controversy came as much of a surprise to Michelle and Angel. “It warns us in the Bible,” Michelle observed. “It says others are going to hate you because of your love for Jesus. It’s part of the territory. That’s what God wants.” Still, there was another reason the two of them could tolerate the strife. To them it was nothing compared with the situation two years previously when they first declared their love for each other. Then the situation was much closer to home, as their families embarked on a yearlong battle to try to separate them. Only during the final week of our season did they feel comfortable enough—with the situation and with me—to tell me what had happened.

“After that night in Dallas when Angel came to my trailer and found God, I was very happy,” Michelle said. “In a way it was better that it happened after I became a Christian. That way we were able to find God together. Two days later I invited him to go to church with me. He said yes, but only if he could do it without anyone seeing him. No one did see him that day, but unfortunately his mother did see me on my way home from church and somehow figured out what had happened.”

Within hours trouble erupted.

“After the wire act I heard people screaming backstage,” Michelle said. “I thought: Oh, my God. What’s happening here? I heard his brother say to Angel, ‘You went with them! You went to church. You are a liar!’ His father started screaming as well. Then his brother got real upset and punched a hole in the wall. He broke his hand. From then on it only got worse. His family didn’t speak to me anymore. They wanted nothing to do with me at all—”

“They thought she had brainwashed me,” Angel said. “I said to them, ‘You don’t understand. It’s not what you think.’ But they didn’t listen. I was upset. They were upset. It was a very difficult time.”

“At that point I didn’t know what to do,” Michelle said. “We had decided to get married at the end of the year. I was going to go to Europe with his family. Then after this happened I got really worried. I thought: What if I go over there with him and nobody ever talks to me? What if they totally ignore me? Finally I decided I shouldn’t go at all. ‘If you want to get married,’ I told him, ‘we can go on our own.’”

“But we already had a contract for Europe,” Angel said. “My mother talked to me about the situation. I told her that I would go with the family for a year but that after that I was going to get married and go out with Michelle.”

For several months the plan seemed to be working. The Quiros Troupe was performing in Europe. Michelle’s family was working in the States. Michelle and Angel were speaking by phone. Then Angel invited her to come visit the following April. That’s when his parents again intervened.

“They told me she couldn’t come,” Angel said. “They tried to persuade me to forget about her. I told them, ‘If you won’t let her visit me you’re even less likely to let us get married. If she doesn’t come, then I have to leave. The day you least expect it, I’ll be gone.’” He asked his mother to give him his passport. She told him she had already hidden it.