As we reached the end of the parade, pausing slightly to let the train of ten elephants pass, I pulled the cart to a stop behind the tent and unloaded the king and queen to the ground. The girl was sniffing back her tears; her brother was peering into the tent. “Do we get to see the rest of the show?” he asked. “You sure do,” I said. “Let’s go.” I lifted their hands in my slightly stained white gloves and led them back to their waiting mother. “Goodbye,” I called as they scampered to their seats. “Enjoy the show!” The boy, anxious not to miss the tigers, ran directly back to his seat. The girl, still overcome by her circus debut, walked more slowly, and just before returning to the comforting hug of her mother, she stopped, turned around to face me again, and waved her fingers goodbye.
I smiled.
Turning, I hurried back to Clown Alley to change my costume for our first gag, now just minutes away. The stilt walkers sat down on ladders to remove their false legs. The acrobats rushed off to stretch their muscles. Jimmy James strode toward the circular cage that surrounded the center ring, blew his whistle with authority, and waited for the end of the “Born Free” fanfare before making his first call.
“In the tradition of America’s Clyde Beatty, we proudly present the Marcan Royal Bengal Tigers, in a rare, exotic breed of four colors. Exhibited under the command of Khris Aaaalllen…”
The lights came up in the iron cage, the cats let out a menacing growl, as Khris Allen stepped forward for his first time in the ring and raised his hand in the air.
2
Under a Canvas Sky
Before they erect the heavens, the men prepare the earth.
At 5:52 in the morning the headlights on the pole truck, No. 2, crease the black and empty field. A lone man dressed in blue jeans, a white sweatshirt, and a red knit cap walks to the end of the twin lines of light, picks up a sledgehammer, and begins pounding a wooden stake into the grass. A forklift appears from out of the dark, lowers its outstretched arms to the ground, and scoops up a sack of assorted ropes and cables, which it deposits next to the first of four red flags that mark where the center poles will rise. The sky is dark, but lightening. The town still sleeps. On Route 92 in DeLand, just up the road from Bud’s Highway Tavern and across the pond from the YMCA, the circus is coming to town.
Swooning, a second worker sings as he emerges from his bunk in No. 63 and begins to remove a stack of poles from the flatbed truck. A third man, much larger, lights up a cigarette as he shuffles toward the poles. Nobody looks at one another. Nobody speaks. By half past six there is a flurry of silent activity on the fairgrounds and nearly thirty men at work. Soon, the outer poles, seventy-six in all, are laid in a giant semicircle facing the center of the imaginary tent. The pattern of work mirrors the big top itself, with the most important work occurring down the spine, where huddles of men prepare the ground for the advent of the center poles. At a quarter to seven the four center poles themselves arrive, each one nearly a foot in diameter and over sixty feet long. Made of reinforced aluminum, the poles are escorted one by one into the arena by teams of straining men, like pallbearers.
“You see these babies?” cries the head of the crew, a man they call New York. “We call these the bone crushers. These are the ones that’ll make you find religion.”
Outside the tent, the shape of the circus is already beginning to emerge. The performers, most of whom pulled into DeLand the previous night, four days before opening, are still sleeping in their trailers along one side of the tent. At the front of the line of thirty or so trailers, a wagon holding ten portable toilets is already in place, along with the ticket wagon, the concession wagon, and the sleeper truck for the clowns. Later skirtlike banners will be laced around the wheels of these trucks, flags will be affixed to their tops, and fluorescent lights will be strung around their roof lines as these otherwise conventional tractor-trailers are transformed into the circus midway, one of the oldest enduring images of a traveling circus, a sort of open-armed “V” inviting you inside. At this early hour the only truck on the midway that doesn’t belong is No. 24, a regular cab with a short, stubbed rear end—inside of which are two giant spools, around which is furled the world’s largest big top.
“Come along, don’t be afraid. You won’t hurt it. After this you can say that along with the owner you were the first person to set foot on the new tent.”
Johnny Pugh put his arm around me just after 8 A.M. and led me onto the striped sea of blue-and-white canvas. In truth it wasn’t canvas at all, but vinyl—a dense twenty-two ounces per square yard, dielectrically heat-sealed by radio frequencies to avoid unnecessary sewing. Manufactured at a cost of $158,000 by Anchor Industries of Evansville, Indiana, the new tent was flame-water-, and wind-retardant up to sixty-five miles per hour. It was also, quite plainly, a sight to behold. Lying on the ground in two separate sections parallel to the center line, the tent looked like two enormous blueberry-and-whipped-cream-rolled pancakes, with splotches of strawberry red and an occasional triangle of butter yellow from fifty five-point stars.
“The spool is always the most dangerous part,” Johnny said of the hydraulic truck specially designed by a shrimp-boat manufacturer in New Bedford, Massachusetts. “When the tent is folded and wound onto the truck, the abrasion from the spools often damages it. Any pinholes, that’s where they’ll develop.”
Once the tent was stretched onto the ground, the workers gathered to unfurl it. Standing at a distance of one person every six feet, the fifty or so men all grabbed the tent and on command—“Ready, pull!”—unfolded the top layer of vinyl and dragged it away from the center poles. After easing their grip, they walked across the spread and hauled the next fold toward the center. The third pull was to the outside, the fourth toward the middle. Some of the workers used two hands, others one. Some faced forward, others backward. It was a curious rhythm in which each individual note was separate and discordant but together they made a striking chord. With the fifth pull the men reached the end of the vinyl, and with that Johnny ushered me onto the tent. It was 283 feet 4 inches long and, coupled with the other half, 146 feet 8 1/2 inches wide. It looked like an overgrown sail.
“When you designate the size of a big top,” he said, “it’s the width that matters. Other tents may be longer, but none is wider. That’s why we’re the largest tented circus in the world.”
Rubbing his hands together in childish delight, Johnny, who has been married to a former showgirl for over twenty years but never had children, led me to the line of center poles and proceeded to explain with paternal pride the modern-day physics of this age-old institution. The new tent, which he had personally designed over a period of four years, had a nylon webbing system imported from Germany to hold it together horizontally, an advanced steel cable infrastructure invented in Sweden to support it vertically, and—Johnny’s personal pride and joy—a system of state-of-the-art lightweight shackles made from a secret NASA alloy to hook the tent onto the four bail rings that carried it to the top of the center poles. Before the poles themselves were raised, however, one final touch was needed. At 8:21 in the morning Johnny personally slid a five-by-eight-foot flag onto the top of each pole: Old Glory on pole one, closest to the front door; CLYDE BEATTY on pole two; COLE BROS. on pole three; and CIRCUS on pole four.