Circus Parade (11 page)

 

A
S the season became older the hatred toward Cameron grew sharper. Men of every description had come and gone since I had joined the circus in Louisiana. My salary was increased to seven dollars a week and board. I earned about the same amount running errands for the Baby Buzzard, the Moss-Haired Girl, and Finnerty and Jack. The Baby Buzzard gave me four half-dollars each week.

For many days I thought of the Strong Woman. I linked her up with the Lion Tamer and recalled the expression I often saw on her face as he passed her on the lot walking, graceful like a panther. Death again haunted me as in my childhood. These two—one buried in Louisiana, the other in Arkansas—did they know what we were doing? I wondered who jerked the Strong Woman's grouch bag from about her throat, and if Anton would ever hear of her death.

The old trailer, who had written the verses when the Lion Tamer died, was no longer with us. He had refused to follow the circus through Arkansas. We had played three days in Little Rock. I last saw him in a saloon near the Iron Mountain railroad. He had been drunk three days and was just trying to sober up. Jock and I had stepped in for a drink. He sat, looking disconsolate, with his elbows on a beer-stained table.

As we walked over to him, he said, “Won't you buy me a drink, boys? My nerves are all gone, my head aches awful an' my mouth feels like a Chinese family's just moved out.”

The words pleased Jock and he laughed heartily. Loungers in the saloon turned to look at us.

“You old reprobate, that's worth a half pint.” Jock placed the coin on the bar. The bartender held a bottle and asked sharply, “What do you want, rye or bourbon?”

“I don't give a damn,” the old man answered impatiently, grabbing at the bottle, removing the cork and placing it to his mouth. We watched the old man drink it like water. Jock gave him a quarter with, “Ain't you trailin' us any more?”

“Not no more, no siree. I don't trail no circus in Arkansas. The God damn rubes down there ain't begun to be civilized. Whenever I hit Little Rock I jist turn round and go back no matter where I'm headin'.”

As we left, the old trailer handed us each a poem printed on yellow paper.

“It's a little thing I wrote the other day. I like it too. It's all about booze.”

Jock crunched the paper in his hand. I looked at my copy as we walked toward the circus lot.

It was Edgar Allan Poe's “Raven.” The first line had been changed from

The poem was called “A Drunkard's Fate,” and was signed by the old trailer.

We encountered a rainy week in the heart of Arkansas. Our nerves, for the most part, worn threadbare from long contact with one another, now grew more taut as one dreary day followed another down the wet road of time. Even the animals became moody and sulky. Jock, full of morphine, swore terribly at the horses, until his “habit” had worn off.

As our bunks were full of vermin, or “crummy” in the vernacular of the circus, we slept in the circus wagons and other places on warm nights. Now that the air was chilled with rain we were forced to our vermin-infested bunks. My own fortunes were to change later when Whiteface became a clown. He was allowed a little tent to himself. I shared it with him.

Mike Anderson, who had succeeded Denna Wyoming as lion tamer, took us one day in a body before Cameron. He met us affably, even benignantly, with, “Well, boys.”

“We're tired of floppin' in the lousy bunks, Mr. Cameron,” Mike said suddenly.

“Why men,” Cameron returned quickly, “this is surprising. Lice and rubes are part of a circus.”

“Maybe so, but I don't want either of 'em in my bunk,” sneered Anderson.

Just then the Baby Buzzard approached.

“I suppose you want me an' the other women to clean 'em for you,” she snapped.

“Naw we don't. We want 'em all burned up an' new ones put in.”

The adroit Cameron soon placated the feelings of all his callers but Anderson. He stood sullenly by while Cameron said with soft voice, “You know how it is, men, keeping a circus clean is a hard job.”

“Ringlin's do it,” put in Anderson.

“But look at the many localities they have; they got everything convenient. Next year, if this rain stops, I'll have a much finer circus an' it'll be like a little home for all of us.”

As we walked away Anderson confided to me, “Tomorrow's pay-day. I think I'll blow the outfit.”

The next day Cameron explained to all who would listen the hardships of a circus owner's life, as he reluctantly paid us.

Anderson was paid in full. He also borrowed twenty dollars from Cameron, who wished to keep him in good humor. Men who could handle animals of the cat tribe were scarce so late in the season.

Cameron had offered Jock more wages to take charge of the “Big Cats” than he was receiving for taking care of the horses. Knowing always the condition of his nerves, he refused.

Bad Bill had been separated from the other lions on account of the growing fierceness of his disposition. Anderson had placed him in a cage next to Ben Royal, a Bengal tiger.

I had often speculated on whether or not Ben Royal could whip Bad Bill. He was at least forty or fifty pounds lighter. I had remembered reading in a history of Rome, as a child, that five lions had always been sent into the arena against four tigers. That seemed proof to me that the tiger was the lion's master. I had once talked about it to Denna Wyoming. “Bad Bill,” said he, “can lick anything that walks or swims in the world.” Anderson, then the chief assistant trainer laughed out loud when I told him about it.

“Ben Royal kin tear Bill's heart out in three minutes,” was his comment. The idea of a fight between Bad Bill and Ben Royal afterward fascinated Anderson. He would often refer to it. And once, after I had talked to him about the ancient combats in Rome, “That'd be a battle, huh! We oughta git old Cameron to stage one for us.”

It was Bad Bill whom Denna Wyoming had feared most of all. Anderson had shared his fear. Jock also hated and feared him. Though he was not directly responsible for Denna's death, both men distrusted him as Wyoming had done. Jock had often called Bad Bill a traitor. He seemed to hold it against him that Wyoming had once saved his life with huge mustard plasers. In some way he resented the fact that the dumb king of beasts was ungrateful. That day Anderson and Jock talked a long time.

All night the rain fell drearily and, in spite of the parafin, soaked the tents. The next morning, before breakfast, an alarm sounded over our canvas world. Anderson was nowhere to be found. The rope which held the partition which separated Ben Royal and Bad Bill had been cut. Many of us had heard a lion roar in the night but had paid no further attention. Bad Bill was found, his throat torn, his stomach ripped open, and part of his carcass eaten. Ben Royal, with bloody jaws, dozed near him.

“Can you beat it?” laughed Jock to me. “Anderson sure as hell turned Ben loose on Bill. The son of a gun wanted to turn him loose on Cameron.”

Cameron was grief-stricken. “Two thousand dollars gone to hell,” was his dismal moan for some days.

The tiger was afterward billed as “Ben, the Lion Killer.” A stirring tale of his combat was written and placed on his cage. Anderson was never found again.

“Anderson knew Ben 'ud kill Bill,” Goosey afterward told me. “The lion has everything buffaloed but the tiger. When I was wit' Wallace I seen a tiger kill two lions quicker'n you could say ‘have a drink.'

“The lions seen the tiger comin' an' roared loud as thunder but it gave a lunge wit' its mouth wide open and caught the one lion right under the throat an' before it got thru' gurglin' it copped the other lion. They had to turn a big hose on him to git him outta the cage. He sure went snarlin'!”

Goosey never tired of talking about animals.

“I seen a half lion and half tiger once,” he told me. “But they coulden go no further wit' it; they can't have little ones; they either come straight lions or straight tigers the second time.

“A tiger kin outjump a lion too. I seen 'em jump over sixty feet. All's a lion kin do is 'bout forty-five. But they don't like to jump, it hurts their feet. They're jist as careful as a housecat about their paws.”

Goosey was placed in charge of the “big cats” until another trainer could be found.

Cameron never forgot the twenty dollars he had advanced Anderson. He used it as an excuse when asked for money during the remainder of the season.

 

F
OR three more days it rained. Our very lives were soggy. The last town had been a bloomer. Not enough money had been taken in at the gate to pay expenses. Cameron was sad. And still it rained. We hoped, the derelicts of circus life, that by the grace of God and the winds of chance we would again see the sun.

The performers were able to travel in some comfort. But the canvasmen, hostlers and stake-drivers, were not so fortunate. We protected ourselves from the maddening rain by crawling under pieces of side-wall canvas atop the wagons. In spite of the rain, we tried to sleep.

The cars lurched noisily from one tie to another through the rainy night. There were no clouds; just the raindrops stabbing through the heavy steel atmosphere.

Once in the pathos of disgust I started to sing, “I wish I was in Dixie, Hurray! Hurray!”

“Shut up, you dog, or we'll lynch you for cruelty to animals,” the jockey yelled above the creaking of the wagons.

I hummed “Rock of Ages” and tried to doze again.

Still a boy, my heart beat lighter then. All life was a pageant where now it is a slow parade.

But I did have one concern. Burrowed under the canvas not ten feet from me was an immense pounder of stakes in whose head several screws had suddenly loosened. It was shaped like a lead bullet that hit a granite wall. Over it was blonde clipped hair that looked like stubs of withered grass.

His nose had been smashed to the left. Each eyeball was permanently fixed in the left corner of his eye. He could not look to the right without turning half way round. But his appearance did not bother me. I had always been certain from the day he joined the show that he was an escaped lunatic, though it was too personal a question to discuss with him.

I had no reverence, and the blonde giant was a religious fanatic. He talked loud and long about Sodom and Gomorrah, as though he felt I was an outlaw from those unhappy places. I had once innocently said to him, “I wonder who makes God's raincoats. You know he's a big guy and I'll bet it takes all the canvas in a Barnum tent just to pad his shoulders. He should give a God damn about it rainin' on us guys.” I had made the remark merely as a philosophical speculation, being very young. But the blonde gentleman was a Christian and became my mortal enemy.

Some days before I had picked up a little dog, the majority of whose ancestors had been Fox terriers. He was all white, save for the end of his stubby tail, which was black. I met him on the circus lot. He was so joyful and carefree, and so glad to see me that I held him in my arms a long time.

I called him Jeremiah. The daintiest of women have since tripped in and out of my life, but little stub-tailed Jeremiah remains my first remembered love.

We trekked with the circus together with no subtleties, and no explanations, our hearts laid bare to one another. I was not a tramp circus kid to Jeremiah, but a traveling gentleman who loved dogs. I write this in explanation of my love for him. It has bulked large through the years.

Jeremiah now slept under the canvas with me. The huge blonde man thought I was making fun of religion whenever I called to the dog. Just the day before he had kicked at Jeremiah, and missed him. I saw the act and tangled with the stake-driver. Jeremiah, in his haste to help me, started to bite, but the little rascal got the wrong leg. Silver Moon Dugan pulled me away from the big blonde.

I could now hear the man moving uneasily under the canvas. I had, like many others, tried to sleep in the bunks. The vermin had routed us all. Now it was anywhere out of the wet.

I would doze fitfully, alert for defense if the blonde should want to rid a sinful world of my presence. Jeremiah seemed to sense my uneasiness, and kept burying his nose under my armpit.

In this manner we jolted on through the rain-drenched night.

We reached a muddy suburb of Atlanta with early dawn. When we unloaded the circus, Jock was compelled to go into Atlanta for more horses to pull us.

Roxie, the best elephant with the show, had worn her forehead raw, pushing out wagons bogged in the mud. Jumpy had made a pad for it out of an old army blanket and a quilt. The heavy poultices dripped with water which ran down her trunk. She was in an evil mood. She clomped through the mud swinging her trunk madly.

After much trouble we were on our way to the circus grounds. A wind came up and sizzed through the rain. Lanterns hung on each wagon. The wind made them bob up and down as if they floated on water. Lanterns were also attached to the neck yoke of the lead horses. From the distance we must have resembled an immense glowworm crawling through space.

Jock worked horses and men with driving energy. An eight-horse team traveled up and down by the side of the road, with a heavy snake chain dragging behind. This was used in pulling wagons out of the mud.

We reached Atlanta at daylight. Within an hour the sun shone over the city. It pierced red through the hazy weather.

On our way to the circus grounds I noticed that the Southern Carnival Company was in Atlanta.

The blonde stake-driver threw a spasm in the cook tent. His hands and knees went together, his eyes stared more rigidly to the left, he jumped high in the air, and fell on the ground as stiff as an iron bar.

We laid him out on a water-soaked bunk.

Silver Moon Dugan, the boss canvasman, mumbled, “A hell of a time to throw a fit, jist when the tent's goin' up.” He was short of men as usual. I helped put up the tent.

With the hope of breaking the monotony by attending the carnival, I asked Jock if I might not play sick that day and join him after the night performance.

He said, “Sure, go ahead. It's too wet to parade anyhow. I'll fix it up.”

Jock gave me a silver dollar. I took Jeremiah with me.

We walked slowly along until we came to a small butcher shop where I bought some meat for the dog. I was glad to be away from the blonde man, and Jeremiah would look up at me as if he were trying to express the same emotion. With no immediate worry save that of obtaining food, I loitered about Atlanta with Jeremiah until mid-afternoon.

My mind was on the Southern Carnival Company. All such aggregations worked a shell game through the South. I had learned many things from Slug Finnerty's crew. Accordingly I sauntered through one alley after another with Jeremiah in the hope of finding rubber out of which to fashion a pea.

After a long search I came upon an old-fashioned clothes-wringer. As no one was about I soon removed one of the rubber rollers and carved a chunk from it. After much shaping and polishing I made it resemble a pea turned dark from handling. When finished, I threw the rest of the roller on the ground. Jeremiah immediately picked it up and started carrying it with him. I bade him drop the possible circumstantial evidence and inquired my way toward the carnival.

Everything was in full blast when I arrived with Jeremiah and hunted up the shell game. A crowd had gathered.

I was attracted by the man who ran it. He stood perspiring under the hot sun. I leaned down and talked to Jeremiah, pointing to the ground at my feet, with the hope of making him understand I wanted him to stay close to me. He remained so close that I could touch him with my foot at any time. The operator of the shell game was jubilant.

“Here you are, folks. If you guess right, you win. That's all life is, folks, just a guess, folks—a question of guessing right. Three simple shells—under which shell is the pea, folks?” he kept saying as he rubbed his hands together.

He was shaved close. His jaw was steely blue with a streak of red across it, as if a razor had made a furrow that healed over, leaving a dent in the middle. The scar seemed to open and close as he talked, as though contradicting what his lips were saying. I looked about to spot the shillabers, his accomplices. There were several within a dozen feet of him.

All about them were vari-colored rustics. The whites were burned red by the sun and the blacks could no blacker be. The latter were dressed in fantastic colors, like barbaric children from another world.

Assuming as much innocence as possible, I looked about in a scared manner. I needed someone to furnish the money. A young Negro stood close to me. The eyes of a born gambler danced in his head. Suddenly I heard the man with the scar across his jaw talk out of the corner of his mouth to a shillaber standing behind me, “Ushpay the pumchay oser-clay.” People in a canvas and semi-gypsy world have a language of their own. They shift a word about and always put “ay” at the end of it. In this manner they can carry on a conversation that no one else can understand. The sentence translated was “Push the chump up closer.” There was a sudden movement from behind. I looked more scared than ever, as I talked to the young Negro near me.

Being shoved closer, I looked at the swiftly moving hands of the man with the scar on his jaw. They were long and well kept, except for the nail on the little finger of his right hand. It extended about half an inch.

His shirt sleeves were rolled above his black alpaca coat. Money of all denominations lay near his left hand. He handled it with indifference. “Just a mere guess, folks, a mere guess, that's all.” He looked at me benevolently. I leaned down and patted Jeremiah who huddled between my legs for protection.

“You merely guess, folks, under which of the three shells the little black pea is hidden. If you guess right, I pay. Nothing intricate at all.”

I watched him closely. He pretended to hide the pea awkwardly. Sometimes it even held up one side of the shell under which it was supposed to be hidden. He would give the shell a little push as if he had just discovered his error.

The play was slow at first. The operator offered ten to five, then twenty to a hundred and so on, alternating, “Come, gentlemen, locate the pea,” he would say as he counted out the money. “Two dollars to one. But why not win more? Your money never grows in your pants pockets.”

A large Negro laid down five dollars. His smile was forced and the look in his eye was too quick. I knew he was a shillaber. He turned a shell. The pea was not under it.

“Even money on the other two shells,” declared the man. “I'll try it once for five,” volunteered a young white shillaber who were a derby. He laid the five dollar bill down and flipped a shell over. There lay the pea. The man with the scar laughed as he paid out ten dollars.

“That's the way it goes, gentlemen. Lay down five and pick up ten. One man's loss is another man's gain. Try it once more there, colored boy,” to the first player. He shifted the shells and the pea.

“I'll try it once moah if you all let my frien' heah pick it foh me,” he suggested, at the same time pushing a chocolate-colored brother in front of him.

“I don't care who picks it, gentlemen, as long as you gamble fair and square,” said the man.

The big colored fellow laid down another five dollar bill and turned to the other. “You go on an' pick it foh me. You looks lucky to me, boy.” The latter grinned proudly and looked closely at the shells.

Several other Negroes told their comrade which shell the pea was under. The operator seemed engrossed in other matters as the Negro raised the shell and disclosed the pea. He then counted out the winnings and began to hand them to the little chocolate-colored man. The big Negro pointed out the operator's mistake and claimed the money.

“My mistake, gentleman, my mistake,” laughed the operator.

The big Negro said, “But you'd all of paid him he won, huh?”

“Certainly, gentlemen, certainly, whoever wins. It's merely the love of the play that keeps me here. I enjoy it as much as you, folks. I could easily, gentlemen, follow any other calling, but here is my life work, gentlemen, just the joy of taking a chance. A gambler at heart, gentlemen, a square shooter, a fair deal, gentlemen, and no favors. I paid one man five hundred last week. The turn of a shell, gentlemen, the turn of a simple shell, and a fortune underneath. The wealth of Minus, gentlemen, the wealth of Minus.” He looked down at me. “If any other gentlemen had put their money down they would have won also.”

The big colored shillaber began talking to the little man who had chosen for him. “Come, boy, you is lucky. I'll put five dollahs down and you puts five dollahs, then we both win. Come on, you otheh colohed boys.” Several of them watched the studied clumsiness of the operator and pulled money out of purses with twist clasps—money earned under a burning sun.

All the Negroes won, and doubled their bets. They won again and tripled. Then all lost.

I watched the operator's long fingernail sweep under the shell with the action of a scythe.

The colored youth next to me stood fascinated. He smiled confidently at me and I saw my chance.

“Listen, kid,” I whispered to him, “I can beat that game. If you'll let me have ten to play, I'll get you twenty back. I know the riffle. We'll make a getaway and I'll meet you at the Salvation Army Hotel on Peachtree Street.”

The big colored shillaber stood within five feet of us, so I whispered even lower. “Now if I play and win and yell, ‘Go,' you've got to run like the devil away from Holy Water. Hear me?” The little Negro nodded, still smiling. The operator was saying, “As wealthy as Minus, gentlemen, as wealthy as Minus. Rockyfeller took a chance, everybody does. Which of the simple little shells is the pea under, gentlemen?”

A shillaber moved closer and placed ten dollars on the board. Then as luck would have it, he turned to the colored lad near me. “You pick it out for me this time, boy.” The little fellow picked the middle shell—and—there was the pea.

He smiled more confidently at me.

Another shillaber edged closer in friendly conversation with a sun-tanned yokel. “We'll show you where we're from. We'll pick out the right shell so often you'll think there's a pea under every darn one o' them,” laughed the shillaber. The yokel laid down five dollars. The shillaber likewise. They won twice, then lost. The yokel had not hesitated, but he lost anyhow.