Ascension (28 page)

Norris’s position was precarious; many still viewed his decision to take the F-F into winter quarters before the season ended in 1945 as irresponsible, and others were upset with how he had attempted to remove all traces of Cole Fisher-Fielding from the Extravaganza. Specifically, people pointed to the firing of the Ursaris, although they were not the only ones to be let go, as the act of a petty, vindictive man, not at all the sort of leadership the circus needed.

As if this weren’t enough, the cold, hard numbers showed that the Fisher-Fielding Circus Company was losing business. Whether this was a result of Norris’s stewardship or not was debatable; all over the country, circus attendance was dwindling. Many big-top circuses had gone out of business, and those that had survived had moved to indoor venues. By 1950, the Fisher-Fielding Extravaganza was the only major circus still playing under a canvas tent. Aside from playing Madison Square Garden in New York and the few indoor dates that had followed the big-top fire, the F-F had always played under canvas. Even Norris Fisher-Fielding was reluctant to make the switch indoors.

Martin Fisher-Fielding proposed to do exactly that. He was less inclined to revere history as he was to celebrate showmanship, and he knew that if the F-F were to go on, it would have to change with the times. He believed his uncle would have agreed; the F-F’s survival was more important than the big top. He had, compounding this belief, more personal reasons for wanting to move the show indoors. He was there the day the big top had burned, and though he never told anyone, he had since then been unable to force himself to enter any tent or anything that resembled one. He had not been into the new big top the F-F had purchased for the 1946 season, nor did he think he ever would.

Although he didn’t know it at the time, Martin was not alone in his phobia; among the survivors of the F-F fire there were many who could not enter a building without checking first for fire exits, and many who would not enter a tent of any kind. These people stood in the rain at weddings and picnics, did not attend fairs or outdoor shows and never, ever went to the circus.

The vote was close, and for a while it looked as if Martin might win. But in the end Norris successfully placated the Respectables,
and he was given another five years. Martin resolved to bide his time. Five years was not so long.

On a sunny day in June 1953, Salvo stood in the middle of his cornfield, the corn nearly as high as his head. With Jacob Blacke’s help it appeared as though he would get a substantial crop, and he was pleased. He was tired and could not stop yawning, in spite of all the coffee he’d drank that morning. Sleep had eluded him in the preceding weeks, and he did not expect it to come easily that night. He was once again mortally terrified of the dark, though he would not leave a light on for fear that Anna would find out. He spent hours lying on his back, his heart racing, sweating through his nightclothes, waiting for disasters that never came. It left him exhausted, cranky and ashamed. Why he who had once walked a high wire should be such a coward on the ground was something he did not understand.

He was suddenly seized by an impulse he couldn’t describe. Before he could identify the source of this feeling, he found himself walking towards the barn. In the past it had held both livestock and hay, but as Salvo had neither of these, it was empty save for a few farming implements that leaned up against the far wall. When his eyes came to rest on a fifty-foot length of quarter-inch cable, he knew why he was there. With a ladder he drove a spike into the main vertical beam of the barn, sixteen feet off the ground, and secured one end of the cable to the spike. Then he climbed the hayloft at the other end of the barn and wrapped the cable tightly around a support beam. If he’d had extra cable, he would have put in a perpendicular guy wire.

He leapt onto the wire. The barn’s sloped roof offered him barely enough clearance to stand fully upright. He could feel
cobwebs pulling at his hair, and he could smell the wetness of the exposed wood. If he’d wanted to, he could have reached out and touched the roof, but he didn’t. Salvo’s feet travelled steadily and without hesitation, and his balance was true. When he reached the middle of the wire he stopped and stood perfectly still. This was the first exercise he’d learned on the wire: the quest for immobility. He stood motionless, and gradually the barn began to recede from his eyes, and a calm radiated through his body. Outside, the branches of a willow tree brushed softly against the side of the barn.

Daniel came into the barn hours later, sent by Anna to tell Salvo to come in for dinner. At first he didn’t see his father, but he instantly knew that someone else was in the barn. He froze, preparing to run, and then he saw Salvo above him on the wire, motionless, his eyes closed. Daniel was unsure what he should do. He didn’t want to startle Salvo, perhaps causing him to fall, but on the other hand he needed to get his attention. He decided to wait it out, and as quietly as he could, he lowered himself to a seated position.

After many minutes, Daniel knew that Salvo wasn’t going to give this up any time soon. He rose and, in a voice that he intended to sound much calmer than it ended up being, called out to his elevated father. “Hello?” he said, instantly wishing he had thought of something better.

Salvo’s eyes snapped open. Much to Daniel’s relief, he didn’t fall. Salvo looked down at him and blinked. “Daniel?”

“It’s time to eat.”

“Yes. I will be there soon.”

Daniel nodded and moved to the door.

“Daniel.” When he turned around, Salvo was no longer on the wire. He stood at the edge of the hayloft.

“Yes?”

“Please say nothing of this to your mother. You are a good boy, and it would be a favour to me.”

Daniel’s heart leapt. He had never had a secret to keep before, and he felt privileged to be given one. “I won’t tell,” he squeaked.

“Thank you.” Salvo climbed down the hayloft’s wooden ladder and put his arm around the boy. Together they walked to the house.

Later, as they ate, Anna could not understand why the usually melancholy Daniel beamed with such joy. She resolved to ask Salvo if he knew anything of this mood swing, but her husband fell asleep immediately after eating, his snores evincing a deep sleep that she had not heard from him in a long time. By morning she had forgotten her question.

Salvo knew that he had not achieved immobility. He knew this because he knew that immobility was impossible, yet he felt that he had come as close as he ever had, and that was enough. He could now see that the previous eight years without the wire had been an illusion of happiness; only his family—their love for him and his for them—kept him from that knowledge.

During his near immobility he had envisioned the most daring, most elaborate, most fantastic wire trick the world would ever see. It had built itself before his very eyes, and though there was a part of him that wondered if it were technically possible to perform, Salvo believed that if it were possible, he would be the one to make it happen.

To this end he began to train in earnest. Anna rarely came into the barn, so he had little danger of his wire being detected. He elected to keep his intentions a secret for the time being. Salvo knew his wife was not looking to return to the wire.

He had not lost as many of his skills as he first suspected he might have. He was rusty, and those muscles not used on the ground needed reconditioning, but he made good progress and was confident he would be able to return to his previous form in a reasonable amount of time.

Salvo’s training was rigorous, far more intense than he had ever undergone at the hands of Tomas Skosa. He allowed himself no mercy and gave himself no room for error. If he were to succeed he would not only have to be perfect himself, he would have to be able to make others perfect.

So focused was he upon his training that he failed to notice the three sets of eyes that peered up at him through a crack in the wall at the rear of the barn. Daniel had suitably impressed upon Mika and Elsabeth the importance of complete silence, and when they had seen what their father was doing, their attention was so rapt that the possibility of sound was non-existent.

To the children, Salvo was performing the impossible on a continuing basis. As soon as he left the barn, they crept up into the hayloft and stared out at the wire, wishing they were brave enough to venture out onto it, wishing they were like their father. They held for him a reverence they had never known before; they had always emulated Anna while at play, unknowingly admiring her strength and clarity, thinking their father to be weak and indecisive.

Eventually, Daniel worked up the nerve to step onto the wire. “I’m not scared,” he said.

“Go out there, then,” Mika said. Both she and Elsabeth knew he was lying.

“Fine.” Daniel stood at the edge, then focused his eyes on the end of the wire like he’d seen Salvo do. He took a step, feeling the wire under his feet for the first time. His balance held.

Mika grabbed her sister’s hand, too frightened to speak, too excited not to. “He’s doing it,” she whispered. It was fantastic.

Elsabeth’s mouth dropped open, but she said nothing. He’s brave, she thought. I wonder why I’m not that brave. Maybe he can make me brave.

Daniel took two more steps—slowly, carefully—then, like someone pulling a cloth out from under a set table, the wire was gone from under him, and he was falling. Just as he realized he was falling he hit the ground, his feet first, then his back, then his head. For a moment his vision blurred, red flooding his eyes, and he felt disoriented, like being dizzy in both directions at once, and his head hurt. He tried to stand and found he could, and he saw his sisters standing in front of him, worry on their faces.

“Daniel? Are you okay?” Mika tentatively placed a hand on his shoulder.

“We’re going to be in trouble,” Elsabeth said.

“No we’re not. Only if you tell.”

“I’m not going to tell.”

“Are you okay, Daniel?”

For a minute Daniel didn’t answer them. His hand rose to touch the spot of his head that hurt, and when it lowered there was no blood on it. He tested his movement and found that he was all right.

“Daniel?”

He smiled. “I’m fine. I’m going to try again.” He climbed the ladder and stood at the edge of the wire, about to step on it again. A sharp, searing pain lanced through his temple and he stepped back, unsure of where he was.

“Maybe we should stop for today,” Elsabeth suggested.

Daniel nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“We’ll try again tomorrow?” Mika’s eyes were glued to the wire.

“Sure. Tomorrow.”

They crept out of the barn and into the house, watching very closely to make sure that neither of their parents saw them, especially their mother. They had heard her speak of the high wire before, and although she never said as much, her voice betrayed a tone of dislike that they easily picked up on.

That night, Daniel’s head ached so badly he thought he was going to die, and he threw up twice. The next day he didn’t throw up, but his head still hurt. Anna kept him home from school for three days; she attributed his symptoms to a flu. It was almost a week before he felt well enough to even think about the wire again.

In the spring of 1957 the Fisher-Fielding Circus Company would again decide between two cousins. Martin Fisher-Fielding had long known that he did not have the support of many of the Respectables. They identified him with his uncle, an association Martin was proud of and had done nothing to discourage. Some of the Respectables, however, still blamed Cole for the fire and its subsequent effect on revenues. This sentiment was fostered by Norris, who knew that the Respectables were the key to his power. Norris had been concerned when he had first learned that Anna’s brothers had given her Arthur Simpson’s block of the F-F, but there was little he could do. His alarm had diminished greatly when no Ursari had shown up at the 1952 vote, and he had little reason to think that they would ever appear. Martin, on the other hand, saw the opportunity he needed. If he could get Salvo and Anna on his side, then there was a chance that the Respectables might vote in his favour.