Under the Big Top: My Season With the Circus (40 page)

“Yes, I do,” I reply. We both shake hands.

“I hope you tell the truth,” he says. “Soon all of this will be gone.”

Back in the Alley the others have gone. I slip off my oversized red-and-white shoes and unhook my floppy gold tie. Piece by piece I remove my costume: my bright orange pants, my white dinner jacket, and my pointy hat with the elastic strap. I fold each of these and lay them in my trunk, already battered from three weeks on the road. At last I slip off my stained skullcap and queen-sized stocking hair net. The only thing left is my bright white face, with the smooth black clefs and the crisp red nose. Squeezing baby oil into my hands, as I have done more than two hundred times before, I smear it into my pores and rub the graphic red and black features into the layer of solid white that covers my skin from my forehead to my throat. After several quick wipes with a well-stained towel my face dissolves into its former self, like a black-and-white negative slowly changing into color. I look at the mirror that hangs in the corner and the image reflected is clearly mine. Instinctively I try to smile, but the truth is painted all over my face. I am myself.

By the time I step outside, the city is already halfway torn down. The flying rigging is being dismantled. The tympani drum is being carted away. The bears and tigers have already gone. By twenty after ten the last lights have come down, leaving behind the empty whale where elephants and horses so recently danced. A few men pull down the outer poles. Ropes dangle everywhere. In a moment a light mist begins to fall. By eleven o’clock the tent is dark. All the seats have been removed. All the magic has been excised. One by one the quarter poles are released and the heavens are slowly winched down to earth, until at twenty minutes before midnight, with a silent, swelling slap, the world’s largest big top spanks a final time against the pale, wet Florida grass. Few people are around to witness the sight—the crew, a few of the mechanics, and, fittingly, the owner.

Johnny startled me moments later as I watched the men dismantle the center poles into their male and female halves. His voice was valedictory. His eyes were heavy. “A long time ago I learned that there are many things in life that I wished I’d looked at just a little longer,” he said. “I always think I might not see it again and I want to remember it. I used to do that with my home. When I left home every spring to go on the road I would walk around the house a little bit. I would wander through the flower beds and the lawn. The trees are here, I would say to myself. The house is here. They might not be here when I get back. It’s the same way with the show. I’m always afraid that something will happen to me, or to the circus, and I might never see it again. One year I will be right.”

Quietly and with casual sleight of hand he produced a bag from behind his back and laid it in my arms.

“I want you to have this,” he said, “and I want you to know: no matter what else, you were a damn good clown. You made our show better this year.”

I thanked him for his generosity, then peered into the bag. Inside were several bundles of faded cloth, four tattered talismans:
CLYDE BEATTY, COLE BROS., CIRCUS,
and on top of the others, the American flag.

“You can never say goodbye to the circus,” he said, “no more than you can ever say goodbye to your childhood. We’ll see you again. I’m sure of that. Now you’re one of us.”

Johnny shook my hand and walked away—vanishing himself in the cover of darkness like the show he so adored. Left alone, I followed his cue, and with one last look at the rolled-up tent, now easing around its spool, I started my camper and drove off the lot—onto a road without any arrows, toward a tomorrow without a circus.

Home

Behind the Painted Smiles

One lingering effect of my year in the circus is that various words now mean different things to me than they do to the rest of society. One of these is the word “clown,” which I am distressed to observe has developed a surprising currency as an insult. Another is the word “circus,” which has somehow come to mean “chaos,” as in “It’s a media circus out there” or “My office is a three-ring circus.” After watching the world’s largest big top go up and down ninety-nine times and seeing two hundred people and two dozen animals move twelve thousand miles and do five hundred and one performances in slightly over eight months, I can say with a certain degree of confidence that I have never been around anything as well organized as a three-ring circus.

With that in mind I would like to thank the two hundred men and women of the 109th Edition of the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus, many of whom appear by name in this book. Their dedication is boundless, their skills unrivaled, and their unflinching hospitality in the worst of conditions made me a believer in the magic of the circus. In particular, I would like to thank the following people who welcomed me into their lives: Khris Allen; Gloria, Dawnita, Elvin, and Bonnie Bale; Elmo Gibb; Blair and Mark Ellis; the Estrada Family; Nellie and Kristo Ivanov; Jimmy James; Kris Kristo; Inna and Venko Lilov; Fred Logan and Family; Michelle and Angel Quiros; the Flying Rodríguez Family; Jenny Montoya and Sean Thomas; Royce Voigt; and the boys in Clown Alley: Brian, Christopher, James, Jerry, Joe, Marty, Mike, Rob, and Buck.

In addition, I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to the men and women of the advance and marketing department (Jeff Chalmers, Bob Harper, Elizabeth Harris, Bob Kellard, Mike Kolomichuk, Tim Orris, Edna Voigt, Chuck Werner), and especially to Bruce Pratt and Renée Storey, whose encouraging words and spirited laughter have made them seem like equal collaborators in this project. Finally, my deepest appreciation goes to E. Douglas Holwadel and John W. Pugh, who invited me to join their show without restrictions and who guided me openly through the normally candy-coated corridors of the circus. Johnny Pugh, still on the road more than fifty years after being born into show business, is one of the most respected men in the circus business today and one of the most decent men I’ve ever met.

Meanwhile, an equally large number of people who don’t live on wheels helped bring this book to life. Jane Dystel, my agent, cradled this book from gleam to reality. Bill Goldstein, my editor, nurtured it from proposal to publication. Miriam Goderich read an early draft and made several helpful suggestions, and David Shenk, my friend and colleague, improved the manuscript with his painstaking edits and prudent advice. Numerous others offered support and escape along the way: Angella Baker, Hamilton Cain, Ruth Ann and Justin Castillo, Robin Diener and Terri Merz, Bill Fahey, Jan and Gordon Franz, Leslie Gordon, Leigh Haber, Allan Hill, LaVahn Hoh, David Hsiao, Michael Jacobs, Dominique Jando, Ben Kinningham, Ted Lee, Halcyon Liew and Arnold Horowitz, Evi Kelly-Lentz and John Lentz, Gordon Lucket, Chuck Meltzer, Irvin Mohler, Susan Moldow, Marcy Oppenheimer, Katherine and Will Philipp, Christopher Reohr, Karen Gulick and Max Stier, and last of all, David Duffy, who taught me how to juggle those many years ago.

Finally, I would not have been able to run away and join anything for a year, or sit at home in front of my computer for a year after that, were it not for the unparalleled support team that surrounds me every day: Aleen Feiler; Mildred and Henry Meyer; Jane and Ed Feiler, editors, advisers, masters of more than one ring; and Cari Feiler Bender and Rodd Bender, newlyweds for now and a lifetime to come. Above all, I would like to express my increasing and undying gratitude to my brother, Andrew. He never set foot inside the ring, but he was outside it, alongside it, and even above it, capturing the circus with his unflinching eye. One of his photographs graces the back cover of this story and this book is dedicated to him.

Read All About It

In the course of working on this book I came to the conclusion that the circus has joined the ranks of sports and war as one of the leading sources of metaphor in our language. A day would hardly go by when I didn’t read about someone “turning somersaults” for some purpose or another or “keeping eight or ten balls in the air at one time.”

Given this penchant for inspiring metaphor, it comes as no surprise that the circus has inspired many metaphor-laden books. Of the three dozen or so that I read, some were particularly enjoyable. In the area of history, John Culcane’s
The American Circus
(Holt) is delightful and comprehensive. Others that I found helpful include David Lewis Hammarstrom,
Big Top Boss
(University of Illinois), A. H. Saxon,
P. T. Barnum
(Columbia), Earl Chapin May,
The Circus from Rome to Ringling
(Duffield and Green), and George Chindahl,
History of the Circus in America
(Caxton). While these books provided important background information, most of the material presented in this book is previously unrecorded. Since much of it comes from first-person recollections by notoriously inaccurate circus personnel, wherever possible I have tried to confirm the dates and information presented.

In addition to formal surveys, hundreds of memoirs by American circus performers have been published in the last two hundred years. I don’t pretend to have read even a substantial sampling of these, but several of the ones I did read stand out as the most charming of all the circus books I examined. I particularly recommend Bill Ballantine’s
Wild Tigers and Tame Fleas
(Rinehart), Fred Bradna’s
The Big Top
(Simon and Schuster), and Connie Clausen’s
I Love You, Honey, But the Season’s Over
(Avon), which not only is the most engaging account I read but also has the best title, and, for me, the most meaning, since it was given to me by a great circus fan, Harrison Sayre of Annapolis, Maryland.

Finally, as much as I love them, books can only hope to intimate and illuminate the immediate sensation of viewing a circus in person. While the American circus is hardly in jeopardy of dying, it is changing in response to the pressures of the times. If this book has rekindled any memories of your own, go see a circus next time one comes to town and in so doing help keep the dream alive.

Author’s Note

This book, like a circus, contains two parallel stories. One centers on the daily life of the show as it proceeds through the season; the other, woven throughout, focuses on the performance as it proceeds through each act. In circus tradition this running order is called the “Program of Arenic Displays.”

About the Author

BRUCE FEILER is the
New York Times
bestselling author of six books, including
Learning to Bow, Walking the Bible
, and
Abraham
. A contributor to National Public Radio, he writes for the
New York Times, Washington Post
, and
Gourmet
. A native of Savannah, Georgia, he lives in New York City.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

P
RAISE
FOR
B
RUCE
F
EILER
and
Under the Big Top

“What a splendid book—funny, insightful, quirky, entertaining, and beautifully written. Bruce Feiler may have been a circus clown, but he’s also a magician with prose.”

—Tim O’Brien, author of
In the Lake of the Woods

“Feiler’s unglossed account of the season is complete with animal rights protesters, sin, sex, sawdust, camaraderie, and personal revelation. ‘So now you know,’ the ringmaster tells him after his last performance. And now we know, too.”

—
Miami Herald

“Incredible…. Exciting…. Unbelievable…. Your view of the big top will never be the same.”

—
Chattanooga Free Press

“What makes
Under the Big Top
a page-turner is Feiler’s eye for detail and his ability to be part of the action but also outside of it.”

—
Detroit Free Press

“As irresistible as cotton candy, as attention grabbing as the death-defying trapeze act.”

—
Indianapolis Star

“In the age-old tradition of truth coming from the mouth of a fool, this clown’s rendition of circus life bounds with humanity.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“Feiler, a superb narrator and storyteller with a gentle, ironic sense of humor, also possesses a potent intellect that at moments blazes forth, illuminating everything in its path.”

—
Washington Post Book World

“A mud-and sweat-filled, but ultimately loving, portrait of the circus.”

—
New York Post

ALSO BY BRUCE FEILER

Learning to Bow:

Inside the Heart of Japan

Looking for Class:

Days and Nights at Oxford and Cambridge

Dreaming Out Loud:

Garth Brooks, Wynonna Judd, Wade Hayes,
and the Changing Face of Nashville

Walking the Bible:

A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses

Abraham:

A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths