Under the Big Top: My Season With the Circus Part 10

"And their names?" she asked.

"Tim and Joyce."

"Thomas?"

"No, Clougherty."

"Clougherty?"

"That's right, Clougherty."

"But I thought your name is Thomas."

"It is."

"Then why are your parents named Clougherty."

"Because that's my name, too."

"Your middle name?"

"No, my last name."

"I don't understand."

"Look, I'm in the circus. Sean Thomas is my stage name. Clougherty is too hard to p.r.o.nounce for television shows and all. Did you see me on TV last week?"

"No."

"I've been on four shows, you know: Street Stories, I Witness Video, Regis & Kathie Lee, Peter Jennings-"

"Excuse me." A lady stuck her head around the corner. "My grandmother is very sick out here. Would you stop wasting time."

"Sorry, lady," Sean shot back. "First come, first served." Turning back to Elizabeth, he added, "Anyway, Clougherty has ten letters, so I don't use it."

"This is too much to handle," Elizabeth said. "I think I'll just call you Thomas."

She printed out a four-page form, had Sean Thomas (Clougherty) sign it five times, then motioned us down the hall. It was already nearing midnight.

"h.e.l.l, this wheelchair is no good," Sean complained as I began rolling him toward the X-ray department. "I can't even do a spin in it, like Elvin's." As we rolled past various open doorways asking for directions, we met several women. One was doing CAT scans, another sonograms, two were visiting patients. With each one we met Sean tried out his routine: "Hi, I'm the Human Cannonball. Did you see me on TV?" Each one was underwhelmed. "h.e.l.l, I can't pick up anybody in this wheelchair," he griped. "I can't even get any sympathy p.u.s.s.y."

Finally we met a woman coming out of an elevator who volunteered to give Sean his X rays. She led us to the radiology lab and together we lifted Sean underneath the machine. "Do you think you could radiate Sean's ego while you're at it?" I said. "Won't that make it smaller?"

"Honey, that won't make it smaller," she replied. "Only brighter."

With the X rays taken, I rolled Sean to the doors of the emergency room, where he waited to get his leg evaluated and where I was kicked out and told to wait in the lobby. An hour and a half later Sean emerged again, this time on crutches with a brace on his knee, and we were allowed to leave. As we were going, I asked Elizabeth for a place to eat and she directed me to two diners on the "Boulevard," just around the corner. One had stairs, she warned, the other did not. Unfortunately, I turned left at the light (the steering was a little loose on the cannon, but the pickup was quite impressive) and ended up with the one that had stairs. COLONNADE RESTAURANT, the lighted sign said. OPEN 24 HOURS.

I parked the cannon behind the restaurant and, rather than climb the one flight of stairs with a crippled cannonball, we headed up the wheelchair ramp in back that led to a gla.s.s door marked HANDICAPPED. I pushed on the handle, but it was locked. I knocked. Four waiters looked up from their pads and quickly looked down at their feet. I knocked louder. The cas.h.i.+er looked up from her register and waved me away from the door. This was not encouraging. Neither of us had eaten since lunchtime, and since then Sean had been shot from the cannon, bashed by the bag, bandied around by the hospital, rebuffed by the nurses, and, even worse, totally humiliated to discover that not one person in all of Staten Island had seen him on TV. I knocked a little louder the third time and even waved one of Sean's crutches in the window to indicate that we were, indeed, handicapped.

No sooner had I lifted the crutch overhead than the owner of the diner, a tall, thin man with a turban around his head, came storming out of the kitchen, running across the floor, and started berating the two of us directly through his still locked door.

"What the h.e.l.l are you boys doing!?!" he shouted. "Are you trying to break down this door?"

Fed up at this point, I started down the ramp. Sean, however, was hardly so mild-mannered. He was the Human Cannonball. The Daredevil of the Decade. The Great DD. He had a reputation to uphold. His response was to take one of his two wooden crutches and begin beating the door, aiming the rubber-cus.h.i.+oned part directly at the owner's face. Now quite animated himself, the owner reached into his pocket and began fumbling for his keys, while I grabbed Sean by the shoulder and pulled him away.

We hurried down the ramp, hopped into the cannon, and drove around the corner. As soon as I reached the light at the corner, however, I began to reconsider what had happened. Even though we had lost the battle, maybe we could get retaliation, I thought, by filing a complaint against the restaurant with the city of New York. It would be the ultimate revenge of the nerds. I pulled the cannon to a stop, left Sean in the front seat, and walked up the stairs.

"Excuse me," I said to the lady at the register. "I would like to know the name of the man who refused to open that door." No sooner had I spoken than the man himself appeared in the foyer and started berating me again. "I'm not going to tell you a d.a.m.n thing!" he shouted. "In fact, I'm going to call the police."

I laughed. "You've got to be joking," I said. "We didn't do anything wrong."

The man picked up the telephone and dialed 911. "These two punks are trying to break into my restaurant," he shouted. He told the dispatcher his name, his address, and his telephone number. As he did, I discreetly wrote each of them down.

"Now stay right here," he raged at me when he was done. "The police are on their way."

"As I walked back to the cannon to tell Sean, the owner walked directly behind me and came to a stop in front of the barrel. With his fists c.o.c.ked at his waist and his face swelling like a child's, he looked like a taller, thinner version of Sean: the Short-Order Cannonball. Faced with such vaudevillian valor, we decided to wait. Five minutes pa.s.sed. Then ten. After fifteen minutes I stepped out of the cab and said to the man, "Sorry, it looks like the cops aren't coming. If they do, just tell them they can find us at the circus."

I started up the cannon and drove to the light. Just at that moment the cops arrived. For a moment I was overcome by the thought of a high-speed chase through New York City at the helm of a thirty-foot-long silver-and-red cannon with a stream of blue-and-white police vehicles stretched for miles behind us as we sped across the Verrazano Bridge, up Wall Street and the FDR Drive, through Central Park, down Fifth Avenue, past F. A. O. Schwarz, Tiffany, and Saks, before das.h.i.+ng to safety on the Staten Island Ferry and floating triumphantly alongside the Statue of Liberty as our pursuers snapped their fingers in frustration: "d.a.m.n! Foiled again." Then I changed my mind and pulled to the curb.

By the time I got out of the driver's seat the manager had already headed off the officer and was ranting about how we were in jeopardy of putting him out of business, how we wanted to break down his door, how we were a threat to Western civilization, or at least that much of it that is practiced on Staten Island. This little tantrum only riled Sean even further. By that time he had burst from the cannon and was waving his crutch in a manner that seemed to validate everything the owner was saying. I motioned him back to the cannon.

"Good evening," I said to the officer when the owner was done. I stuck out my hand in greeting. He looked at me skeptically. I started explaining what had transpired, having already decided that I was going to bore this poor officer to death with every detail of our evening. "We're with the circus," I said. "We've come to Staten Island to entertain the people..." What followed was the kind of sickly-sweet speech that came partly from my experiences as a onetime student in peace studies and partly from my experiences as a teacher's pet. "My friend was seriously injured during our show tonight...The kind people at the hospital recommended that we get something to eat at this diner." The more obsequious I became, the more bemused the officer got and the more irate the owner. He interrupted me several times, jabbing his finger into my chest and saying things like "Do you know how much that door cost?" and "If I keep that door unlocked people will leave without paying their checks." Each time he burst into a tirade I would turn to him and say in my most angelic voice, "Excuse me, sir. I didn't interrupt you while you were speaking. Now, if you don't mind..."

By the time I finished the officer was almost asleep. He turned to the owner of the restaurant and asked, "So, is there any damage?" The manager seemed stumped. He thought for a second, then said, "No," at which point the officer turned around, got into his car, and drove away. I nodded and walked back to the cannon.

The next day I telephoned the New York City Department of Health.

"I would like to file a complaint against a restaurant for violating my handicapped rights," I said to the woman who answered my twice-transferred call.

"Were you in a wheelchair?" the woman asked.

"No, I was on crutches."

"Then you weren't handicapped."

"What do you mean I wasn't handicapped? I had just come from the emergency room, where I had been in a wheelchair."

"Were you in a wheelchair at the restaurant?"

"No, but I couldn't walk up the stairs."

"Handicapped means you have to be in a wheelchair."

"Okay," I said. "Then I would like to file a complaint against a restaurant for violating my civil rights."

"You don't have any civil rights to be in a restaurant."

"Sure I do. They were keeping me out just because I couldn't walk. They have to keep their doors open to the public."

"No, they don't."

"Yes, they do."

"No, they don't. People might leave without paying the check."

"Okay," I repeated. "If that's the case, I would like to file a complaint against a restaurant for violating my legal rights."

"Fine," she said. "Call a lawyer!" And with that she hung up the phone.

Triple Whammy The best trick of the show begins the second act. It's magic in the air. It's h.e.l.l on the shoulders.

At the end of intermission four jugglers appear-Kris Kristo; his brother, Georgi; Marcos; and Danny Busch-who perform for several minutes while the audience returns to its seats. At the end of the routine the ring lights go out and these youthful veterans, like a barbecue quartet, juggle among them a dozen burning clubs. The darkness, the fire, and the sizzling pop music all provide cover for a surrept.i.tious entrance by the grandest artists of them all.

"Introducing...those celebrated stars of the flying trapeze...the Pride of Meeexico...the Flying Rodrguez Faaaaamily..."

With a flourish of sequins, the team of flyers-Big Pablo, Danny, Little Pablo, and Mary Chris-toss off their capes, kick off their clogs, and begin to climb the two flimsy ladders that lead into the darkness above ring three. As they clamber toward the top of the tent, the lights gradually illuminate their rigging, their breathtaking scaffolding sky. Stretching fifty feet long and ten feet wide, the cantilevered rigging that supports their act looks like a giant bear trap suspended upside down in midair. On one end, hanging eight feet down, is a single trapeze with an aqua-blue wrap where Big Pablo, the catcher, finally sits. On the other end hangs a giant mult.i.tiered platform covered with blue carpet where Danny, Mary Chris, and Little Pablo convene. Below them, stretching the entire width of the tent, is an enormous all-cotton net; while in front of them, dangling twelve feet from the top of the tent, is the somber means of their flight, a three-foot-long solid-steel bar, one and a half inches in diameter, and fifteen pounds in weight.

"It's my baby," Little Pablo said. "It's my life. It's more important than my pillow."

It's also subtly patriotic. The bar that hangs thirty-two feet from the ground and vaults the flyers through the sky is wrapped entirely in white gauze with two inches of red tape on the right fringe and two inches of green on the left. "Red, white, and green," Little Pablo boasts. "The colors of the Mexican flag."

"Hey!"

As soon as the entire family is in place they shout a mutual salute. Then the warm-up begins. The first on the bar is Little Pablo himself. Like his brothers, he is wearing neon-pink tights with flaming sequins on the side and a pink see-through vest that barely covers and in truth only accents his well-sculpted upper body. The look, sort of Mr. Universe meets the Sugar Plum Fairy, is an homage to the inventor of the flying trapeze and, after Robin Hood, probably history's most famous man in tights, Jules Leotard. In further homage to Leotard and his effete French aerialist tradition, Little Pablo and his brothers have shaved their underarms. In deference to their own Mexican macho background, however, they have not shaved their chests. "A bush under my arms would not look good," Little Pablo said. "But my chest, that is manly."

The manly Little Pablo, actually a boyish twenty-three years old despite his grown-up muscles, grabs the bar in his well-powdered hands, jumps from the pedestal with a slight flutter of his feet, and begins the gradual pendulum swing that is both the basic syntax and the lofty poetry of the flying trapeze. "As a boy, the first thing I learned was the swing," he told me. "It's really quite simple. As you leave the pedestal you swing your feet up, then on the way back you arch your back forward, swing your feet under, then throw them forward as fast as possible. It's just like riding a swing when you're little-that little snap of the legs is what gives you all the power. Once you get that down the rest of it just follows."

The rest of it follows, at least for the audience, in somewhat of a confusing blur. The first trick is performed by Mary Chris. She does an initial swing to gain power and then on her second pa.s.s through the air, instead of hanging beneath the bar, lifts her body onto the trapeze itself and does a forward somersault that takes her over the bar, through the ropes, and into the outstretched arms of her husband, who has miraculously appeared above the ring at the precise moment she arrives. Catch. Once they complete their follow-through and are back in the middle of the tent, she releases his hands, spins halfway around, and once again grabs on to the bar, which she then rides safely back to the pedestal. Though few in the audience could describe what they just saw, they still burst into applause.

The next trick, a double layout, is Little Pablo's. After completing his swing, he releases the bar in a swan-dive position, does two complete revolutions of his body, and then at the last possible moment grabs his brother's arms. The trick after that seems even more perplexing. Danny, who is tall and s.h.a.ggy compared to Little Pablo, never mastered the art of catching with his hands. Instead, after his warm-up swings, he performs two and a half revolutions through the air and is caught by his legs. The trick is impressive, a gradual escalation, but like a piece of music that takes place in different themes, the act needs a memorable climax that gives meaning to the disparate early movements. That responsibility falls to Little Pablo; the climax comes from a single trick, arguably the most famous trick in the previous century of the circus. More important, it's a trick that everyone in the audience can understand. Everyone can count to three.

The music stops when Juan Rodrguez, alias Little Pablo, steps to the center of the carpeted platform. Not even a drumroll fills the air. It's the first time since the show began that no sound at all is heard in the tent. All eyes turn toward the platform. Jimmy James enhances the scene.

"Introducing...the Master of the Legendary Triple Sommmersault...Fox Television Star, Juaaaan Rodrguezzz..."

A quick slap of the snares accompanies the applause. Juan raises his hand in a salute, plucks a piece of chalk from his waistline, and climbs three steps to the very top of the platform. There he prepares his body for flight. After stretching his back and clapping his hands to remove the excess dust, he grabs the fly bar held up by Danny, calls to Big Pablo on the far side of the tent, and tightens his hold around the trapeze. On his wrists he wears a three-year-old strip of cotton gauze to make it easier for his brother to grab him. On his hands he wears a small leather palm guard to prevent open sores from weakening his grip. On his fingers he wears a layer of Cramer Firm Grip to make sure he doesn't slide off the bar. In a moment he launches his swing.

"As soon as my brother pa.s.ses the center I go. I jump up, kick my feet up into the air, and begin my forward swing. On the way back I try to go as high as possible-I'm almost in a seated position by the time I reach the top of the tent. Coming down for the final time I have to let go just before I reach the top of the swing. If I let go too early, I'll smash into the catcher. If I wait too long, I'll fall into the net. It's all a matter of timing."

Like time, somersaults are measured in revolutions. Each spin marks not only the pa.s.sage of time but also the pa.s.sing of a generation. Indeed, as Little Pablo explained, the history of ascending somersaults is as closely followed in the circus as the number of home runs is wors.h.i.+pped in baseball. One historian has even compared the question of who would turn the first triple somersault from a springboard in the 1840s and 1850s to the early-twentieth-century antic.i.p.ation over which aviator would first fly across the Atlantic.

The enthusiasm over somersaults switched to the air in the 1850s after Jules Leotard first leapt from one wooden bar to another over his father's swimming pool in France. The first double somersault was thrown by Eddie Silbon in Paris in 1879. The first triple was actually thrown by a teenage girl, Lena Jordan, though her technique (being thrown from one person to another) was slightly unconventional. Instead, the glory for turning the first consistent triple somersault from the trapeze falls to lithesome Alfredo Codona, who performed the trick regularly from 1920 until he dislocated his shoulder and shredded two muscles during a performance in April 1933.

After Codona few people were able to perform the triple consistently, and the trick was considered an unattainable dream. The speed of up to sixty miles an hour, the risk of cras.h.i.+ng into the catcher, and not least of all the mental instability that comes from spinning so quickly in the air all kept the dream out of reach. All that changed, however, in the 1960s with the advent of t.i.to Gaona, who not only consistently performed the triple but also performed it blindfolded. Gaona even attempted-though he ultimately failed-to catch a quadruple somersault in the air. Suddenly the standard had been raised. With the new benchmark came a new crop of performers eager to inherit the mantle of Codona and Gaona. One of these was a group of flyers from Mexico City, the Flying Vzquezes. Another was their cousins the Flying Rodrguezes.

"The first time I threw the triple was in 1980," Little Pablo recalled. "I was ten and I made a bet with my cousin Miguel Vzquez. It was the last day of the first year we had ever worked the flying act. He and his brother came to help us. We were in Evansville, Indiana. Before the last show I told him, 'I'll go up and throw a triple to the net if you throw a quad.' He had never done a quad, and I had never even done a double. I went and threw a triple, and he went and did the quad. It was an incredible moment."

Within a year of that moment Miguel was attempting to throw the quadruple to his brother's hands. In 1982, a year and a half after his experiment with his cousin, he tried to throw the quad on opening day for Ringling Brothers in front of Irving Feld, Kenneth Feld's father, who had purchased the show from the Ringling family in 1968. Like t.i.to Gaona, Miguel failed. For two months he tried and repeatedly fell short. The dream seemed out of reach. Still, the Vzquez brothers never stopped trying, and on July 10, 1982, in front of 7,000 people in Tucson Community Center, Miguel Vzquez left the bar, turned four complete revolutions in the air, and turned yet another generation in history by catching his hands with those of his brother and completing the first quadruple somersault in circus history. The following day his feat was reported on page one of The New York Times.

"It was amazing," Little Pablo recalled. "It was the start of a run. You have to understand, in the circus everyone has his time. t.i.to Gaona had his time in the sixties and seventies. In the eighties it was Miguel. But now his time is pa.s.sed. Now there's almost no one left who can even catch the triple every show, not to mention the quad. That's why our time is now."

His timing perfect, Juan Rodrguez leaves the bar high above the ring and immediately tucks his body into a ball. "The first thing I do is grip my knees, then right away I spread them open. When you throw your head back and pull your legs open that's what gives you the speed. It's called cowboying, from the cowboys, who always have their legs open. It feels like riding a roller coaster."

By the time his arms have gripped his knees Little Pablo has already completed one turn. Since the trick starts with his head facing the catcher, every time his head returns to that point it counts as one somersault. The pace of the turns is marked by the drummer-snare! ba.s.s! cras.h.!.+ catch?-but Little Pablo himself doesn't hear the count.

"I actually don't count the spins; I just feel them. Just before completing the third somersault I break: I remove my hands and kick out my legs, sort of like doing a back dive into a pool. My eyes are open but I still haven't seen my brother. Not until I'm ready to give him my hands do we actually make eye contact. At that point his hands are like a gift from G.o.d. Sometimes he catches my elbows, sometimes just my fingers, but as soon as we grab each other I just slide into place. If I'm late there might be a jerk on my shoulders. If I'm early I might bash into his face. But when it's perfect nothing hurts."

Hanging by the arms of his brother as the two of them complete their arc of triumph, Juan Rodrguez epitomizes the glory of the circus: he's defied gravity, he's defeated fear, he's done what few others have done before-and done it consistently. He's a symbol for his country, a beacon for his family, a hero to children everywhere.

And yet.

"Flying is one of the hardest acts in the business," he lamented, "and we've been doing it since we were small. It's rough. It's hard on the shoulders; it's hard on the mind. It's like gymnastics. The kids start when they're eight or nine, and by the time they're twenty or twenty-three they get burned out. It's the same thing here, except we work every day. Every day, every day. And for what? When Miguel first landed the quad Irving Feld gave him fifty dollars every time he caught it. Later he offered him a bonus of ten thousand dollars if he caught two hundred quads in a year. He caught two hundred quads. Eventually Kenneth Feld stopped the bonus because it was costing too much money. By the time I was ready to try it the incentive was gone. We slapped hands a few times, but we never caught it. As long as you do the triple and catch, the owners don't really care. Let's face it, the quadruple somersault doesn't put people in the seats. Why should I risk my life?"

Back at the pedestal, Juan accepts his applause with an una.s.suming wave. As Mary Chris and Danny prepare for the finale, a crossover leap in which the two of them pa.s.s each other in midair, Juan has already turned his mind forward-to another act (he must return in ten minutes for the high-wire act), to another day (a long drive awaits), and ultimately to another life.

"To be honest I don't think I'm going to be doing this much longer. I like show business all right, but it's rough. If you look at our salaries, then you look at baseball players and people like that...they don't do s.h.i.+t compared to us. Not only do we have to work every day, but then we have to set up, tear down, drive, and do it all over again. Maybe I'll stay in the business another two or three years, but then I want to buy a house. Go to school. Maybe learn to weld or something. Get a town job. Relax. That's what we want to do, my wife and I. If you ask my dad, back when he was young the circus was great. Now it's starting to go downhill. It's not like one big family these days. There's no love in the circus anymore."

I certainly could understood his point, but welding? What about the glamour? The lights? The tent? The glory of being a "Fox Television Star," even if it's all just Barnum humb.u.g.g.e.ry? Ask any welder in America if he would trade his blowtorch for a shot at stardom and what would the answer be? Ask any young circus star if he wants the reverse and the answer would be surprisingly clear.

"I'm doing this because it's what I know how to do. But for me the future is elsewhere. I can still go to school. I can still get an education. I've always wanted to do welding or mechanics. As long as you make enough money to pay the food bills, the light bills, the phone bills, I'll be happy with that."

In the circus, as in America, each generation no longer expects to jump higher, or turn more somersaults, than their parents did. Like so many others, young performers in the circus today have upward desires and downward mobility. Juan Rodrguez could fly through the air, but in the end all he wanted was to land on his feet.

His younger brother was just the same. Only he did something about it.

10.

Without Saying Goodbye Before there was Danny, there was Buck.

I spent Friday afternoon at Buck's place, or what Arpeggio referred to as "Bucky's Workshop." The reason was my trunk. For four months the props department had loaded and unloaded my wardrobe trunk in each new town, a service for which I was obliged to tip them five dollars a week. Now, as a result, the wood on top was splintered, the lock on the front was broken, and the bottom was splitting its seams. Near Shea I had purchased four elbow brackets at a hardware store on Roosevelt Avenue, along with sixteen nuts and bolts. Now on Staten Island, I emptied out my mildewed a.s.sortment of dress s.h.i.+rts, baggy trousers, juggling b.a.l.l.s, grease rags, makeup containers, powdered socks, dismembered roaches, and melted pieces of candy and carried the trunk over to Buck's red van. There I spent the afternoon slowly repairing the ruptured bottom and listening to stories of Buck's latest adventures on the nude beaches of the Northeast. Just that morning, while I was visiting the Statue of Liberty with Danny, his sisters, and their mother, Buck had driven from Staten Island to New Jersey for a few hours of total body tan.

"That's a long way to go for a tan," I said. "After all, you can go to the beach right behind the tent for free."

"Well, the bridges are free when you leave the City," he said. "Plus, they want four dollars and twenty-nine cents for a twelve-pack of c.o.ke around here. I can buy the same thing for two forty-nine in Jersey. Plus gas is only a dollar seven. I filled up on super before I came back."

I should have known better than to quibble about pennies with the World's Most Frugal Clown. I asked him instead how he got started sunbathing in the nude.

"I've always liked going to the beach," he said, still dressed in his skimpy jogging shorts and ratty thrift-store thongs. Folded into a wobbly director's chair, he looked like a giant hermit crab who had long since outgrown his sh.e.l.l. "Years ago a friend suggested I go with him to a secret place he knew. Well, I couldn't believe it when I first saw it: n.o.body had any clothes on! I decided to give it a try, and-boy!-you can really get a good tan. Then another friend told me you could buy a book of all the nude beaches in America, even the world. I still use it today."

Buck pushed back on his heels and smiled: a life on the road, a barrel of laughs, and, as always, a hint of mystery.

When my trunk was repaired I headed back to the Alley, where the boys were just beginning to settle into their chairs and apply the first halting strokes of greasepaint. Just as I sat down Jimmy appeared in the entranceway. His reddened face had the stern demeanor that usually suggested a rebuke was imminent. Maybe we were bunched too closely in spec. Maybe he was upset that so few clowns had signed for the following year.