Читать книгу The Long Shadows - Andrew Boone's Erlich - Страница 12

I never finished telling you what happened as a result of decking that rube in Madison Square Garden. I think when I left off I was gazing at a tug in the East River after fleeing Ingalls and the need to make a decision about my future in the circus—if I had any future.

Well, that afternoon I arrived back at the circus with only about five minutes to spare. Thank goodness I was already in costume or I would have been late and in even more hot water, if that were possible.

The cop at the performers’ entrance was tasked with checking identification and keeping out the riffraff and runaway kids who dogged us everywhere we played. I wish I needed ID. All that flatfoot had to do was take one look at me and he knew I belonged, so I breezed right past him without even stopping.

Walking through the entrance to that building never failed to amaze me. Today was no different. Even though I was seriously thinking of leaving the circus, performing in Madison Square Garden always made me feel a sense of awe and wonder. For a performer, playing for a New York audience in those hallowed halls absolutely meant you were in the big time. That was a thrill I would miss if I left the show.

As quickly as I could, I made my way to the backyard. That’s what we called the area just outside, where the acts entered and exited the Big Top or, in this case, the arena. I walked by Fred Bradna, Ringling’s Ringmaster and Equestrian Director.

Bradna was an institution. He’d been with the circus as long as anyone could remember. He was unmistakable with his pencil-line moustache, red-frocked velvet coat, white pants, calf’s skin gloves, black top hat, and the silver drum-major’s whistle he wore around his neck. Although Bradna was a small-framed, short man, he was born with natural gifts you would assume were the birthright of a bigger person; great charisma and a booming voice that could silence a Big Top full of thousands or get a circus crew jam-packed with egotists to march in time and perform on cue.

When I walked by him, Bradna looked me up and down with the same critical eye he employed with Ringling’s prized Percherons. The Ringmaster carried a clipboard to ensure that all the acts assembled in the backyard lined up in the right order.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were gonna make it or not today, Erlich. Please don’t tell me you’re turning prima donna on me,” he said, looking for my name on his list.

I just nodded and kept walking, searching for my assigned position in the multitude of performers and animals that, if placed in a straight line, would have stretched for several city blocks. Looking back on it, one of the things that kept me in the circus was how well-ordered things were and that I knew just where I belonged.

As I approached, my eye was immediately drawn to a dozen or so regally robed elephants and a company of drummer girls in gorgeous purple satin costumes. In those days, we were Madison Square Garden’s biggest moneymaker, and from the looks of the elaborate Durbar spec we were about to present, you could easily see why we drew such large crowds. I knew my station in the lineup: just in front of Gaspaux’s rhinestone- and-feather-clad Arabian Show Ponies and behind Lew Jacobs and the other clowns. My place in that assembly of men and beasts was at least one point of certainty in my circus life. I nudged myself into position and felt a tug on my trouser leg.

“Where the hell have you been, Jake? Do I have to worry that you’re hitting the bottle?” I heard Harry Doll ask.

I looked down at him.

“Harry, it’s been many years and I’ve never let you down yet, have I?”

“No, you haven’t. But there is always a first time,” he shot back. “Even before you decked that rube last night, you’ve been acting stranger than a one-legged man in a sack race.”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. I felt that I had offended him earlier that day in the dressing room and hoped he would forgive me. Neither of us seemed to know what to say next. Then, bridging the growing distance between us, Harry broke the silence. “You know, this is sort of an anniversary. It was ten years ago, here in the Garden, when the circus started their 1926 run, that I first met you. Do you remember?”

“You’re so romantic,” I joked, trying to lighten the mood. The serious look on Harry’s face let me know he didn’t appreciate my levity.

I didn’t say it, but I would never forget that night. The unpleasant experience I had during my first performance with the circus was inscribed in indelible ink in my memory. Clyde Ingalls, whom I’d only met a few weeks before in El Paso, dressed me up in an outlandish, scratchy wool outfit that included gold buttons, gold epaulets, a red satin hat that was sixteen inches high, and patent leather platform shoes. I was so damned high in the air that I had to keep moving my toes to make sure it was my feet down there. That first night, standing in the sideshow tent, when I heard the talker holler “Doors!” and the stampeding crowd approached, my knees started knocking. Every fiber in my being had screamed “Run!” Then, for the first time, I heard the voice of the man who would become my best friend.

“Take it easy, Jake!” I had looked high and low for the source of the thin yet vibrant sound. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from until I dropped my gaze a very, very far distance down to the sideshow platform next to mine and Harry had smiled up at me. “Welcome, Jake, and don’t worry. There are more freaks out in the crowd then there are up here,” he had said with the authority of the well-seasoned trooper that he was. I smiled back at him. Though he was a little man, there was something powerful about his presence and his words that calmed me down and helped me to face the onslaught.

That first performance in the sideshow was the beginning of a beautiful friendship that had lasted for years. You can see why the thought of telling him I was about ready to leave the circus was eating me up inside.

“Okay, big man, enough with the nice memories. The show’s about to begin so assume the position,” Harry ordered. Like one of the finely trained, plume- and sequin-clad equine specimens just behind us in line, on command I bent down on my right knee. Resting my right elbow on my knee, I spread my fingers wide and turned my open palm to face the ceiling. I looked like a waiter who forgot his tray. In some kind of bizarre scene from Gulliver’s Travels, Harry sat squarely in the middle of my hand.

Two shrill calls from Bradna’s whistle pierced the early afternoon air. The animals in line, sensing the excitement, roared, neighed, growled, and announced their presence however they could. Though most of the troopers had done this dance so many times it was second nature, they were never nonchalant. An adrenaline-generated murmur filled the backyard. The show was about to begin and everyone was keyed-up. Over my years with the circus, I think I must have gotten addicted to that adrenaline. That was something else that kept me hooked on the place.

I carefully stood up, hoisting Harry over my head. He looked like a little emperor, enthroned next to my right ear. One minute later, Bradna blew his whistle again. That was the cue for Ringling’s big brass band to begin the show’s drum and bugle overture. Like Hannibal’s Legion, the colossal collection of costumed performers and beasts that was to be the circus’s opening Durbar Spectacular slowly moved forward through the arena entrance.

Once inside that space, I immediately felt the thrill of it all. There was so much stimulation in that place: perfume of peanuts and popcorn, heat from the multi-colored spotlights, heart-walloping music, the explosion of what seemed to be a million photographers’ flashes, murmuring applause, and a blurring of faces all whooshing by on an absolutely electric current of excitement.

Marching around the circus’s three rings was special for me. There was something otherworldly; for lack of better words, something sacred about it. When I marched in the spec I felt connected to primitive mask-clad Indians dancing around a winter campfire and to Romans racing their chariots in the Colosseum. In the spec, we carried on a timeless, trance-inducing choreography by tramping around and around in circles.

More often than I’d like to remember, I’d been painfully bruised when one of Gaspaux’s ponies stepped on my Achilles. So that night as we started to move out and one of those Arabians stepped a little too close for comfort, I picked up the pace.

Harry and I marched along in uncharacteristic silence. He knew that something was wrong and I wouldn’t or couldn’t talk about it. Trying to escape the tension, I looked away from him, up at the rigging for the trapeze. In just a few minutes, my friends the Codonas would be flying high above the crowd doing death-defying triple summersaults. The audience’s attention would always be glued to them. I think that’s because trapeze artists fulfilled the need we humans have to be free of our limitations, including gravity, time, and thought. In just a few years, the overwhelming danger of that pursuit would hurl Lillian Lietzel, Fred Codona’s wife, to her untimely death. She would take her husband’s sanity along with her. After Lillian fell to her death, Fred became terribly depressed. Finally he married another flyer. That was a disaster. The marriage ended up on the rocks. At a meeting in Long Beach at the divorce lawyer’s office, Codona pulled out a gun. When it was over, he had killed his ex-wife, her mother, the divorce lawyer, and himself. I’m not proud to admit it, but when that all went down I understood just how down Fred Codona must have been.

During that afternoon’s spec in Madison Square Garden, after I looked at the rigging for the trapeze artists, I turned my attention to the center ring. There I saw the huge steel cage that housed Frank Buck’s big cats. The lion tamer was another death-defier, sure to grab the rubes attention. I imagined his Bengals as our deadly passions; Buck’s whip, chair, and gun our meager will.

That afternoon I must have looked at the acts with different eyes; the eyes of a man who knows his time somewhere is limited. The reality that I would be leaving soon either of my own accord or against my will was sinking in. I remember worrying that when I left or was canned, I’d feel like a refugee; displaced, never fully at home anywhere else. I loved the circus but I also hated it. I would truly miss my friends in the show. And to be honest, besides the rubes, who at times made my life a living hell, I liked having an audience.

As I continued walking around the rings, I looked up to the packed stands and watched fans enter while others exited the arena. Looking back at it from this hospital bed, it makes me think of all those people who at that very instant were coming into and leaving this world; some would see a great show; some would detest their experience; some would be forced to leave before they were ready; others would leave early of their own accord.

XXXX

“There’s somebody waiting for you at the exit, Jake,” Harry said, “He looks pretty anxious to see you.”

I looked to the green curtain and saw Clyde Ingalls peering right at me. I wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go and no way to avoid the confrontation I had been dreading. As we approached, he aggressively stepped forward. “May I have a word, Jake?” he asked, loud enough to be heard above the throng.

“I’ve got to take care of this, Harry.” I stepped out of line and lowered my little friend carefully to the ground.

Harry walked on and was swept away with the rest of the procession. I was scared of the tongue-lashing and ultimatum I was sure to receive. I was still ambivalent about what I wanted to do. Leaving would be a big gamble. Where would I go? The Depression enveloped the world with no sign of letting up. If I left how would I support myself? And if Ingalls let me stay, what prospects might I miss? How much time did I have to waste?

“Hello, Jake. Have you been avoiding me?”

I had no idea what to say to him. “Well . . . Well . . . ” I stammered. “Clyde . . . Clyde, you were furious with me last night and, to be honest, I was very embarrassed by what I did.” Unable to look him square in the eye, I stared over his right shoulder as if I were speaking to someone standing behind him.

“Look, Jake, I’ve put that behind me. That rube ended up with a bad bruise on his butt and on his ego. A lot of your friends say he had it coming. Our lawyers gave him two C-notes and he decided to forget the whole damned thing. As far as that affair goes, I just need your promise it will never happen again; and I mean never!” Ingall’s demeanor shocked me. I had expected him to tear off my head and hand it to me on a platter, but he was levelheaded and calm.

“Absolutely. I give you my word,” I answered reflexively, grateful for the apparent reprieve. I felt relieved, but I also knew I still owed him my decision about my future in the circus.

“I know you have not made up your mind yet about next season. With the way things are in the world, for the life of me I can’t figure out why.” Here it comes, I thought. “We’re in the middle of worst hard times any of us can remember. Men are begging for work, getting their food in bread lines. You’re in the Big Red with the largest and most respected of any freak show. If you’re not careful you’ll end up in a mud show or worse.” He shook his index finger at me. I just listened, nodded my head, and wished I were a million miles away. “You’re the only one in the troop who hasn’t signed up for next season. I need to know what you plan to do by next Monday before the show, and no later. If I don’t have a signed contract, I will assume you are resigning as of next season. Do you understand, Jake? Have I made myself clear?”

“Crystal clear,” I answered, now making direct eye contact but just for a few seconds. “You’ll have my answer by then.”

I turned around and started to walk away. That had not gone at all as I anticipated. I felt shell-shocked. What other unexpected surprises are in store for me? I wondered.

“One more thing, Jake.” I turned around, expecting the other shoe to drop. “That dame I saw you and Buck talking to in the menagerie—you know, the artist. She had a messenger drop this off for you before the matinee.” He reached up, handed me a small envelope, and walked away.

Without any hesitation I tore it open and read the note on the sweet-smelling monogrammed stationary.

Dear Mr. Erlich,

It was such a pleasure to meet you today. I know it is last minute, but my husband and I are hosting a soiree this Wednesday evening at our home in the city. I would love for you to come. There are some people attending whom I would like you to meet. Frank Buck is coming. There is no need to RSVP. I know that you are not done until about nine, so if you would like, just get here when you can. Our address is:

376 Madison.

Your new friend,

Val McPhearson

P.S. I do hope I see you there.

I reread the note several times. Surprise and anticipation washed over me just like stormy waves in Santa Monica. I didn’t want to admit it, but I hoped there was something written between the lines. My jitters about Val’s note didn’t make any sense. Even though I had just met her, I felt as eager for the party as a kid counting down the days to his birthday. What’s more, she was married. Yet I was all twisted up inside. I hadn’t felt that way about anybody since I left Hollywood. Recalling what a fiasco that turned out to be, I was determined not to make that same mistake.