Страница 14 из 76
“Everybody on the show has a way to make a little extra money,” Buck said in his loopy, wry hillbilly drawl that usually culminated with some unexpected crack. “Sometimes it’s from the rubes, the townies; sometimes it’s from the people around here, like First of Mays. When I first joined the show I made eighteen dollars a week. Now I make ten times that amount. It’s still not very much, so I make a lot of extra money on cherry pie.”
“What’s cherry pie?”
“Oh, it’s many things,” he said. “Taking down and putting up the big top. Carrying the ice. Anything you do to make extra money. They’re what I call my sidelines. I work flea markets, I sell circus memorabilia, I have a few dirty videos I rent out. Also, drinks. If you’re thirsty on this show and you run to the Coke house to get a cold soda, it costs you seventy-five cents. I sell them out of my van to the clowns for fifty cents. You go to the Coke house, they don’t have any diet. I’m diabetic, that’s the only thing I can drink. Hell, half the clowns in there I’ve trained to drink diet.”
“So that’s how you make your living?”
“I certainly don’t make it off the circus. I have to make it off something. Just wait a few days, you’ll see.”
It turns out I didn’t have to wait that long at all. Within hours of my arrival on the lot I became aware of a vast underground economy on the show. Even before I learned people’s jobs, their names, or even their sexual histories (which was usually the second thing I learned), I heard about their rackets. Ora sold jackets. Bo
While this underground economy was one of the more impressive aspects of the circus, it could also be one of its more sordid. As I learned quickly, life operated much more smoothly on the show with a little tip here or a small bribe there. The problem for an outsider was trying to figure out whom to tip, when to tip, and how much to tip. The water man received a tip, for example. Joh
What I was sure of was that, in those opening days at least, loyalty was only wallet deep. The workers on the show viewed a First of May, especially one with a bright, shining RV and clean fingernails, as a rube and a gold mine. When I first arrived on the lot, I was told that the external electrical cable on my Wi
“Jack told me to tell you that you are expected to tip me,” Willie mumbled in what was probably the most coherent thing I heard him say all year.
“I understand that,” I said. “I hear you like beer.”
“Even better than the smell of a pussy,” he said. “And almost better than reefer.” At the mention of this Willie visibly swooned. “But you still have to pay Jack for the plugs, you know.”
“And how much are they?”
“Sixty-five dollars,” he said.
The next day I dutifully paid Jack for my plugs. And when I learned that he asked all the performers to tip him five dollars a week for their power, I never got around to paying that.
“Higher, higher. Lift your hands a little higher…. That’s right. Now put your palms up, not down. You’re not flying anywhere; you’re not an airplane. The proper position is palms up.”
“What about my feet?” I said.
“You can stand like you are now, with your feet not completely together. But turn your toes out a bit.”
“And my head?”
“Head up, eyes out. Don’t look at the first row, but the last. Remember, you’re asking for something: you want their applause. The show is for them and you want their appreciation.”
Elvin Bale is never more alive than when he discusses performing. On opening day he sat outside his sister’s trailer, with a cellular phone in his hands and a tuna sandwich in his lap, and brought his forty-eight years of circus experience to life as he taught yet another newcomer how to style—the circus expression for taking a bow.
“A lot of performers don’t know how to get the audience,” he said, his ruddy cheeks blushing in the afternoon breeze and his thin blond hair flapping against his head. “You have to communicate with them even though you’re not talking to them. You must look into their eyes and control them. To me, the audience was my lifeblood. They were the ones who gave me the daring to do some of the things I did. And no matter what I did, I always left the ring saying, ‘God, I wish I could have done more.’ That’s a good performer—when you feel you haven’t given enough.”
As he spoke, Elvin searched the empty sky with his eyes as if he were looking for a spotlight. With his voice he could conjure up memories of a thousand circuses past. With his arms he could direct me in exactly how to stand. But with his legs he could no longer stand that way himself. Elvin Bale, the “Great Melvor,” the Circus Daredevil of the Century, was sitting forever in a wheelchair.
“It happened in 1987,” he recalled. “I was in Hong Kong to do a shot with my ca
For his signature act, Elvin would crouch in the steel barrel of the world’s largest ca