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“Sure. I’ve done all sorts of things over the years. I’ve produced. I’ve done advance. I’ve even been in a few movies or so. I tell the boys in the Alley it’s important to move around a lot. If not, you’ll get stale. The worst thing you can do is be on the same show all your life. Hell, I myself have been on Carson & Barnes, as well as Hoxie Tucker. I put in a lot of years at Great American. But still, I think I like this show the best.”
“Why’s that?”
“I can get away with murder.”
I laughed. “What does that mean?”
“It means exactly what I say.” He didn’t seem to be laughing with me. “I always say, you haven’t lived until you’ve spent a week in jail.”
“And you’ve spent a week in jail?”
“Oh, sure. I’ve spent more than that. It’s not until you’ve lived in jail that you know what you can do without. Oh, you can run, you can escape a few times, but sooner or later they’re going to catch up with you.”
“Who’s they?”
“The police. The customers. The parents.”
“The parents?”
He pulled his van in front of Clown Alley and turned off the engine. “I’m afraid that’s all I can say,” he insisted. He stepped out of the van and slammed the door behind him, speaking to me through the half-open window. “I’ll just have to leave a little mystery in the air.” He turned and lumbered away, leaving the door rattling in its sockets and me sitting in the dark.
“You want to know what I really think of these clowns? They don’t put one pe
Jimmy James was angry. Earlier in the day, during the 4:30 show in York, chaos had struck the firehouse gag. Joe couldn’t find the ax for the knockoff head. Brian fell on the first hop over the jump rope. Marty couldn’t get the fire going for the blowoff. And worst of all, Henry ran into Rob during the run-around and chipped off the bottom half of his two front teeth. Back in the Alley, Henry threw his helmet on the ground, examined himself in the mirror, then slammed his chair into the ground. Moments later Jimmy came storming into the Alley. It was his first appearance all year.
“Where is the fire?!” he demanded. “This gag is nothing without the fire. I want to see the fu
After the show, he came into the cookhouse. “Let’s see what culinary arts Pops has prepared for us this evening,” he said. Inside the sagging, sievelike tent, Arpeggio had spread his broccoli and cheese on a piece of white bread with margarine. Pops, the grizzled former Marine turned grease gourmand, had actually run out of cheese and substituted Nabisco Cheez-Its. It was broccoli and Cheez-Its for the boys. Jimmy spooned out his serving into a trash can. “But, Jimmy,” Arpeggio protested. “Those are vegetables. They’re good for you.” “I’m on a diet,” he said. The previous night, during a rare rehearsal to tinker with the finale, he had a
“We’d like to see a dessert list when you have a chance,” Arpeggio said to Pops, who stared back at him, baffled.
“And how about a glass of your house wine?” Jimmy added.
Pops wandered off shaking his head. Jimmy sat down across from me.
“I hate yelling at the boys,” he said. “But I have no choice. Sometimes they don’t have the proper respect for tradition. For most of them it’s just a lark. But for me it’s something else…” Jimmy quietly poured salt on his soggy corned beef, the only thing left on his plate except for vanilla pudding from a can. He was dressed as he always was between shows, in black formal trousers, ankle-high boots, and an open-necked white dress shirt. On the pocket of his black waistcoat was a barely detectable clip-on pin displaying a pink triangle. “My friends at home think it’s glamorous. If only they knew that for years I lived in a two-by-two room and poured buckets of water over my head for a shower. Like many people, I came here to get away, you see. From the witch-hunts of the 1950s. If I had it to do all over again I probably would have stayed in school. But I was never a good student. In high school I had so many other things on my mind I could never concentrate on my studies. I got C’s as a result. And by then it had started to ooze out.”
Jimmy ate a spoonful of corned beef and winced at the taste. He took a sip of Kool-Aid to wash down the food.
“For me it was an escape. Nobody here asks any questions. Look at Buck. Look at me. You haven’t learned many of the secrets yet, but you will. You’ll learn about the animals, the workers. Hell, a few years ago a clown was raped by the elephant department on another show. He came to work on Clyde Beatty but was never the same. I’m afraid to say it, but most people here are ru
“I bet they’d be proud of you today,” I said. “You still have something, something from the outside…”
He looked at me primly. “Class.” His back was straight. His hair was neatly trimmed. Earlier that day I watched him get out of his pickup truck carrying pies to the office. I noticed that his hair was shorter, straighter, and, well, darker. “What are you looking at?” he said. “I’m admiring your haircut.” “You mean my dip job. I got up this morning, looked in the mirror, and said, ‘Jimmy, you look like a dead Communist leader,’ so I went into town and got my hair dyed.” Within a week it had begun to gray again.
“I was raised in a proper Southern home,” Jimmy continued. “I’m sure you know what that means. I was taught to say ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘No, sir.’ To this day I still feel that ma