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“I got this sudden urge to get up in the middle of the night,” she remembered. “It doesn’t happen to me often, so I knew something was wrong.” She threw on her clothes and went ru
But how did she know this for sure? I wondered. Maybe he was just sleeping through the night. Perhaps he was trying to stay out of the cold.
“I hate to say this,” Dawnita said, “but a horse’s penis is dirty. When it’s clean we know something has happened. Either they’ve been mating with the mares or they’ve been played with. We know they haven’t been mating with the mares.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“As soon as I realized what had happened I dragged him out of there as fast as I could and beat the shit out of him with a rubber whip. I would have beat him to death if someone hadn’t pulled me away. Luckily the guy was gone by the next morning. I told him I would kill him if he ever stepped foot on the lot again. And do you know why? Because if he would do that to an animal, he would do that to a child…”
Circus people will tolerate a lot in private—drinking, drugs, even profligate sex were all part of the daily life of the show—but if somebody either inside or outside the community threatens to spoil the public face of the show—the basic elements of the dream—reaction is swift and lethal. The circus, at its core, is a fantasy: you can look but you ca
As the act nears its end, Gloria calls all the horses to the center of the ring with the simple command “Chez!” With a giant sweeping gesture of her arms she signals for all eight of her horses to stand on their hind legs. The first attempt is valiant, but short. The second lasts a little longer. It is not until the third try at the trick that her full platoon of Thoroughbreds rears back on its sixteen hind legs, punches the air with its line of hooves, and holds its pose for an impossible span that seems to defy not only gravity but time.
“The truth is, not all of the horses like to do that trick. It’s hard, and they’re getting old. These animals are around seven. If they’re taken care of they can work for another few years. But then they’ll get tired; they’ll lose weight. They’re like old people. Sometimes they just don’t want to go out and perform anymore.”
Sitting behind her trailer between shows, with the wind skipping up from the early-evening sky and the lights first appearing on the top of the tent, Gloria realized the irony of what she was saying. All good acts must come to an end. All performers have their time. In his book Wild Tigers and Tame Fleas, famed clown Bill Ballantine writes about living on the Ringling train in the 1950s next door to the newly arrived Trevor Bale and his family. In the book Gloria (age eleven) and Elvin and Dawnita (age eight) are seen giggling around the circus lot until they are beckoned back by the commanding call of their father: “EL-VIN! DAWN-NITA! GLOO-O-O-RIA!” “Try to imagine an ocean liner whistle at six feet,” Ballantine writes, “a diesel locomotive at a crossing, and you approximate father Bale’s call of the wild.” Almost forty years later these names were still being bellowed around circus tents and their glory was just as strong. Still, hints of retirement were just begi
“Sure, I’ve done what I wanted to do: I’ve worked with horses, I’ve done the trapeze, I’ve traveled all over the world. But it’s in my blood. I’ll do it until I feel like I don’t look good enough and I don’t feel as if I can perform well. Then I won’t do it anymore. Then I’ll know it’s time to leave.”
Tired, the horses are ready for their exit dance. Gloria sends them back into their original single-file trot around the ring, this time to the timely gallop “Homestretch.” When the last horse in the line gets to the front of the ring, the horse turns a complete 360-degree revolution and obediently steps out of the ring into the outstretched grasp of a handler. The process is repeated—eight, seven, six, five, four, three, and two—until horse number one, Blair, appears to sprint unexpectedly past the gate. “You forgot to turn,” Gloria calls in a public rebuke reminiscent of her father. Blair slowly backs up as if he were going to turn, then steps abruptly into the ring and, with Gloria at his side, bows his head to the audience. The simple gesture brings “aaaah”s from the house. The trick has worked to perfection. The horses have worked their charm.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Gloria Louise…”.
The first half is coming to a close.
8
A Streak of Blood
Douglas Holwadel walked alongside the tent and rehearsed the remarks he would soon have to make on the cellular phone in his rented motor home. In the twelve years he and Joh
“Mrs. Mitchell, I’m calling about your son. I’m afraid I have some bad news…”
Natick, Massachusetts, is a small community of 30,000 people on Route 135 west of Boston, full of deserted red-brick buildings placed around a central square and with several shallow lakes ringed around its outer core. With its rich evergreens, stone sidewalks, and gentle hills, the town is perfect for sleigh rides in winter and pickup baseball games in summer. Indeed, for years the circus used to play the baseball diamond behind Natick High School every year on July 4. The town loved the circus, for it provided a focal point for its Independence Day celebration. The circus loved the town because the lot was grassy, there was a basketball court nearby and just beyond that a rare treat, Dug Pond.
This year, because business had been slow in recent seasons, the circus decided to move its date from July 4 to the last weekend in June. From the begi