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“Good God!” Jimmy exclaimed when he looked at my face. Glancing at my reflection in the window I saw that the previous shallow mark on my cheek had already swollen into a red puffy sore like a slice of slightly discolored peach on my otherwise pale white face. “Did you put ice on it?”
“It didn’t occur to me.” I was begi
“Do you have any ice?”
“A few cubes, I think.” I sat down in my chair.
“Wait right here.”
Jimmy disappeared and returned moments later with a bag of ice and a tube of Betadine.
“First of all, get your makeup off,” he said. “You’re not going to perform tonight. Then put some ointment and this ice on your cut and get yourself to a doctor as soon as you can. I’ve got to go back and a
I assured him that I would be fine. After he left I carefully removed my remaining clown face, unplugged my camper from the generator, and just as the whistle blew for the start of the second show wobbled slowly off the lot and away from the tent.
“So, you’re a clown?” the doctor said to me as she entered the emergency room a little over an hour later. The ice pack was still on my face. Clown white was still behind my ears. I felt like a boy left behind in summer camp after the rest of my cabin had gone fishing.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “I’m a clown.”
“Well, then, make me laugh,” she said.
Why do so many people ask this question of clowns? I thought. Everywhere I went people asked for a free performance. If you want to be made to laugh, I felt like saying, come pay to see a show. She certainly wasn’t offering me free medical care.
My look managed to get the message across, and the doctor turned her attention to my face. After a brief examination she a
That would be the hardest of all.
“Were you fired?” Guillaume wondered when he saw me out of costume near the end of the second show. Everyone was surprised when I told them about the accident. They hadn’t seen it and, in the intervening two hours, hadn’t heard about it either. I was shocked. “You mean to tell me that, with all the worthless gossip that goes around this lot, when somebody actually gets injured nobody talks about it?” The performers know whom their neighbors are fighting with, flirting with, even fornicating with, but, it turns out, they know very little about what those neighbors are doing in the ring.
This seems only fitting. The American circus, I was begi
“Welcome to the begi
“Any advice before leaving?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Don’t go.”
Chuckling through my trepidation, I hopped in the driver’s seat of my Wi
Intermission
The Color of Popcorn
With the houselights illuminated for intermission the tent begins to stir. The clowns come pouring into the center ring to sign autographs; two elephants come plodding into ring one to give rides; and a dozen butchers come wandering down the track. The show is in recess, but the business marches on.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there will now be a precise fifteen-minute intermission…, with elephant rides in ring one—elephant rides for the entire family: you must purchase a ticket before boarding the pachyderm…concessionaires selling hot dogs, hot buttered popcorn, ice-cold Coca-Cola, peanuts, Cracker Jack, cotton candy, and delicious cherry Sno-Kones…plus—Mom, Dad, bring your camera, come right down to the center ring, and meet the clowns in an autograph party: don’t forget to purchase the all-new Clown Alley coloring book…”
The business makes quite a show.
As the circus inched its way back down the East Coast from New England toward its inevitable date with New York, it also moved steadily toward another important date: the change of leadership from Doug to Joh
When John W. Pugh and E. Douglas Holwadel first became partners in 1982, the two of them could not have been more different. Joh