Swim to Me

by Betsy Carter

  Since he’d left home, he’d formed many habits like this. He got into the shower, cold water only, and soaped up his whole body. Then he took the bar of soap and ran it through his hair, kneading his fingers into his scalp to ensure a thorough massage. Somewhere he’d heard that the secret to keeping your hair was to make sure the blood circulated vigorously on the top of the head. Roy had always prided himself on his thick, wavy hair, which was down to his shoulders by now, and he was certain that the patch of baldness on the crown of his head, tiny as a teacup, would prove to be just an aberration.

  Because the windows inside his trailer were no larger than tissue boxes, he could never gauge the weather for sure until he stepped outside. Looked like rain. A sheet of low, gray clouds floated overhead. At any moment, there’d be a steady, hard rain on his metal roof, soaking the laundry hanging on the clothesline, filling the buckets with water, and turning the ground into a muck of silt. Then it would only be a matter of minutes before the sun would bear down and all that had been soaked was baked dry again.

  Roy stepped back into his trailer and made his bed, careful to fold the hospital corners at precise angles. He had virtually no possessions: a few changes of clothing, including two Hawaiian shirts; two sets of sheets; a blanket; a pillow; a sturdy pair of shoes; a toothbrush; a razor; a hairbrush; his New York Yankees cap; his wraparound sunglasses. He took extra care of what he had. He’d sold the car to a fellow from Bradenton who gave him six hundred dollars in cash. That was a year ago, and he still hadn’t spent it all. In the business he was in, there wasn’t a whole lot to need.

  Roy sat on his bed and looked around his trailer. He didn’t often let his mind wander to the past, but somehow the sound of the rain and the smell of the soaking earth brought his thoughts back to what it had been like to be in that apartment in the Bronx on a stormy day. It had smelled like wet towels, and he’d felt as if they were suffocating him. Sometimes he had screamed just to be heard, to feel the sound of his own voice. Sometimes he’d left and gone anywhere, just to assure himself that he was alive and that there was something else beyond those walls. And then he had done the thing he was most ashamed of. He had walked out on his family and run away from home.

  Here he was living in a place that was a quarter the size of that cramped apartment; he was as alone as it was possible for a man to be. While he tried not to think about the family he’d left behind, the knowledge of what he had done scarred his every moment. He never dreamed of redemption; the ascetic life he was now leading seemed to be the closest he would get.

  WHEN HE FIRST LEFT, he had no idea where he was going. He had never been anywhere, except for Florida. He got onto I-95 south and thought he’d just keep driving until something occurred to him. The first night, he drove until eight in the morning and got as far as the border between North and South Carolina. Barely able to keep his eyes open, he had been led by a succession of green and orange billboards into a place called the South of the Border Motel. After ten hours of a dreamless, uncomplicated sleep, he had driven for another twelve hours until he found himself outside of Sarasota. He hadn’t had a real meal in days, and his belly was aching to be filled. Maybe that’s why he had been drawn to a modest-looking diner with the words GIANT CAFÉ written in a playful script across a pink awning. A giant steak, a giant plate of French fries. It had made his mouth water to just think about it.

  Inside the café, a man so tall that he had to stoop slightly to avoid bumping his head on the ceiling greeted Roy. Roy had never seen anyone this tall. He had to be nearly eight feet. His shoes looked to be the size of planters, and his hands easily spanned the width of an air conditioner. His smile was shy and almost plaintive, and his sad beagle eyes made him less menacing than he might have been—that and the way he hunkered down and spoke kindly to the two midgets who were sitting at the soda fountain. Roy sat at an empty table and looked through the menu. He became engrossed reading about the “succulent steak smothered in onions” and might not have noticed anyone standing over him, except for the dark shadow that suddenly dimmed his view of the menu. “What can I get for you today?” The voice, deep and hollow, sounded as if it were rising up out of a drainpipe.

  Roy ordered his steak and a glass of beer to go with it. As he ate, he stared into the distance, aware of nothing in particular except how the sweet smell of onions lingered. At some point, his eyes settled on a wall filled with framed newspaper clippings. In each, the tall man at the front door was pictured with his tree-sized arm around some famous person who, in comparison, looked as if they had fallen out of his pocket. Roy recognized Elizabeth Taylor and Tony Perkins and Steve Lawrence; Lawrence was about Roy’s height, so seemed short enough even when not posing next to an eight-foot man. Roy gathered from the captions that the tall man was famous, that the place he was in was famous. Venice, Florida. He’d never heard of it, but according to the newspaper clippings, it was the winter home of Hanratty’s Circus, one of the largest in the world. That explained everything: the midgets, the giant, the Giant Café.

  The only time Roy had ever been to the circus had been with Delores, when she was still a little girl. He remembered the colors and how the acrobats had seemed to fly. He pictured the faces of the aerialists, first rigid with concentration, then flashing triumphant smiles after they had danced across the high wire and made the audience cry out in delight. Some people had even turned away, frightened at the prospect of witnessing the consequences of a turned foot or a missed step. Roy remembered that time at the mermaid park when, for just a few seconds, all eyes had been on him and the crowd had held its breath as he’d hauled Delores above his head and struck the pose of a nearby statue. People like him didn’t draw crowds. Yet the one time he had, he’d felt a rush of pleasure and possibility that he often thought about but had never found a way to duplicate.

  The midgets broke his daydreams. They were being held spellbound by a man with a perfectly waxed six-inch flattop and baggy gray pants. He must have said something funny because they all started to laugh, a tinkling laugh. Roy wondered if the man was a clown in the circus. Roy tried not to stare but he gradually became aware that by being ordinary looking, he was the odd man out in this little place.

  He tried to put his mind to productive thoughts, like getting a job. But thoughts of his family wouldn’t leave him. What sort of man up and leaves a wife and two children, for God’s sake, for no reason? For a moment, he even considered whether he should go back. Then he remembered the night of the liver scene and what had happened next. He could never go back. He had reasons, all right, most of them having to do with the way he’d lived and breathed misery for so long, he’d almost stopped caring. He had left, he told himself, because if he didn’t, the rage inside of him would eat him up or kill them all. Maybe Gail brought out the rage in him. They were so young when they got married and had a baby. When it came down to it, Gail was a survivor. She was also a looker in her better days. She’d do fine. Delores was a clever girl and would find her way. And the little one: well, he really didn’t know much about the little one, only that he was a mama’s boy. Mama’s boys always find someone to protect them.

  At least he’d left some money behind: those silver dollars he’d been squirreling away all those years. He’d loved staring at the old scratched-up profiles, wondering whose hands they had passed through and what they had bought. Gail would probably rummage through his things and find them soon enough.

  Roy’s mind circled back to where he was. This place felt comfortable. The people seemed friendly. Nice weather. He liked the hoopla around him. When the giant came back to take his dishes, he leaned down and asked Roy: “Will there be anything else?”

  Roy said, “Yes, sir. Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  The giant grimaced as if anticipating the question of how tall he was.

  “Sure,” he said.

  Roy thought for a moment. “I was wondering if you knew how a man could go about getting work around here.”

 
The giant smiled. “Well, you know there’s only one show in town. How are you on the high wire?”

  Roy smiled. “I’ve never been on the high wire, but I’ve got a swell set of biceps on me. Check these out.” Roy rolled up his sleeves and flexed his muscles, the way he imagined the strong man in the circus might.

  The giant poked Roy’s bulging arm with one of his fingers.

  “Not bad,” he said. “Been eating your spinach, have you? Are you a wrestler or something?”

  “No,” said Roy. “I lift cartons of canned food and detergent for a living. Or at least I did.”

  The giant had the vulnerable look of a person used to tolerating indignities, and Roy felt instinctively as if he understood. “There’s always room for one more roustabout,” he said.

  “Roustabout. What’s that?”

  “They’re the guys who do the heavy lifting,” he said. “They help with the rigging, they set up the tents, load and unload. Whatever needs doing.”

  “My kind of work,” said Roy. “I could do that. Do you mind if I ask you one more question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Rex,” he said. “T. Rex, but Rex for short. And you are?”

  “Roy Walker. Roy for short.” He grinned. “You from around here, Rex?”

  “No. None of us are from anywhere, really. My mother is from Saginaw, Michigan, and my father is from Toronto, which is how I got my name, I suppose.”

  “Oh, so T. Rex is a Canadian name, then?”

  His laugh was more of a rumble. “Rex is my professional name. My Christian name is Albert Tillingham. Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?”

  Rex tore a sheet of paper from his order book and scribbled something on it. “This is the name of the fellow you want to see about work. You here by foot or car?” he asked.

  “Car.”

  “You won’t need a car if you stick around. Just go straight down Tamiami Trail and make a left on Venice Boulevard. Go about half a block and, on your left, you’ll come to a park filled with trailers. There’s a banner over the entrance that says Hanratty’s Circus. That’s us. Ask anyone there where Finn is, and they’ll direct you right to him. Finn’s the guy who runs it, the gaffer we call him. He’s always looking for another hand. Make sure to tell him you got his name from Rex, not T. Rex. Only outsiders call me that.”

  Rex tore the sheet of paper from the pad and handed it to Roy.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said, reaching into his pants pocket. “Now, what’s the damage?” Roy had the habit of holding his wallet with two hands, one hand on top and one on the bottom. To anyone watching, it would have seemed that the hand on top was trying to get the hand on the bottom to close the wallet and put it away. Money was always tight and he never spent it without thinking. He’d already planned to leave Rex more than the 10 percent tip he usually gave.

  “Nah, put that away,” said Rex. “Your money’s no good in this place. Go get a couple of weeks of work under your belt, then come back and we’ll talk about you treating me to the biggest lobster we can find around here.”

  Roy looked at his wallet and up at Rex. “You sure?”

  “Yup, sure as can be,” he said.

  Roy slipped his wallet back into his pocket and held out his hand.

  “Well, Mr. Rex, you’ve got yourself a deal. I’ll do everything in my power to make good on that lobster dinner.”

  “Deal,” said Rex, aware of how tightly Roy was gripping his hand.

  FINN HAD SIGNED him up right away.

  He became an able roustabout: setting up the tents, feeding and cleaning up after the animals, washing Nehru and all the other elephants. Each week, he’d fill a pail with soap and water and take a large broom, the kind they use to clean hospital floors, and scrub the elephants. Had Roy viewed his life with irony, he might have seen this as retribution for all of the stains he’d left on the walls in the Bronx. But he didn’t. Washing them, particularly Nehru, had become one of his most pleasurable chores.

  Lately, he’d also been one of the catchers who stood under the net during the show’s main attraction: the American Arroyo Brothers. The Arroyos, Leonard and Ernesto, had recently returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam. Before their act, they would climb their thirty-foot rigs to their platforms, where Ernesto would pull out an American flag from under his spandex shirt. He would unfurl it for all to see, while, across the way, Leonard would stand on his platform and salute it. The audience would go wild. It added a touch of danger and patriotism to what was already a flying trapeze act of unsurpassed daring, made beautiful by its precise timing.

  The brothers would hang from their feet on facing fly bars. Leonard would grip his bar, swing forward, and then let go, as he launched forward into a somersault or two before falling, cannonball-like, but with his arms outstretched, toward Ernesto. Ernesto, his feet still wound around the catch bar, would swing forward just in time to catch Leonard in midair, where they grasped each other’s elbows, slid their hands down to their wrists, and swung together in perfect synchrony, ready for another flight.

  A split second could make the difference between the catch and death. Even the net beneath them was no guarantee of safety. Landing in it improperly could mean a broken neck, or worse. Should one of them topple, Roy was there to break the fall. The American Arroyo Brothers entrusted their lives to him; once, after Roy was a few minutes late for a rehearsal, Leonard grabbed him by the shoulder and said, “Hey, man, I didn’t make it out of Nam alive so I could bite the big one here. You get what I’m saying?” Roy clenched his fists. Had he been holding something in his hand, he would have certainly flung it at Leonard. His face got taut and his heart pounded but he swallowed hard and said nothing. He knew enough to keep his temper in check at this place.

  By now, the rain had stopped. When Roy came out of his trailer, the fourteen Pomeranians were already out practicing in their ruffled tutus, front paws waving in the air, hind legs dancing to some soundless cha-cha. Lucy, the bicycle-riding chimp, was tooling around the campgrounds on her Schwinn tricycle. The tumblers were practicing a seven-person pyramid, the one created by German high-wire-walker Karl Wallenda. This particular act, which Wallenda had created with a woman standing on a chair at the top, had a sad history. Nearly ten years earlier, while the pyramid was being performed in Detroit, one of the members faltered and three men fell to the ground. Two died of their injuries and the third, Karl Wallenda’s son, was paralyzed from the waist down. The seven-person pyramid had rarely been performed since, but Dave Hanratty, the owner of the circus, wanted to include the act in the next show as a symbol that life goes on. He thought it wouldn’t much hurt ticket sales, either.

  Mr. Hanratty had asked Roy personally whether he would act as the catcher for that act, and that was a big deal. As Roy wandered through the campgrounds, people waved or nodded at him: the clowns, the little people, the calliope player, the elephant trainer. And of course Carmen, the aerialist, who made even the simplest sentence sound like a seduction, greeted him with a creamy, “Hey there, Mr. Catch Me If You Can.”

  The thought flashed through his mind: if only Gail could see him now, a well-respected man, a tan and muscular man with long hair and important responsibilities. What would she say to that?

  Fourteen

  What was the name again?”

  “Walker. Gail Walker.”

  The hotel clerk ran his finger down a list of names as he tapped a pencil against his forehead.

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t seem to have any Walkers. Is it possible it could be under another name?”

  “I’m here with the CFAA Convention. Maybe it’s under Mandor. Avalon Mandor,” Gail said, trying to sound pleasant.

  “Avalon. Interesting name,” he said, twirling the eraser into the side of his cheek.

  “Ahh, yes, here we go: Avalon Mandor: one assistant, plus child. Assistant—” He looked up. “Could that be you?”

  Gail hadn’t quite
thought of herself as an assistant. She had certainly made it sound to Thelma and Delores as if she were equal to Avalon, if not running the CFAA. But the truth was, ever since the cab pulled up to this hotel, pink as Westie’s Play-Doh, with its turrets, pointed arches, and swaggering palm trees, Gail had felt overwhelmed by the size and ritziness of it all. The one time she had gone into New York City to shop at Saks Fifth Avenue, she’d felt as if she were trespassing—that Alexander’s was where she really belonged. This hotel, with the men in their starchy blue uniforms reaching for her bags, calling her ma’am, and wishing her a good stay made her feel the same way—as if everyone was wondering what exactly a woman of her station thought she was doing here. So she allowed that, yes, she could very well be Avalon Mandor’s assistant.

  “We have a room for you and the little guy,” he said, looking down at Westie. “This, uh, time of year, particularly with this, uh, convention, we get booked so far in advance. It’s a little, uh, modest, but cozy. And you’ll be only minutes from the beach. Room 101.”

  Gail took the key. “Sounds fine,” she said, surprised by the sharpness in her voice. She picked up Westie in one arm, their bags in the other, and said she would make her own way to the room, thank you. The room was half in the basement and half above ground, so that there was a band of light across the top of the window. It was dark and small, and the constant revving sound of the generator made the walls vibrate slightly. A narrow bed was covered with a pale yellow blanket, full of those little nubs of wool that indicate the blanket has been well used. Next to the bed was a fold-up canvas cot. There were no pictures on the wall, just the purple stain of something spilled or thrown. Wine perhaps. And there was a folding metal luggage rack and a scratched wooden bed stand with a gooseneck lamp.

  “They’ve certainly put me in my place,” Gail said to Westie, as she searched the wall for a switch that would turn on the gooseneck. Westie sat at the foot of the bed, hugging his stuffed turtle. Tired and hungry, he’d only talked to Otto and Dorph since they’d left Weeki Wachee six hours earlier.