by Jim Tully
We landed in the town with our dead lion tamer. He was laid out with one lone medal on his chest. It showed the Blessed Virgin holding the child Jesus. It was heavy and made of brass. Ten men were hired to play the part of the lion tamers from the other circuses. They were a frightful-looking crew. Two other lads and myself were made to act as their attendants. Bob Cameron seemed to have an idea that all lion tamers were Negroes. Nine of the pseudo-colleagues of the deceased were dark. The tenth was Irish. They paraded about the town like a minstrel troup. They drank an astonishing amount of liquor out of respect to their dead comrade. As I had respected him greatly, I drank also.
The circus grounds were jammed with people. They crowded into the main tent to see Denna Wyoming in his torn velveteen coat. The Homeric vagabond rose magnificently to the occasion. He sold verses in honor of his dead friend. They read:
Green lies the sod on Denna’s breast,
And my poor heart is in a haze.
He sleeps in mansions of the blest,
Where lions in the meadows graze.
No more on earth will Denna play
His music to secure our praise.
But he will sing the years away
Where lions in the meadows graze.
As you are now—
So once was he,
As he is now—
So you will be.
It is our mighty
God’s Great Plan—
Open thou thy heart—
Give what you can.
Thousands of people followed the coffin to a spot on a hill. A trained dog, drafted into service, watched, with tired eyes, the whips, spurs and boots of its supposedly dead master. A black preacher stood on a white tombstone and shouted:
“The Lawd Gawd he collect up the sons of Cain. He gatheh the little childern from play and from the dens of lions. When He say Come—you lays down youh work and go sailin’ away to sit on the right hand of the Heavenly Fatheh and His Only Legitimate Son … glory be to Them each one!”
He stopped and scanned the motley assemblage with yellowish white eyes. “The Lawd giveth and the Lawd taketh away,” he shouted. “That’s fair enough,” laughed a drunken stake driver, as the Negro minister of God continued with impressive manner, “May all heah see the light and the dark of their ways.… Fo’ to them that hath shall be given some moah—and them that hain’t got it never shall get it—world without end!—for so it is written—and ever will be—thus and ever—now and forever. He that lies here once held the lions in sway—and now none of you brethern is too pooh to do him honoh.…”
The lion tamer’s body was lowered in the grave. The multitude poured back to the circus under the burning sun.
When the festivities ended the circus owner counted the receipts of the biggest day’s business of the season. The crowd paid nearly two thousand dollars to see Denna Wyoming’s funeral.
I sat on a flat car with the ex-jockey as the circus rattled out of the town. The wind flapped the canvas cover on a gilded wagon as he said, “Denna was a hell of a lion tamer … got killed by that damn brown bear!”
“I know … but how can you catch a blind bear’s eye?” I asked.
His crooked mouth parted in a half-smile.
“I’m damned if I know,” he replied.
II: Circus Parade
II: Circus Parade
CAMERON’S World’s Greatest Combined Shows consisted of ten cars. The car which Cameron occupied had once been a Pullman. It was now obsolete. Cameron’s bunk and office were in one end of the car. There were three state-rooms for important performers. Another room was occupied by Cameron’s common-law wife. There were eight other sections in use. The open end of the car was used as a general dining and living room by day. At the other end was a small kitchen in which de Bussey, a French Negro, served as cook.
An old baggage car carried the ninety-foot “big top,” the seventy-foot round top, and two thirty-foot middle pieces. It also carried stakes, poles, trunks, seats, lay-out pins and other paraphernalia. Flat cars carried the wagons in which stake-drivers and other circus roustabouts slept. The bunks were too full of vermin to be occupied long at a time, and so, weather permitting, they were not used.
The performers were more snobbish than any class of people I had ever known. They did not talk to the lesser gentry of the circus save only to give commands. They were known as “kinkers” to us. We looked upon them with mingled disdain and awe.
They “doubled in brass” in parade and band concert, each playing some musical instrument. For days at a time, when we were short of men, they also “doubled on canvas” or helped put up the tent.
Bob Cameron, the owner, was a remnant of early American circus days. He claimed to be seventy-three years old. His face was florid, his hair a faded brick red, his step firm and heavy. He was muscular and tall. His jaw was crooked, as though a blow had knocked it sideways.
His nose slanted in the opposite direction from his jaw. He was nearly blind in one eye. It had a streak across it; thin as a razor blade from one corner to the other. In vitality and gusto he was ageless. Sardonic and brutal, he cared for nothing on earth but his circus and the scarecrow woman who traveled with him as his wife.
She weighed about a hundred pounds, and was wrinkled, yellow and cracked like thin leather in the rain. Her face was not much larger than a sickly baby’s. She looked to be ninety. Age had touched her with a wicked leer. One could have placed a pencil in the hollow of her eyes, which were rheumy and of a weird green color like a weed the frost had touched. She had been a bare-back rider, and her hands were overdeveloped. Her shoulders stooped forward as she walked. Her nature, no larger than herself, was mean and petty. The “Strong Woman” had once called her a baby buzzard. It was the name by which she was afterward known among us.
It was said that she had been married seven times. She lived in her belligerent past. “I was born on a horse’s back—it’s nobody’s damn business when,” she often said.
“The horse she was born on was sway-backed,” was Jock’s comment.
She helped to rule our vagabond world with a ruthless snarl. Her special passion was to superintend the thieves in the gambling car. For long hours at a time she would not leave the car which she occupied with Cameron. He gave her every attention.
Like Cameron, she seemed an undying type of humanity—all whalebone and gristle. Seventy years on the road, the monotony of it often made her mentally ill. Many times around the world, her imagination was so limited that it was all of one pattern to her. “It ain’t no different—some people’s yellow and some’s black and some’s Irish,” she used to say. “It’s all a heluva mess.” She preceded every remark with a snarl.
In moods of mental illness she would lie and look out of the window with the defiant expression of an old hag that would not die. When some of my licentious doggerel had been shown to Cameron by the Lion Tamer, he decided that I would be a good companion for the Baby Buzzard, who loved everything in books that concerned illicit love. Her lascivious mind reeked with fantastic tales of sex. The only time her voice ever became soft was when she talked of some man out of the long ago.
“He knew how to love, you betcha,”—and then a deep sigh. “They were real men in them days.” She would then lean her jaw on a withered arm and look defiantly at me as if anticipating that I would dispute her.
But my reply would always be, “You bet they were.”
“Huh,” would be the contemptuous rejoinder, followed by an expression that seemed to say, “What the hell do you know about it?”
Between helping Jock, the boss hostler, and now and then lending a hand in putting up or taking down the tent at the different towns, and my work as a crude secretary to the Baby Buzzard, besides running errands for the performers and freaks, I was kept busy.
The Baby Buzzard was not always easy to please. Seldom a day passed that she did not have an ache in some portion of her withered body. If I rubbed her back it seemed to cure the ache elsew
here. My wrists would become tired and numb. But the old lady would lie quite still under the rubbing and utter sounds which were neither moans nor purrs but blended of both. She was born for the wiles of an osteopath.
She would give me fifty cents after each rubbing. It was never in change, always the half-dollar. She was in the habit of keeping a dozen half-dollars about her always. They were placed in a glass, which she frequently picked up and rattled.
Once, as we were pulling into Houston, Texas, she lost the glass. The Baby Buzzard was in an agony of despair. Cameron sent for me. I had to rub her back for an hour. Cameron went away to help Silver Moon Dugan superintend the business of putting up the tent. My tired hands had finally rubbed the old lady to sleep. As I left the room, I stumbled upon an empty glass. Near it was a half-dollar. I picked up the money, and near it was another coin. I looked about patiently until I had found twelve of them. I placed them carefully in the glass and left the room taking glass and contents with me.
The old lady often mentioned “the damn thief that took my half-dollars” and wondered who he was.
I would always say, “Well you can’t trust anything around a circus.”
She would snarl and say, “Huh—what in hell do you know about it?”
Feeling that she was not the first woman to doubt the word of youth, I would say no more.
Cameron would always hold back the first four weeks salary. He would explain to all his employees that it was merely kindness on his part; that he did not wish anybody who worked for him to finish the season broke.
Seldom did the lesser workers have the fortitude to stick with the circus until the end of the season. If any of them endeavored to do so, they were “red-lighted,” thrown off the train near the red lights of a railroad yard. If they again managed to catch up with the show, they were promptly accused of desertion and run off the lot.
During the first four weeks Cameron would stand for an occasional “touch” on the part of his men. He would give them a quarter, a half-dollar, and once in a while a whole silver dollar at a time. In less than eight weeks the wandering circus laborers would learn that they were up against an unbeatable game in working for Bob Cameron, and would leave the show. As a result, all hands “doubled up.”
Cameron paid the most honestly earned dollar reluctantly. It meant that much less money to be saved toward a larger show. He really did not dream of riches—only of a big circus.
His motto was: “As Big as Barnum’s.” Perhaps no more dishonest than many of the greater circus owners who had passed through the same school of trickery, Cameron had nevertheless been over forty years in acquiring a ten-car show.
It was said of him that he once came near to being in the big league of showmen but he cheated his partner, an illiterate Irishman, who believed in fairies, and was shrewder than a Jew.
An old circus roustabout told me that the Irishman, in retaliation, had made Cameron at the point of a gun, match a coin with him—best three out of five, for the entire circus. Cameron lost.
The Irishman’s coin was the same on both sides.
Cameron discovered the trick. Twelve witnesses, all Irish, swore the game was fair. Cameron, mad with the slipping gold fever, tried to murder the Irishman.
The latter gentleman had playfully knocked his nose sideways, had cut his eye with a knife, and had then fractured his skull.
They were no longer friends. Cameron had to start all over again. The Irishman became honest and died rich.
It was said that after Cameron’s split with his partner he succeeded in adding only one other car to his circus every four or five years. He still dreamed of a twenty-car show. And the years were crawling over him with mockery.
The approach of pay-day was like the hour of execution for Cameron. It mattered not whether business was good or bad—his greed mania was the same. His safe was guarded always by Slug Finnerty, Gorilla Haley, Silver Moon Dugan or some other circus ruffian even more dishonest, if possible, than himself.
Cameron sent all surplus cash to the bank in the town where he made his circus headquarters. He was a deacon in the Methodist church there, and a director in the bank.
Like many circus owners, he was respected in his winter headquarters’ city. He brought business, money and wide advertising to the place.
He would hardly leave enough money to pay the men, if business lagged at all. And often he would allow the money to remain in the safe for several days after pay-day. Money was glue to Cameron.
Something had always happened to keep him from owning a “big show.” A panic, the low price of cotton, ruined crops, cattle dying from drought. But once money was in the bank he drew it out with pain. He would hold a minimum in the bank. When down to that amount he would withdraw no more money if the heavens fell.
He could always wheedle the laborers. Somehow or other he could move the circus. But he could not give a show without the performers or “kinkers.”
At one time Cameron had only left enough money in the safe to meet a pay-day that had passed. There was near mutiny in the circus, until Cameron announced two full weeks pay the next day.
The pay envelopes were ready in the next town. It was a small town in which no liquor was allowed to be sold. The next town in which we were to appear was wide open and wet.
Cameron knew the men would reach the wet town without breaking into their pay.
In the next town Bob Cameron borrowed a great deal of the money back from the men by offering them four weeks pay for two if business picked up.
Some of the men had a few dollars in their “grouch bags” which were made of chamois skin and tied about their necks. Circus rovers as a rule did not like people who saved money. They called them “grouchy.” Hence the term “grouch bag.”
And, of course, a grouch bag was a safe place in which to carry money. A circus is, or was, generally a canvas nest of petty thieves and criminals among the lower gentry.
Next to handing out money, Cameron deeply regretted giving passes to see his circus.
When he had a two-car and three-car show, he was always at war with railroad men. It was the same when he had a circus of ten cars. Train crews, like the rest of the world, enjoy sights that are free.
As he was stingy with passes to the crews who switched his train, often a switch engineer would wait until we were at breakfast and bump his engine into us. Cameron would shout his opinion of railroad men in general, but the mischief never abated. One train crew would pass the word on to the next division.
In earlier days Cameron often acted as his own “advance man,” and traveled ahead of his show. He was considered one of the best “fixers” in the business. A large circus will pay from five hundred to a thousand dollars a day to appear in a town. Some cities have been known to allow a circus to show free of charge in order to advertise the city.
Cameron’s show would be called upon to pay from one to three hundred dollars tax, unless, of course, Cameron, or Bill Regan, his chief advance agent, managed to fix it for nothing. They would often be forced to give many passes away to city authorities. Regan always sent word back what the license fee would be, also the price of the “lot” rent, and other important information. If the advance man reports that a town is “tough,” there is always the “fixer” in evidence.
Cameron was shrewd and resourceful in such matters. He always wore plaids or loud checked clothes. A gold watch chain, with links an inch long, was stretched across his vest. Two immense green elk teeth dangled from it. His hair was long and straggly. He wore a broad-brimmed Stetson hat. He was never without a heavy gold-headed cane. It was loaded with lead at the top. The cane had served as a weapon in many a circus battle.
Cameron’s custom was to parade from the lot to the principal corner of the town in which he happened to be with his circus. After the band had played several selections, Cameron would mount a box and make a speech.
“Neighbors, it is sure a mighty good thing to be back once again in my old home state. Here
in this my old state the sun kisses the meadows as with beams of silver. I was born over yonder about eighty miles. After all, neighbors and friends, I’ve toured all over the world and I want to tell you folks there ain’t no state like the old state here after all. As I was saying to Senator ———, (mentioning a senator in Washington from the state in which he happened to be showing) God Almighty in his infinite wisdom made this state when he felt good. But, neighbors and friends, this state is the home of great showmen, and I want to tell you that never was there such a show on the road as you will see today. We have camels and tigers from Rotabasco, and lions from the Amazonian jungles of the Nile. We have the bloodsweating Behomoth also, The Strong Lady, gentle as a babe, and she can lift eleven men, such prodiverous strength was never before seen in the muscles of a lady. We also have the Moss Haired Girl, captured by me and my men on a hunting expedition in Absenteria.”
The band would play Dixie at the finish of the speech. The return to the circus lot was made over the leading street.
If the town had been lenient with the circus and had allowed a low license fee and cheap lot rent, Cameron would don his loud clothes after the parade and drop around to the saloons and hotel lobbies and become acquainted with as many people as possible. Always would he tell of his love for the state and of the present town in particular.
None of us ever learned just which corner of the world Cameron called home. He claimed as birth place every state in which his circus appeared.
But if the town was “tough” or had been none too generous, Cameron’s system was not the same.
He would put on an old hat, a worn suit and rundown shoes. His diamonds and gold watch chain and other jewelry was left in the safe in the car in which he lived. The gold cane was also left behind. He would carry a gnarled hickory stick which resembled something recently cut from a tree. Thus prepared he would hasten to the mayor or the town clerk long before the parade was to start.
