by Jim Tully
Floating on the River of Sin.
Freaks and thieves, trailers and clown acrobats and stake-drivers gathered in front of the Strong Woman’s tent.
“Come on now, men, we’ll make it snappy,” said Slug Finnerty. “Join in the song with the calliope.”
He waved his hands.
I seen a band of spirits bright,
Floating on the River of Sin,
Holding church by candle light,
Floating on the River of Sin.
A great big chariot passing by,
Floating on the River of Sin,
Come so close they had to fly,
Floating on the River of Sin.
The crude heavy voices were drowned out by the wail of the calliope.
They drove the chariot down below,
A spirit fell down and hurt his toe,
Floating on the River of Sin.
Then singin’ and shoutin’ way out loud,
Floating on the River of Sin.
They took her to heaven in a great big cloud,
Floating on the River of Sin.
When the song had died away Silver Moon Dugan, the Boss canvasman, commented.
“Gee, if she ever falls outta heaven there’ll be a splash.” A few roustabouts laughed. Then Cameron stood before us on a pine box.
“Fellow travelers with Cameron’s World’s Greatest Combined Shows,” he began, and paused—“it is my sad duty to say a few words here. I wish it understood that I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise her. She is beyond us now, stripped of everything before God, who takes care of the weary and the worn and calls the wandering lady here home.
“We talk of worldly splendor, yet Solomon in all his gorgeous glory was not arrayed as one of these. She who now lies here before us once held our little world in awe. Now none of us are too procrastinatin’ an’ poor to show our irreverence, and she recks not at all of it. It is not ours to judge, for we are ever in the Great Taskmaster’s eye, and if he should ever blink it ever so slightly we would crumble like the atomic mountains that rise outta the sea.
“Ours is but a little stay here, full of sound and fury, and, if you will pardon the blasphemy, signifying not a hell of a lot.
“It all reminds me of that well-known poem made immortal by Browning, than whom there was no more profound student of the human heart:
There is so much good in the best of us,
And so much bad in the rest of us,
That it little behooves the best of us
To talk about the rest of us.
“Those lines to me have always been a welcoming tocsin. When tired, when weary with the troubles of Cameron’s World’s Greatest Combined Shows, I often retire to my humble car and solicitate upon them. Feeling the full majesty of them, I have naught but love and understanding for those members of my circus who would fain be ungrateful.
“For are we not the same that our fathers have been? Do we not see the same sights and view the same sun and run in the same blood where our fathers have run?
“A great object-lesson can be received from this. As I have said in preceding, we are ever in our Great Taskmaster’s eye. He who rolls the mountains is watching over us.
“God is ever on the side of justice, or as General Robert E. Lee so well said, God marches at the head of the heaviest battalions; and those battalions are imposed of justice and mercy and undying truth.”
Cameron took a large red and white kerchief from his pocket. He unfolded it deliberately, then wiped his forehead and eyes, cleared his throat and resumed:
“We have labored in the vineyard with our sleeping friend here—and that reminds me that she is not dead, but sleepeth.” Cameron looked at his audience as one will who feels he has uttered a profound truth. He wiped his eyes again. When he removed the kerchief they suddenly filled with tears. His whole manner changed. “Oh it stabs my heart, this grief before me. He who has loved and has run away may live to love some other day. But what about the victim of this dastardly attempt at liason? I adjure you …” His frame shook, his kerchief rubbed wet eyes. The audience looked bored with piety. Cameron’s right hand, holding the kerchief, rose high in the air. He stood on tiptoe. “But friends, do not despair. In that vast circus ground in the other world we shall meet the lady who lies here with folded hands forever.”
The crowd dispersed. The Strong Woman was placed in the elephant cage while the calliope played:
Room enough, room enough,
Room enough in heaven for us all—
Oh don’t stay away.
It then shifted:
At the cross, at the cross,
Where I first saw light,
And the burden of my heart rolled away,
Rolled away—
It was there by faith
I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day—
All the day.
The ringmaster’s whistle blew. Wagons began to move. The Strong Woman started on her last parade.
X: Tiger and Lion Fight
X: Tiger and Lion Fight
AS the season became older the hatred toward Cameron grew sharper. Men of every description had come and gone since I had joined the circus in Louisiana. My salary was increased to seven dollars a week and board. I earned about the same amount running errands for the Baby Buzzard, the Moss-Haired Girl, and Finnerty and Jack. The Baby Buzzard gave me four half-dollars each week.
For many days I thought of the Strong Woman. I linked her up with the Lion Tamer and recalled the expression I often saw on her face as he passed her on the lot walking, graceful like a panther. Death again haunted me as in my childhood. These two—one buried in Louisiana, the other in Arkansas—did they know what we were doing? I wondered who jerked the Strong Woman’s grouch bag from about her throat, and if Anton would ever hear of her death.
The old trailer, who had written the verses when the Lion Tamer died, was no longer with us. He had refused to follow the circus through Arkansas. We had played three days in Little Rock. I last saw him in a saloon near the Iron Mountain railroad. He had been drunk three days and was just trying to sober up. Jock and I had stepped in for a drink. He sat, looking disconsolate, with his elbows on a beer-stained table.
As we walked over to him, he said, “Won’t you buy me a drink, boys? My nerves are all gone, my head aches awful an’ my mouth feels like a Chinese family’s just moved out.”
The words pleased Jock and he laughed heartily. Loungers in the saloon turned to look at us.
“You old reprobate, that’s worth a half pint.” Jock placed the coin on the bar. The bartender held a bottle and asked sharply, “What do you want, rye or bourbon?”
“I don’t give a damn,” the old man answered impatiently, grabbing at the bottle, removing the cork and placing it to his mouth. We watched the old man drink it like water. Jock gave him a quarter with, “Ain’t you trailin’ us any more?”
“Not no more, no siree. I don’t trail no circus in Arkansas. The God damn rubes down there ain’t begun to be civilized. Whenever I hit Little Rock I jist turn round and go back no matter where I’m headin’.”
As we left, the old trailer handed us each a poem printed on yellow paper.
“It’s a little thing I wrote the other day. I like it too. It’s all about booze.”
Jock crunched the paper in his hand. I looked at my copy as we walked toward the circus lot.
It was Edgar Allan Poe’s “Raven.” The first line had been changed from
Once upon a midnight dreary
to
One summer morning bright and cheery,
While I pondered weak and weary …
The poem was called “A Drunkard’s Fate,” and was signed by the old trailer.
We encountered a rainy week in the heart of Arkansas. Our nerves, for the most part, worn threadbare from long contact with one another, now grew more taut as one dreary day followed another down the wet road of time. Even the animals became moody and sulky. J
ock, full of morphine, swore terribly at the horses, until his “habit” had worn off.
As our bunks were full of vermin, or “crummy” in the vernacular of the circus, we slept in the circus wagons and other places on warm nights. Now that the air was chilled with rain we were forced to our vermin-infested bunks. My own fortunes were to change later when Whiteface became a clown. He was allowed a little tent to himself. I shared it with him.
Mike Anderson, who had succeeded Denna Wyoming as lion tamer, took us one day in a body before Cameron. He met us affably, even benignantly, with, “Well, boys.”
“We’re tired of floppin’ in the lousy bunks, Mr. Cameron,” Mike said suddenly.
“Why men,” Cameron returned quickly, “this is surprising. Lice and rubes are part of a circus.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t want either of ’em in my bunk,” sneered Anderson.
Just then the Baby Buzzard approached.
“I suppose you want me an’ the other women to clean ’em for you,” she snapped.
“Naw we don’t. We want ’em all burned up an’ new ones put in.”
The adroit Cameron soon placated the feelings of all his callers but Anderson. He stood sullenly by while Cameron said with soft voice, “You know how it is, men, keeping a circus clean is a hard job.”
“Ringlin’s do it,” put in Anderson.
“But look at the many localities they have; they got everything convenient. Next year, if this rain stops, I’ll have a much finer circus an’ it’ll be like a little home for all of us.”
As we walked away Anderson confided to me, “Tomorrow’s pay-day. I think I’ll blow the outfit.”
The next day Cameron explained to all who would listen the hardships of a circus owner’s life, as he reluctantly paid us.
Anderson was paid in full. He also borrowed twenty dollars from Cameron, who wished to keep him in good humor. Men who could handle animals of the cat tribe were scarce so late in the season.
Cameron had offered Jock more wages to take charge of the “Big Cats” than he was receiving for taking care of the horses. Knowing always the condition of his nerves, he refused.
Bad Bill had been separated from the other lions on account of the growing fierceness of his disposition. Anderson had placed him in a cage next to Ben Royal, a Bengal tiger.
I had often speculated on whether or not Ben Royal could whip Bad Bill. He was at least forty or fifty pounds lighter. I had remembered reading in a history of Rome, as a child, that five lions had always been sent into the arena against four tigers. That seemed proof to me that the tiger was the lion’s master. I had once talked about it to Denna Wyoming. “Bad Bill,” said he, “can lick anything that walks or swims in the world.” Anderson, then the chief assistant trainer laughed out loud when I told him about it.
“Ben Royal kin tear Bill’s heart out in three minutes,” was his comment. The idea of a fight between Bad Bill and Ben Royal afterward fascinated Anderson. He would often refer to it. And once, after I had talked to him about the ancient combats in Rome, “That’d be a battle, huh! We oughta git old Cameron to stage one for us.”
It was Bad Bill whom Denna Wyoming had feared most of all. Anderson had shared his fear. Jock also hated and feared him. Though he was not directly responsible for Denna’s death, both men distrusted him as Wyoming had done. Jock had often called Bad Bill a traitor. He seemed to hold it against him that Wyoming had once saved his life with huge mustard plasers. In some way he resented the fact that the dumb king of beasts was ungrateful. That day Anderson and Jock talked a long time.
All night the rain fell drearily and, in spite of the parafin, soaked the tents. The next morning, before breakfast, an alarm sounded over our canvas world. Anderson was nowhere to be found. The rope which held the partition which separated Ben Royal and Bad Bill had been cut. Many of us had heard a lion roar in the night but had paid no further attention. Bad Bill was found, his throat torn, his stomach ripped open, and part of his carcass eaten. Ben Royal, with bloody jaws, dozed near him.
“Can you beat it?” laughed Jock to me. “Anderson sure as hell turned Ben loose on Bill. The son of a gun wanted to turn him loose on Cameron.”
Cameron was grief-stricken. “Two thousand dollars gone to hell,” was his dismal moan for some days.
The tiger was afterward billed as “Ben, the Lion Killer.” A stirring tale of his combat was written and placed on his cage. Anderson was never found again.
“Anderson knew Ben ’ud kill Bill,” Goosey afterward told me. “The lion has everything buffaloed but the tiger. When I was wit’ Wallace I seen a tiger kill two lions quicker’n you could say ‘have a drink.’
“The lions seen the tiger comin’ an’ roared loud as thunder but it gave a lunge wit’ its mouth wide open and caught the one lion right under the throat an’ before it got thru’ gurglin’ it copped the other lion. They had to turn a big hose on him to git him outta the cage. He sure went snarlin’!”
Goosey never tired of talking about animals.
“I seen a half lion and half tiger once,” he told me. “But they coulden go no further wit’ it; they can’t have little ones; they either come straight lions or straight tigers the second time.
“A tiger kin outjump a lion too. I seen ’em jump over sixty feet. All’s a lion kin do is ’bout forty-five. But they don’t like to jump, it hurts their feet. They’re jist as careful as a housecat about their paws.”
Goosey was placed in charge of the “big cats” until another trainer could be found.
Cameron never forgot the twenty dollars he had advanced Anderson. He used it as an excuse when asked for money during the remainder of the season.
XI: A Day’s Vacation
XI: A Day’s Vacation
FOR three more days it rained. Our very lives were soggy. The last town had been a bloomer. Not enough money had been taken in at the gate to pay expenses. Cameron was sad. And still it rained. We hoped, the derelicts of circus life, that by the grace of God and the winds of chance we would again see the sun.
The performers were able to travel in some comfort. But the canvasmen, hostlers and stake-drivers, were not so fortunate. We protected ourselves from the maddening rain by crawling under pieces of side-wall canvas atop the wagons. In spite of the rain, we tried to sleep.
The cars lurched noisily from one tie to another through the rainy night. There were no clouds; just the raindrops stabbing through the heavy steel atmosphere.
Once in the pathos of disgust I started to sing, “I wish I was in Dixie, Hurray! Hurray!”
“Shut up, you dog, or we’ll lynch you for cruelty to animals,” the jockey yelled above the creaking of the wagons.
I hummed “Rock of Ages” and tried to doze again.
Still a boy, my heart beat lighter then. All life was a pageant where now it is a slow parade.
But I did have one concern. Burrowed under the canvas not ten feet from me was an immense pounder of stakes in whose head several screws had suddenly loosened. It was shaped like a lead bullet that hit a granite wall. Over it was blonde clipped hair that looked like stubs of withered grass.
His nose had been smashed to the left. Each eyeball was permanently fixed in the left corner of his eye. He could not look to the right without turning half way round. But his appearance did not bother me. I had always been certain from the day he joined the show that he was an escaped lunatic, though it was too personal a question to discuss with him.
I had no reverence, and the blonde giant was a religious fanatic. He talked loud and long about Sodom and Gomorrah, as though he felt I was an outlaw from those unhappy places. I had once innocently said to him, “I wonder who makes God’s raincoats. You know he’s a big guy and I’ll bet it takes all the canvas in a Barnum tent just to pad his shoulders. He should give a God damn about it rainin’ on us guys.” I had made the remark merely as a philosophical speculation, being very young. But the blonde gentleman was a Christian and became my mortal enemy.
Some days before I had picked up a little dog, the majority of whose ancestors had been Fox terriers. He was all white, save for the end of his stubby tail, which was black. I met him on the circus lot. He was so joyful and carefree, and so glad to see me that I held him in my arms a long time.
I called him Jeremiah. The daintiest of women have since tripped in and out of my life, but little stub-tailed Jeremiah remains my first remembered love.
We trekked with the circus together with no subtleties, and no explanations, our hearts laid bare to one another. I was not a tramp circus kid to Jeremiah, but a traveling gentleman who loved dogs. I write this in explanation of my love for him. It has bulked large through the years.
Jeremiah now slept under the canvas with me. The huge blonde man thought I was making fun of religion whenever I called to the dog. Just the day before he had kicked at Jeremiah, and missed him. I saw the act and tangled with the stake-driver. Jeremiah, in his haste to help me, started to bite, but the little rascal got the wrong leg. Silver Moon Dugan pulled me away from the big blonde.
I could now hear the man moving uneasily under the canvas. I had, like many others, tried to sleep in the bunks. The vermin had routed us all. Now it was anywhere out of the wet.
I would doze fitfully, alert for defense if the blonde should want to rid a sinful world of my presence. Jeremiah seemed to sense my uneasiness, and kept burying his nose under my armpit.
In this manner we jolted on through the rain-drenched night.
We reached a muddy suburb of Atlanta with early dawn. When we unloaded the circus, Jock was compelled to go into Atlanta for more horses to pull us.
Roxie, the best elephant with the show, had worn her forehead raw, pushing out wagons bogged in the mud. Jumpy had made a pad for it out of an old army blanket and a quilt. The heavy poultices dripped with water which ran down her trunk. She was in an evil mood. She clomped through the mud swinging her trunk madly.
After much trouble we were on our way to the circus grounds. A wind came up and sizzed through the rain. Lanterns hung on each wagon. The wind made them bob up and down as if they floated on water. Lanterns were also attached to the neck yoke of the lead horses. From the distance we must have resembled an immense glowworm crawling through space.
