Pride

by William Wharton

  “What do you think of that, Dickie? How’d you like going back up on the boardwalk to see what’s going on this late in the evening?”

  I reach out fast, catch Cannibal, and put her in her box. I squiggle out from under the bed till I can look up at Dad. He’s stretched out on the bed on his stomach with his head hanging down so he looks upside down to me looking up.

  “Gee, Dad. That sounds great!”

  I look around and Mom and Laurel are already in their sweaters and standing at the door. I scramble to my feet with Cannibal under my arm as Dad gets off the other side of the bed and swings his coat over his shoulder. I think my dad carries a coat jacket that way—one finger hooked under the neck part through the little loop for hanging a coat, that coat hanging down his back—more than he ever wears it. I think he only carries it along in case he might get cold, but he never seems to. My dad’s hands and feet are always warm. Mom says that’s what makes him one of the nicest people in the world to sleep with.

  I pull on my sweater, push down my hair, turn up the sleeves and the waist part.

  “Is it all right if I take Cannibal along? I want her to see that lion again.”

  Dad puts his hand on my shoulder, the hand he isn’t using to hold his coat.

  The other thing is my dad never wears a hat. He has curly, dark hair, really wavy not curls, and he hardly ever has to comb it. If I could have hair like that I’d never wear a hat either.

  “Sure, Dickie. But maybe the lion will be asleep now or they’ll be using him in that Wall of Death act.”

  “That’s O.K. She’ll love to see the lights and the merry-go-round.”

  So we start off. It isn’t cold at all. It was much colder in Stonehurst Hills when we left, really beginning to feel like Halloween coming. But here it’s warm. The air feels full of water, soft, but it’s warm.

  The first thing Dad does is buy more salt-water taffy. We know now what we like so he gets some of everybody’s favorites. Mom is holding on to Dad’s arm and leaning into him. They look like some of the high-school kids getting off the school bus. It’s nice to see them that way; maybe they’re that way a lot but I’ve never noticed it before. Dad’s always working or tired and Mom’s so worried and busy with the house they don’t have much time just to be people.

  We pass the merry-go-round and show them the animals we were riding on. It’s more crowded now, with someone on almost all the outside animals. We watch and they only get about fifteen times around; I think we must have gone around thirty or more times.

  “Do you kids want to take another turn?”

  I look at Laurel and she shakes her head no, points down the boardwalk. We smile at each other. “Gee, Dad. There’s another merry-go-round farther down the boardwalk, one we haven’t tried yet. Could we go on that one?”

  “Sure, kids, whatever you say.”

  We walk along some more. There are good smells. There’s all the smells of the places selling candy, popcorn, hot dogs, salt-water taffy; but there’s more: the smell of ocean, of sand and wood in the boardwalk. It all blends together.

  We’re getting near the Wall of Death when I begin hearing the motorcycles warming up, and then there’s actually a roar from the lion. I look over at Dad. He runs his hand through my hair.

  “I must say, Dickie, that sounds pretty impressive. We’ll have to take a look at that, all right.”

  We start hurrying and there’s a crowd around the little stage. By the time we get there, the older man is on his motorcycle, and he’s standing up on the seat with his hands outstretched, balancing. The younger one is sitting back on his bike cleaning his teeth with his little fingernail. The lady is still talking about “the most amazing act in show business.” Mom doesn’t want us getting too close; she’s afraid the man will fall, or that motorcycle will just go flying out into the audience; but we get up close anyway. I can tell Dad likes it as much as we do.

  But more than anything I want to go over to visit the lion again. When the motorcycles roar, he roars back. He roars then growls and coughs. They have a light in the back of his cage so you can see him and he’s pacing back and forth as if he’s nervous. I’d sure be nervous if anybody put me in a motorcycle sidecar and hung me on the side of a wall like in those pictures.

  It turns out the Wall of Death is the big round thing behind the lion cage and this little stage. It looks like the gas tank down at Long Lane and Marshall Road, only not as big, and it’s made out of wood. There’s a staircase like a fire escape up the side and people who buy tickets from the lady with the microphone walk up there. We can see others up at the top walking around a little platform, where I guess they can see right down in.

  I take Dad’s hand and pull him over to see the lion while he’s still out there. They’re pushing the motorcycles back down the ramp and inside now. The lady stays out, selling tickets. Pretty soon, I guess, the lion will be gone inside.

  We all go over and stand in front of the lion cage. Mom holds on to Dad with one arm and on to Laurel’s hand with the other. I open Cannibal’s cage a little bit so she can see, the same as last time, and she does the same thing, just sticks the top of her head out, her eyes peering over the edge of the box. That lion, pacing back and forth, is even more scary than he was sitting down. I never knew a lion was so long, that its tail was so thick. Dad’s leaning forward looking hard.

  “I think that poor creature’s practically starving, Dickie. See his ribs and look how the skin’s hanging under his stomach. I’ll bet he needs about ten pounds of meat a day and these people probably don’t make enough money to feed him properly.”

  I look and see Dad’s right, the lion is hungry. I wonder if he knows we’d be good to eat.

  Dad backs off a step, looks over at the board with all the pictures, at the lady alone, nobody buying any more tickets. “Well, who wants to go in and see this with me? I know twenty-five cents is a lot of money, but this looks like something special, the kind of thing we’ll remember all our lives.”

  “Oh no, Dick! You aren’t really going up there and watch them do this, are you? Somebody’s liable to get killed.”

  “Oh, come on, Laura. They’ve been doing it all summer long and nobody’s gotten killed. They know what they’re doing, and I’ll bet it’s a great act. Besides, a little money from us might help fill that poor lion’s stomach some.”

  It turns out I’m the only one who will go with him. I think for a minute Laurel wants to go, too, but then she decides to stay and keep Mom company. I leave Cannibal in her cage with the top closed and hand it to Laurel. Dad just catches the lady with the tickets before she goes inside. He gives her the fifty cents.

  “Hurry up, mister. They’re about to begin the show.”

  Inside we can hear the motorcycles being started. We take the tickets and dash up the stairs. There’s plenty of space up top when we go around to the other side. I don’t know what I expected but I’m really surprised when I look over the edge down into the Wall of Death.

  There are lights over the top hanging down and it’s all bright in the bottom. We look right straight down on two motorcycles. The men are on them but only one has his motor running. The sides of the Wall of Death are black with splintered boards and skid marks from tires and what I guess is black from the motors. In a strange way, there’s something about this “Wall of Death” reminds me of our alley, or maybe it’s the garages with the deep spots of oil from drippings out of cars. It smells something like a garage, too, damp and the smell of motors. The smell of the car gas Mr. Harding killed himself with, the smell of old wood from the porches, a slight smell of rotting garbage, too, and the smell of the lion is almost like alley-cat smell.

  Just as we get settled against the wall, leaning over, one motorcycle starts off running along the bottom in a circle fast, then up the side of the wall, going faster and faster till it’s right out sideways, going around the inside of the round wall, making everything rattle. Sometimes he comes so close to the top edge where we are
I can’t stop myself from ducking. I look over and Dad’s ducking, too.

  He leans close to me and cups his hand around my ear.

  “Now, this is what I really call something.”

  He smiles and we both stick our heads up carefully. The man riding the motorcycle is standing on the seat now, the way he did outside, but he keeps hold of the handlebars. If he lets go, then he’d sure as the devil fall all the way to the bottom and be killed. It’s the young one with the slicked-back hair who’s up on the wall. His hair just stays in place without getting mussed up, even though he’s going fast, so he must have some Wildroot Cream Oil or Vaseline, or some other kind of stickum on it. Mom tries to make my cowlick stay down for church sometimes by combing my hair with stuff, and when it drips off the comb into my eyes, it stings and stinks. She always used to do this when I served mass but I don’t have to worry about that any more. When you have stuff like that in your hair and it dries, then your hair feels like broom bristles, not like hair at all. It feels as if, when you bend it, it’ll break.

  Now he’s up on the handlebars bending at his waist, with his feet sticking out in space. He’s doing a handstand on those motorcycle handlebars sideways! I can’t figure what keeps any of it up on the wall. I keep looking but I don’t see any tracks and he goes all different angles so there can’t be that many tracks.

  Now, the older man, thicker, slower-moving, takes off his cap, and I can see he only has thin blond hair like fuzz on his head. He puts on a helmet and climbs onto his motorcycle, then starts it with a hard kick. The young one is sitting back on his motorcycle as he rides and twice goes right across the bottom and up the other side; you’d swear he’d fly clear off that wall; then he turns and gets going fast as the wind again. He’s shouting down at the older man. We can just hear him as he shouts over the sound of the two motorcycles. “Come on, old man! I’ll race you twenty-five turns.”

  The other motorcycle comes up the wall fast, almost to the top, then they start crossing back and forth over and under each other. The whole wall is practically rocking now, so I’m afraid the boards will break or maybe the wall will just lift up and turn over. The little walkway we’re on is shaking and wobbling.

  They’re racing around those walls and everybody starts counting as they go around: nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Dad and I are counting, too. Everybody’s doing it, and it gets louder and louder. At first the older guy gets a good lead so he’s almost half a length around the wall in front of the young one. Then gradually as we get close to twenty the young guy starts gaining. Then, just as we’re counting the twenty-fifth turn, he passes the older guy and goes up into his handstand, crossing his legs in the air. He comes down and sits straight on the seat with his hands out and goes around a few extra times, no-handed, while the older guy goes down to the bottom and parks his motorcycle. The young one comes down and rolls his bike outside through the door. Everybody applauds. The lady from the stage comes in with a megaphone in her hand and the two men push in a sidecar. They start attaching it to the older guy’s motorcycle.

  The lady is shouting up at us through the megaphone. She turns around as she talks so we can all hear:

  “Now, ladies and gentlemen. You are about to see the only full-grown male lion who can ride on the Wall of Death in a sidecar. Let me introduce Satan, the Dare-Devil Lion!”

  She points over at the side with her hand and I see another door, one I didn’t even notice before. It opens and there’s a barred door that the older guy pulls up. He has a whip in his hand and snaps it a few times on the floor, making it really pop. The lady takes a jacket and helmet from the young one and puts them on. It looks as if she’s going to ride that lion around the wall because she climbs on the motorcycle.

  She only has those bare legs, or maybe she has silk stockings on, I can’t really tell. With a lion it wouldn’t make much difference, anyway.

  Then we hear the lion roar and he comes to the opening of the door. He stands there with his paws on the edge and looks up at all of us around the edges on top. It’s really scary seeing a lion without any bars between you and him. He looks up at the light, then at the older guy with the whip. The lion starts walking toward him.

  He keeps popping the whip but doesn’t pop it anywhere near the lion. The lion moves over toward the sidecar and stops. The other guy, the young one, who won the race, is standing against the wall, away from the door, holding a long pole with a pointed metal sticker on the end of it. He looks as scared of that lion as I am. I know I wouldn’t like to be down in a wooden hole with a lion and nothing between me and those teeth but a long stick.

  The older guy keeps snapping his whip and gradually gets the lion to climb into the sidecar and sit. That whole sidecar sags with the lion in it, he’s so heavy. Then, the older guy runs his hands through the mane of the lion while the lion actually rubs his big hairy head against the man’s shoulder. The older guy locks a bar across the lion’s front legs, over his paws, and straps him in. The lady is sitting on the motorcycle seat staring straight ahead, not looking at the lion at all. Then the older one, with the whip, comes around and kicks the starter on the motorcycle so it coughs, then roars, ready to start.

  He steps back and gives a snap of his whip in the air but I think that’s just for show. The lady in the purple, shining costume waves her hand, the one away from the lion, up at all of us on the top, half smiles, then starts the motorcycle going around in circles. The man with the whip stays in the center of the pit, turning around as the motorcycle gains speed then starts going up the side of the wall. It really looks as if she’ll never get going fast. That lion must weigh hundreds of pounds, at least twice as much as a human being.

  Then she’s really up on the wall. The whole wooden bowl begins rocking as she gets higher and higher. I manage to keep my head up once when the motorcycle goes by just below us and the lion isn’t more than five feet from my face; there’s no bars or anything. I look at Dad and he’s looking as scared as I am. It’s hard to believe and I’m having an awful time keeping my head up, looking; after all, we did pay twenty-five cents. At least I ought to look. I’m beginning to wish she’d stop and go back down. It’s not like on the merry-go-round at all when I wanted it to keep going. I’m so scared something bad will happen I want it to stop.

  Finally, she begins to slow down and goes rolling onto the bottom of the pit. She sits still on the motorcycle while the older guy goes over to the lion and unhooks him. The younger one has moved toward the door opening into the lion cage; he’s pulled back the wooden cover and pushed up the bars. He stands there with his pointed stick like a harpoon, still looking scared and trying not to let on.

  The older guy helps the lion out of the motorcycle and holds him by the mane beside him. He doesn’t seem afraid of that lion at all. But the lady gets off the motorcycle on the other side from the lion, takes off her helmet, and holds her hands up in the air, smiling a fake kind of smile and sneaking looks over at the older guy and the lion. She stays like that with her arms up and perfectly still while the older guy leads the lion toward the door out of the pit. Everybody is applauding. The lion gives a growl at the young one with the pointed stick but goes into the door without any trouble. Then, quickly, the young guy comes over when the lion’s already halfway through the door and gives him a good hard punch with the pointed end of his stick. This makes the lion really roar, but he hurries through the tunnel and out to his cage.

  I look at Dad. For some crazy reason I feel almost as if I’m going to cry and I don’t really know why. It’s probably all the excitement. Dad’s face looks mad.

  “There’s no excuse for treating a lion that way, Dickie. He didn’t have to poke him; he’s just goading the poor thing. I really don’t think that lion would hurt a soul; he’s tame as a kitten. Cannibal’s meaner than that lion by a long shot.”

  He puts his arm over my shoulder and we start toward the stairs with all the other people.

  Mom and Laurel are waiting for us outside. Laure
l has bought a little statue of Happy, one of the Seven Dwarfs. It cost twenty cents. I guess it’s to help balance out the twenty-five cents I got to spend watching the Wall of Death.

  Dad and I go over to look at the lion again. He’s already settled down and is just sitting there staring out at the crowd as if all those things we saw inside hadn’t happened at all.

  Laurel is between Dad and Mom. She has hold of their hands.

  “Gee, he looks so nice but he must be lonesome all by himself. Doesn’t he have any family?”

  Dad leans down and gives her a kiss on the top of her head between her braids.

  “A lion’s family is called its pride, Laurie. This lion was probably born in captivity; he’s never had any family, any pride.”

  I turn away from watching the lion. I know he’s looking right at Cannibal, and I’m sure he doesn’t want to eat her or anything, he just wants to be friends.

  “Is that pride like one of the capital sins, Dad? Can lions commit sins too, like people?”

  “There’s all kinds of pride, Dickie. There’s real pride, like being proud of good work, like when we do a good job building a porch. Then there’s false pride like when you think you’re better than somebody else for no good reason; that’s the sin one. Then there’s the lion’s pride, his family.”

  “Gee! I like the idea of a family being a pride. Let’s call our family a pride. I’d be proud of our pride and I bet it wouldn’t be a sin at all.”

  “Probably just the opposite of sin, Dickie. I hope we can always be proud of our family.”