Two Legs

“Keep your eye on the freaks, the flits, and weirdos, kid! That’s why we hired your college educated ass!” This came by way of sound and earthy advice from the balding producer with a flipped patch of feeble brown hair which he kept adjusting, unsuccessfully, in the dry Midwestern breeze. He leaned forward, along with a few strands of hair and grasped the turnstile, spun it round, and watched it jerk to a stop. He seemed to ponder it, as if it was a wheel of fortune and he couldn’t figure out what he had just landed on. “Well, at least these damn things are working! Ching, ching, ching! Showtime in 2 hours, the high school kids should be here soon to take the tickets! Just watch out for the freaks, will ya! He gently cocked his head and rolled his eyes towards the empty parking lot and said, “like that joker”. They stood for a moment in the sun beside the line of turnstiles like guards at some imaginary hastily built metal gate between show business and humanity. Then he turned toward the back door of the box office trailer and waddled up the creaky tiny steel steps. A funny pear shaped man forked with two stubby little legs in plaid pastel pants that were far too tight for a middle aged man and a pair of white shoes to match his big white belt. He was wearing an orange silk shirt that was sticky with patches of sweat or maybe it just stale cologne here and there.

      Mark leaned on the turnstile and looked out over the parking lot up and then awkwardly, up at the sky and then back down at a man sitting in his pickup truck, because, it was the only thing he could look at in the empty parking lot. He had a sensation but if it were translated into a thought it would read something like how can you avoid looking at the only thing there is look at and pretend you are not looking at it? Just a dark silhouette, in a car door picture frame rectangle, but it was a dark silhouette that was definitely looking at Mark.  He had on a cowboy hat and his dusty old tincan truck with old style rounded edges, like a chariot was almost floating in the sun soaked ocean of the parking lot.

Golden breezes came and each soft breeze always promised relief but only left you with slow waves of wheat dust sticking in your throat. There was an Indian head with feathers on the door and the words Native American art stenciled on the side. A tarp in the back of the truck looked like a pile of black coal. Just to seem normal, he looked back up again at the Prairie sky. The hugeness of the sky always made you feel like you were seeing with the whites of your eyes. Out here, there were no scientific discoveries or revolutions resulting from telescopes. Here, the earth is definitely flat and the sky is a very real and present god who has watched over these fields of golden wheat, and its roaming wild and raw horses, from long before horses were called horses because language had not been invented yet.  Mark looked at his hands, kinda arched his back and stretched a bit just to look normal again. What the hell is normal when you work for the circus, he thought. Might as well do some cartwheels and stand on my head, he’ll think I’m just another one of the clowns.

 The quick hsst hsst hsst of the helium tank made him turn his head back to the site and the balloon man nodded and shouted. “Someday this war is gonna end, son” They both smiled knowing the line. It was their line from the beginning of the season, well, at least since Halifax, when they had had a day off and they went to see Apocalypse Now at a repertory theater. It had replaced “good morning” countless towns and shows behind them. They both liked Brando cause Brando was the kind of man who made big decisions for himself, in movies and in real life.

The balloon man was cynical beyond repair despite being surrounded by a constant halo of bright red, blue, green and yellow circles and the endless gaggle of children during his regular working hours.

 

- You know that guy in the truck was out round the back this morning, eh?

- Nah I didn’t know

- ahh, he’s just some dumbass Okie, never seen anything like the big top here. Probably never even been 10 miles from where he was born!

- Yeah, its nothing..just some farmer.

- What’s he got in the back of the truck?

- Don’t know

- Not another horse, I hope

- Christ!

They both shook their heads remembering the town four shows back. A guy, showed up with the dust, and sold the tiger trainer a dead horse for next to nothing on the condition that his kids could feed the tigers personally. It was illegal but it was Sunday.  They showed up after church and the girls were dressed in long white dresses and the boys in dopey bowties. It took about seven guys, including some of the kids, to yank it out of the truck and then it landed with an awful, awkward thud. They cut the legs off first. The change saw coughed and sputtered chunks of bloody flesh on everybody and on the white dress of one of the girls. She was biting her lower lip against the tears even as she tried to jam a stiff leg through the green metal wire, like 18 month old babies try to put square blocks into circle shapes.

In the end, the tigers refused the flesh and just gnawed a bit then curled up and went back to sleep, like cute little kids with stuffed animals. “The horror, the horror” said the balloon man. The producer found out and blew a gasket and blamed Mark for everything as usual. What the hell do you think the animal rights freaks would say about that or the health department!!! Is this 1860? Are you Buffalo Bill? Everything that went wrong was Marks fault. That was the price of being the corporate gopher. The list of things that had gone wrong so far this season looked like a runaway train with all the crimes and incidents stenciled like ads on the side of box cars.

https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/bKDMacTxFlu/circus-troubles/#/

 

First the skeleton begins to take shape, amongst roadies scurrying between clanking steel and wood planks knocking into place, then the cables and wires stretch like arteries and nerves around the steel frame. Then the yellow and red flesh gasps, buffs suddenly and blooms into shape.  The electrical crew zap and sparkle connections as the lights hum in to being. Then, there is a long silence, with only the slow roar of tigers and the grunting of elephants providing a muffled sleepy afternoon soundtrack from the plains of Africa. Mark and the Balloon man had seen it hundreds of times and continued talking, could have been at a laundry mat.

 

What the hell’s going on!, shouted the producer, his head floating outside the box office window. “I thought we had an arrangement. Stick by the turnstiles, for Christ sake! I got 3 kids in the box office now and you are going to have to explain what they gotta do. Can’t we have just one show without a hassle? Let’s put the mirrors out.” Mark started propping up the plywood signs and kicking them open and so the distorting mirrors faced each other, creating a kind of gauntlet for the customers to line up within. The mirrors were the producer’s big new idea of the season. “This will keep the twerps and rug rats busy in the line.” Ten signs later and Mark was about 30 yards away from the pickup truck and could feel the man in the cowboy hat watching him. He walked back slowly through the signs with his body distorting and ballooning into a fat little midget then reappearing as a tall skinny guy with silts for legs then bursting into endless reoccurring reflections of himself.  A few kids pulled up on bikes and skidded to a stop. “You got any midgets in there?” “What about a lady with a beard? “Got any pot?”

 By the time he got back to the turnstiles everything was in full commotion. The cotton candy kiosk grinding out pink sugar clouds and the popcorn man was scooping and stacking small bags of bouncing particles. The Ringmaster in a top hat and red sequined tux was arguing with the Producer. The acrobat team was pointing towards the cables in the tent and the girl on the flying trapeze, in full fishnet thighs thundered past everybody like a royal white ghost, into the dark mouth of the tent where everybody seemed to be gravitating to, at this moment in time. He placed the high school kids in position and the people started springing through the clanging turnstiles. Kids with defiant locked legs poised in all directions tugging and jerking their parents behind them, towards this modern day gaudy red and yellow pyramid.

The man from the pickup truck was now walking slowly towards the turnstiles. He was holding a big bag, with dark green and black camouflage colors. The producer stuck his head out the door and raised his hands in frustrated supplication to Mark as if to say, “Be ready to do something!” The man had deep lines surrounding the features of his face. It was a hard face and eyes like the sky above him. His hands were leather baseball gloves and he had scars on both his arms, where younger men today would probably have tattoos. They were real tattoos. They were hieroglyphic etched in the flesh.

-I’m sorry sir, we can’t let you bring that in here.

-Can’t lock my truck, the window’s busted. Can’t leave my stuff there.

-Sorry sir, we can’t be responsible for customer….

He held the bag up to Mark.

-That’s fine kid, you can hold it for me then!

-I’m sorry that’s really not……that’s not really my job. I’m not allowed to…

-Seems like it’s your job, I saw you talking to the man in the trailer earlier

-I’m just supposed to watch the turnstiles.

-Well, then you can watch my bag beside the turnstiles. I won’t be long.

He put the bag down and started to move towards the tent. Mark suddenly noticed the worn brown leather casing bouncing off his side and something inside his head said” knife”

-Sir, you can’t take that in the tent!

The silence was terrible. Mark felt the producer staring at him. But before anybody could do anything the man had removed the knife and handed it to Mark, handle first the proper way, and very gently.

-Here, kid, I told you I won’t be long

Mark decided, and he put his hand out slowly towards the knife.

The man walked past the balloons and the cotton candy and into the darkness and the band started playing. Mark stood like a clown at clown school with a shinning prop in his hand but he didn’t know what the gag was and everybody in class was staring at him. The producer shook his head and rolled his eyes and slowly disappeared back into the box office. The high school kids shuffled their feet.

       Halfway through the dancing elephants with hula hoops, which was still only the opening act, the man appeared again and slowly walked up to Mark with his hand open for his knife back, as if they had been working on something together, like the engine of a truck, and Mark had to hold it for a only brief second.

-I don’t get it, kid?

-Don’t get what, sir?

-What’s with making animals walk on two legs?