I continue, on a roll. "If they catch up with me, they catch up with
me. If they don't, well, then at end of season I'll call and go back. And if something goes
wrong in the meantime, just call and they'll come get me. What's the harm in that?"
Charlie stares at me. I've never seen a man look more serious.
One, two, three, four, five, six—he's not going to answer—seven, eight, nine—he's going
to send me back there, and why shouldn't he, he doesn't know me from Adam—ten,
eleven, twelve
"All right," he says.
"All right?"
Water for E l e p h a n ts
"All right. Let's give you something to tell your grandkids about. Or great-grandkids. Or
great-great-grandkids."
I snort with glee, delirious with excitement. Charlie winks and pours me another finger's
worth of whiskey. Then, on second thought, he tips the bottle again.
I reach out and grab its neck. "Better not," I say. "Don't want to get tipsy and break a
hip."
And then I laugh, because it's so ridiculous and so gorgeous and it's all
I can do to not melt into a fit of giggles. So what if I'm ninety-three? So what if I'm
ancient and cranky and my body's a wreck? If they're willing to accept me and my guilty
conscience, why the hell shouldn't I run away with the circus?
It's like Charlie told the cop. For this old man, this is home.
A u t h o r 's N o te
The idea for this book came unexpectedly: In early 2003 I was gearing up to write an
entirely different book when the Chicago Tribune ran an article on Edward J. Kelty, a
photographer
who followed traveling circuses around America in the 19x0s and
'30s. The photograph that accompanied the article so fascinated me that
I bought two books of old-time circus photographs: Step Right This Way: The
Photographs ofEdward J. Kelty and Wild, Weird, and Wonderful: The American Circus
as Seen byF.W. Glasier. By the time I'd thumbed through them, I was hooked. I
abandoned the book I'd planned to write and dove instead into the world of the train
circus.
I started by getting a bibliography of suggested reading from the archivist at Circus
World, in Baraboo, Wisconsin, which is the original winter quarters of the Ringling
Brothers. Many of the books were out of print, but I managed to get them through rare
booksellers. Within weeks I was
off to Sarasota, Florida, to visit the Ringling Circus Museum, which happened to be
selling off duplicates of books in its rare book collection. I
came home poorer by several hundred dollars and richer by more books than I could
carry.
I spent the next four and a half months acquiring the knowledge necessary to do justice to
this subject, including taking three additional research
trips (a return to Sarasota, a visit to Circus World in Baraboo, and a weekend trip to the
Kansas City Zoo with one of its former elephant handlers
to learn about elephant body language and behavior).
The history of the American circus is so rich that I plucked many of
this story's most outrageous details from fact or anecdote (in circus history, the line
between the two is famously blurred). These include the display of a hippo pickled in
formaldehyde, a deceased four-hundred-pound "strong lady" being paraded around town
in an elephant cage, an elephant
who repeatedly pulled her stake and stole the lemonade, another elephant who ran off and
was retrieved from a backyard vegetable patch, a lion and
a dishwasher wedged together under a sink, a general manager who was murdered and
his body rolled up in the big top, and so on. I also incorporated the horrific and very real
tragedy of Jamaica ginger paralysis, which devastated the lives of approximately one
hundred thousand Americans between 1930 and 1931.
And finally, I'd like to draw attention to two old-time circus elephants, not just because
they inspired major plot points, but also because these old girls deserve to be
remembered.
In 1903 an elephant named Topsy killed her trainer after he fed her
a lit cigarette. Most circus elephants at the time were forgiven a killing
or two—as long as they didn't kill a rube—but this was Topsy's third strike. Topsy's
owners at Coney Island's Luna Park decided to turn her execution into a public spectacle,
but the announcement that they were going to hang her met with uproar—after all, wasn't
hanging a cruel and unusual punishment? Ever resourceful, Topsy's owners contacted
Thomas Edison. For years, Edison had been "proving" the dangers of rival George
Westinghouse's alternating current by publicly electrocuting stray dogs
and cats, along with the occasional horse or cow—but nothing as ambitious as an
elephant. He accepted the challenge. Because the electric chair
had replaced the gallows as New York's official method of execution, the protests
stopped.
Accounts differ as to whether Topsy was fed cyanide-laced carrots
in an early, failed, execution attempt or whether she ate them immediately before she was
electrocuted, but what is not disputed is that Edison brought a movie camera, had Topsy
strapped into copper-lined sandals, and shot sixty-six hundred volts through her in front
of fifteen hundred spectators, killing her in about ten seconds. Edison, convinced that this
feat discredited alternating current, went on to show the film to audiences across the
country.
On to a less sobering note. Also in 1903, an outfit in Dallas acquired
an elephant named Old Mom from Carl Hagenbeck, a circus legend who declared her to
be the smartest elephant he'd ever had. Their hopes thus raised, Old Mom's new trainers
were dismayed to find they could persuade her to do nothing more than shuffle around.
Indeed, she was so useless
she "had to be pushed and pulled from one circus lot to another." When Hagenbeck later
visited Old Mom at her new home, he was aggrieved to hear her described as stupid and
said so—in German. It suddenly dawned on everyone that Old Mom only understood
German. After this watershed, Old Mom was retrained in English and went on to an
illustrious
career. She died in 1933 at the ripe old age of eighty, surrounded by her friends and
fellow troupers.
Here's to Topsy and Old Mom
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
小说下载尽在http://bbs.txtnovel.com--书香门第【水泠&水泠】整理
附：本作品来自互联网,本人不做任何负责 内容版权归作者所有!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
