pokes me.
"Come on, kid," he says. "You gotta get out of here before the canvas men arrive. I'm
gonna try to set you up with Crazy Joe this morning." "Crazy Joe?" I say, sitting up. My
shins are itchy and my neck hurts like a son of a bitch.
"Head horse honcho," says Camel. "Of baggage stock, that is. August
don't let him nowhere near the ring stock. Actually, it's probably Marlena that don't let
him near, but it don't make no difference. She won't let you nowhere near, neither. With
Crazy Joe at least you got a shot. We had a run of bad weather and muddy lots, and a
bunch of his men got tired of working Chinese and moped off. Left him a bit short."
"Why's he called Crazy Joe?"
"Don't rightly know," says Camel. He digs inside his ear and inspects
his findings. "Think he was in the Big House for a while but I don't know why. Wouldn't
suggest you ask, neither." He wipes his finger on his pants and ambles to the doorway.
"Well, come on then!" he says, looking back at me. "We don't got all day!" He eases
himself onto the edge and slides carefully to the gravel. Sara Gruen
I give my shins one last desperate scratch, tie my shoes, and follow.
We are adjacent to a huge grassy lot. Beyond it are scattered brick buildings, backlit by
the predawn glow. Hundreds of dirty, unshaven men pour
from the train and surround it, like ants on candy, cursing and stretching and lighting
cigarettes. Ramps and chutes clatter to the ground, and
six-and eight-horse hitches materialize from nowhere, spread out on the dirt. Horse after
horse appears, heavy bob-tailed Percherons that clomp down the ramps, snorting and
blowing and already in harness. Men on either side hold the swinging doors close to the
sides of the ramps, keeping the animals from getting too close to the edge.
A group of men marches toward us, heads down.
"Mornin', Camel," says the leader as he passes us and climbs into the
car. The others clamber up behind him. They surround a bundle of canvas and heave it
toward the entrance, grunting with effort. It moves about a foot and a half and lands in a
cloud of dust.
"Morning, Will," says Camel. "Say, got a smoke for an old man?" "Sure." The man
straightens up and pats his shirt pockets. He digs into
one and retrieves a bent cigarette. "It's Bull Durham," he says, leaning forward and
holding it out. "Sorry."
"Roll-your-own suits me fine," says Camel. "Thanks, Will. Much obliged."
Will jerks his thumb at me. "Who's that?" "A First of May. Name's Jacob Jankowski."
Will looks at me, and then turns and spits out the door. "How new?" he says, continuing
to address Camel.
"Real new."
"You got him on yet?" "Nope."
"Well, good luck to ya." He tips his hat at me. "Don't sleep too sound, kid, if you know
what I mean." He disappears into the interior.
"What does that mean?" I say, but Camel is walking away. I jog a little to catch up.
There are now hundreds of horses among the dirty men. At first glance
W a t e r for E l e p h a n ts
the scene looks chaotic, but by the time Camel has lit his cigarette, several dozen teams
are hitched and moving alongside the flat cars, pulling wagons toward the runs. As soon
as a wagon's front wheels hit the sloped wooden tracks, the man guiding its pole leaps out
of the way. And it's a good thing, too. The heavily loaded wagons come barreling down
the runs and don't stop until they're a dozen feet away.
In the morning light I see what I couldn't last night—the wagons are
painted scarlet, with gold trim and sunburst wheels, each emblazoned with the name
BENZINI BROS MOST SPECTACULAR SHOW ON EARTH. AS soon as the wagons
are hitched to teams, the Percherons lean into their harnesses and drag their heavy loads
across the field.
"Watch out," says Camel, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward
him. He braces his hat with his other hand, the lumpy cigarette clenched in his teeth.
Three men on horseback gallop past. They swerve and cross the length of the field, tour
its perimeter, and then swing back around. The one in the lead turns his head from side to
side, shrewdly assessing the ground. He holds both reins in one hand and with the other
retrieves flagged darts from a leather pouch, flinging them into the earth.
"What's he doing?" I ask.
"Laying out the lot," says Camel. He comes to a stop in front of a stock car. "Joe! Hey,
Joe!"
A head appears in the doorway.
"I got a First of May here. Fresh from the crate. Think you can use him?" The figure steps
forward onto the ramp. He pushes up the brim of a battered hat with a hand missing three
of its fingers. He scrutinizes me, shoots an oyster of dark brown tobacco juice out the side
of his mouth, and goes back inside.
Camel pats my arm in a congratulatory fashion. "You're in, kid." lam?
"Yep. Now go shovel some shit. I'll catch up with you later."
The stock car is an ungodly mess. I work with a kid named Charlie whose face is smooth
as a girl's. His voice hasn't even broken yet. After S a r a G r u en
we shovel what seems like a cubic ton of manure out the door, I pause, surveying the
remaining mess. "How many horses do they load in here, anyway?"
"Twenty-seven."
"Jesus. They must be packed in so tight they can't move."
"That's the idea," Charlie says. "Once the wedge horse loads, none of em can go down."
The exposed tails from last night suddenly make sense. Joe appears in the doorway.
"Flag's up," he growls. Charlie drops his shovel and heads for the door. "What's going
on? Where are you going?" I say.
"The cookhouse flag's up."
I shake my head. "I'm sorry, I still don't understand." "Chow," he says.
Now that I understand. I, too, drop my shovel.
Canvas tents have popped up like mushrooms, although the largest one—obviously the
big top—still lies flat on the ground. Men stand
over its seams, bending at the waist and lacing its pieces together. Towering wooden
poles stick up through its center line, already flying Old
Glory. With the rigging on the poles, it looks like the deck and mast of a sailboat.
All around its perimeter, eight-man sledge teams pound in stakes at breakneck speed. By
the time one sledge hits the stake, five others are in motion. The resulting noise is as
regular as machine-gun fire, cutting through the rest of the din.
Teams of men are also raising enormous poles. Charlie and I pass a
group often throwing their combined weight against a single rope as a man off to the side
chants, "Pull it, shake it, break it! Again—pull it, shake it, break it! Now downstake it!"
The cookhouse couldn't be more obvious—never mind the orange and blue flag, the
boiler belching in the background, or the stream of people heading for it. The smell of
food hits me like a cannonball in the gut. I haven't eaten since the day before yesterday,
and my stomach twists-with hunger.
W a t e r for E l e p h a n ts
The sidewalls of the cookhouse have been raised to allow for a draft,
but it is divided down the center by a curtain. The tables on this side are graced with red
and white checked tablecloths, silverware, and vases of flowers. This seems wildly out of
sync with the line of filthy men snaking behind the steam tables.
"My God," I say to Charlie as we take our place in line. "Look at this spread."
There are hash browns, sausages, and heaping baskets of thickly sliced bread. Spiral cut
ham, eggs cooked every which way, jam in pots, bowls of oranges.
"This ain't nothin'," he says. "Big Bertha's got all this, and waiters, too. You just sit at
your table and they bring it right to you."
"Big Bertha?" "Ringling," he says. "You worked for them?"
" U h ... no," he says sheepishly. "But I know people who have!"
I grab a plate and scoop up a mountain of potatoes, eggs, and sausages, trying to keep
from looking desperate. The scent is overwhelming. I open my mouth, inhaling deeply—
it's like manna from heaven. It is manna from heaven.
Camel appears from nowhere. "Here. Give this here to that fella there, at the end of the
line," he says, pressing a ticket into my free hand.
The man at the end of the line sits in a folding chair, looking out from under the brim of a
bent fedora. I hold out the ticket. He looks up at me, arms crossed firmly in front of him.
"Department?" he says.
"I beg your pardon?" I say. "What's your department?"
"Uh ... I'm not sure," I say. "I've been mucking out stock cars all morning."
"That don't tell me nothin'," he says, continuing to ignore my ticket. "That could be ring
stock, baggage stock, or menagerie. So which is it?" I don't answer. I'm pretty sure Camel
mentioned at least a couple of those, but I don't remember the specifics.
S a r a G r u en
"If you don't know your department, you ain't on the show," the man says. "So, who the
hell are you?"
"Everything okay, Ezra?" says Camel, coming up behind me.
"No it ain't. I got me some smart-ass rube trying to filch breakfast from the show," says
Ezra, spitting on the ground.
"He ain't no rube," says Camel. "He's a First of May and he's with me." "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
The man flicks the brim of his hat up and checks me out, head to toe.
He pauses a few beats longer and then says, "All right, Camel. If you're vouching for
him, I reckon that's good enough for me." The hand comes out, snatches my ticket.
"Somethin' else. Teach him how to talk before he gets the shit kicked out of him, will
ya?"
"So, what's my department?" I ask, heading for a table.
"Oh no you don't," says Camel, grabbing my elbow. "Them tables ain't for the likes of us.
You stick close to me till you learn your way around." I follow him around the curtain.
The tables in the other half are set
end to end, their bare wood graced only with salt and pepper shakers. No flowers here.
"Who sits on the other side? Performers?"
Camel shoots me a look. "Good God, kid. Just keep your trap shut till you learn the
vernacular, would ya?"
He sits down and immediately shoves half a piece of bread into his mouth. He chews on
it for a minute and then looks across at me. "Oh go on, don't be sore. I'm just looking out
for ya. You saw how Ezra was, and Ezra's a pussycat. Sit yourself down."
I look at him for a moment longer and then step over the bench. I set my plate down,
glance at my manure-stained hands, wipe them on my pants, and, finding them no
cleaner, dig into my food anyway.
"So, what's the vernacular then?" I say finally.
"They're called kinkers," says Camel, talking around a mouthful of chewed food. "And
your department is baggage stock. For now." "So where are these kinkers?"
Water for E l e p h a n ts
"They'll be pulling in any time. There's two more sections of train still
to come. They stay up late, sleep late, and arrive just in time for breakfast. And while
we're on the subject, don't you go calling them 'kinkers' to their faces, neither."
"What do I call them?" "Performers."
"So why can't I just call them performers all the time?" I say with a note of irritation
creeping into my voice.
"There's them and there's us, and you're us," says Camel. "Never mind. You'll learn." A
train whistles in the distance. "Speak of the devil."
"Is Uncle Al with them?"
"Yep, but don't you go getting any ideas. We ain't going near him till later. He's cranky as
a bear with toothache when we're still setting up. Say, how you making out with Joe?
Had enough of horse shit yet?"
"I don't mind."
"Yeah, well I figure you for better'n that. I been talking to a friend of mine," Camel says,
crushing another piece of bread between his fingers and using it to wipe grease from his
plate. "You stick with him the rest of the day, and he'll put in a word for you."
"What'lllbedoing?"
"Whatever he says. And I mean that, too." He cocks an eyebrow for emphasis.
CAMEL'S FRIEND IS a small man with a large paunch and booming voice. He's the
sideshow talker, and his name is Cecil. He examines me and declares me suitable for the
job at hand. I—along with Jimmy and Wade, two other men deemed presentable enough
to mix with the townsfolk—are supposed to position ourselves around the edges of the
crowd and then, when we get the signal, step forward and jostle them toward the
entrance.
The sideshow is on the midway, which teems with activity. On one side, a group of black
men struggles to put up the sideshow banners. On the other, there's clinking and shouting
as white-jacketed white men set S a r a G r u en
up glass after glass of lemonade, forming pyramids of full glasses on the counters of their
red and white striped concession stands. The air is filled with the scents of corn popping,
peanuts roasting, and the tangy undertone of animal.
At the end of the midway, beyond the ticket gate, is a huge tent into which all manner of
creatures is being carted—llamas, camels, zebras, monkeys, at least one polar bear, and
