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Page 5 of 6
The air had cooled after nightfall and steam rose off the performers heads. They chattered at the back of the tent to get rid of their nerves. The laughter of the audience punctuated their talk. It was loud. Nino was working them like a bullfighter, placing the banderias close to the heart, and weighting until the very end of the fight to push the sword in. The trick of a good clown is to expose yourself to the audience's horns, to dare them to embarrass you, to take them in with easy jokes when you have better ones, to be patient and let them open up. A clown is not harmless.
Roger's act was early in the show. He walked away from the group towards his trailer, closed his eyes, and visualized his routine. The slack rope is a balancing act. You have to let the rope take root in your feet until it feels as wide as a road. Then you do your tricks. Juggling, swinging, lying down, backing up, pretending to fall. When that was all done, Cara, dressed in her horse ballerina costume, handed Roger a ladder, which he would balance on the rope, and then climb up. It is a difficult trick and its expertness is measured by how many rungs you can take. There was a guy in Vasquez who went up six but that is inhuman. Roger took two and it was considered exceptional that he used the ladder in his first year on the rope.
The trick in the slack rope is to be a woman, with wide hips and a strong back, balancing a jug of water on your head. If you become that woman every night, the rope grows into you. Giovanni had told Roger the trick. He told him to make the woman real, to imagine her every night before he got on the rope. A Romanian at Ringling had taught him in the old days.
Roger didn't know where his woman had come from, maybe from his Sunday school class. She had brown skin, red lips, and wore a blue robe and headscarf. The jug on her head was a kind of clay amphora with curved double handles. The woman had a far-away long-suffering look in her eyes, which were black and glowed with wet light. She walked with her hands on her hips and the jug was totally still on her head. As Roger had gotten better at the act she had become a bigger part of it. Now as he walked his line on the grass, he closed his eyes and imagined his own feet as hers, bare and brown and calloused. He felt the weight of his hips and the energy in his womb, the fullness of her worries so that the jug was only a jug. Almost subconsciously he heard the last laugh of Ivan's hat throwing act and walked back over to the tent flap, blinking long and keeping the woman in his mind's eye. Ivan came out of the tent.
"I'm fuckin on fire tonight," he said.
His eyes were feverish and he had a smile on his face that, even under the clown paint, made him look like a wolf. He slapped Roger on the ass.
"The ring is the thing, New Hampshire," Ivan said.
Roger walked past him through the flap and into the ring. The lights were bright and he kept his face tilted up toward them so that they made the backs of his eyelids black screens to watch his woman. He felt his face stretch into a wide smile and he walked toward the rope where it lay on the ground. He straddled it while Ted and Werner hoisted the winch until Roger and his slack rope were ten feet in the air. The audience clapped as he stood up. The rope swayed, Roger exhaled, and it was still. He felt the rope shifting under his foot as he stepped forward and it made him panicky. He paused and he could hear the audience murmur. He closed his eyelids halfway and there she was, her blue robe hiked up over her ankles, her eyes still, and Roger felt the rope disappear until he was on a road and the act went past one trick after another. He juggled, spun a hoop on one leg, lay down, pretended to fall, walked to the support stanchion and back again. When all the tricks were over except the last he walked back to the center of the rope and bowed. The people clapped. He glanced down at Cara. She had a big smile on her face and he laughed. He felt good. She handed the ladder up to him and he looked forward again to keep his balance and felt the weight of it. He searched with the grooves on the ladder until they were firm on the rope and then he extended his right arm straight out away from his shoulder his hand on tenth rung of the ladder until the ladder made a ‘V' with the rope at a 45 degree angle.
He imagined himself carrying the jug on his head up steep Roman steps. He searched for the bottom rung with his right foot and stepped up, letting his left foot follow it up until they were both firm. The audience clapped loudly, he heard a whistle. He stepped up again. The ladder was firm. His left foot followed and there was more applause. He let his eyes shut and breathed deeply. His right foot stepped to the third rung. His left foot followed. His balance faltered and he saw the water slosh out of the jug on his head. He looked down instinctively and saw Cara's worried face, her eyes wide and sad like Estelle's. He felt himself falling and lifter his chin to stop it. He closed his eyes again, sunk his weight into his hips, and regained his balance. The ladder steadied. He stood with both feet on the third rung and the audience clapped wildly. Roger let himself smile as he soaked in the applause and the hot lights from above. He could feel Cara smiling beneath him. When the applause began to die he raised his left arm high over his head and the clapping got loud again. He laughed and looked down. Cara shot him a disapproving frown but smiled right through it. Roger bowed his head one last time as his legs began to burn with the effort of holding him still and then he stepped back down the ladder until he was firm on the rope again. Cara took the ladder out of his hand, and he was relieved to drop from the rope onto the ground. The two of them held hands and bowed together.
"That was awesome," she said between her teeth.
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