The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(108)

The things in their hands are long and thin. Metal. Metal pipes.

In the middle of the circle is a man. He is on the ground. He is on his knees with his head down on the ground in front of him, his hands wrapping his head, and then he is on the ground on his side. This is the moment. I take a step forward, toward them, the great carnie hero that I am, and Spif, who has just done so much work to drag me by the hair from the last fight, grabs my shoulder and throws me back into the Honey Bucket we are standing beside.

“Are you fucking nuts?” Spif says.

“Are they killing that man?” I ask, my chest heaving, breathing jagged.

“Maybe,” he says.

“We have to stop them,” I say.

“Yeah?” he says. “You want to be in the middle of that?”

We are in the shadows of our tent, but the men who make up the circle can certainly see us. Nobody seems to care. There’s nothing to hide. There are rules here and I don’t know them and I probably never will. But there is a human on the ground. Getting beaten. Badly.

“We could call the cops,” I say. My brain is rattling, desperate.

“Ha. You think they’d come?”

“They might.”

He swings his face over to me.

“The reason the guy is probably getting the shit kicked out of him is for calling the cops,” he says. “It’s not our business.”

“But—”

“No.”

“Spif—”

“Do you want to get us killed?”

I close my mouth. Watch the man on the ground.

“What do you think he did?” I ask quietly.

“Who knows,” Spif says. “But he probably deserves it.”

I lean against the Porta-Potty and watch the metal come down on the bones and organs and hair and unrecognizable black costume of the man on the ground, for five, ten more seconds. It’s their business.

“This isn’t safe,” Spif says. “Go get in our tent, now, and don’t come out until tomorrow.”

And I do. Just like that.

*

I never knew if the man lived or died.

I stood there, watching. And then I left.

The next morning, I walk over to the spot to check the grass for evidence, but the grass has already moved on. There is a tight squeeze around my throat, a hot guilt, a shame, like I am searching for the spot where I’d let a man die.

When I get back to our tent, Captain America is there with an apology slice of pepperoni pizza.

“Sorry you had to see our fight,” he says, handing me the pizza and a Coke.

“You guys okay?” I ask.

“Everyone’s fine. Was just some drunk bullshit. It’s all sorted out now. But we didn’t mean for you guys to be in the middle of that. Didn’t want you getting hurt. You didn’t, did you?”

“No, we ran away pretty quickly,” I say, “and ran right into another fight. An uglier fight. I didn’t stop it.”

“Why would you have stopped it?”

“They were hurting some guy pretty badly.”

“The less you know about this world, the better,” he says. “There are systems in place here that have been working for many, many years. You can’t change that.”

“What about all the Germans who turned a blind eye when the Nazis started terrorizing innocent people? Didn’t they have a responsibility to step in?”

He laughs. “So the carnies are Nazis here? Come on, now. I just brought you a piece of pizza and a soda. Fresh pizza. Straight from the oven.”

I look out our door to one of the kiddie rides down the midway, where a lanky carnie with a long brown ponytail is helping a little boy into the airplane ride. I think about Leo at the first fair, who’d delivered me iced tea when it was hot and who only wanted to talk about orchids. About Dale and the dream of his ranch. And then about the posture of the man’s body on the ground as he stretched his limbs over his most fragile parts like children are taught to do in earthquake drills in California schools. And I wonder how a person could not feel concern for someone else who is clearly so afraid that his neck will be broken. I do. I feel it. But I didn’t do anything about it.

You did what you had to do.

New worlds call for new yous.





ELECTRICITY

Day 130 of 150

World of Wonders

October 2013

A day passes, two, three, more. The show carries on in its regular irregular swing, and I try not to think about the man on the ground, about my teeth marks on Cassie’s skin, but those are not easy weights to lift. I’m surprised by this darkness inside myself. My whole life I have tried to be good. And nice. To act right. I thought being out with the sideshow would present clearer moral grounds than the gray area I’d been inside for so long with my mom. I thought I could be here, do the job right, be good, and that’d be it.

*

The electric woman is not nice.

“Can I be Electra?” I asked Sunshine during setup a few spots back.

I’d spent a long time watching the electric chair from afar. I’d remained quiet when Sunshine cast the acts for each new fair, waiting, patiently, until she thought I might be ready. She didn’t ask. I stopped waiting.

“Sure,” she said. “You’re the new Electra.”