The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(33)

In the kitchen, there were a table and chairs made for a two-and-a-half-foot-tall man. When Davy, at seven, was invited in, it was the first time his legs didn’t dangle down from a chair, the first time he could rest his elbows comfortably on a table. He fit there. He was ecstatic. There was not only the magic of this Hungarian aristocrat living close by and performing in circuses and sideshows and traveling the globe, there was also the fact of finding, as a child, a world that seemed made just for him.

As a kid, I loved these stories. The idea that out there, somewhere, a weird, wild world awaited. A world that fit people of all sizes, where everyone was normal because nobody was. I kept the stories tucked away like tiny prizes I’d occasionally allow myself to admire.

*

Two months after my mom got sick, two months into the hospital and rehab facilities and emergency goodbyes and brain surgeries and therapies and grim consultations and leaking blood and brain fluid and crises and recoveries and humming, I met a carnie in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

I was walking with Devin back to our respective apartments from a bar.

The carnie was slumped against a bank on the town’s main drag in the middle of the night.

This was two years before I heard of the World of Wonders, two years before I knew anything about the town in Florida where sideshow performers went to retire.

I’d been in California most of the time since my mom had her stroke, saying goodbye and goodbye and goodbye, but she seemed not to be dying just yet, so I was back in Alabama. Trying to be totally, completely, absolutely normal.

We saw the man and asked if he needed help. He didn’t respond. We shook the man by the shoulder and his eyelids retracted slowly like a toy losing its batteries and he said, “I work with the carnival and I lost it.”

The streets were filled with souped-up Ford trucks accelerating under the feet of hammered frat boys. We were nervous about what might happen to this man if we let him be, and charmed by the idea of the carnival, and so we said, “Come with us.” We bent down, one on either side, and held his elbows as he swayed to his feet.

“We’ll get you a taxi,” Devin said, “to take you back to the carnival.”

“Where is the carnival?” I asked.

“You know where,” he said. I wanted to know where. I wanted to have a sixth sense for that sort of thing, but I didn’t.

We stepped to the edge of the sidewalk, looking for a miracle cab in this cab-less college town, hoping a driver might know where the fairgrounds were. We stood for twenty minutes and no cabs passed. We couldn’t get any on the phone either, or find any information about any fairgrounds.

“What do you do in the carnival?” I asked, standing close to the nodding-off man while Devin waved and thumbed at passing cars. We were now hoping for a generous stranger.

“Rides,” he said. “The Gravitron. And more. A lot. Let’s us have some fun. Let’s go have fun.”

I looked at Devin, still frantically trying to wave down a car. Good-hearted, loyal Devin. He saw my look, walked back, and pulled me down the street by the elbow.

“We are not taking him back to my place. No,” he said.

“No,” I agreed. “That would be a bad idea.” We looked at the man, now wide awake and singing something to himself as he looked up and down the street. “But maybe not that bad of an idea. A real carnie. Let’s take him back to your place. You’ve got beers. I’ve got so many questions.”

“He’s not a lost puppy,” Devin said. “We’re taking him to the Downtown Pub. They’ll know what to do to help him.” I had no good arguments against this.

The night was warm and swarms of blond girls filled the air with their floral perfumes, and sometimes I could howl with how much I wanted that easy life, but tonight we had captured a true American vagabond carnie. And maybe he’d be able to tell me about life on the road. About waking up beside a Ferris wheel. About a world where people who couldn’t fit anywhere, did. It was the most excited I’d felt in two months.

The man slid into the booth beside Devin. I poured us beers as the man nodded off and then woke back up with a shock and looked me in the eyes. His were a clear light blue, bright and almost white, somewhere between a glacier and a blue Slurpee.

“Let’s have fun, us three,” he said. Devin huffed and left for the bathroom.

The man’s eyelids did not spasm or close. He was looking at me, right at me. “I really think we could be something, me and you,” he said. I swallowed hard.

“What really happens at the carnival?” I asked.

“Everything,” the man said, then paused. “You could live with me in my trailer,” he said. “I have a TV in there.”

I laughed, laughing at myself for feeling drunk and serious, sipping my beer and looking around the bar. We were both quiet until Devin started walking back toward us. The man reached across the table and grabbed my hand in his.

“Run away with me,” he said quietly, urgently, those blue, blue eyes wide and staring me down. “Run away with me to the carnival.” I couldn’t swallow. Tears started pouring down the sides of my cheeks.

Devin hurried toward us and, from a few feet away, yelled, “Hey! What the fuck did he just say to you? What’s wrong?” I tried to wipe my eyes and paw toward him an “all’s okay,” but nothing was coming across to anybody. “What’d you just say, buddy?” he said, standing tall over the man.