The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(46)

10:44 p.m.: Light up your torches and eat fire.

10:45 p.m.: Tell the drunk man that you will not give him your number right now but that you will consider it if he goes into the show.

10:51 p.m.: Light up your torches and eat fire.

10:59 p.m.: Gather with the rest of the crew around the bally stage. Watch the Ferris wheel.

Note: At 10:00 p.m. on the luckiest nights, but usually 11:00 p.m. or midnight, and sometimes 2:00 a.m., Tommy will make the call that you are about to perform your last show, and you’ll speed through the acts, cutting the least impressive parts, making sure the last stragglers in the audience feel they got what they came for, and once they go, your crew will come sit out on the bally stage for the last few minutes as the fairgoers leave, smoking cigarettes and comparing notes on the day. Sometimes, when the day has been too long, they sit quietly, all faces turned toward the big wheel. That’s the sign. Nobody on the fairground may shut down under penalty of a big fine until the fairground bosses give the A-OK to the Ferris wheel.

11:02 p.m.: Wheel’s off. And then the echo down the midway, Wheel’s off! Wheel’s off! Wheel’s off!

11:04 p.m.: Untie the banners, drop or roll them, unplug the sound system, take the props off the front stage, put the snake away and turn her heated blanket on, close the mummy cases if there is any chance of bad weather. Clear the stages.

11:22 p.m.: Decision.

(11:28 p.m.–12:13 a.m.): Will you grab your shower bag and shower shoes and a few pieces of dirty laundry and run for the showers, hoping the line isn’t too long, hoping the water is warm, hoping someone hasn’t taken a crap in the stall?

(11:28 p.m.–1:13 a.m.): Will you grab your wallet and hop in the van with Tommy or Sunshine if they are doing a Walmart run, to try to stock up on peanut butter or granola bars or tampons or sunscreen or drinking water because who knows when the next store run will be?

(11:28 p.m.–12:25 a.m.): Will you think of a friend or lover waiting to hear from you and call them, sprawled on your bunk or on the grass in the tent?

(11:28 p.m.–2:19 a.m.): Will you relax and chat and have a drink with your fellow performers, shooting the shit, having your tarot cards read, decompressing from the day?

Whatever you choose, do it fast, because before long if you’re not in bed, the wake-up time will be swiftly approaching and you won’t even be able to believe the idea that you’ll have to do it all again. And you will wake up and swear that tonight, this night, you will go to bed right when the show is over, get a long sleep, “catch up,” as they say, but when the last act is over and the banners are wrapped that night, your body will be buzzing with the adrenaline of performing, with the exhaustion mixed in, but more than that, your brain will be awash in relief for having finished the day and you will forget how tired you are, will feel this overwhelming need to have a little downtime, just a little while to unwind and talk to people other than the audience, and so you will, and will stay up too late, and will go to bed a little more relaxed, and will wake up once more in near disbelief that you have to do it all again.

*

The next morning I wake up and do it all again.

“America the Beautiful” wakes me. The recording is old, crackly, broken up behind a woman’s overly vibrato voice. It is 8:00 a.m. I know it is 8:00 a.m. because the rodeo stadium blasts “America the Beautiful” across the fairgrounds at this same time each morning, a carnie alarm, an ironic paean to America’s opportunities that many of the sleeping men within earshot haven’t ever been able to access.

American carnivals are made up of many non-U.S. citizens: Mexican, Central and South American, South African laborers who are willing to do intensely grueling physical work. I’ve heard a lot of folks in the business praise the melting pot of the American carnival. Whereas the stereotype of the rough-and-tumble carnie usually brings to mind a toothless, tattooed white man, in reality the carnivals are largely run by non-Americans. Away2xplore is a South African company that hires South Africans to work a carnival season in America. We pay for your airfare**, the website advertises. The asterisks let you know that in exchange for your paid airfare and a weekly check—dependent, mostly, on commission from what you sell—you work a full season, which ranges, per the website, from six to ten months. There are no exceptions.

“Positions open now for Ride attendants/Ride operators, starting from next month! Operating your ride whilst playing the latest music and meeting lots of girls. If you like hands-on work while getting your hands dirty and want to be the most popular boy in every town, this job is for you, for sure!”

Many of the carnies I meet have had trouble with the law. The carnival companies don’t ask lots of questions, so carnivals are full of people with histories—ex-cons—that preclude their working other kinds of jobs. Some years ago, when the law would come to the carnival looking for so-and-so, whomever they asked would plead total ignorance and word would bolt down the midway like rigged bowling pins to the ear it needed to find, to the ear that needed to hear Get lost, and that person would, usually to rejoin somewhere down the road. This place has all sorts of secret songs being sung in frequencies I can’t hear.

“America the Beautiful” ends and I stretch out in my bed, sore, but my feet hit the wooden wall at the end of my bunk and my hands hit the wooden wall at the head and up above; opening my eyes toward the morning sun, I see a dick and balls and clown face and fuck you cunt written on the slats of the bunk above. If I reach my arm to the right, it will press against the truck’s metal wall. My left arm does not quite reach the other wall, but it’s close, almost touches, and if I stretch out my foot across the two feet of space beside our bunks, it will touch. Then I can be touching all four walls at once. Two small plastic bins with three drawers each sit at either end of the room, one for each of the bunks. One drawer I fill with food, one with costume accessories, one initially with underwear and socks until I hear that panties go missing all the time if they are visible from the doorway, clean or not, and so I bury them in my suitcase and stick T-shirts in that drawer instead.