The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(53)

“Anytime you change your mind, escape artist,” the cop says, “I’ll be waiting for you.” The golf cart doesn’t drive away. I can feel it behind me, the metal, the eyes following me as I walk quickly away, the stone in my throat growing smaller and smaller the farther I get.

*

A tire blows outside South Bend, Indiana. After Ohio we headed for a couple more small county fairs in Illinois as holdover stops before we reach the meat-grinders of the season: the big state fairs. Playing them grinds you up into little pieces, the hours are that long—8:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., often, because the audiences are huge all day every day, because the fairs are two weeks or longer. We won’t get to them for a few more weeks, but I know they’re out there because the seasoned crew talks about them as both a cure for these dopey little fairs and a curse on your sanity.

We’ve played only two fairs so far, but this life is becoming familiar so much more quickly than other kinds of lives I’ve had. It is so packed full all day, every day. I’ve escaped from handcuffs over a hundred times on that bally stage already, eaten fire nearly as many, I’ve unrolled and rerolled the banners every morning and night day after day, and now, just over a month into the tour, it is starting to feel as if I’ve always been here.

*

This isn’t the season’s first blown tire. On the drive from Florida up to Pennsylvania for the first fair, the tire on our semi blew, and a piece of the rubber spun around and cracked the truck’s battery. We pulled off at the next rest stop and started calling around for the cheapest, closest rig mechanic out in rural West Virginia. The pool of battery acid beneath the truck grew drip by drip.

“Get comfortable,” Tommy said. “This’ll take a while.”

We trudged into the rest stop and slouched against the walls. “Of course this would happen,” Sunshine said. She explained that the show never had enough money, and year by year it made less. Smaller crowds. Cheaper tickets. More people who believed it was politically incorrect to gawk, or gross, and then went home to reality TV shows nobody watched them watching. So each time the semitruck wore down its tires, Tommy, per instruction from the owners, took the worn front tires and rotated them to the back, where they were less important for traction, then bought newer but still used tires for the front. This is why the tire blew, I heard. It’s old, cracked, worn well beyond its life. Nobody said anything else, and we settled into a card game.

“Are we playing Poobah’s rules?” Sunshine asked.

“Of course,” Spif said, and started dealing.

“Remember a few years back when Poobah got so pissed at Chris Christ?” Sunshine said, laughing as she organized her hand. “He hid behind one of the semi’s tires with a knife. He’d decided to stab him. So when Chris walked by, Poobah lurched out from behind the tire but somehow missed Chris and slashed the tire instead. That’s why we had the blowout,” she said. “The stabbed tire probably got rotated into the wrong spot.” Nobody looked up or asked if the story was true. Nobody sought clarification. The truth, I’ve learned, is less in the particulars of the story and more in the fact that there is a story at all. Somebody threw a joker.

*

With our second blowout, we wait inside a gas station for a few hours while it’s repaired, sipping the local root beer sold at the register for a dollar each or Special! $2 for 2, which tastes exactly like every root beer I’ve ever had, though the bottle has a handwritten label that promises Grandma’s secret recipe.

We write postcards, walk the small aisle of trucker amenities, and touch the camo steering wheel covers. Staring at the hot dogs juicing on their spigots, I casually mention the creepy cops from a few nights earlier to Tommy and Spif. They stop gazing at the dogs. As I talk, they cross their arms over their chests and start shaking their heads.

“Motherfucking cops,” Spif says.

“Tess, you should never be out alone on the fairgrounds at night,” Tommy says.

“Or even in the day,” Spif says.

“Get pepper spray or a knife. I’m not kidding. All the girls carry them,” Tommy says. I know this is true, but don’t want to accept its necessity. I’ve lived plenty of other places people thought were dangerous—New York City for two years, West Africa for a year—and I never carried weapons. “And listen.” Tommy beckons the others over. “Here’s the new thing. Anytime you need to go out of the tent at night—to the bathroom, to smoke, whatever—you bring someone with you. Preferably me or Spiffer. I know you girls are tough, but it’s just not worth the risk. Wake me up anytime, seriously, I don’t care, just don’t go out alone. Okay?”

We nod. I understand the concern—not just for the cops, of course, but all the incidents over the years. There’d been a brutal rape on one of these fairgrounds last year. But I feel two things—angry that it is necessary to protect women who just want to go pee at night, and relief that there are willing allies. We are all in it together.

*

The July sun is gaining relentless heat.

The July sun is gaining such relentless heat that nobody wants to walk back out to the van to retrieve their backpacks for entertainment while we wait, so we sit around a sticky plastic table beside truck parts, watching a staticky, muted episode of Judge Judy on a small TV mounted in the corner.

By the time we get to the Kane County Fair in St. Charles, Illinois, the news station releases a heat advisory for the whole forthcoming week. The newscasters suggest that all vulnerable populations in Kane County—the elderly and children, two of our primary audience types, in particular—stay indoors in air-conditioning. It is a health risk to be outside at all.