The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(85)

We prepare each piece of the loosed vinyl tent on the ground for curing by hosing it down if it needs to be hosed, by dragging it along the ground until it is perfectly straight and flattened and then begin, yellow by red, yellow, red, yellow, red, folding and smoothing the creases. We tuck and pull, two of us crouching together for each fold so we move simultaneously, so no extra creases form beneath the folds. The vinyl tent must slide perfectly into a canvas bag, which must fit perfectly in a stack of other canvas bags, which must fit perfectly between Queen Kong and a light box in the meticulously organized truck container. All of this care. The minutiae inside the wild animal of sideshow.

Five hours.

We look at the tongue, our stage, that expanse of wood we’ve been parading across for ten days. We see the eye, that single doorway behind the curtain into the backstage world, into the animal’s brain where we live and work and sleep and eat and fight. This face will be dismem bered last. Once all traces of the former animal are tucked inside, we hoist the stage up until it tucks flat against the side of the semi container, closing its eye until the next unveiling.

Beside us on both sides and across the midway, carnie crews are leaping between sections of their rides, yelling, killing their animals, too. I wonder about wandering over to carnietown once teardown is done, to see if there are any special celebrations that go on before they load back up and move on to the next town.

Seven hours.

There is too much work to be done.

And what is that bloody meat beating in the middle of it all?

What keeps pumping when the bones have been released from the skin, when the skin has been folded and tucked away, when the mouth has been shut? What else is still throbbing? Do we hear that humming? Don’t we hear that music? A low drumming? Teeth, somewhere, hitting against a glass?

I can hear it still, even after the semi is hitched and pulls the container onto the next grounds. I hear it when the lot is empty except for piles of hot-dog containers and a broken Octopus ride, and I hear it when we are barreling down the highway with the dead animal all packed away in the truck just ahead, I can hear it. Ravenous. Thrumming. Desperate to come alive.

*

The trailer behind the van is fishtailing. It’s a heavy, old trailer, and though the van was upgraded a few seasons ago, it isn’t hauling the trailer in a straight line. The trailer swerves to one side, pulling the van along with it. It’s throwing us over the lane dividers on the freeway, hemming us right up against the semitrucks throttling alongside us. We feel the blowback of the trucks’ wind pressing our trailer toward the other edge of the lane, a seesaw we can’t ever stabilize.

We’ve unloaded the temporary performers. We dropped the last three off at the bus station and airport after teardown in Minnesota.

Big Boss Chris has left, too. We are back to our skeleton crew, plus Short E, who will stay with us for most of the rest of the season. Well, our skeleton crew minus Pipscy. We are very quiet. It feels like the whole thing should be over, like we’ve survived the hardest part to survive and therefore it is time for a big break for everyone, margaritas by the pool, but we still have two and a half months to go.

I had a text from Pipscy saying she’d made it home, saying it was wonderful to see her mother, her boyfriend, saying that she had found a job in a bar as a mermaid, one of those girls who swims, in a bikini and tail, in a giant tank behind the bar. She also had a mermaid gig lined up for the next Renaissance fair, too. Mermaids fill her future.

We point the van toward Hutchinson, Kansas. But we don’t make it far.

The van keeps skidding across the road, fishtailing back and forth. We pull over to check the tire pressure, fill the gas tank, change the oil. Nothing works. Hours pass, our caravan swaying gently back and forth across the highway lines while our performers inside all sit straight up on the bench seats, fists taut around the ceiling handles.

A blue Honda is on the shoulder ahead of us. Our trailer sways. We can just make out the blur of several arms waving frantically from a pile of humans beside the blue car. We swerve, and Sunshine keeps her hands on ten and two at the wheel and says, “Oh shit, Oh shit,” and we’re all staring at the commotion beside the road, and suddenly, thankfully, we’re beside them and not directly upon them, we’re barreling past and we see two adults waving their arms madly around and a woman between them, her mouth open in a wail we cannot hear, and in her arms a child’s limp body.

Somebody else’s catastrophe is unfolding right now, right this very moment, right beside us.

We barrel on. Say quiet things to ourselves like oh shit and that sucks.

At the next exit, Sunshine veers off the highway and I think it’s maybe to call for help or to go back and help, but we don’t. Instead, we pull into the parking lot of the Kansas Star Casino, a massive reflective tomb surrounded by a mostly empty asphalt parking lot and, beyond that, fields of corn as far as you can see in any direction.

My heart is beating fast, both from the caterwauling van and the emergency we passed, and the feeling is familiar, the panic, the danger. The taut faces that signaled distress.

“Fix this fucking trailer problem,” Sunshine tells Tommy, who has swung the semitruck around in the parking lot and, sighing, gets into the van’s driver seat.

“Everyone out,” he says, and we pile out onto the empty parking lot, the sun a low gold ball above the cornfields. We hear sirens in the distance. I imagine the people on the side of the road hearing the sirens, too, believing that there might be time for what has gone wrong to be made right again.