Charley swung out and built the swing higher with two hard strokes, then settled himself into the leg-twined upside-down posture of the catcher and established a stately, predictable rhythm. Charley started the count for her. She swung out and high. At the apex of her second swing she released the trap and did a full slow layout and seemed to float into the catch. All four hands catch wrists. They caught with an audible smack. It was so beautiful I wanted to hear 10,000 persons applauding. I watched several more catches.
“You that Paulfox, hah?” a heavily accented female voice said at my elbow.
I looked down into the leathery face of a stocky woman with bright yellow hair. She wore black denim pants and a sweat shirt that was stenciled with the curious legend, SARASOTA JUNGLE GARDENS. She stared at me with great intensity and repeated her question.
“Yes, that’s my name.”
“I’m her mamma, Jenny Markava.”
“How do you do?”
“I was top flier one time. Sixteen years. Longer than you tink, hah? Was damn good. But not so good as her. You watch. Wan has special ting. How you say? Floating. A slowness, like a magic. Hang in air. Nijinsky had. In ballet is called ballon, hah? A jeté lasting like forever. She is one of the great ones.” Her mouth twisted into a curious smirk. “But you tink is foolish nonsense, jumping around in the air, hah? Somebody gets hurt, hah?”
I looked up to see Wanda rise high in a blurred spin and, just as she started to fall, snap open for the wrist smack of the precision catch.
I turned back to Jenny Markava. “It is one of the most beautiful things in the world,” I said. “Anything that beautiful is very important, Mrs. Markava. It could never be nonsense.”
She gave me a stevedore grin, and such a backhanded crack across the middle that it nearly dropped me. “You stay and eat good, hah? You too tin and weak.”
I watched all of the practice session. At the end Wanda wanted to try the triple. Charley wouldn’t let her. He told her she was a little bit off in her timing. She had fallen into the net twice. They both dropped, bounded, came to the edge of the net in that curious, wide wading walk and dropped lightly to the ground. She was sweaty and winded, and there was a net burn on the outside of her right leg.
“You eating here?” she asked me.
“Your mother invited me.”
“Don’t get close to me. I smell like a horse. I’ll see you in a little while.”
It was the most confusing house I’ve ever been in. There seemed to be four or five tiny living rooms, each with its own group. In one room three old ladies were gabbling at each other in a foreign tongue while they sewed sequins to heavy new material with a dazzling speed. People were singing, some were arguing, some were cooking and some were eating. Two television sets and a radio were going with the volume turned high. I estimate I met about one out of every four of them, and usually it was only the first name. They all had muscles, vitality and violent opinions. The children seemed able to run up the walls and across the ceiling, but I suspect that was an illusion. I remember one dreamlike sequence in particular. I was still waiting for Wanda to appear. Somebody had put an opened can of beer in my hand. I found a chair in a comer. A tired skinny little dog with ancient gray on his muzzle came trudging over and stared at me. Suddenly, as if arriving at a decision, he hoisted himself up onto his hind legs and jumped up and down a half dozen times. Then, with great elderly care, he rocked himself up onto his front legs and stood balanced there, looking sideways at me. “Nice doggie,” I said weakly. He stayed as he was, looking at me with sad, expectant patience.
“He wants you to clap,” said a very tall and wonderfully beautiful girl in a thin little voice. I clapped. The dog dropped back to all fours, sighed, yawned and walked away.
“That’s Captain Bligh,” she explained.
“Oh.”
“He’s retired, but he wants strangers to know he’s been with it.”
“I see his point.”
Soon Wanda joined me. She was in a full crisp white skirt and a black trim blouse. Her eyes and her smile were shiny in the dusk. She brought us two bowls of an ominous-looking stew and two bowls of salad. We took them out on the porch, away from the confusion, and sat in a band of light that came through one of the windows. The stew was superb; so was the salad. Later we joined some singing in foreign tongues, and I smiled in a strained way at jokes I couldn’t understand which sent powerful men into helpless falling-down laughter. At a little after eleven, a morose boy drove me in an old pickup back to my car. I finally found a vacancy in a rather dreary motel. There was a handsome blister on my heel.
At eleven the next morning, when four of them came swinging down over the edge of the big safety net, Wanda walked over to me, scowling, and said, “How many meetings can you miss?”
“I’ve got vacation time piled up that I didn’t use. My boss didn’t want me to take it now because we’re bringing out new products. I told him on the phone this morning that I have to take it now.”
She put a big beach towel around her shoulders like a cape, and we strolled over and sat on a plank-and-sawhorse table in the shade.
“So will you just be — around here?” she asked.
“If nobody minds too much.”
She looked at me with a tolerant amusement. “We leave in March for the season on the road, Paulfox. There is always work to do at this time. Without cheap labor the small circuses would die. Over there is the bunkhouse for single men. You would eat fine, you know. Maybe you are too important. No? I can ask then and see if it is all right with everybody.”
I took the two weeks, and then I demanded a third week. Harry Fletcher was very sour about it, but he couldn’t afford to get too nasty. Other firms had been after me, and he knew it.
I drove up to Tampa on a Monday morning. When I walked into his office I knew he had decided to be jolly. He’s a pasty little man with steel-wool hair and a lot of nervous mannerisms.
“Paul!” he said. “You look absolutely marvelous! Got that weight back. Got a tan. My, my, my.”
I sat by his desk and said, “I appreciate all you’ve done for me, Harry. I know I should give you more warning. But just as soon as you can line up a guy for my territory, I’ll spend a week taking him around and introducing him.”
All the cheer slid out of his face. He tugged his ear, shifted some pencils around, and said, “I get pressure coming down from the top and up from underneath. You can’t appreciate what it’s like. I can get into a serious hypertension situation. One thing I thought I could rely on. Loyalty!” He stared fiercely at me and then sighed with resignation. “So if I have to buy your loyalty, Paul, I can face that too. Tell me what you’ve been offered. We’ll match it.”
“It isn’t like that, Harry.”
“You’re taking another job, aren’t you?”
“Sort of.”
He began to tear a memo into strips. “What is this ‘sort of’?”
“Harry, I’m joining a circus.”
I saw him take it the way a good fighter takes a surprise right lead. He kept moving until his world came back into focus. “You’re making a mistake. An advance man for a show is more like press-agent work. It isn’t your kind of selling, Paul, believe me. You’re a repeat business salesman, not one-shot promotions.”