“Crazy Joe?” I say, sitting up. My shins are itchy and my neck hurts like a son of a bitch.
“Head horse honcho,” says Camel. “Of baggage stock, that is. August don’t let him nowhere near the ring stock. Actually, it’s probably Marlena that don’t let him near, but it don’t make no difference. She won’t let you nowhere near, neither. With Crazy Joe at least you got a shot. We had a run of bad weather and muddy lots, and a bunch of his men got tired of working Chinese and moped off. Left him a bit short.”
“Why’s he called Crazy Joe?”
“Don’t rightly know,” says Camel. He digs inside his ear and inspects his findings. “Think he was in the Big House for a while but I don’t know why. Wouldn’t suggest you ask, neither.” He wipes his finger on his pants and ambles to the doorway.
“Well, come on then!” he says, looking back at me. “We don’t got all day!” He eases himself onto the edge and slides carefully to the gravel.
I give my shins one last desperate scratch, tie my shoes, and follow.
We are adjacent to a huge grassy lot. Beyond it are scattered brick buildings, backlit by the predawn glow. Hundreds of dirty, unshaven men pour from the train and surround it, like ants on candy, cursing and stretching and lighting cigarettes. Ramps and chutes clatter to the ground, and six- and eight-horse hitches materialize from nowhere, spread out on the dirt. Horse after horse appears, heavy bob-tailed Percherons that clomp down the ramps, snorting and blowing and already in harness. Men on either side hold the swinging doors close to the sides of the ramps, keeping the animals from getting too close to the edge.
A group of men marches toward us, heads down.
“Mornin’, Camel,” says the leader as he passes us and climbs into the car. The others clamber up behind him. They surround a bundle of canvas and heave it toward the entrance, grunting with effort. It moves about a foot and a half and lands in a cloud of dust.
“Morning, Will,” says Camel. “Say, got a smoke for an old man?”
“Sure.” The man straightens up and pats his shirt pockets. He digs into one and retrieves a bent cigarette. “It’s Bull Durham,” he says, leaning forward and holding it out. “Sorry.”
“Roll-your-own suits me fine,” says Camel. “Thanks, Will. Much obliged.”
Will jerks his thumb at me. “Who’s that?”
“A First of May. Name’s Jacob Jankowski.”
Will looks at me, and then turns and spits out the door. “How new?” he says, continuing to address Camel.
“Real new.”
“You got him on yet?”
“Nope.”
“Well, good luck to ya.” He tips his hat at me. “Don’t sleep too sound, kid, if you know what I mean.” He disappears into the interior.
“What does that mean?” I say, but Camel is walking away. I jog a little to catch up.
There are now hundreds of horses among the dirty men. At first glance the scene looks chaotic, but by the time Camel has lit his cigarette, several dozen teams are hitched and moving alongside the flat cars, pulling wagons toward the runs. As soon as a wagon’s front wheels hit the sloped wooden tracks, the man guiding its pole leaps out of the way. And it’s a good thing, too. The heavily loaded wagons come barreling down the runs and don’t stop until they’re a dozen feet away.
In the morning light I see what I couldn’t last night—the wagons are painted scarlet, with gold trim and sunburst wheels, each emblazoned with the name BENZINI BROS MOST SPECTACULAR SHOW ON EARTH. As soon as the wagons are hitched to teams, the Percherons lean into their harnesses and drag their heavy loads across the field.
“Watch out,” says Camel, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward him. He braces his hat with his other hand, the lumpy cigarette clenched in his teeth.
Three men on horseback gallop past. They swerve and cross the length of the field, tour its perimeter, and then swing back around. The one in the lead turns his head from side to side, shrewdly assessing the ground. He holds both reins in one hand and with the other retrieves flagged darts from a leather pouch, flinging them into the earth.
“What’s he doing?” I ask.
“Laying out the lot,” says Camel. He comes to a stop in front of a stock car. “Joe! Hey, Joe!”
A head appears in the doorway.
“I got a First of May here. Fresh from the crate. Think you can use him?”
The figure steps forward onto the ramp. He pushes up the brim of a battered hat with a hand missing three of its fingers. He scrutinizes me, shoots an oyster of dark brown tobacco juice out the side of his mouth, and goes back inside.
Camel pats my arm in a congratulatory fashion. “You’re in, kid.”
“I am?”
“Yep. Now go shovel some shit. I’ll catch up with you later.”
The stock car is an ungodly mess. I work with a kid named Charlie whose face is smooth as a girl’s. His voice hasn’t even broken yet. After we shovel what seems like a cubic ton of manure out the door, I pause, surveying the remaining mess. “How many horses do they load in here, anyway?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Jesus. They must be packed in so tight they can’t move.”
“That’s the idea,” Charlie says. “Once the wedge horse loads, none of ’em can go down.”
The exposed tails from last night suddenly make sense.
Joe appears in the doorway. “Flag’s up,” he growls.
Charlie drops his shovel and heads for the door.
“What’s going on? Where are you going?” I say.
“The cookhouse flag’s up.”
I shake my head. “I’m sorry, I still don’t understand.”
“Chow,” he says.
Now that I understand. I, too, drop my shovel.
Canvas tents have popped up like mushrooms, although the largest one—obviously the big top—still lies flat on the ground. Men stand over its seams, bending at the waist and lacing its pieces together. Towering wooden poles stick up through its center line, already flying Old Glory. With the rigging on the poles, it looks like the deck and mast of a sailboat.
All around its perimeter, eight-man sledge teams pound in stakes at breakneck speed. By the time one sledge hits the stake, five others are in motion. The resulting noise is as regular as machine-gun fire, cutting through the rest of the din.
Teams of men are also raising enormous poles. Charlie and I pass a group of ten throwing their combined weight against a single rope as a man off to the side chants, “Pull it, shake it, break it! Again—pull it, shake it, break it! Now downstake it!”
The cookhouse couldn’t be more obvious—never mind the orange and blue flag, the boiler belching in the background, or the stream of people heading for it. The smell of food hits me like a cannonball in the gut. I haven’t eaten since the day before yesterday, and my stomach twists with hunger.
The sidewalls of the cookhouse have been raised to allow for a draft, but it is divided down the center by a curtain. The tables on this side are graced with red and white checked tablecloths, silverware, and vases of flowers. This seems wildly out of sync with the line of filthy men snaking behind the steam tables.
“My God,” I say to Charlie as we take our place in line. “Look at this spread.”
There are hash browns, sausages, and heaping baskets of thickly sliced bread. Spiral cut ham, eggs cooked every which way, jam in pots, bowls of oranges.
“This ain’t nothin’,” he says. “Big Bertha’s got all this, and waiters, too. You just sit at your table and they bring it right to you.”
“Big Bertha?”
“Ringling,” he says.
“You worked for them?”
“Uh . . . no,” he says sheepishly. “But I know people who have!”
I grab a plate and scoop up a mountain of potatoes, eggs, and sausages, trying to keep from looking desperate. The scent is overwhelming. I open my mouth, inhaling deeply—it’s like manna from heaven. It is manna from heaven.