“What about your health? You need any medicine?”
“Nope. There’s nothing wrong with me but old age. And I reckon that will take care of itself eventually.”
“What about your family?”
I take another sip of whiskey, swirl the remaining liquid around the bottom, and then drain the glass. “I’ll send them postcards.”
I look at his face and realize that didn’t come out right.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I love them and I know they love me, but I’m no longer really a part of their lives. I’m more like a duty. That’s why I had to find my own way over here tonight. They plum forgot about me.”
Charlie’s brow is furrowed. He looks dubious.
I barrel on, desperate. “I’m ninety-three. What have I got to lose? I can still mostly take care of myself. I’ll need some help for some things, but nothing like what you’re thinking.” I feel my eyes grow moist and try to rearrange my ruined face into some semblance of toughness. I’m no wimp, by God. “Let me come along. I can sell tickets. Russ can do anything—he’s young. Give me his job. I can still count, and I don’t short-change. I know you don’t run a grift show.”
Charlie’s eyes mist over. I swear to God they do.
I continue, on a roll. “If they catch up with me, they catch up with me. If they don’t, well, then at end of season I’ll call and go back. And if something goes wrong in the meantime, just call and they’ll come get me. What’s the harm in that?”
Charlie stares at me. I’ve never seen a man look more serious.
One, two, three, four, five, six—he’s not going to answer—seven, eight, nine—he’s going to send me back there, and why shouldn’t he, he doesn’t know me from Adam—ten, eleven, twelve—
“All right,” he says.
“All right?”
“All right. Let’s give you something to tell your grandkids about. Or great-grandkids. Or great-great-grandkids.”
I snort with glee, delirious with excitement. Charlie winks and pours me another finger’s worth of whiskey. Then, on second thought, he tips the bottle again.
I reach out and grab its neck. “Better not,” I say. “Don’t want to get tipsy and break a hip.”
And then I laugh, because it’s so ridiculous and so gorgeous and it’s all I can do to not melt into a fit of giggles. So what if I’m ninety-three? So what if I’m ancient and cranky and my body’s a wreck? If they’re willing to accept me and my guilty conscience, why the hell shouldn’t I run away with the circus?
It’s like Charlie told the cop. For this old man, this is home.
Author’s Note
The idea for this book came unexpectedly: In early 2003 I was gearing up to write an entirely different book when the Chicago Tribune ran an article on Edward J. Kelty, a photographer who followed traveling circuses around America in the 1920s and ’30s. The photograph that accompanied the article so fascinated me that I bought two books of old-time circus photographs: Step Right This Way: The Photographs of Edward J. Kelty and Wild, Weird, and Wonderful: The American Circus as Seen by F. W. Glasier. By the time I’d thumbed through them, I was hooked. I abandoned the book I’d planned to write and dove instead into the world of the train circus.
I started by getting a bibliography of suggested reading from the archivist at Circus World, in Baraboo, Wisconsin, which is the original winter quarters of the Ringling Brothers. Many of the books were out of print, but I managed to get them through rare booksellers. Within weeks I was off to Sarasota, Florida, to visit the Ringling Circus Museum, which happened to be selling off duplicates of books in its rare book collection. I came home poorer by several hundred dollars and richer by more books than I could carry.
I spent the next four and a half months acquiring the knowledge necessary to do justice to this subject, including taking three additional research trips (a return to Sarasota, a visit to Circus World in Baraboo, and a weekend trip to the Kansas City Zoo with one of its former elephant handlers to learn about elephant body language and behavior).