LITMIR.BIZ

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the ones that fill this riverside memory.

      I was all alone. Ben was nowhere in sight. He and his friends had wondered farther down river out of earshot. I couldn’t think. It felt like I had swallowed a volcano. If I breathed too deep it would erupt, sending a cloud of ash a hundred miles high, spewing shattered pieces of myself all the way to Santa Fe.

      As I scanned my surroundings I felt almost numb. The light on the riverbank was unreal, dream-like. But the pain from the bone-dry stickers that had punctured the flesh of both of my hands when I’d fallen brought me back, making me remember that I was alive. For a kid, crying in front of your peers is never a good idea but at that moment I didn’t have any choice. My tears slowly started to flow. They must have stained my face a sandy brown as they merged with the dust that had come to rest on me.

      Freed from my paralysis, I got to my feet and wiped my eyes. If only I could have gone back in time and helped myself through that turbulent time. I would have urged myself to punch and kick Eisenbeis before he got the drop on me. But it was too late for that.

      “Never run from predators. It makes them think you’re prey.” I remembered the words of the old fireman that taught Ben and me to box on Sundays behind the firehouse. “Stand your ground!”

      So I stood there facing them. But when a rock flew by my right ear I panicked, turned, and ran toward the river. I tripped in the reeds and scampered to my feet. A barrage of stones soon followed. Having to dodge rocks that were thrown at me when I was a kid would become all too common. Ugly scars on my right knee, chin, and in the small of my back were proof that sometimes, just like with Gargantua, the stones hit their mark.

      I was trapped: on the one side, my rock-throwing tormentors, on the other the treacherous Rio Grande. A rock hit me hard on the back of my right shoulder. My only escape was the river.

      Not even thinking of my parents’ admonition, I ran down the bank into the water. When I was only knee-deep I slipped on green moss. I fell forward. Rocks continued to land all around me. Luckily, the river was at its widest where I had entered. Soon I was out of the range of their rocks, but they continued to hurl insults.

      “Kill the Kraken! Kill the Kraken!” They screamed.

      I couldn’t believe what was happening. I couldn’t think. I needed to escape. I dove under the murky water, propelling my giant frame far from those verbal harpoons. All that swimming helped to dissolve my panic. Gradually I surfaced, with just my head, eyes, and nose above the surface. I felt like a storybook creature, a great white whale coming from the depths. As I swam, I treasured the feeling of the water containing my huge body. I stretched my long arms and legs in the river and thrust myself forward. I felt buoyed and weightless.

      The water was warm but refreshing. It had a distinct smell and taste; not salty like the ocean, but slightly metallic, woody. After about two minutes, I had reached the middle of the stream. I couldn’t hear their insults any longer. I felt invigorated, reborn, and safe. Relieved to be free of danger, I finally relaxed.

      Then a crocodile of an undertow took hold and dragged me down below the surface. I felt the river close its jaws around me. Desperate to free myself, I sank deeper and deeper into its belly. I swallowed water. I couldn’t breathe.

      Then all at once, I felt my head jerk back and my hair yanked upward as if someone or something wrenched me between worlds.

      XXXX

      At first I couldn’t see anything. All I remember was the deafening sound of crickets. When I finally could focus, I saw Ben and his two friends looking down at me, outlined by a tapestry of topaz sky and billowy white clouds. I sat up and vomited ugly river water and bile.

      “What happened?” I asked.

      “You almost drowned. What the hell were you doing in the middle of the river? You know how dangerous it is out there,” Ben said. I was ashamed to tell my brother and his friends about my run-in with Eisenbeis and the others. “You’re damn lucky that mojado (wetback) came along and saved you,” Ben continued.

      I pushed myself up to my hands and knees.

      “What mojado? Where is he?” I asked.

      “He’s gone,” Ben said.

      A few minutes later, I learned that in payment for his good deed the angel who saved my life had stolen my shoes. I don’t know why he took them; they must have been too big for him. Maybe he just claimed the giant shoes as a memento. Maybe he’d try to sell them in the mercado (market). Maybe he kept them to pass on to his kids as a family heirloom.

      I can laugh about it now but back then I was mostly ashamed. And I don’t know if I was more scared that I might easily have drowned or that my parents would find out what had happened. When we finally got home, the bruises where the rocks hit me started to hurt like crazy. Those bruises took a long time to heal but the depression that came on full force after that incident never has. In fits and starts it comes and goes, but like the river with two names it never really disappears.

      CHAPTER 4

      The Giraffe

      Let me finish telling you what happened at Madison Square Garden. Where was I? Oh, yes.

      After I left Harry in the freaks’ dressing area, I walked down the hallway and found the staircase. Slowly I climbed down the dimly lit stairwell to the basement where they kept the menagerie and where, in venues like the Garden, we set up the sideshow. I felt like a desperado fleeing to his hideout. But instead of a posse, I wanted to dodge Ingalls, the threat of being fired, and the pressure to make a decision about renewing my contract. I also wanted to avoid any circus friends with their questions about what went down the night before.

      For my purposes, there was no better place to disappear than the menagerie. Before the incident with the rube it was my favorite place in the circus. There was something about that space; so full of squawking, growling animal life and feral smells that made me forget about myself.

      It was 1936 and by then I’d been with Ringling Bros for ten years. At thirty, you’d think I’d know my own mind or at least have some sense of direction. In those hard times the circus was a sure bet. I got shelter, three squares a day, a fair salary, and I was a celebrity to boot. But I was miserable. Yet, when I thought of leaving I’d get scared like a kid. I felt as confused and down as I did before Papa and I had made our fateful trip to Hollywood.

      When I stepped into the menagerie that morning, the first thing I did was take a look around. This was the scene of the crime that will most likely end my circus career, I thought.

      Immediately I heard the roars and growls and breathed in the odors I’d come to love. They let me know that even in the midst of a big city the place was full of wildness. That day it reminded me of a wild place in me.

      I glanced to the front of Gargantua’s cage, sure I would see the rube’s corpse where I had flattened him. Instead I spotted my friend Frank “Bring ‘Em Back Alive” Buck speaking to a tall drink of water. When I approached the pair, Buck turned toward me. From the look on his face I couldn’t tell if he was surprised or upset that I was interrupting his hunt.

      “Way to go last night, mate,” the lion tamer said. The woman he was talking with looked up at me and smiled.

      Without thinking, I smiled back. She must be another of Buck’s fawning chippies, I thought. It seemed like every place we played he had women. They were attracted to him like flies to sugar.

      “That was one bad fellow who deserved his comeuppance,” Buck said. Sometimes the lion tamer’s personality matched his appearance, dashing and full of bravado. But he could also be kind and caring, not only to the animals he ran but also to his friends. He was a lean six-footer, mustached, and ruggedly handsome in his custom-tailored, khaki lion tamer’s costume and brown safari jodhpurs.

      “Maybe you could

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