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 plead my case to Clyde Ingalls. I think he’s going to fire me,” I replied.
“Don’t be silly, Jake. We’ve all got a soft spot for that gorilla. Just about everybody who works with Ringling Bros knows what Gargantua went through; taken from his mother when he was just a baby and that drunken sailor that threw acid in his face on the voyage from Mombasa. That son of a bitch left him with a scowl,” he said, turning toward what I assumed was his starstruck paramour. “Please forgive my French, ma’am.” The young woman nodded. “And if it wasn’t for Gargantua, this show would really be hurting. So don’t you worry,” he added, stepping forward and patting me on the forearm.
“Who is your friend?” the woman asked.
“Oh, I’m so rude. Let me introduce you two. You know the social niceties aren’t my strong suit. I don’t have too much call for them on the savanna,” Buck added, making a sweeping gesture to the right as if we could glance in that direction and see the African plain, complete with a herd of zebras. “Valerie McPhearson, this is my dear friend and the gentlest giant, Jake Erlich, also known as Jack Earle.”
She looked up at me and extended her hand, which got lost in mine. The woman had a firm handshake.
Val was in her early thirties and about five foot nine. She had long auburn hair and wore a paint-stained brown artist’s smock. I imagined the smock camouflaged her curves, long legs, and an expensive French outfit she wore underneath it. Her eyes were bright green and big; the kind a man could get lost in. They sparkled. I would come to realize that woman’s beauty was intoxicating and healing. Like Orpheus’s music, it made me forget, at least for a while, all my troubles. But like all drugs, I would pay a price for it.
“Val is here doing a sculpture of Gargantua for her art class at NYU,” Buck explained.
I glanced across to the gorilla’s cage. He was an altogether different creature from the enraged beast I’d seen the night before. Now Gargantua slept peacefully on a pile of light-green and yellow straw
