bleachers was paved with dirt that people kicked into child-sized clouds as they hurried forward. The dirt hung in the air as dust particles creating a thin, continuous veil across her vision. The tent dome ran upward in arches of dark red, dark gold, dark green, dark sunshine.
They sat in the front row only a few feet from the center ring where the action was to take place. Ushers and vendors wound through the busy aisleways. Then a bugle cried out of the darkness and a deep slow drumroll began. More instruments began to play: trumpets, tubas, a sad clarinet. A funeral march anthem played through the tent. Erycha stared over the ring, across the tent toward where the sound seemed to emanate, but she couldn’t see the players at first. They were still shrouded, invisible. The funeral march played on, its deep, gutter-low groove rumbling the bleachers.
A woman appeared at the north end of the tent. Spot-lit outside the ropes of the ring, she wore a sequined dark yellow gown that flowed all the way to her ankles. Her fat fingers sparkled with little diamonds, her headdress plumed in pale green feathers. “Soul!” she sang in full sudden ecstasy. “Soul!” The music rose like something headed into the sky. “Soul universoul . . .
“One of these mornings bright and fair
Goin’a take my wings and cleave the air
Pharoah’s army got drownded
O Mary don’t you weep . . .”
And as her singing reverberated through the still, thick air a buzz of anticipatory talk started to flow through the grapevine of bleachers. In time the word passed through enough lips that it found its way to Erycha and her parents, and they passed it between each other like a burning coal: “Here comes the band, here comes the band. South Care-lina State. The truth!”
“Drum major,” the singer said, her voice descending even further out of female range, into a low, sweet slow tone. “Drum major, now, what’s goin on?”
Stillness: the spotlight alone moved. Wandered away from her and panned in ever-diminishing illumination across the north and northwest end of the tent until it fell away completely and full gloom accompanied stillness for a long moment.
“Drum major, c’mon now. I been asked you, what’s really goin on?”
The spotlight triggered back, this time at the southern end of the tent, just over Erycha’s shoulder and aimed down along a passageway of suspended dust that flowed out to the very end of the tent itself. She turned with all the rest and looked to the swirling dust beam.
“Drum major, girl, you comin out or not? Now, these people been waited.”
The trumpets blared forth again, the clarinet called out in its light and lonely voice; then the rest of the brass section and the cymbals and the drumroll barreled on, all gut-bucketing forward in slow lurches. Subtly, new melodies and an unfamiliar rhythm arose.
“I likes what I’m hearin now. I likes what I’m hearin. Ain’t this your cue, boy?”
A small black shadow appeared at the very furthest edge of the spotlight, its slender semi-rounded shape like a shy small cat come out at daybreak. It slipped forward a step. Its white and gold tassels gleamed in the illumination. But it paused there, in a recess between slip and step and stride.
“Drum major,” the singer said, “Please! Get to steppin.”
Suddenly the music reeled out of blues, past jazz and into chaotic Southern bounce. Roiling across the space and bringing the crowd to their feet as if they were all one mind in motion, one body in dance.
The drum major sprang into view, a small but awesome frightening figure dressed in white, gold-tasseled shoes; immaculately blue-jeweled and yellow-fringed pants; a sky-colored shirt with bold-embossed letters over the heart: University of South Carolina State.
“The South Carolina State marching band, y’all!” The woman’s voice rang out. “Make noise!”
The drum major’s face was invisible between a high tight collar and the furred feathered top hat that started somewhere around the eyes and seemed to reach ten feet up in the air. Metal wings extended from its sides and back, like silver flames, seemingly weighting down the hat and the drum major held beneath it that much more. The drum major’s head tilted down and the wand he carried at his side swung like a militant third arm, every last thread of his momentum concentrated into propulsive step, like dancing on an earthquake fault line. Erycha didn’t know whether to dance or cheer or do what she really wanted to do, which was coil up in fear at the newness of it all, when the major danced past her and led the band into the center ring.
They arrayed themselves behind their leader, so many peacock plumes. The music pulled back and settled itself in a bed of down-tempo trumpets. The drums and cymbals silenced. The melody returned to its first funeral lilt. The drum major came still and stood corpse rigid, his thin shoulders forward, arms at sides, legs close together, all military precision and rigor. Erycha looked on. Her fear began to wane.
Sometimes Erycha fantasized herself in the role of a princess and sometimes even a queen, but now she wished she could be the drum major at the center of the circus orchestrating its wild careening movements. People took their lead from the drum major. They did as the major did, moved as he moved. They even went silent and came to attention when he went silent and still and brought his wand down motionless at his side.
Now, the drum major raised the wand slowly and the spotlight rose. He held the wand high like a standard in the sky. Seconds extended themselves like days. Everyone waited on that wand to drop. The drum major tilted his top hat forward and the plumes shook like so many dancers. He sliced the wand downward through the air, bringing it back to his side. In the distance, an elephant roar drowned out the band altogether. At that call, the drum major leapt over the ring ropes and quick into the dark, invisible. The other band members followed and the spot-lit stage fell empty for a moment. The elephant sounded his one booming note again. And then he and a fleet of his brothers came rushing up from the east end of the tent, up a steep incline and into the light of the circus.
Fine cedar-colored sisters rode the elephants, straddling their gray backs with lean exposed legs. Suddenly one girl in a shiny gold dress hopped to her feet atop the elephant and the crowd let out a collective gasp. Then the girl bent forward at the waist like her muscles and bones were elastic tape; she angled her forehead down onto the elephant’s neck and brought her hands down on its back and executed a perfect handstand. Her tiny dress fell inverted over her upper half and she held the pose for a good minute, perfect as any ballerina, atop the romping elephant. The elephants arranged themselves in a tight circle at the center of the ring, the girl reassumed her straddle-spot and while the elephants roared exultantly a red, black and green flag was produced from somewhere and Carthage was conquered and Hannibal’s spirit was anointed emperor of all known worlds.
When the elephants and their riders exited, recorded music began to blast from the subwoofers perched in the high corners of the tent: hip-hop bass blending with atmospheric chords. “Ladies and gentlemen,” a male voice rang out. “Next up we got a real treat for you. All the way from BK, Double-Dutch Dynamite!”
The strange beat quickly segued into an EPMD instrumental.
“BK to LA.”
Two girls and four boys cartwheeled into the ring, waving jump ropes like nunchucks. The six split into sets of three and the girl threw two of her ropes to her opposite number. Then they slipped the jump ropes to the boys at either side of them and began to dance like over lines of fire as they quickly complicated their steps into a whirlwind of runs and walks and an incredible backflip
