The Circus Event

The Circus Event

From the moment his mother gave birth to him, pushing and screaming, to the moment of his death, he was known simply as Whitey. No one in his family had ever seen, let alone given birth to, an albino.

His growing up was hard; being so different he was the outcast and the butt of all the jokes. The boy with buck teeth and the girl with the burn scars were thrilled to be in school with Whitey because they were pretty much ignored by all the other kids. They were merely a background distraction from the main event of finding new ways to humiliate Whitey.

He learned to cope by discovering how to entertain. He grew very tall and lean, which only added fuel to the fire of ridicule, kept brightly burning by his tormentors. Thankfully though, he was also flexible and he could contort his body into incredible positions. The first time he hooked his legs around his neck, the class stood in stunned silence. Whitey smiled.

The mockery never stopped, but it was now wrapped around a bit of awe. “Hey, Moby Dick, do a trick for us!”, or “Ghost! Do that thing where you fold yourself up backwards!” Eventually he came to be invited to every party, not as a guest but as the entertainment. They’d send Whitey out into the back yard and everyone would gather around while he went silently through one of the routines he had created. He had a dozen contortions he’d made up, but he knew better than to give it all away at once. He only performed seven of them at a time, mixing them up with regular hand stands and somersaults. If the music was right he could choreograph his routine on the spot and that always brought cheers from the onlookers.

When he was done someone would usually hand him a beer and he’d sit in the corner for a while, tapping his foot to the rhythm of the music and watching the backs of all the other kids. He knew every classmate by sight from behind.

The year he graduated from high school Whitey ran away to join the circus. The enormous tent showed up on the outskirts of town one day and he left when it did. This had been the first time he had ever seen a circus and he recognized his calling from the first moment. When he saw the clowns he saw his future. The circus manager was eager to take Whitey on; he knew a gold mine when he saw one.

Twenty years Whitey worked in the circus. He came to be the head clown, the one with the funniest gags and the most ring time. There were many other clowns, among them midgets. Whitey was their boss, but he was also their friend. While they were putting on their make-up he would make the rounds and get the mood set for the show. He’d pull gags or tell jokes. They had heard the jokes and seen the gags a million times, but they all looked forward to the routine and let the magic work on them. They were the most popular clowns ever in the history of the circus.

Whitey was the favorite of the crowd. He was so white that he never put on face paint, except for the red mouth and black eye paint. Most of the people in the crowd had never in their lives seen or even heard of an albino, so he was a side show act in the main ring. The audience loved to see him unfold his long body out of the toy-sized car that the midget clowns pulled into the ring. When his whiter-than-white face and arms and legs came out they shrieked and raised the tent with applause.

Shrimp was one of the midget clowns whose prop was a gun that shot out a flag that said BANG. He pretended to shoot an apple off of the head of another clown. The apple exploded in a burst of confetti and streamers. The crowd always loved that one, too.

Whitey and Shrimp would sometimes meet in Shrimp’s cabin after a show and have a few drinks. Sometimes they drank a little bit too much, but Whitey learned that Shrimp could sure hold his liquor.

One night they were drinking away, passing the bottle of Scotch back and forth, refilling glasses or drinking right from the bottle. There was no drinking etiquette between the two of them.

Whitey said, a bit drunkenly, “I wish I had a gun for a prop.”

“Well, I guess you could if you wanted,” Shrimp replied, a bit drunk himself. “But to tell you the truth I think it’s funnier for a midget to have the gun. You know. Funnier for the little guy to have the big gun than for the big guy to have a little gun. Besides, in point of fact, I am actually a skilled marksman.”

“No! You’re not”

“Yes, really. In fact, I was a sniper in the Marines.”

“And you expect me to believe that. They don’t let midgets into the Marines.”

“Well, not normally they don’t, no. But this was a special case.” Shrimp passed the near-empty bottle and Whitey poured them both a glass. Then Shrimp continued.

“I have a brother who is a year older than me. Poor guy, he’s normal. Anyhow, my dad taught us how to shoot. He figured it was the one thing we could do together. I was too small to handle a shotgun so we learned to shoot pistols.”

“Well,” Whitey remarked, looking up from counting the green squares in the gingham curtains, which was making him dizzy, anyway, “pistols are respectable guns. The cowboys used them.”

“You’re darn right, Whitey. In fact I was so good with a pistol I could out-shoot my brother every time. I swear to you, if I had been living in the Wild West days I’d have been Wild Bill Hickock or Jesse James. I was so good it was scary, how natural it came.”

“So, what about the army?”

“It was the Marines. Pass me the bottle and I’ll tell you.” They each took a swig. “My brother went into the Marines and he told them how good I was at shooting ‘cause they needed snipers to send to South America. So, they signed me up. I didn’t even have to go to boot camp.”

“Now I know you’re lying to me. I’m no dummy. I know you can’t be a soldier without going to bootcamp.”

“Well, Whitey, you are right. Partly. But the thing is I was not a regular soldier. I was signed on to do one job only, so they didn’t feel like they needed to waste time and money training me in all the other soldier stuff. I was a special case.”

“A special case.”

“You got it. I already shot so well with the pistol that it didn’t take long at all for me to learn to do as well with the sniper rifle. Of course they had to fix that rifle up a bit, customize the trigger so that my small fingers could press it. But once they did that, I got my mark every time, I tell you what.”

“Give me another drink, Shrimp. I’m trying to picture this.” They emptied the bottle and opened another

“You know what I mean when I say, ‘customized’, Whitey?’

“Course I know. I went all the way through high school. I know lots of words.”

“OK, I just wanted to make sure, is all. See, I have to tell about them customizing the trigger because I don’t want to take credit that isn’t mine. I mean it was my talent and all, but I could have never gotten all those medals if they hadn’t made that special change to my gun.”

“You got medals?”

“Oh, yea, lots of them.”

“Can I see your medals, Shrimp?”

“Well, you know Whitey, I would love to show you my medals. Wouldn’t any guy like to show his medals to his friend? But the fact of the matter is that I let my mother keep them. They are very valuable, as you can imagine and I don’t want to carry them on the road with me. So she keeps them for me at her house.”

“Man, if I had medals that I let my mother keep for me, I’d go visit her more often, that’s for sure. And every time I was there I’d get those medals out and I’d polish them and put them all on and wear them to the A&P and the Laundromat so everyone in town could see them.”

“That’s about how it is. Except I don’t wear them around town. Everyone knows what a good shot I am and I don’t really want to brag about it too much. I’m sure you understand.”

“Oh, sure. I’m just sayin’.”

They filled their glasses again and drifted off into a drunken slumber.

After twenty minutes or so, Whitey woke with a start. “Hey, Shrimp.” Shrimp didn’t reply. Whitey toed him in the belly. Hard. “Hey, Shrimp.”

Shrimp grumbled awake and Whitey continued. “If you were so good with a gun, I’ll bet you could really shoot an apple off a guy’s head. In real life.”

“You got that right, my man. I did it all the time. Whenever the neighborhood kids needed entertaining I’d line them all up against the back fence and shoot crabapples off of their noggins. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. It was a blast.”

“Let’s do it now!”

“Well, Whitey, that’d be lots of fun I have to admit, but I don’t have my gun anymore. They don’t let you keep your weapon when you leave the Marines, you know.”

“Oh, yea. But, say, I know where we can get one. Not a fancy sniper rifle like you had in the marines. But a pistol. You could use a pistol.”

“Sure, a pistol works just fine.”

“Listen. A couple of weeks ago I was outside the tent and heard the Bearded Lady talking with Lobster Girl. She says, ‘Oh, no honey, I don’t ever lock my door. Ever. Don’t you know these train cabins are fire traps? Just the thought of being caught in my cabin, fumbling for the lock while fire burns around me and I’m choking with smoke is enough to keep me up nights. But I tell you, I’m not afraid of intruders. I got me a gun. Yes, I do girl. And I keep it right there under my pillow. Some sicko comes into my cabin at night and I’m blowing him to kingdom come, you can be sure of that.’” Whitey did a respectable imitation of the Bearded Lady.

“So, all you have to do,” Whitey continued, “is sneak into the Bearded Lady’s cabin and snatch the pistol.”

In their drunken state this seemed like a very reasonable proposition. Each of them happily forgot the part about blowing the sicko to kingdom come.

“OK, but I’ve got to have another drink first to help me wake up.”

Luckily the Bearded Lady’s cabin door opened without creaking and Shrimp crawled in. He decided that crawling was his best option. If he was on his hands and knees he couldn’t fall down. Also, if she woke up he figured he could freeze and maybe she’d mistake him for a footstool. Not that it was likely she would hear anything anyhow, what with the racket of snoring coming from her bed. Slowly creeping through her cabin, Shrimp eventually came to the slumbering Bearded Lady.

Now, the problem was that she was sleeping with her back to the wall, which meant that as he knelt there by her bed, preparing to reach under her pillow, he was staring straight into her ugly face. He thought that if she woke up and looked at him he would pee his pants and die.

Carefully he reached under her pillow, praying that the gun would be there at his fingertips, but it wasn’t. He continued to reach further until his face was so close to the Bearded Lady’s he could count the hairs growing out of her nose. He sucked in his breath and at that moment, she opened her eyes. Shrimp felt the warmth in his pants and was preparing to meet his Maker when she snorted, rolled over and took up snoring again.

Then he was able to reach far enough to grab the gun, and he got himself out of there.

Outside, the chill in the air made his damp pants feel very cold, but he sure wasn’t going to say anything about it to Whitey, who probably would never notice the dark stain, anyway.

“OK!” Whitey proclaimed when Shrimp came out with the pistol stuck in his waist band, looking for all the world like it belonged there. “Now we gotta find an apple.”

Neither of them knew where to get a real apple. They sat outside the Bearded Lady’s cabin scratching their heads.

“All right. Wait. I have an idea,” said Shrimp.

They returned to his cabin; he ran in and came back out with the bottle of Scotch.

“You gonna shoot THAT off my head?”

“No, this is because we’re thirsty. THIS is to shoot off your head.” In his other hand he held a strawberry.

“That seems kinda small”, Whitey worried.

“No way, man. This is bigger than some of the crabapples I used to shoot. It will make a perfect target. Look how big it is.”

The strawberry was pretty big, now that Whitey paid attention. It was about as big as Shrimp’s palm.

“OK. Let’s go. But first maybe we better have some of that Scotch.”

They staggered out to the open field next to the Big Top, and Whitey balanced the large strawberry on top of his head, as carefully as he could.

Whitey stood unsteadily with the strawberry balanced on his head, looking across the field at Shrimp, backlit by the dawn. Shrimp spread his feet a few inches apart, held the gun in both hands, closed one eye to aim, and fell over.

“You OK over there, Shrimp?”

“Yeah, sure Whitey. I guess I was standing on a big pebble and lost my balance.” He searched the ground and picked up a small rock. “See, here it is. Now I’m tossing it away and there are no more pebbles on the ground, so everything will be OK.”

Whitey watched as Shrimp spread his legs a bit further apart and took aim again.

His next to last thought was, “But that gun doesn’t have a customized trigger!”