See You on the Backlot Read online

  Sorry if I’m being rude, but those old rummies make me so mad. It’s bad enough I blow my pipes getting the words out to the huge crowds I got coming to see us. I can barely talk to these guys because of it, so it makes it hard to step up when they start talking about my da. They don’t know my pops. They don’t know me. I could tell the other carnies were getting uncomfortable when those old bums started talking stuff about what happened to my mum and how they think my pops is running our show into the ground. That’s why I left… I don’t need that kind of…

  Well, anyways, I need to get back to look over the receipts and do a last count. Pops always handles it, but I feel better if I can get an idea about how much the show is really bringing in. Now I realise you’re probably wondering how we make our money, what with all the shorting and dings that come with running our show. It kind of goes like this:

  Pops rents our space on the midway from Big Mike for the run of the location. Big Mike runs the carnival fence to fence – so we never have the problems of an independent midway, where some idiot locals with a booth might end up having a beef and giving our whole show a bad name. Everyone’s in competition with each other on our midway, sure – I mean, if someone else takes a dollar out of a yokel’s pocket, that’s one less dollar we can take – but Big Mike likes to keep it friendly between all the concessions and shows. Guess he figures everyone’s got a stake in making sure the whole carnival does well. Anyways, those who can’t cut it tend not to show at the next location. Sometimes Pops says Big Mike is living in the past, thinking that folks these days will come out to a carnival filled with so many ways to take them for as much money as possible. He says people would rather watch television or movies than leave their houses. That if they want entertainment they’ll head to a theme park or spend an afternoon watching elephants in an air-conditioned arena, rather than come out to a carnival. Pops says that these days ain’t nothing compared with what it used to be like, back in what he calls the ‘salad days’.

  I don’t understand that saying. Never have. Something old people say to each other I guess. Doesn’t matter, either. All that matters is that without Big Mike we don’t have a show. And no show means no money.

  Anyways – along with renting the space, there’s always these other dings. Dings are expenses the greenies don’t count on, like extra insurance, cut-ins (that’s hooking us up to the genny – the generator on the Light Truck – so we can have electricity for our top), parking for the trucks, maybe some special IDs or other nonsense the lot has cooked up to get some extra cash from everyone. Then if they decide to do some Dollar Day or other special, we lose our shirts on top of that… Well we just have to take it, because by the time we find out about it, it’s too late to pass off on the place and find a new place to stake. A show like ours doesn’t do well barnstorming – that’s when we set up somewhere with no notice. We need a carnival on a lot to make our nut.

  Then there’s the payoffs, too. It doesn’t matter how clean our show is, some local politician or sheriff is always standing there with their hand out to help get us through an inspection or some such. Usually there’s a patch, one of the carnies, who takes care of all that by making ‘donations’… but sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes there’s a do-gooder in a town who decides that all carnivals are nothing but rip-off games, with flat joints – that’s a rigged game set-up – and the like, or immoral, with the freak or girly shows. Or even worse, cruel to animals – as if there were any animals with us that couldn’t hold their own if they needed to. And I’ve never known any animal show that was really cruel to any creature in its care. Well, if some townie just decides he wants to squeeze our teats, then that is just what he’s going to do until he gets wet. It is easier to pay them off just to leave us alone. Shoot, most of the mooches WANT to be ripped off! They expect it – that’s part of the reason they’re here in the first place.

  All right where was I? OK, so once we’re through paying out for all that just to set up, we might find out we have to drop off banners at the end of our line because we were shorted space. Maybe, if it’s not too much space we’ve lost, we can crescent – which means we bend our banner line – just to get it all up there. It doesn’t look as good, though. And this show is all about looking good. That’s what my pops says, anyways.

  That all matters, of course, because we have to pay out to the head office – that’s Big Mike – for every ticket we sell. The office has people all over the lot, checking on numbers and making sure no one is shorting the house. What we get left after all that is our end. That and what we sell inside. See, that money they know we’re getting, but they don’t know how much, so we can keep some back before the first count.

  Of course, we’re not only taking the marks’ money at the door! Once the rubes are under the canvas, we got a few more ways to shake a couple bucks out of them. About halfway through we bring out our bender, Bettie – that’s the contortionist girl you saw up on the bally – in a skimpy costume, and she gets into the blade box. Now once she’s inside, she hands her costume out of one of the holes on the top to Murphy, the talker. Then he slides all these blades through the box, leaving them sticking in there while the girl is bending her body around in the box to keep from being impaled. See, once all the blades are in, the talker invites the men to come up and see the girl in the box, now without her costume. We tell them that she only gets the money they give, so they have to pay a dollar to come up and look. When they look through, they see that she’s in a bikini she had hidden under her costume – but by then they’ve already paid their money!

  Then, at the end of the show, our talker steps up to the curtain, close to the way out, and offers to let people step behind it for another dollar. Because, of course, back there, they’ll see something even better!

  No, no… nothing like Barnum’s ‘this way to the egress’ gag, or tricking them into looking into a mirror or something. Not with any show that Charlie puts on! My pops, he went and got himself a real half-and-half… that’s a half-man half-woman gag for this circuit. She’s real nice. She told me she’s using the money from this season to go all the way. I didn’t ask her which direction she’s going. Honestly, I was kind of disgusted with it. I mean – here she is with an honest way to make money, just letting the rubes look at her, and she doesn’t have to say or do anything if she doesn’t want to, but she wants to change. It must be her boyfriend who doesn’t like people looking at her or something. I’ve seen him around and he looks like that type. I would never change for anyone… and I certainly don’t want anyone changing for me!

  I asked Pops about it, and he kinda laughed at me, which made me mad. But then he sat me down for a bit and began talking about being more understanding of other people, and keeping my mind open to other things. Honestly, I had stopped listening by that point. See, Charlie has been to college and stuff. One of the carnies asked me once why someone who’s a doctor would run a Ten-in-One in some flea-bitten sideshow, but one of the other guys told him to shut his yapper and BC. I didn’t see what the big deal was, you know, why that guy was telling him to Be Cool – but I was pretty young then. I asked Pops about it, but he didn’t tell me anything; he just looked sad and wandered off. It took me a bit to understand that not every doctor is the medical kind. I’m still not sure what kind of doctor Charlie is, but he’s the kind where I don’t have to go to some school away from him. He spends some time teaching me every morning before things get busy. It’s probably the best time of our day, because it’s usually too early for him to have had a drink yet. Sometimes, though, he hasn’t come sober from the night before.

  So, anyway, it’s the inside money that really helps pay everyone on the show. Of course, every time one of our people wanders off and never returns, or shorts us with the ticket money, or some bonehead makes a mistake that damages equipment or gets someone injured… well, that always seems to put us closer to disaster. That’s why I need to get back to do a count before it gets much later, and Charlie d
ecides to head over the G-Top.

  You know the other day, Murphy – he’s been with our show a while – he says to me, ‘Boy – you don’t need to be spendin’ your time worryin’ about such things. You should spend your time just being the kid you’re supposed to be.’

  Now I ask you, would you want to spend your time just being some punk? Stuck in some crummy school? Stranded in one place ‘cause your da doesn’t care enough to take care of you after your mum’s gone? Sounds like something for the chumps, to me. Here, it’s me and my pops all the way!

  Besides, it’s not like I’m the only one keeping an eye out for everything going on with the show. There’s Murphy, who my da says has been with him since he started running the show. Murphy used to tell me about mum when I was younger – but at some point I guess Charlie asked him to stop doing it because he never said another word. Guess it was too sad for Charlie. Anyway, without Murphy there probably wouldn’t be a show at all! Sure, Charlie is great – but I can’t keep my eye on everything Charlie may have overlooked – and that’s where Murphy comes in.

  The rest of our crew, whether they’re First of Mays, or on their one hundredth season, know enough to keep Charlie out of Big Mike’s path whenever he’s on a bender. Murphy told me once that Big Mike knows all about Charlie’s late nights, but as long as he doesn’t have to see it or put up with it, he will ignore it. At least so long as the show keeps making money.

  And, luckily for us, the show makes a lot of money.

  Of course, it’s a lot of work. We’re going to be pulling up stakes and making the jump to the next location day after tomorrow. There will be a lot more jumps after that, too. That’s what the beans are for – they give some added pep to the workers, so we can make the long night after the show when we’re tearing down the tent and loading the trucks before driving all night. And once we’re there, we’re going to have to set everything up before taking time to rest.

  That’s the best time, really, once we’re in the air and ready to drop, especially if we’re at a lot for a few days or a week. Then we can relax in the mornings – at least until the weekend comes, when we might run shows throughout the day as well as the night.

  Look, it’s getting late now, and we have a full day tomorrow before the jump. So let me get to my work before I turn in. Before I go, though, I want you to think about this: those old carnies, they think they’re with it – but they’re not. Me? I’m a showman. It takes a lot more to sell a show than just framing it up. It takes real skill and talent to sell it to a crowd, otherwise any grinder could do it. On nights when Charlie isn’t up for it, I take over as talker – sometimes inside and sometimes out – plus do my acts and keep my eye on the brass ring, too – you know, make sure that the take is good and that everything runs smoothly. I don’t care what Murphy says… this is my life. This is what I do. I’m the ‘Clown Prince of the Sideshow’.

  And I intend to stay that way.

  CHAPTER 3

  FINALLY! Thank goodness you made it, gazoonie! I’ve been through more on this jump than I ever thought I’d have to.

  Did you pick up what I asked you to? The cotton mop-head? The white gasoline? OK, great, thanks! Here, sit down with me for a minute and I’ll tell you what happened, while I get these fire-eating torches together for tonight’s show. Good thing you went with the advance man like I told you to last night. You ended up missing all the mess.

  Ahh, just as well, I suppose. It was a jump like any of the hundred jumps we’ve done before. Not too close, not too far. I mean sure, we’re not forty-milers, but it’s not as if we’re heading to the ends of the earth. You know what I mean by forty-milers, or cake-eaters. What they do, see, is settle themselves down somewhere safe, then they just make the jumps out to the lots from wherever they are. Usually, it’s within a single day’s drive or so from where they live, which means they never travel more than forty miles or so from their home base. I mean they could go home every night if they wanted to! Why they would want to do anything like that I have no idea. Isn’t that the fun? Being on the road? That would be kind of tough for me, I’ll tell you that for nothing. The road is what I’m about.

  Course, most of them aren’t travelling with shows. Most of the time they’re retirees who’ve got their cash invested in some chump-twister ride or something. Or got a stand that sells snacks. Then they have their snotty grandkids and those kids’ even-more-snotty friends working it during the summer season. I hate those kids. They act like they’re so much better than us. But they all seem the same, lot after lot after lot.

  Those kids. God, I hate them! They don’t understand what we’re doing. They don’t understand the history, the past – or the future of what I’m doing here. They’re not ‘with it’. If another one of them ever looks at Delilah again, I swear…

  But back to the forty-milers. We couldn’t be a forty-miler show, even if we wanted to. Who would want to see us? Honestly? We’d never get far enough away to bring in new audiences. Charlie got me to understand that, pretty quickly; we would see the same crowds over and over. And then those crowds would get tired of seeing the same show over and over again. The only way to keep the townies coming, Charlie says, would be to offer something new each time we came through.

  Normally, I just shut Charlie out when he gets into rambling. But when he was telling me all this, it got me to thinking. Who would we get as performers? I mean, a bender or fakir – like we have now – might be OK. Work out new acts and get new skills, and the rubes can see the same performer time and again. But someone like our half-and-half, a fat lady or one of those wolf-boys – well, they wouldn’t be able to do more than one set of shows with us. Once a group has seen the blow-off, would they really pay to see it, again?

  OK, so I was telling you what happened on the jump before I got sidetracked. Well, usually I run most of the things once we start breaking down, because once Charlie gets things started up, well, he has other things he needs to handle, right? Right!

  But this time there’s something else up. I don’t know why, but Charlie won’t get off our backs through the entire teardown. That’s never good, because there’s so much to do! I know that he thinks he knows everything – but he doesn’t. He may have started this show, but Murphy tells me he hasn’t slung canvas in years. I mean, why should he? That’s what he has me for.

  I know the routine.

  I know how it fits together.

  I know the fastest way to get it broken down and loaded up so we can get on the road!

  But when Charlie gets it into his head that he’s got a faster way of doing things, he sits on top of us. And something always goes wrong.

  So let me tell you how it works on the last night on a particular lot. Once the last show of the night is done, almost before the last of the rubes leave the grounds, everyone’s already breaking the whole carnival down. As soon as we kick the stragglers out of the top, we start pulling the canvas and breaking down the frame. Not all of us, of course. Some of the performers are ‘delicate,’ as Murphy says. Of course, there are still plenty of props to be loaded up, and the banner line needs to come down. If the weather’s good though, the banner line will come down while the last show is still on. That was my idea – it always saves us some time.

  Why time is important is because Big Mike never lets us spend a night in a spot if we’re not opening there the next night. After all – every day on the lot is another day that has to be paid for, right? So we break it down and head out to the next spot right away after we’re done.

  Sometimes, if the jump’s a little longer, we stop at a motel on the way. Sometimes Pops would let me choose where we’d stay. While our performers would be finding their own way in their campers or whatever, it’d just be Charlie and me on our rig together. Charlie always seemed to like it better when I’d find these really out of the way places – and I mean way off the beaten track. Sometimes he’d let me choose names for us to register under, too. Not something boring like our real names! So, in
stead of being Charlie and Tony Grice, we’d use all of my names instead. So we’d register as Charles and Richard Anthony (cause, you know, my name’s Richard Anthony Grice). Or we’d be Chuck and Dick Cloonie or something. Pops always laughed at that one – not just at calling me ‘Dick’ – but because ‘Cloonie’ is a version of ‘Clownie’ or ‘Carnie’. He’s a strange one, Charlie.

  Anyway, we’d get registered, then order in pizzas and stuff, and watch movies on the television from under tents we made on the beds out of the covers. I’m getting too old for that kid stuff, now – but those are some of my best memories with my da. I don’t ever remember him really drinking a lot when we were at the motels, either.

  But back to now. This time we weren’t planning a stopover; Murphy was riding with us, so he and Charlie would split the driving on the overnight run. By that I mean that Murphy and I would split the driving, while Charlie slept it off on the pallet behind the seats.

  But Charlie wouldn’t get off our backs! Every time I turned around he had told someone to do something different from what I had told them to do – so everything was a mess! It seemed like forever to get it all broken down. By the time we were loaded up in the trucks, all the rest of the carnival was on the road. Good thing I had thought to send you with the advance man, so you could make sure our spot was staked out. We were the last ones to leave the lot – like a bunch of chumps!