His parents took the little clown to his first circus, where the real show was the sideshow, not so noisy, and up-close. There was a lady braiding her long beard, and a man who had scribbled all over himself with colored pens, even where he couldn’t see behind his ears, between his fingers and toes. And a man with no arms who sat in a crooked highchair, who made his bare feet work like hands. Shook out a cigarette, that he lit with a pack of matches. Reached up and took his wallet out of his shirt pocket, took out a dollar bill, folded it four times into a tight little square, unfolded it, put it away. But the greatest thing was the elephant. His parents gave him a peanut to feed it, and showed him how to hold his hand out flat. But it wasn’t like feeding a donkey that could bite. Here the elephant stood bigger than the tent, almost big as the sky, and reached down with his nose like a leather firehose with hairs and lips on the end of it, that snuffled at him and his hand, then curved its lips and plucked the peanut, took it all the way up to his mouth. And while the little clown watched, this great wrinkly thing flapped its ears, and with one huge dark eye watched him back. They were standing behind a rope, and the elephant had a chain around one ankle, that went to a truck axle pounded through sawdust down into the dirt. But it was nothing. The elephant could just walk off, and his parents and everyone else here were helpless as he was. So while he shook with fear and wonder, he fed it more peanuts.
Posted on: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 15:38:52 +0000
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