Chris Offutt - The Same River Twice - A Memoir

Tattoos of brilliant tropical birds covered every inch of her body. Two parrots faced each other on her buttocks, beaks curving into the cleft, tail feathers running down the back of her legs. A swirling flock of bright plumage fluttered up her back and across her shoulders. Parakeets perched among toucans and birds of paradise. Lush jungle foliage peeped around the birds.

Slowly she turned, revealing a shaven yoni from which a pair of golden wings fanned along her hips. On top of each breast sat two enormous and lovely parrots. She rotated again, moving at a slow pace until she faced the men once more. She now held a long fluorescent light tube. An electric cord ran behind the black curtain. She spread her legs for balance and tipped her head back. Only her neck and the point of her chin were visible. She lifted the light tube above her head and very slowly slid it down her throat. She took her hands away, and pressed a switch on the cord that turned on the fluorescent tube. The spotlight went black. Her body glowed from within, illuminating the birds in an ethereal, ghostly light, like a jungle dawn. She flicked the switch off and the tent was dark save for sunlight leaking beneath the canvas flaps. The houselights came on very bright. The stage was empty. She was gone.

The dazed men stumbled outside, blinking against the sun. I never missed her act and always tried to maneuver myself near the front. After ten or twelve shows, I was sufficiently familiar with the birds to begin watching her eyes. I expected a blank look but she gazed at the men with a blend of fury and desire. Eventually she saw me watching. I was embarrassed, as if caught peeping, a curious reverse of logic. The following day I stayed in the back but she found me. Her vision locked on me during the entire act. I left with the crowd, feeling devastated.

My tear-down job was pulling stakes, a chore relegated to the most useless worker. The stakes were car axles driven very deep into the earth. To pull them, I first had to loosen the dirt by pounding the ground with a sledgehammer. At times I worked in a rhythmic blur, grateful for the simple repetition. Other times I wore myself down in rage at my occupation.

I abandoned my bunk after a wave of lice spread among the workers, making us scratch like junkies. If our hands were full, we wiggled and shifted in vain attempts to relieve the itch. I boiled my clothes and the sight of swollen nits in the seams made me sick. Since I was being fed and housed, my pay was not enough to buy new clothes. When my toothbrush snapped at the handle, I decided to quit.

I told Barney, who said he’d speak to Flathead about my working as an all-purpose animal helper. For the next two weeks we traveled across the Deep South. In many of the smaller towns attendance at the circus included a black night and a white night. The Sunday matinees were the only integrated time, but the groups didn’t mix. I swept manure, hauled feed and water, and hosed down Peaches twice a day, Barney lent me money against my raise. I bought clothes and a toothbrush. Luckily, I’d been keeping my journal in the glove box of Barney’s pickup. Everything else had been stolen from the sleeper truck.

The new job gave me greater privacy. I slept under the truck and had time to write in my journal. I never reread an entry. They represented the past, and my journal was proof that I existed in the present. As an event unfolded around me, I was already anticipating how I’d write about it later. A new entry began where the last one ended, continuing to the immediate, to the current act of writing. Each mark on the page was a gesture toward the future, a codification of the now. Through this, I learned to trust language.

The animal trainers were an odd lot who argued constantly, smoked hand-roiled cigarettes, and possessed only one friend apiece — their animal. Soon I began to roll my own cigarettes. During off-hours we sat in a circle debating the merits and dangers of various animals. Everyone teased Arnie, the gorilla trainer, about the simplicity of his job. Gabe the Gorilla was ancient and nearly blind.

One night the show was canceled due to a fire in town that destroyed four blocks. The entire circus left except the trainers who stayed to guard their animals. We passed a pint of whisky and began our usual bickering.

“Don’t go getting the big head, Barney,” the tiger man said. “Elephant ain’t the worst to work.”

“More of mine kill folks than yours ever did,” Barney said.

“Killing ain’t the mark,” the man said. “Go a season with zebras and you’ll wish you had a rogue. Zebras is the meanest there is.”

“Bull smoke,” said Arnie.

“Fact before God. Over in Africa the zebra’s worst enemy is a lion. That makes them a mean fighter.”

The others pushed a lower lip out and raised their eyebrows in the animal trainer’s sign of acknowledgment.

“My opinion,” the horse man said, “the all-time worstest is a camel. I purely loathe a camel. There ain’t no safe place to work them from because they kick sideways. I never seen a sideways kick that didn’t bust a leg to a compound. Humpy bastards are stubborn as a mule.”

Barney drank from the bottle as it went past him.

“The elephant is the closest animal to a man there is,” he said.

“Bull smoke,” said Arnie.

“Telling it true,” Barney said. “Its back legs bends forward like a human. They got tits up front, not in the back. They go off on their own to mate.”

“Gorilla’s ten times closer to human,” Arnie said.

“Well, a cat ain’t,” said the tiger man. “I’m put right out of this talk. The only thing a cat’s like is a damn cat.”

“Horse is gabbier,” the horse man said.

“Bull smoke,” Arnie said. “Me and Gabe talk plenty.”

“I heard something on a gorilla maybe you can clear up,” Barney said. “But I ain’t advising you to ask Gabe on it.”

“What?”

“A gorilla’s got a harem, don’t it?”

Arnie nodded. “In the wild.”

“Then it don’t have to work too hard for company, if you know what I mean.” Barney tipped his head to me. “I’m trying to talk nice in front of the squirt.”

Everyone laughed and the tiger man handed me the bottle. “That boy knows what’s what,” he said. “He ain’t missed the Parrot Lady since he joined on.” The men chuckled again.

“Way I hear it,” Barney said, “the gorilla’s got the littlest balls of any creature on earth. They shrink up from not having to hunt no nookie.”

“Bull smoke,” Arnie said. “They’re big as a man’s.”

“Damn cat’s got his snuggled up to his butt-hole,” the tiger man said. “I got to find me another animal to work if I want to keep up with this outfit.”

“Is that true?” the horse man said. “About the gorilla?”

“No,” Arnie said. “Gabe’s balls are big as mine.”

“That ain’t saying much.” Barney grinned at the men. “We might just have to get some proof on that.”

“We got eighty proof right here,” the tiger man said.

He opened another pint of local rotgut, took a hard drink, and sent it on its rounds.

“Might be tough to see Gabe’s balls,” Barney said. “Little as they are.”

“All you got to do is get him to stand,” Arnie said. “We can squat low and put a flashlight on him. They’re a good size, you can take my word for it.”

“Chris, there’s a flashlight behind the truck seat. Get the elephant prod, too.”

I walked through the warm summer darkness, rummaged for the light, and returned. The men were swaying on their feet.

“Gabe ain’t going to like this much,” Arnie said.

“He won’t know,” the horse man said.

“He will. He’s smarter than any nag you run.”