Джоанна Скотт - Excuse Me While I Disappear - Stories

It was long ago, long before your grandparents were born, when a ticket to see a dancing bear cost a mere two cents. I listened to him while he emptied a bottle of brandy and talked about the peculiar sport of jumping waterfalls. But it wasn’t a sport to him. It was an art he’d perfected as a boy jumping from the bridge in Pawtucket. The fact that he remained impoverished and unrecognized only made him more certain that he was deserving. He had courage. He had vision. Most important, he had a surefire technique, the details of which he guarded jealously. But the more he drank, the more freely he talked. I kept listening. He must have assumed I couldn’t understand. He was a man who wanted to be a hero. I was just a bear, already stiffening with age and growing ever stouter.

Wear a snug-fitting shirt, he said, and loose pants of white cotton. Breathe in when you leap. Pin your arms against your sides. Bend your knees then snap your legs straight just before you hit the water. Let the current carry you away. Find a rock to hold on to downriver. Only when the audience has concluded that you’ve been swept to a watery grave should you burst up through the surface and wave to them.

Oh, and whenever you jump, make sure you’re good and drunk. That’s essential. Be a better friend to the bottle than the bottle is to you.

He jumped Passaic Falls when he was twenty-seven. He jumped from the top of a ship’s mast into the Hudson River when he was twenty-eight. A few weeks later he jumped Paterson Falls. Finally, on a rainy October afternoon, when he was twenty-nine, he jumped eighty feet over Niagara Falls. That made him famous, for certain. But he wasn’t famous enough by his own measure. He could never be famous enough.

We met in Buffalo. He was wearing a sailor’s jacket. I was dancing on a stage at McCleary’s Museum. He bought me for ten dollars and led me away on a leash. We sat in a bar. He talked for hours, as if he’d never before met anyone willing to listen to him. I listened while he told me about his impossible dream of success. His next jump, he said, would be more daring than the last. He vowed to jump Niagara Falls from a platform 120 feet high. He told me not to warn him against it. He’d made up his mind. I could see he was a stubborn fool, but I also admired him more than I care to admit. He was the first individual I’d ever met who was truly fearless.

He jumped for the second time into Niagara Falls on October 17. I sat among an audience of ladies who had paid a fee to watch from a boat. He entered the water with one knee bent. The ladies in the boat exclaimed at the splash, and those closest to me buried their trembling fingers in my fur. We all thought he was dead. And then he popped from the water, waved to us, and swam on his back to shore.

There are many routes to fame, but the quickest and surest is the one I traversed with my friend, there and back. It’s true that almost no one remembers me anymore. I’ve lived too long. But I once became very famous very quickly. You could do it, too. Let me suggest, however, that jumping from a high platform into the falls wearing a snug-fitting shirt and white trousers, with your arms tight against your sides, won’t be enough. Nothing is enough unless you advertise.

With each successive jump, he became savvier about publicity. He began printing out announcements headed with his motto: “Some things can be done as well as others”—whatever that meant, I never quite understood. He paid boys to put up the flyers around town, in stores and music halls and taverns. The point was to convince every segment of the public that there was no better way to spend their time than watching a man risk his life for the sheer thrill of it.

They called him doggone crazy back home in Pawtucket. They called him spectacular in Hoboken. They called him astonishing in Niagara. But he wanted more than passing notice. He wanted to have a permanent place in history.

He decided that he hadn’t paid enough attention to his appearance. He spent his earnings on a manicurist and a shave at the barber. He added a black silk scarf to his wardrobe. He bought himself a pair of gold cufflinks. I could have told him to leave his cufflinks at home. Baubles such as cufflinks are like berries to young bears—the more one has, the more one wants. A few won’t satisfy. I should know.

It’s true that I haven’t stripped a bush of berries in a long time. But I’d rather resist temptation than have to suffer when there’s nothing left. I won’t let myself get started. I don’t waste my time remembering that blueberries were once my favorite, or that tender wintergreen can be found growing beneath pine trees. Isn’t it better to learn to take pleasure in what is most readily available?

Anyway, you didn’t seek me out to talk about berries. You want to know about the man who was famous, but not famous enough, for jumping from high platforms into the raging tumult of cascading rivers. He had fine gold cufflinks, a silk scarf, a snug-fitting shirt, and white trousers. Add a tried-and-true technique and several fortifying snifters of brandy, and it still wasn’t enough.

What was missing? he wondered aloud. We were at an establishment called The Recess, just the two of us. He was scheduled to jump the local falls the next day. He was told to expect a crowd of hundreds. But he wanted a crowd of thousands. How could he make the world stop turning and pay attention to him?

I yawned. He watched me yawn. There you have it. It was late at night, I couldn’t help but yawn. He looked into my yawning mouth and saw his future. He saw renown, wealth, adulation beyond anything he’d yet experienced. He followed my wide pink tongue into the black chasm and saw his own potential.

The next day, a fine, bright Indian summer day, he invited me to accompany him up to the platform that had been erected above the falls. After delivering his usual speech, in which he compared himself favorably to Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and God, he jumped. Though he was still enjoying the effects of the previous night’s brandy, his form was perfect: arms tight against his sides, knees bent then snapping straight so he entered the water with hardly a sound. The audience waited with increasing fear for him to emerge. He didn’t emerge for several minutes. Nervous murmurs rippled through the crowd. And then there he was, bobbing along the river, smiling and waving. The audience cheered.

Their cheers weren’t enough for a man who was born to feel unappreciated. So this is what he did to invite them to cheer louder: he climbed out of the river, up the stone steps to the top of the gorge, and up the ladder to the platform where I was waiting. I noticed that his cufflinks were gone. He smiled at me, a strange, indecent smile that made me wonder if he longed for more than fame. And then he shoved me. That’s right—he jammed an elbow deep into my fat belly and pushed. I wasn’t prepared for the assault, and with a roar of outrage I fell backward, off the platform.

As the local newspaper reported, I made several promiscuous turns in midair, and then struck the water stern first.

What my famous friend discovered was that if you want to succeed, don’t try to do it alone. Any challenge is less agreeable when you confront it alone. Find someone you can trust, a loyal, brave collaborator.

He trusted me. I listened to his stories, his complaints, his secret dreams. And in fact I’d trusted him. When he led me away from Jonathan McCleary’s Buffalo Museum, he saved me from the humiliation of dancing in public. He wanted me near him. I hadn’t been wanted like that since my mother banished me from the den. I was his friend, and he was mine. We were a swell pair, we complemented each other. He liked to talk; I liked to listen. I was content to keep him company—until the day he pushed me from the platform over the Genesee Falls.