Driving Blind

Pretending nonchalance, I ate my ticket.

Inside was a single ring around which were tiered three hundred slat-board seats cleverly built to kill the spines of plain meadow-beast folk like us. Down circling the ring stood two dozen rickety tables and chairs where sat

the town aristocrats in their licorice-dark suits with black ties. There also sat their proper wives and uncomfortable children, all meticulous, all quiet as behooves the owners of the town cigar store, the town store that sells liquor, or the best car mechanic in Mexicali.

The show was to start at eight p.m. or as soon as the tent was full; by rare luck, the tent was full by eight-thirty. The extravaganzas lit their fuses. A whistle shrieked. The musicians, outside, flung down their instruments and ran.

They reappeared, some in coveralls to haul rope, others as clowns to bounce across the ring.

The ticket-seller lurched in, bringing with him the Victrola which he banged onto a band platform near the ring. In a great shower of sparks and minor explosions, he plugged it in, looked around, shrugged, spun a record, poised the needle. We could have either a live band or live acrobats and trapeze artists. We chose the latter.

The huge circus began—small.

Now a sword-swallower choked on a sword, sprayed kerosene in a gout of flame, and wandered out to applause from five small girls.

Three clowns knocked each other across the ring and bounded off to aching silence.

Then, thank God, the little woman leaped into the ring.

I knew those spangles. I sat up swiftly. I knew those vast teeth, those quick brown eyes.

It was the taco-seller!

But now she was—

The beer-keg juggler!

She rolled flat on her back. She shouted. The sword-swallower tossed a red-white-green keg. She caught it deftly with her white ballet-slippered feet. She spun it, as a John Philip Sousa record beat hell out of the tent canvas with a big brass swatter. The tiny lady kicked the whirling keg twenty feet up. By the time it fell to crush her, she was gone, running.

“Hey! Ándale! Vamanos! Ah!”

Out beyond in the dusting night I could see the colossal grand parade corseting itself together, girding its gouty loins. A small mob of men was leaning against what looked like an irritable camel out by the watermelon stands. I thought I heard the camel curse. I knew I saw its lips move with obscene belches. Were they or were they not slipping a stomach belt on the beast? Did it have multiple hernias?

But now one of the sweating rope-haulers jumped on the bandstand, crammed a red fez on his head, mouthed the trombone in a great wail. A new record trumpeted like a herd of elephants.

The great parade dusted in, led and followed by ten million crickets who had nothing else to do.

First in the parade was a donkey led by a fourteen-year-old boy in blue overalls with an Arabian Nights turban over his eyes. Then six dogs ran in, barking. I suspected that the dogs, like the crickets, had gotten tired of the nearest street corner and came every night to volunteer their services. There they were, anyway, dashing about, watching from the corners of their eyes to see if we saw them. We did. That drove them wild. They cavorted and yipped and danced until their tongues hung out their mouths like bright red ties.

This, for the first time, stirred the audience As one, we burst into shouts and applause. The dogs went mad. They bit their tails on the way out.

Next came an old horse with a champanzee on his back, picking his nose and showing results to all. More applause from the children.

And then, the grandest part of the sultan’s vast parade.

The camel

It was a high-society camel.

Which is to say that while it was patched at the seams, needled and glued together with bits of yellow thread and old hemp, with floppy turrets, torn flanks, and bleeding gums, it nevertheless had one of those looks which say, I smell bad but you smell worse. That mask of utter disdain which only rich old women and dying dromedaries share.

My heart leaped.

Riding on the back of this beast, in charge of tinsel, was the tiny woman who had taken tickets, sold tacos, juggled beer kegs, and was now—

Queen of Sheba.

Flashing her lighthouse-smile to all, she waved a salute as she rode between the coming-and-going tides of camel-humps, jolting.