I was maybe ten or eleven when the circus came to town. I remember the posters going up and I remember everyone so beside themselves with excitement at finally getting a lick of fun in this town. And I remember talking to my mom and dad about my allowance for rides and candy and shows with all the animals I’d never seen. All the trick horse riders and jugglers and magicians and dancers. I remember them all shuttling in their traveling wagons and I remember seeing the dirty faces and tents. All the animals scruffy with mange. I remember seeing all the old men with so many years on their faces and the tired way they did their tricks. I remember feeling the fleas crawling up my legs and I remember the odors of breath mint and cigarette smoke wafting from their mouths. I remember all the mud in my boots and I remember the sweat crawling down my back in the hot Texas sun, hotter than I’d ever felt it then or since.
I remember, too, walking off behind a big grimy tent to try and find a place to pee and walking past at a clown who’d stepped out for a smoke. He was shirtless, big torso covered in great thickets of hair where I’d never seen hair before and thick rolls of fat down the sides of his back. Suspenders holding the polka dot pants around his redwood waist. I remember him smiling at me in his mean way and seeing all his gnarled yellow teeth with spots of brown and black. And I remember too the little girl who went missing when they packed up and left, on to some other town I don’t know which.
Oddest of all is that nobody seems to remember no circus. “There ain’t never been no circus come through this town so you’d better quit talking about it and eat your dinner,” my father’d say. But I remember the circus and I remember that clown clear and vivid as the words that flow now out of my pen, up and down the paper. And I remember the girl too, smashing ant hills with her at recess and hearing her laugh as they all came crawling out. Oddest of all is that nobody seems to remember no circus.
Nick Mace’s work has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential and Be About It Press. He is the author of the novel SALOMON'S GARDEN, forthcoming from Farthest Heaven.