Under the Big Top

by Dennis Vannatta

 

I still miss the tent. It was big enough that it could hold a hundred people on folding chairs, easy, and in those towns where Pop couldn’t beg or borrow folding chairs from some school or church whose preacher didn’t see us as much of a rival for his dollar, it’d shelter as many lost souls as were willing to stand or sit on blankets. Some would even bring lawn chairs, having witnessed with us before and knew we were unlikely to scrounge up folding chairs for the two or three nights we’d be in town.

It could get hot and airless under the tent in the summer and cold in the spring and fall, and a tent doesn’t stand much chance against a tornado, as events were to prove. Still, I loved that tent, loved the smell of it, musty like an attic when it was folded up but when it was spread above us smelling like a spring storm on its way. Then one spring a storm did come, and a tornado dropped down like a black snake out of the clouds and snatched that tent up into the sky, and we never saw the tent again.

I said that the tent was like a snake, but that was because I’d seen The Wizard of Oz at the drive-in in Pine Bluff and thought all tornadoes must look like the one in the movie. In fact, it came in the middle of the night and I never saw it.

The next morning, a fellow told my dad that the tent had come down on the farm of a fellow named Kip Means, who’d let Pop have it back for one-hundred dollars.

I went with Pop out to see this Kip Means. Pop told him he was much obliged to him, but he wasn’t going to pay him one-hundred dollars for his own property. He wasn’t going to pay him one-hundred cents. Kip Means told him that, well, the tent had taken out two of his pecan trees when it came down, so either he was going to have one-hundred dollars, or he was going to have the tent.

Pop said that wasn’t any way to treat a man of God, and Kip Means laughed and said, “Hell, you ain’t no preacher. You’re just a damn ham actor.”

That was a pun on our name, see: Hamm. Arnold Hamm, my dad, Teresa Hamm, my mom, Lisa Hamm, my little sister, and me, Jerry.

Pop never called himself a preacher, never claimed to have a church.

“I’m Arnie Hamm, come to share my Jesus with you.” That’s what he’d say. “I don’t have a church. I don’t have a congregation. All I have is the solid rock upon which I stand, inviting you to stand with me, all of us lost souls looking for God.”

Yes, he could sling the words, but it didn’t work with Kip Means, who told him to go whistle for his tent, and Pop told him he’d go to the law, and Kip Means laughed again and told him to go right on ahead. The law in that county was named Bob Means, and he had the same mom and pop as Kip did.

As we were driving away, I was surprised to see Pop looking cheerful.

“Jerry,” he said, “that tornado was sent by God, God doing us a favor. The truth is, I’ve been thinking about getting rid of that tent for a long time now and was just too timid to get off the dime. That tent has always been a pain in my ass.”

No, it wasn’t the first time I’d heard Pop use language. He used language quite often, to be honest, but he said he always asked God’s forgiveness for it. “We’re all fallible,” he said.

Truer words . . .

*

The tent had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. Big as it was, it could fold up small enough to fit in the back of the olive-drab, extended Ford panel truck Pop bought cheap from a fellow who got it cheaper from Army surplus. Into the truck also had to fit ropes and support poles, plus suitcases for our clothes and boxes of supplies, plus the little Coleman stove Mom cooked on, plus Mom, Pop, Lisa, and me. The big center pole went on top tied to a homemade rack Pop installed by drilling holes in the truck roof. Duct tape, electrical tape, caulking, and road tar were a few of the means Pop tried to stop the holes from leaking, and all worked fine except when it rained. Many nights we slept in that truck. We knew how to position ourselves to avoid the leaks.

I have to admit that the space freed up after the tent was lost came in handy. Pop even bought a little used piano, cheap, which my mom played, badly, and Lisa and I sang hymns to, badly, but we were cute, at least until I hit the gawky teenage years, and Lisa was a cute even then.

Pop was of two minds about music at his “gatherings of lost souls,” as he called them. On the one hand, he thought witnessing and music didn’t quite fit together. On the other hand, he knew from experience that more folks would turn out if they knew they were going to hear some music. A man had to feed his family, Pop said, and the more people who came to share his Jesus, the more food for the Hamms.

Of course, we never charged admission to our gatherings. But we did pass the galvanized bucket, and what went into the bucket had to support us for the six months out of the year we’d be on the road with hopefully a little left over to pad out whatever work Pop could find October through March back home in Pine Bluff.

But where would the lost souls gather without the tent?

*

Before the tornado, we’d put up the tent near some town in a meadow or field gone fallow, park our truck there, too, and in good weather bed down outside in sleeping bags with the trees around us and the stars over us. If it was too cold or wet, we’d sleep in the truck, Pop and Mom behind a wall of suitcases, me on top the tent and Lisa on two long sofa pillows. With the tent gone we moved our gatherings, and ourselves, into the towns, where I never really felt at home, just like Pine Bluff never really felt like home. Home was on the road, in the fields, under the tent. But where was home now?

I first experienced what life would be like, post-tent, in McGehee, Arkansas, where Pop parked the truck on an abandoned lot downtown. We all got out and Pop led us to the curb, where he stopped. We stood beside him and looked where he was looking.

There across the street was an old red-brick building, two stories high but windows, dark and dusty and Xed-out with what looked like six-inch-wide masking tape, only on the ground level. Three broad steps led up to double-doors, locked shut with a hasp and padlock.

“What you’re looking at, ladies and gentlemen, is the new world,” he said.

I didn’t know what he meant by that, but that didn’t stop me from saying, “I liked the old one better.”

Pop slapped me on the back of the head like Moe would slap Larry. He did that quite a bit. He might have been being playful, might not. Generally, you weren’t too sure, but he’d hit you hard enough to let you know it was in your best interest to figure it out.

I knew this one wasn’t playful when he said, “It don’t make any difference whether you like it or I like it or anyone likes it. When the new world gets here, you’ve got to live in it, that’s all.”

“Live in it, not of it,” Mom said, a thing religious folks like to say although even now, all these years later, I’m still not quite clear on the difference.

I didn’t pursue the issue, though, not anxious for another slap on the back of the head. Instead, I turned my attention to the building again and noticed that carved above the entrance in two-foot-high block letters was a word I was not familiar with:

LYCEUM

I sounded it out, correctly, as it happens.

“Yes. Lyceum,” Pop said. “It means something or other in Greek, could be anything. Heathens back then, you know. They have them all over in little towns of any size. Lyceums.”

We crossed the street.

*

It took me awhile, but I finally understood why, from Pop’s point of view, we were better off without the tent. It was a lot of work unloading it and the poles, ropes, etc., setting the tent up, then taking it down again and getting everything loaded back in the truck, with hopefully enough room left over for us.

There was ongoing expense involved, too, even if we did own the tent. Poles would break and have to be replaced; ropes would fray, and rope is expensive; metal anchors to tie the ropes to would disappear; and twice in one summer Pop lost the sledge hammer. Then, too, even when Lisa and I got big enough to pitch in, it was next to impossible for the four of us to raise the tent and take it down by ourselves. There would always be curious bystanders hanging around, though, and Pop would collar two or three teenagers and offer them a few bucks to help out. Once the tent was up, he’d tell them to come back “after the show was over” and help take it down, and then he’d settle up with them. What settling up meant was he’d tell them how grateful he was and how grateful Lord Jesus was for their help, for which they’d earned six dollars (or whatever the promised wage was) “credit in heaven.” He’d frequently get a good cussing for it, which didn’t bother him at all. One time, though, he came back with a black eye, and a few other times he returned from the settling up declaring that he’d shelled out the cash as promised because after all they were good boys and deserved it. (My guess is he was threatened with worse that a black eye. You run into some rough customers in backwoods Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, where we did most of our business, and they start getting rough early.)

It didn’t occur to me when I was little, but eventually I realized that what Pop was doing to those boys who came away with only credit in heaven for their labors was cheating them. I was shocked. My dad, a cheat. I was always kind of timid, though, uncertain about ethical and theological matters, pretty much uncertain about everything important, so I never challenged him on it. Besides, I knew what his response would be. Didn’t he begin every single gathering with the same confession?

         I’ve been a sinner.

         I am a sinner.

         I will sin again.

         Help me, Jesus, to be a better man.

Probably he wouldn’t go that far, though. Probably he’d just repeat his eleventh commandment: “A man has to feed his family.” Or maybe it was his first.

*

Anyway, the point is, that tent was a cumbersome, labor-intensive expense. But how could this brick-and-mortar new order be less so?

Actually, there always was some work involved. We’d have to clean up and sweep out. Do battle with rats and mice and cockroaches. Move boxes, old desks and whatnot. Make those decrepit buildings at least presentable. If it wasn’t an old church with pews or theater with seats, Pop would again try to beg or borrow folding chairs although that was never a priority. Folks could sit on their haunches or stand if need be. Jesus had suffered more for them, hadn’t he?

It was the expense that was the real advantage over the tent: there wasn’t much. When we came to a new town, Pop would ask around to find out who owned an abandoned building he was interested in because every town, dying from the center out as most of them were, had them. Couldn’t find the owner? We’d just move on in. Yes, he jimmied a lock or two. A surprising amount of time when he did find the owner, they’d just let him use it for free. “Probably hoping we’ll burn the place down so they can collect on the insurance,” he said. Sometimes he’d have to slip the local law a few dollars to look the other way when we helped ourselves to an empty building, but that was about it as far as expense goes.

I have to admit, the new order had its good points for me, too. If the rodents and bugs weren’t too bad, often we’d bed down in those old buildings in sleeping bags or pallets made out of comforters. Lisa and I would pretend we were staying in fancy hotels and make up names for them. The Eudora Ritz. The Lake Providence Hilton. True, helping out cleaning wasn’t much fun, but we loved going up and down stairs, in and out of dusty, box-filled rooms, exploring.

It all came to an end, for me, anyway, when Lisa and I found something in a storeroom in the Royal Theater in Monticello, Arkansas.

*

I don’t know much about cameras and movie projectors and such things. Was it a sixteen-millimeter projector that we found? I don’t know. But I was pretty sure it hadn’t been used for regular movies in the theater. It was too small, like one a teacher would use in a classroom.

“Hey, look at this, Jerry. Nekkid people!”

Lisa had found a reel of film and was holding a section up to the light.

I took the reel from her and looked.

“Oh my God, this is a dirty movie, Lisa.” “Give it back. I found it.”

“No. I’m going to take it to Pop.”

“’I’m going to take it to Pop. I’m going to take it to Pop.’ God, Jerry, you’re such a pussy.”

Lisa was fifteen by then and had hit the confused, rebellious years. Me, I was two years older but hadn’t gotten to the rebellious part yet. I was just confused.

I went ahead and took the reel to Pop, who took one look at a section of film and wrinkled his nose like it he’d runover a skunk.

“The men who look at these things are sad men, Jerry, lonely men. We should pray for them.”

He handed me the reel.

“Put it back where you got it.”

That night we had a pretty good turnout, and I was happy about that because things had been pretty rocky that year, money-wise.

Afterward, Pop said we were going to sleep in the truck. “Too dirty in there,” he said, meaning The Royal. By “dirty,” I was betting he meant the kind of dirt on the reel, not the floors.

When I was little, sleeping in the truck had been a lark, but I was adult-size now, and Lisa almost there, and the thrill was gone. I didn’t have to worry about being cramped up next to Lisa that night, though. She was nowhere to be found.

That wasn’t anything unusual. She was not only rebellious but much more sociable than I was. She needed to be around kids her own age, and anytime Mom’s and Pop’s backs were turned, she’d be off searching for friends to make. So, my parents were irritated but not especially worried when she was missing after the gathering.

I didn’t think I was worried, either, but it took me a long time to go to sleep wondering what she was up to.

I didn’t know what time it was when I woke up. Lisa wasn’t back. I sat up and looked out the window. Downtown Monticello looked deserted except for some cars parked over near the theater. The theater itself, though, was dark—or so I thought when I first looked at it. But then it did seem to me that the diamond-shaped windows in the double-door entrance had a grayish glow about them.

All at once it came to me. I knew what it had to be. It was Lisa. She’d come back to the storeroom and somehow got the projector working and was showing that dirty film. Lisa, my sweet little sister, so desperate for friends, was recruiting them with the promise of porn.

Trying not to wake up Mom and Pop, I got out of the truck quietly as I could and crossed the street to The Royal. I eased into the rear of the auditorium.

The projector was set up on an old door laid across seat backs about two-thirds of the way toward the front. Like I figured, it wasn’t made for a big screen, and the rectangle of images it projected wasn’t much larger than the flat-screen TV in our den today.

The men were bunched up in the first couple of rows close as they could get to the screen. A few of them were teenagers, but most were young men, and middle-aged, and a few old men, their rheumy eyes gleaming in the light of the flickering images.

Or so I imagined. They all had their backs to me, and I couldn’t see their eyes. And I really didn’t care what they or their eyes were doing. And I wasn’t interested in that stuff going on on the screen. Maybe I would be someday, I thought, but I wasn’t there yet.

I didn’t bother looking for Lisa. It’d been silly of me to even think that she could be behind something like this. It was Pop.

It took me a minute to locate him even though he was the nearest to me of them all, sitting behind the projector. He was fiddling with something on the seat beside him, and although I couldn’t see it I was pretty sure what it was because I’d seen him do it after every gathering. He was pawing through the collection bucket to see how much money he’d made.

*

I left the next day, took my little suitcase and hitchhiked back to Pine Bluff, then kept right on going up US 65 to Little Rock. I got a job in a rental store cleaning up used equipment and what not and paid the manager twenty dollars a month to let me sleep on a cot in the storeroom. I forged signatures left and right and enrolled at Hall High. I never had understood what official status I’d had as a student, going to Pine Bluff schools for a few months every year, Mom and Pop teaching me at odd hours in the truck, and I guess Hall High didn’t either because they enrolled me as a seventeen-year-old sophomore. I was as surprised as anyone how much I enjoyed my time there, joined the journalism club and even went out for football. Go Warriors. I graduated in two years. Went to the local university. Got my degree in business. Married. Children. The years kept right on passing.

I saw my folks and Lisa occasionally. It wasn’t like I’d run off in the middle of the night. I had left after breakfast, gave them all hugs and kisses, got hugs and kisses back. If I didn’t exactly leave with their blessing, they understood that it was time for me to go and didn’t try to hold me back.

Had Pop realized I’d seen him in The Royal? I really don’t know. What difference would it have made? If I’d pressed him on it, he would’ve just explained what he’d already explained: that a father has to do . . . you know. He might even have believed that made it all right. I might have believed it, too.

*

I told myself that I hadn’t thought about all that stuff since Mom and Pop died, Lisa, that poor lost soul, dead too, hadn’t thought about it until I saw the commercial on Channel 11 for the circus “Under the Big Top” coming to the state fairgrounds in Little Rock. But as I drove over there with my grandsons, Jake and Cal, seven and four, I realized it was always there with me, whether I was conscious of it or not. Hell, not just with me, it was me.

When we got there, though, damn. I’d planned on taking the boys up to the big tent where I’d say, “Here, smell this.” And all three of us would press our noses to the canvas and smell. Then we’d go inside and do the same thing—“Now smell here”—because canvas has a different smell in sun and shade. But to these grifters out of Florida, “Under the Big Top” meant inside ancient old Barton Coliseum, once a pretty impressive facility for these parts but now reduced mostly to holding gun shows and flea markets.

I didn’t want to spoil it for the boys, though, so I tried to put a good face on it, bought them popcorn and promised them cotton candy later, and I crowed, “We’re going to have ourselves a big ol’ time under the big top!”

I couldn’t help it, though. I felt my back bowing under the weight of my disappointment.

But then I glanced over at Jake and Cal. The ringmaster had come out and was standing in the middle of the spotlight in his silver-sequined top hat, pink jacket, red-and-white-striped shirt, and royal blue slacks; and as he went into his pitch—the amazing things we were going to see, things we’d never forget, things that would change our lives—the boys’ eyes shone. It was the same look I saw on the faces of those lost souls, desperate to believe, when Pop promised them salvation.

Had he been no more than an entertainer, then, just trying to feed his family? There has to be easier ways to make a living. No, I think he did believe in what he told them. Did I believe it? I’m not sure what I believed then or now. Sometimes, though, when I’m feeling lost, I pray.