Sean liked malls because of the mirrors. Considering his penchant for fistfighting and mudslinging, Sean was remarkably vain—particularly about his hair. His blond locks were short in the front with Little League-type bangs and long in the back with rockabilly-like ducktails. In every place he spent more than a passing moment he liked to keep a brush—in his trailer, in my trailer, in the front seat of the cannon. Before his act he would usually brush his hair for ten or fifteen minutes in a combination of Herculean narcissism and Samson-like fortification. In Lynchburg, during one particularly marathon grooming session, I noticed with some alarm that four of the metal bristles of his white doggy-style brush were missing. “I bit them off,” he said from the top of the cannon. “The rubber was missing off the tips and the metal was hurting my head. When you brush your hair as much as I do you have to be careful.” In a stately gesture he took one final sweep of his bangs and tossed the brush down to the ground. As he did, Arpeggio appeared alongside the cannon and caught the brush in his hat. “Oh, Mr. Thomas,” he squealed. “Thank you so much. I’ll treasure it always.” “There are a few hairs left in it,” Sean kindly pointed out. “You can keep them if you want.”

Going to the mall with Sean, even a run-down one like Willingboro Plaza, was to be a bit player in this ongoing parody of self-aggrandizement. On the way to Pic-n-Pay we passed a mirror. “Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and wonder why God was so good to me,” he said. “And the other times?” I asked. “I know why.” To get around this seemingly impenetrable wall of self-confidence, I asked Sean during our walk through the mall to tell me how he met Elvin. He responded with surprising modesty.

Sean’s first brush with the cannon came in 1989, two years after Elvin’s accident, when Elvin first asked his unsuspecting pool boy if he would be interested in joining the circus. Sean said yes; his girlfriend, however, said no. The idea was quickly dropped. Two years later, with no replacement in hand, Elvin again approached Sean. Once again he said yes; more importantly his girlfriend was no longer around. Within a week he was practicing.

“I remember the first time I got inside the cannon,” Sean said, his voice unusually respectful. His posture was much less sure. “The net was up against the lip of the barrel. That was before we had the air bag. I was wearing sweats and Reebok hiking boots. I slid into the capsule and got situated—my legs on the platform, my butt on the seat, my arms crouched at my side. My whole body tensed up. I took the hit—the initial bang when the capsule slides up the track—and I almost passed out. By the time I knew what was happening I was already coming out of the barrel. My heart was beating. I was scared. I ducked my head like Elvin told me to do and the next thing I knew I had landed in the net. You’re supposed to land on your back. Only that time it didn’t work that way. I dragged my feet when I was leaving the cannon and my left foot caught the bottom of the barrel and my shoe was ripped off. I was lucky my foot wasn’t taken off as well.”

“Were you hurt?”

“No. I got up and Elvin said, ‘Are you all right?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I got my foot caught on the mouth of the cannon.’ ‘You’ve got to keep your legs together,’ he said. So I got in again. That time I was concentrating so hard on keeping my legs together that I spread my arms apart too soon. When I opened up I caught the last two fingers of my left hand on the edge of the barrel and split the webbing between my fingers. My wrist got hurt as well. Elvin gave me the rest of the day off. That’s when I got really frightened. On my way home an old lady pulled out into the road in front of me and I had to swerve my Jeep to avoid getting killed. By the time I arrived at my friend’s house I was shaking like a leaf. ‘Sean, where have you been?’ he said. ‘You’re covered in gunpowder.’ I looked down at my body. My black sweats and red T-shirt were coated in white with splotches of blood everywhere. It looked like I’d been shot. But it wasn’t the shot that freaked me out. It was the lady. She had almost killed me. That’s when I realized my life was about to change.”

For the next several months Sean drove out to Elvin’s house every afternoon at 4:30, took a couple of shots, and slowly learned his way around the cannon. Elvin guided him through the mechanical operations part by part, piece by piece. “It’s kind of Neanderthal,” Sean said, “but it’s brilliant.” Elvin also guided him through the mechanics of flight: keep your back stiff, your legs straight, your toes pointed. Shoot straight ahead, look where you’re going, reach for an imaginary track. Gradually they lifted the cannon higher, Sean flew further. Now his head was straight, his back was firm, but his legs were still lagging behind. “For most people who aren’t gymnasts it’s hard to control your legs,” he recalled. “When you watch somebody dive off a diving board, they can usually control their upper body—their arms and their head—but their legs are always sagging. They have them apart or their toes aren’t pointed. In the air you have to stay perfectly straight, then at the last second, in order to get over, you have to squeeze your butt and point your toes so you rotate over onto your back.”

Within several months opening day arrived. Sean’s parents came to DeLand for the show. His ex-girlfriend was there as well. Sean marched in the opening parade, then almost immediately came out for his act, which at the time followed the tigers. Elvin was frantic with nerves: Sean had never done a shot in the tent, only in the open air. Everyone else was nervous as well. Sean, however, was a beacon of calm. “Elvin said to me, ‘Are you sure you’re not going to freak out? Are you sure you’re not stiff?’ I said, ‘What’s there to be afraid of? Let’s just do the shot.’ So I did the shot. It was perfect, beautiful. Elvin was so excited. ‘I told you I could do it,’ I said to him. He just started to cry…”

Sean went silent for a moment. We had stopped for lunch at a Chinese takeout—chicken with peanuts, Oriental vegetables. He put down his fork. “I can’t say Elvin’s like a father to me because my dad’s an incredible father. Elvin’s different. My dad’s like my best friend, a real-guy kind of father. Elvin’s more like a Leave It to Beaver type of father. My dad was never really strict with me. Elvin’s very bossy. When we left DeLand last year and drove to Brunswick, Elvin asked me to call every day, but I never did. He gets mad, but I tell him I have it under control. He says, ‘That’s why I worry about you. You only call when there’s a problem, so when the phone rings and it’s you, I know that there’s a problem.’”

For Sean’s first several months on the show Elvin’s phone never rang. There were problems, but nothing Elvin could solve. For Sean, cocky about his body as well as his virility, the primary problem was dealing with his colleagues. “I wasn’t from the circus,” he said. “My family wasn’t from show business. They all knew that. I had to be accepted. That was hard, especially on this show where everybody has grown up together. They all said he’s not a performer or anything and now he’s automatically the star of the show. He’s always on TV, he’s got girls in his trailer every night, and he’s got a full page in the program, which, ooh-ooh, is a big deal to these people. To me I couldn’t give two shits, but to them…”

Everyone thought Sean was a snob because he did the cannon. To make matters worse, they thought he was English. “They just wouldn’t speak. I would say, ‘Hi,’ and they would just be cold. It’s that snobbery thing. You know how it is.”

“So how did it change?”

“I kicked a few butts. There were a few rumors around, and finally one day I got mad. If I’ve done something and you’ve seen me do it, tell the whole world, I don’t care. But if you don’t see me do something and you make it up, then I’m gonna get some revenge.”