The first rumor involved drugs. At the beginning of the year Sean made the bang that accompanied the cannon shot by pumping acetylene gas into a balloon. He would turn on a torch, snuff out the flame, then inflate the balloon with the gas. One day he snuffed out the flame incorrectly, and when he went to squeeze the gas the balloon exploded in his hands, shredding his shirt and burning half the skin on his stomach. Nellie Ivanov gave him some baking soda to put on the wound. That night he was sitting in his trailer when some of the workers came by. “They saw me with this pile of baking soda on my table and said, ‘Man, sell me some of that.’” The following day Kris came up to him and said, “Sean, you better watch what you do. Word travels fast around here.” “What are you talking about?” Sean said. “I heard you were selling cocaine to the workers.”

A week later the rumors had him in jail. In Utica, New York, Sean went to watch a Chicago Bulls game on television with Jerry, the clown. In front of the lot they asked a policeman for directions and he offered to drive them himself. “The next morning I got the manager knocking on my door,” he recalled. “Boom, boom, boom! ‘Sean, Sean, are you in there?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Really?!’ he said. ‘How did you get out of prison?’ As soon as I got out of my trailer everybody was going ‘Hey, jailbird. We heard you got arrested. Big cannon man had a little too much to drink.’” One of the young workers on the front door told everyone Sean had been arrested. “I wouldn’t have been mad,” Sean said. “But word goes back to Elvin. You get one of these shit-ass workers who goes to another show. Say these people want me to work there. ‘Oh, man,’ they say. ‘That guy’s a troublemaker. He’s a bum.’”

To prove he was not a bum Sean decided to beat the guy up. Unfortunately for Sean he never got the pleasure. The man, sensing danger, blew the show first. Sean responded by beating up the man’s friend who had earlier confessed to spreading the rumor. In the prison mentality of the circus, Sean was now considered a man.

“Suddenly people started talking to me. ‘So, how did you get into the business?’ they asked. ‘Tell us, how did you get hold of Elvin? Are you family with the Bales?’ First I couldn’t get a ‘Hi’ from them and now they’re asking me questions. It’s just like they’re doing with you now. ‘So, why did you join the circus? What do you think of life around here?’ As soon as that starts happening you know you’re one of them.”

By the time Sean had finished his story we had finished our lunch and decided to check out the one remaining possibility for shoes, Boscov’s department store. As we cut through Women’s Clothing on our way to Sporting Goods we overheard two women who worked at the store, which was located directly next to the lot. “They must be really weird…,” one of the women said. “You better believe it,” her friend added. “Just wait until they come in here and start washing their babies in the sink.” As soon as we heard this, Sean stopped in place and walked back in their direction.

“Are you two talking about the circus?” he asked.

“Yes,” they said.

“Well, ladies,” he said, yanking up his sleeves, “have you looked out the window? You see those trailers out there? In the circus we live in those, and, for your information, they all have bathrooms. So we don’t need to wash our babies in your sink.” He hesitated for a moment. His skin was becoming flush. Should he stop, he considered, or should he continue? But by now he realized these women weren’t talking about them anymore. They were talking about him. “You see this watch?” he said, now getting caught up in the hyperbole of the moment. “It costs three thousand dollars. This bracelet costs five hundred. That’s more than you make in a week. In the circus we all live in three-hundred-thousand-dollar homes on the beach. We work nine months of the year. In fact, we make more in a week than you make in a month. We don’t need to wash our babies in your sink, and we don’t need to buy anything in your store. And if I were you, I would just shut up.”

He spun in his tracks and stormed out the door. I followed him outside. Later that day a man from the big top department walked into the store through the exact same door and shoplifted two cassette tapes.

Danny Rodríguez knew why someone would steal. Sitting up late the following night in a plastic beach chair near his half brother’s trailer, he was complaining about a lack of money. Hardly starving, he was wearing blue-jean shorts that reached to his knees, black high-tops that climbed to his ankles, and a red Chicago Bulls tank top that hung halfway to his thighs. Basically he looked like a rapper, albeit an immobile one, for underneath his oversized duds he was still wearing a neck-and-shoulder brace from his tumble off the swing.

“Do you know what time it is?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“No?” he mocked. “You’re not supposed to say, ‘No.’ Don’t you know anything about the circus by now? You’re supposed to say, ‘What do I fucking look like, Big Ben?’ or ‘What am I, a fucking watch or something?’ That’s the way to be a member of the Clyde Beatty family.”

Actually Danny Rodríguez wasn’t feeling particularly close to the family these days. Since the accident it had turned on him full force, starting when his immediate family had rejected his explanation for his fall. Feeling beleaguered, Danny was considering splitting the show. For him it was a matter of money.

“I tell you, this show is rolling in cash. Everyone gets it except us. They have to pay all the marketing people, the cookhouse, and don’t forget the band. Also, it costs over a thousand dollars every time they fill up the trucks with diesel. And all that hay and shit for the elephants. The performers don’t get anything, man. Sean makes less than five hundred dollars a week.”

“A friend of mine came to see the show,” I said, “and I was telling her how much work there is. ‘And of course you make ninety grand a year to do it,’ she said.”

“Shit,” Danny said. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her the clowns make one hundred and eighty dollars a week.”

“Tell her I wish I made that…” As he spoke, a loud crash came from No. 63, where the workers were having a payday bash. Meanwhile one of the bears was wailing in his cage because his brother had been donated to a zoo. “Do you know the only people who make any money on this show? The butchers. One guy made three hundred dollars last Saturday selling hot dogs. You can make six hundred dollars a week selling peanuts. Just look at the trailers. The concession people—Larry, David—they’re the ones with the expensive trailers. Look at what the performers have, driving around in these pieces of shit.”

“But those jobs are hard to get,” I said.

“My cousin is assistant manager of concessions on Ringling. He could get me a job selling Sno-Kones or something. You can make good money butchering, I’m telling you. Somewhere between forty-five thousand and a hundred thousand a year.”

“But why would you leave your family?” I asked.

“Because I want to buy a house, a car. I don’t want to raise my kids on the road. Let’s just say I get married—” Danny halted himself in mid-sentence. Maybe the rumor was true, I thought. Was Danny not telling me something? He returned quickly to his tale. “I couldn’t afford it. My father gets okay money, but it has to support four families. He couldn’t afford to give me more right now, and the truth is, he’ll probably never be able to. There used to be a lot of large families around the circus. But look around, we’re one of the only ones left. Nobody else can afford it.” He sat up in his chair and straightened his brace. “Look, man, I want my children to go to school. I wish I had gone. I wish I could have played football, baseball. I might have sucked, but at least I would have had the chance. Here, you work every day, you live on the road, and for what? You wake up every morning hurting, all sore and shit. You’re ruining your body. When I first arrived here I bruised my body and couldn’t work for a month. Last year I tore all the ligaments in my shoulder. This year I broke my collarbone. My brother broke his foot. This is a dangerous business.”