Michelle smiled at her husband and took his hands in hers. After several seconds, the tears starting to shine in the black gloss of her eyes, she turned and looked at me. Her voice was almost deathly calm. “That’s when the real battle began.”

Last comes the spin. Like an ice-skater, Michelle has moved gracefully through all of her tricks—spinning hoops, juggling fire, occasionally even balancing plates on a stick—but the act is not complete until she executes the one vivid display that everyone in the tent is secretly expecting—the spiral of death.

“I start on the floor. It’s the first time I’ve actually touched the ground since the act began. I do a little dance, sort of like a mermaid underwater. My husband comes behind me and lifts me off the ground, slowly walking me into space until he gives me a little push. That’s when I start spinning, whipping myself around and around, kind of like turning nonstop pirouettes. I start with one hand over the other like I’m dead, then slowly lift my arms. At that point I get going faster and faster until I don’t know where I am and all I can hear is the beat of the drum, and all I can feel is the pain in my neck…”

And in the end that’s where the trick lies: not in the ring that sticks out of her head, not in the shampoo she uses on her scalp, but in the strength of her hundred-pound body that runs from her back, up through her neck, throughout her scalp, and out of her hair. True to her word, Michelle is the real Samson of the show: her life depends on her hair. Fifteen minutes before every performance she crouches before a plastic bowl in her trailer, pours a pitcher of water over her head, and combs her hair into a long ponytail. Angel stands behind her, ties a cotton rope around her ponytail, then braids the rope into her hair. When he’s finished he folds the braided ponytail into a loop and ties the end to its base at her scalp. Into this loop he places the ring. Michelle Quiros is not hanging by a screw in her head, she is hanging by her hair.

“The funny thing is, I get used to it. It actually hurts more when I first go up. That’s when I feel all the weight. Once I start doing the tricks I don’t feel it at all. Then when I do the spin I feel it again. It’s double pressure at that point. I have to concentrate real hard. I’m listening for a certain part of the music that I know is my cue to open my tuck. That gives me time to come down and do my style. Of course, when I do come down I can’t see anything; everything looks blurry. I go down on one knee, because if I was standing up I would probably fall over. I would look like a drunk or something, and that sort of defeats the whole look of the act. Two seconds later, I’m fine.”

Two seconds after that she’s off. As soon as Michelle settles into place, Jimmy blows the whistle with alarming speed and all the performers scurry from the tent, clearing the way for the animals to return.

7

Please Don’t Pet the Elephants

My dream nearly died in Fishkill, New York. Overnight the peril of the circus became real.

“Did you hear about the excitement last night?” Khris Allen found me in the dollar store. I was looking for cotton swabs.

“What excitement?” I said, stepping closer.

“In the elephant department.” He was not speaking loud.

“Somebody in the circus?”

“Somebody in town. I think you better come see…”

The circus reached New England in early June. After four sold-out days in Princeton we headed north to the Hudson Valley before darting across Connecticut for a two-week trek around Boston. Somehow our entire Northeastern run seemed cursed. In Massachusetts one person ended up in the hospital. In Connecticut, days before that, anxiety reigned. Almost exactly fifty years earlier, in July 1944, the worst circus fire in American history engulfed the Ringling tent in Hartford, killing 168 people, injuring 487 more, and creating a rift between the state of Connecticut and the circus community that has yet to heal. Circus people still feel jinxed by the state, especially after historians concluded recently that the fire was almost certainly the result of arson. The state, meanwhile, still feels threatened by the circus, and as a result charges $7,000 in permits (most places let the circus play free) to have firefighters encircling the tent at all times with water pressure in their hoses.

Fishkill, however, was supposed to be different. For two hundred years the Hudson Valley has been considered the “Cradle of the American Circus.” The area has been particularly generous toward circus animals. Isaac Van Amburgh, the famed wild-feline trainer, was actually born in Fishkill. Old Bet, the second elephant ever brought to America and the first to become a star, was purchased in 1805 by Hackaliah Bailey of nearby Somers, New York. Bailey toured the elephant around New England, but it wasn’t until he threatened to shoot the animal if his partner didn’t turn over half the profits that Old Bet became a national phenomenon. Even after the elephant was shot by a disgruntled farmer in Maine for luring money from the town, Bailey continued charging twenty-five cents a peek for fans to view Old Bet’s stuffed carcass in front of his Elephant Hotel in Somers. A granite pillar topped with a gold-lacquered elephant marks the spot today, and two clowns on our show actually made a pilgrimage to this mecca during our weekend stay in Fishkill—just thirty miles away.

“The evening started funny,” Khris explained as we walked out of the Dutchess Mall. The sun was high—summer was coming—but the air was fresh and spicy to breathe. “When I came back from the bar I found this couple playing with the tigers. They had climbed over my fence and were trying to pet the cats. The woman had actually stuck her hand into Tito’s cage. I told them if they didn’t leave I was going to call the police and have them arrested for trespassing. They said they were so in love with the cats that they just had to pet them. I pointed to the exit and they eventually left.”

We approached the portable orange fence that surrounded his compound. The smell of rotting horsemeat swirled around the cages. The red-and-white-striped canopy reflected the noonday glare.

“Twenty minutes later I was just lying down to sleep when I felt my trailer rock. I have the fence tied to my bumper for that reason. It’s like a silent burglar alarm. I hopped out of bed and ran outside—I wasn’t even wearing pants—and that’s when I saw them next to the cages. ‘Get your motherfucking asses away from here!’ I yelled. ‘And stay away! If I see you around here tomorrow, or the next day, I will have you put in jail.’ They climbed over the fence. Only that time I followed them to their car. I waited for about fifteen minutes and when they didn’t leave I went back to get my whip. I walked up to their car, tapped on the window, and in my best tiger-ruling voice said, ‘If you don’t get out of here you’re going to end up in the hospital!’” Khris smiled with a certain degree of satisfaction. “They started the car, and vroom, took off. I went back to the trailer and lay down. That’s when I heard the noise from the elephant compound.