The ringmaster’s voice interrupted the scene. With Jenny left standing at the altar, Sean excused himself to go do his act. By the time he returned Jenny’s mother had arrived. “‘Sean,’ Jenny said, ‘I want you to meet my mother.’” Sean went over and shook her hand. Jenny’s father was parking the car. “‘Mom,’ Jenny said, ‘Sean wants to marry me.’

“‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I love your daughter.’

“‘That’s good,’ her mother said. ‘That is very good. But what about my husband?’

“‘I’ll tell him,’ I said. ‘I don’t care. Let’s go tell him now…’

“‘No,’ Jenny said. ‘No, we can’t. I’m afraid.’”

The second show started. Jenny went to find her father. During intermission she reappeared.

“‘Guess what?’ Jenny said. ‘My mom told my dad.’

“‘And…’

“‘He said he likes you. He said you’re a decent man. You’re clean. You shave good.’”

Shaving? For months Jenny’s father had been observing Sean. In Florida he had seen the act. In Louisville they had shared a dressing room. In Greenport, finally, they met face-to-face.

“I went to see him after the show,” Sean said. “He was standing by himself. ‘I love your daughter very much,’ I said. ‘I want to marry her.’

“‘Sean,’ he said without hesitation. ‘I want you to know. This is the happiest day of my life.’”

Two days later Sean Thomas Clougherty and Jenny Montoya were married in a private ceremony near Yaphank, Long Island. That day he twice got shot out of the cannon.

“The funny thing was, I never even held her hand until I asked her to marry me,” Sean said. “I never even kissed her until we were engaged.”

“So in the end, Kris was right,” I said.

“But I wanted it like that. I wanted it to be all new with the girl I married.”

“You’re just an old-fashioned romantic after all.”

“I guess you could say that.”

“So why do you think her parents were so happy?”

“Because I’m a good guy.”

“No, you’re not,” I said. “You’re a jerk.”

Sean laughed.

“Anyway, you’re not Pentecostal.”

“So what? You can always change. I told her I would be willing to do anything to marry her. She said, ‘I don’t want you to change just for me; I want you to change for God…’”

No sooner had he said that than Jenny walked through the door. Though it was still quite warm outside, she was wearing a straight beige skirt that stretched to her ankles and an off-white blouse that was buttoned around her wrists. Her skin was unpainted around her eyes. Her brown hair hung straight to her waist. She looked like a piece of smooth, unvarnished wood. She was beautiful. Unadorned.

“Isn’t she the greatest wife in the world?” Sean asked, sitting up and slapping his thighs.

“Isn’t he just silly?” she countered, pushing him down with insouciant aplomb.

Earlier in the evening the two of them had invited me for dinner—stewed chicken and rice, Wonder bread and butter. It was the first time I had seen silverware in Sean’s trailer. It was the first time they had received houseguests. All night the two of them alternately bickered and cuddled like the strangers and newlyweds they still were. “You are the most hyper person I know,” she said to him when he jumped on her back and kissed her neck. “You are the most stubborn girl I’ve ever met,” he retorted when she slapped his hand away from the stove. They would snap at each other, apologize quickly, then roll around on the floor in a frantic embrace. “It’s just that time of the month,” Sean whispered. “All girls are like that.” “It’s just right after his act,” she countered. “All circus boys are like that.” After dinner she washed the dishes and took the leftovers to Michelle and Angel while Sean lay on the bed and recounted their story. The number of pillows had blossomed again. Not only mauve, now, but fuchsia and lavender. Sean’s old black blanket had disappeared. So had his gold necklace with the Florida Gator.

“Did you tell him what happened at church?” she said, finally arriving on the bed.

“I was just getting to that part,” he said, putting his arms around her waist.

“Stop it,” she said. “We have company.”

“He’s not company,” Sean said. “He’s Bruce.”

He tickled her for several seconds until she finally gave him a kiss. Then he returned to his story. The day after Jenny moved into his trailer Sean agreed to attend Sunday-morning services at a local Pentecostal church. “It’s not like it came as a total surprise,” Sean said. “In recent weeks I had been reading the Bible a little with Michelle and Angel. In Commack a priest came to the lot several times and showed us the right way to read it. Once you know, it all makes sense. For Jenny’s sake I agreed to go.”

“But you have to admit,” she said. “Even you were surprised.”

“We went to church,” Sean said. “It was Angel and Michelle. Jenny and myself. Mari and even Juan.”

“Juan went as well?” I said.

“It was his first time. He had been reading all along, but he never wanted to go to church. You can’t make anybody go. They have to want to do it, or it won’t work. I think he was upset about Danny.”

“So what happened?”

“We were sitting there all through the service, and at the end the priest said whoever wanted to be baptized should raise his hand. I thought about it for a second, then raised mine. At that point I tapped Juan on the leg. He didn’t want to do it at first, but then, out of the blue, he raised his hand. He said he felt something inside him push his arm into the air. The priest said, ‘Yes.’” Sean pumped his fist like the athlete he once was. “Anyway, we stood up and went in front of the entire church. We changed into a thin white gown and stepped into the pool.”

“The priest was in there with you?”

“The priest was right in the water, only he was wearing fishing waders so he wouldn’t get wet. We stepped in the water. He said a blessing, and then he dunked our bodies in the pool. That’s when I had the feeling. It was like a wave of lightness that came over my body. I wasn’t myself anymore. I felt free.”

“You see, a lot of other religions baptize you when you’re young,” Jenny added. “But at that time you haven’t done anything wrong. It’s important to go through this experience after you’ve committed a lot of sins.”

Jenny’s voice was earnest, her body was erect. Sean, however, was still unsure. It would be several months before he felt comfortable enough to regain some of his former spunk. At the moment he was mostly supine.

“And what about these sins?” I asked Sean.

“Well, I don’t drink anymore. I’m trying not to curse. To tell you the truth, I feel a lot better. I do crave a dip every now and then. But all of those things are bad for you, even if you do them a little. It’s probably better that I don’t.”

“We’re not perfect,” Jenny said. “But God doesn’t expect us to be. We pray for each other. We’re trying to do better. Whatever God has planned, that’s what will happen—”

Far away the generator emitted its midnight cough and slowly, inescapably, ground to a halt. Within several seconds Sean’s circuit breaker snapped and the lights went dark in the room.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Sean asked.

“Why? Don’t you have battery power?” I said.

“Only when we hit a bump in the road and the cables under the sink stick in place.”

“Sean, we have to get a new trailer,” Jenny whined.

“But I like it in the dark,” he cooed.

I made my way to the door.

It was late Friday night on the eve of September, less than a week later, when I walked into Ruby Tuesday’s behind Atlantic City Raceway and happened onto Darryl from the props department and a few of his friends at the bar. Like almost everyone else, they were dreaming of escape. Our race down the coast, now well under way, was moving much faster than our ascent. After a few weeks on the Jersey shore and a brief stop on Chesapeake Bay we would be making a long autumn dash toward the Gulf of Mexico, followed by the gradual slide toward winter quarters in De Land. Darryl and his buddies, like many of the workers, needed money for the journey. I decided to ask them my “question of the day.”