The Fear In Yesterday's rings

cans, but nobody ever had to support me. There's no way you could know this, but this is the longest I've been sober in a lot of years. I don't even want a drink. The reason I don't want a drink is that the minute I woke up in the hospital and saw you, I knew you'd been taking care of me. I'm too used to having people depend on me, Mongo, and I can't stand to be dependent on anyone; I'd rather starve or freeze to death. When I realized what you'd done, I knew I was going to have to find a way to earn enough money to pay you back. That's more important to me than booze.'

Phil Statler, I could see, was going to be a problem; there's nothing more difficult to nurse than someone else's wounded pride. 'Phil, you mentioned kindness, and how difficult it can be to repay. Well, think of all the kindness you showed to me, the skills you nurtured in me, and then the fame and fortune that those skills brought me. But the greatest gift you gave a certain defiant, defensive, and decidedly self-conscious young dwarf was an opportunity to live with dignity and self-respect. I wouldn't be where I am now, Phil, and I certainly wouldn't be anywhere near as comfortable with myself as I am, if not for you. As far as I'm concerned, this is at most simply payback time.'

Phil sighed, once again looked down at his coffee cup. 'I appreciate it more than I can ever say, Mongo,' he murmured.

'I'm well aware of that, Phil. No problem.'

'And I'm going to find a way to pay you back.'

'Whatever you say, Phil. In the meantime, I'd take it as a personal favor if you'd think of this place as your home. It's a big house, as you can see, and I've been kind of clanking around in it since Garth moved out. I'd like you to keep me company, at least until you get your strength back and your plans in order. When it comes time to reimburse me for medical expenses, or whatever, I'll give you an itemized bill, if it'll make you happy. I'll always think of you not only as my mentor but as a second father. Now I'm asking you to let me be your friend. Please accept my help, Phil, until you're back on your feet.'

He looked up, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again when tears welled in his eyes. He nodded, then rose and retrieved the coffee pot from the warmer on the stove. He refilled both of our cups, then sat down again. 'What do you know about the circus business these days, Mongo?'

'Well, there's the Big Apple Circus, and Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey still comes into Madison Square Garden for a few weeks every year. Aside from that, I don't know much. To tell you the truth, I always had mixed feelings about being in the circus. Despite the fact that you'd made me a headliner, I still felt that being in a circus was somehow just too common for a dwarf.'

Phil shook his head impatiently. 'I don't understand what the hell you're talking about.'

'People expect to find dwarfs in a circus; it's like going to see The Wizard of Oz.'

'I still don't understand what the hell you're talking about.'

'It doesn't matter.'

'It's the same as I could never understand why you quit the circus to take a job as a college professor after you got that doctor's degree. You were at the top when you quit, and I know you were making a hell of a lot more money than you were ever going to make as a professor. Hell, the world has college professors up the ass, but there aren't a whole hell of a lot of circus performers who could do the stuff you did.'

'There weren't-aren't-that many dwarf college professors. There are a hell of a lot fewer dwarf college professors than there are circus performers.'

He stared at me for some time, and I could see pale shadows move in his pale eyes as he struggled to understand. 'Ah,' he said at last, raising his gray eyebrows slightly. 'You mean it's the same thing as saying there aren't a whole hell of a lot of dwarf private investigators?'

'Now you've got it.'

He shook his head slightly, brushed a strand of gray hair back from his eyes. 'You're a pisser, Mongo. Always were.'

I grinned. 'Garth always says I have a tendency to overcompensate. But it all started with you.'

'Yeah, well, I guess maybe you got out at the right time-even if you did just about break poor Mabel's heart and leave me with an elephant nearly nobody else could handle. The days of the real Big Top were about over, and everybody knew it but me. Ringling had already started developing into the mechanized arena show it is now, and it wasn't long before the Cole and Clyde Beatty people started going down the same road, booking up all the largest indoor arenas along their routes and cutting back on everything that wouldn't fit into one ring inside some goddamn armory.

'At first I was delighted to see Cole and Clyde Beatty going that way. Hell, our circuits had always overlapped, and we'd always been fighting tooth and claw to be at the top of the second-tier circuses, behind Ringling. Now, the way I had it figured, my competition had written themselves off by going into the indoor arenas. Statler Brothers Circus was the only genuine Big Top left in the whole goddamn country, not counting the little mud shows, and I couldn't imagine that parents and their kids would be content to sit inside some air-conditioned warehouse for two or three hours to watch what amounted to a vaudeville show when they could spend a day at a real circus, in real tents pitched in a field where they could wander around the midway or through the sideshows as long as they wanted, and then go inside a real Big Top to watch a real circus.'

'And you were wrong,' I said quietly.

The old man grunted, took another sip of coffee, said: 'Yeah, I was wrong. I still don't understand it, Mongo. I kept doing everything the way I had been doing it, the way I'd been taught by my father and uncles. I got the best performers I could find and paid them well, kept a large stable of good animals and kept them in peak condition; I had the most interesting freaks, I made sure that the food at all the concessions was quality stuff, and I made damn sure that none of the carny barkers ripped off the rubes. But attendance just kept dropping off. Each year it got worse. I tried upping the advertising budget, but that was like pouring money down a rat hole. Toward the end we'd be playing matinees outside some town and we'd get maybe fifty people inside the tent. And damned if the other shows weren't packing people into the indoor arenas.'

'There may be no place left in this country for real circuses anymore, Phil,' I said evenly. 'People just don't have the time, or maybe the patience, to spend walking around circus grounds. They're not interested in watching animals being fed. They want packaging, shows they know will start and end at a certain time; they want to be able to get reserved seats, and they want to be comfortable. Once you saw that you weren't getting the people to come out anymore, why didn't you follow along after the other big players and book indoor arenas?'

He shrugged. 'Even if I'd wanted to, by that time it was too late. The other shows were already in place in the arenas, and they had exclusive contracts-as far as circuses were concerned- with all the best sites. Besides, it would have meant cutting loose the freaks and getting rid of more than half the animals.'

'And you wouldn't cut back on operations.'

Phil glanced at me sharply, smiled without humor. 'Cut back on operations? Is that what you'd call it, Mongo?'

'Phil, I know-'

'What was I supposed to do with people like Roger, Harry, and Lisa? Give them a pink slip? Where were they going to find work? Some of those freaks had been with me since they were teenagers, just like you; they weren't just employees, they were family. You know freaks can't just go out and find some other job. I wouldn't go on welfare myself, and I wasn't going to put any of my family on welfare; cutting them loose would have meant just that for a lot of them. And what about the animals? Zoos don't like circus animals, even when they have room for them, because circus animals don't do well in zoos. Hell, put Mabel in a zoo, and she'd end up killing some keeper. Sell them off cheap to some mud show or carny operator? I'd rather shoot them myself and save them the misery. We took in Mabel from a carny man, Mongo, remember? You remember what kind of shape she was in?'

'I remember, Phil. So the bottom line was that you couldn't bring yourself to lay off anyone, or cut loose a single animal, if you weren't sure they'd be well taken care of. But there was no other place for them, as you saw it, so you had no choice but to try and keep going.'

'That's right; I had to try and keep going. It was a bust, but I don't regret it even now. I'm a circus man, Mongo. I don't know anything else-and, to me, those shows you see sitting in a steel shed in the middle of some goddamn city aren't really circuses. I sank everything I'd saved over the years into the circus to try to keep it together. It took everything I had. Then I started losing my best acts, because I no