Two weeks ago they set up a circus in our town, pitching a sky blue bigtop with spindly flaps and banners with clowns, little people, and an insane flying elephant. The elephant is loving life, propelling himself forward through the air with a massive thrust of his sailing ears, carrying a parcel of triumphant zoo animals on his back, also the Mario Brothers and what looks to be Sonny and Cher, and he is swooping right at you. They parked their two campers with HERMAN CIRCUS emblazoned in blue and red on the outer sides at right angles to form one corner of the stockade, backed in two semi trailers to complete the front, one of which was in fact a ticket booth and gate complete with tin stairs and runway and bulbs, and finished off the rest of the enclosure by parking their six jalopies inside an eight-foot chain link fence that they erected. All of this they did one night on the outskirts of town in a field next to the long brick building and whitewashed wall which is where the preacher’s compound begins, next to the church where he has the little empty 4×4 houses set up for his treatment program.
The very next day the circus sent out a perifoneo on a VW Bug to cry the performance around town at top volume, on every single street in Talagaya, to which lines were observed to have formed the same evening. People went to the show, apparently, but as we crouched in our doorway we had to notice, with our little cocked ears, that there was no noise, not even music or shouting from over there, nothing at all whatsoever to indicate the people were having a good time like they do at a rodeo or a Lucha Libre. You would not have known there was a circus in town, and we scratched our itching scalps and doubted inside our raincoat as we stood and picked our teeth, by this time far out in our yard, straining against the chickenwire that forms the fence that keeps out the dogs from the property.
And we are not crazy, it has all been confirmed: aside from the lady who drove the Bug that day not a single human being has been seen to stir in the circus yard, not even a wiggle of sky blue tarp or clunk of metal in there, or a guffaw of drunken carnie, not even the clink of one goddamn glass bottle. Since the single function two weeks ago the circus has just sat in the dust of the valley, under the volcano, not even breathing.
Today I saw the local little person, Eduardo, emerge from the alley behind the circus compound, legs swinging like wooden doll legs because of their shortness, also because he was running. He had on his green hoodie with the hood covering up his face, eyes burrowing into the ground like an angry monk’s, fists on arms thrust into the hoodie pocket moving like a boxer’s. He walked quickly away from the circus tent as though from a job interview that had gone south, and scrambled into the creek bed to skirt the town rather than walking back up Libertad past the church and the cluster of folks at the sweetbread boy’s where the basket sat propped on the back of the motorcycle.
I shall continue to update you on Herman Circus, though I don’t even dare look at the tent or campers when I hustle past, urged on by an unknown and gnarly fear, whether they have boxes of guns or gimps in there, or serve as infrastructure for some mid-level distributor, or run protection in the communities, or who gave them permission to park on our land, maybe the crazy gringa mayor, and worst of all just the silence in there, the utter lack of life and breath despite all the trappings.
Colin Gee (@ColinMGee on X) is founder and editor of The Gorko Gazette. His latest novel Robinson Crusoe Maybe is out with Urban Pigs Press.
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