The Cannonball

They would like me to sit at the end of the barrel and wait my turn.

First the elephants dance, then the clowns cast their pies, then the lions roar and the tigers hiss and only at the finale, is the fuse lit--

The Cannonball.

I stagger my breathing as my body crunches up to fit inside the narrow pipe. No matter how many times I execute my stunt, the sweat still finds me in all the worst places. On the underside of my chin. The back of my ankles. In a small pool tilting upon my right ear. I tell myself that if even a molecule of my own sweat falls off me, I will have failed.

And failed at what?

Regardless of my own superstitions, the cannon will fire. I will be propelled out of it. Provided I don’t somehow magically alter the very form of my body, I will advance in a steady arc towards the net placed carefully and strategically above the audience on the other side of the circus tent. The net has been erected hundreds of times. The tent, maybe even more. The audience will always gasp. The tigers will always hiss. Nobody believes me when I tell them tigers hiss, but why not? They are cats, after all.

As to failing, there are a myriad number of ways to fail aside from failing at your overall task. Each task in life is made up of other, smaller tasks. Some logical, some illogical. If I have a heart attack when the cannon goes off and pass away as I’m exiting the structure, I will have failed at defying death while performing a death-defying feat. I will have failed at entertaining the kind of audience that likes to see a man survive the difficult-to-survive, but I will have succeeded at entertaining the morbid kind of audience that enjoys a bit of bloodshed amongst the clowns.

I might not be expelled from the cannon at all. I come from a long line of cannonballs. My uncle once gained an extra pound in between shows, and when the blast went off, he didn’t move an inch. The force, however, was so strong that it took his hearing and half his mind. From that day on, he was relegated to picking up after the horses as they paraded themselves around the center ring. My uncle lives in my thoughts, but he is the only tragedy in my family. My grandfather, my father, and all my brothers have never failed to find their way out of the cannon.

The trouble is, they always wind up back in it.

When I turned fifteen, I sought after every occupation that would have me. Two shifts in at the fabric factory and I was let go for having “dreamy eyes.” The girls on the other side of the belt would stare at me. I had the aura of a showbiz man, no matter how many coats I wore or how unruly I let my hair become. The same happened at the dairy farm and the grist mill. Even when there were no women around, men found themselves distracted by me. One incident involved a tussle behind a bar where I was tending to winos, wherein I was accused of hypnotizing the customers.

It became evident that I would need to familiarize myself with a helmet and a flashy costume and report immediately to the Big Top.

My family was only too thrilled to hear via letter that I had rejoined their professional lineage. Training took place one afternoon before my first show. My father took the train in from Baton Rouge to do the instructing. Twas more than just a “Do this, do that.” It was a rite of passage. In I went, the imaginary fuse lit so as to not make waste, and my father made a “Boom!” sound to signify what I’d hear at the culmination.

Nothing can prepare you for that first time, but the steps remain the same whether there is fire or whether there is not. You both are the ride and along for the ride all at the same time.

Dozens of shows passed. I became restless. While inside the cannon, I would practice what little education had given me. Multiplication tables, Shakespearean soliloquies, and the names of every clown that had passed through the show before becoming too high or too drunk or too enmeshed in scandal.

That’s what I attempt to do now as the fuse scatters itself to naught.  I list names and consider what sort of controversies I could find myself in if I wished to leave the circus behind me, which, of course, I do. Despite my early failures, my failures now seem to be driving me deeper and deeper into the cannon. Perhaps one day I’ll wind up like my uncle. Failing even to do the thing that science says must be done. A force moves an object. No object is immovable. Religion agrees with science on that one. It is the one area where agreement can be found.

I hear a countdown. The ringmaster has the children worked up today. They scream the word ‘five’ as though it is ‘Merry’ and ‘four’ as though it is ‘Christmas.’ My father would always say that you make a wish on ‘two’ and if you wish hard enough, you’ll find your wish granted at the halfway point between the cannon and the net.

I make my wish as I always do.

The two turns to one, and then--

I am trapped in air.

Air around me, crowds holding breaths, trapeze bars swinging, clowns holding pies, an elephant flapping its ears, and somewhere, at the halfway mark, I feel it.

I feel the wish coming true.

For it is not into the net I go, but up through the hole above the center ring. The sky welcoming me as its newest cloud. The clouds cheering me on as though they have seen every act, and mine is the most worthy of joining them. I go up and up, but there is never an end to the up. No space, no stars, no moon. Just sky and sky and sky.

I’m free.

Down below, far out of hearing’s reach--

A tiger lets out a grateful hiss.