The Surest Thing in Show Business

THINGS didn’t pan out in Texas, so my wife, Jerry, and me, we come East in our old car, hauling a trailer loaded with three hundred pounds of snakes, an old cheetah, and a bear cub. We found this place we could rent on the highway, just outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, on the Tennessee side, so we decided to give her a try. It had a large clear space for parking and was on a long mountain grade going into the Smokies. A long grade that way will get you traffic that stops because the motor gets overheated, and then too, the kids will be yelling they want to see the snakes. So between the radiator and the kids, Daddy, he can’t do nothing but stop.

Jerry, my wife, she helped me paint the signs, thirty-nine of them, all bright yellow and red enough to dazzle your eyes, and we tacked them up for two miles along the road on either side of the place, but mostly on the downgrade side. I was able to pick up three fair-size iguana lizards and a couple of pretty good Gila monsters from other reptile folks passing through on the way to Florida, and by the time traffic started really coming through in June, Jerry and me had a nice palisade wall, an admission booth, a free ice-water fountain, a free radiator water tank, and a Cherokee squaw named Lizzie who held down the candy, cigarettes, and souvenir stand.

Lizzie was okay, only she cussed and swore when she got excited, which had got her fired from her job at a souvenir joint inside the park. And, too, she was somewhat of a problem at first because she wanted to call me a swear word, and I don’t like to have nobody but myself to swear around Jerry. What Lizzie called me sounded like sumitch, all one word: “Gimme some change for this goddam drawer, sumitch.” She wouldn’t call me by my own name, Jake, so finally we hit on a sort of middle bargain. “How’s about just calling me Mitch?” I says. And after some practice it worked out okay, and that’s how come we changed the name to Mitch and Jerry’s Reptile Show in place of Jake and Jerry’s. For in show business you got to be ready to wheel and deal and bargain a little if you make it. And any show around the Smokies that don’t have at least one real Indian is like a kite without no tail.

By July we was going full blast, and I had took on an old man and a boy to milk a couple of afternoons a week so I could tend to building more animal cages and ordering hot snakes in place of the old ones we brought with us. The old man couldn’t do no more than hang a snake’s mouth over a milk jar and grin — I mean he didn’t actually milk out no venom and never learned — but he had a good line of gab and always drank a little dab of colored water he hid in the jar ahead of time, and the crowd liked him. Another thing, the old man put on he was more feeble than he really was and made his hands look real shaky so they figured he was going to get bit any second. And that’s the whole secret. You go in there to make them believe you might get bit. But now the kid, he milked good and he handled them good and took all kinds of chances, but he made it look too easy and he never got the attention the old man did. The kid never got the point that you can’t make it look too easy.

So ON the Fourth of July the stranger showed up, one of those long pale guys in a shiny blue suit too small for him, wearing shoes that were never meant for walking — the pointed kind that might have been yellow when they were new — and of course he had walked about a hundred miles. He stayed around the Cherokee’s counter for about two hours until she told him to get the hell away from there. Then he hung back a little distance like a stray dog and just stared and waited. Then about noon he got some free ice water and hiked on and I just wrote him off of my mind like a bad debt and patted myself on the back for having got a smart Indian out front like Lizzie, even if it did mean changing my handle a little bit. About four o’clock that afternoon he was back. He marched right up to the ticket window like he had money and asked Jerry, my wife, if the boss was around. He didn’t need to explain that he was down on his luck. I guess the thing was that he had a Texas drawl and an unexpected soft voice. All of those fellows’ voices will startle you, though. The voice never sounds like the guy looks. It’s the road that does it. Jerry just pointed at the palisade gate with her thumb, and he slipped right on in on me. I could hear Lizzie swearing when he opened the gate. You would have thought some of the animals was loose. But Lizzie didn’t have no use for white men in any form or fashion, especially his kind. They don’t take too kindly to walking tourists up in the Smokies, for the walking ones never want to buy nothing and are always looking to put an honest Indian out of her job.

He come in and closed the gate behind him and give a sidelong glance at the cheetah, which was napping on his sawdust bed in one corner of his cage. I was just through with the three-thirty show and was trying to make a six-foot diamondback get on in his box. He was a new snake and was still hot as hell. I just kept coaxing him with my snake hook and holding that tail, and the other guy waited real polite till I had the diamondback in the box.

“Well?” I says. He was a pitiful sight. With everything else he had a blond mustache. It made him look like the next rain would dissolve him. But then he spoke up, brighter and more eager than I looked for.

“I need a stake.” he says, waving one long hand like he was fending gnats away from his eyes. They were bright and yellow, like the Western sun, and Texas was right there in his voice so that he got to me fast, like remembering home and the old folks. But us show people are softhearted anyway.

“I found a little hick place over the ridge there,” he went on. “talked them out of the high school auditorium for this evening to do a reptile show.” The hand went hunting down into his pocket, the back pants pocket of the blue suit, and I couldn’t hardly believe my eyes when it came out again. “I already collected fifty dollars in advance.” He unfolded the bills one right after the other on top of the glass reptile case at his elbow. The snakes raised up and rattled a little and then laid right back down. They were the last of that original three hundred pounds, and they were getting wore out in a hurry. The most of them don’t live over six weeks.

“Hey,” I says, “I’d call that a pretty good stake already.”

“Yeah,” he says, “only I ain’t got any snakes.”

And there it was. He had located a school and store and a clump of houses up there on the edge of the park, and in three hours he had to be back up there ready to put on a full-feathered reptile show and he didn’t have so much as a frog in his pocket. It wasn’t any wonder to me at all, because if I’ve learned one thing after twenty-five years in show business, it’s the fact that there ain’t a single living American that ain’t had a great-granddaddy or a stepuncle or some connection like that who was swallered whole by a rattler. Understand, they never knew him, but Granny told them about it, which makes the rattlesnake the surest moneymaker in American show business. They will pay to see what swallered Granddaddy every time. Of course you have to expect the comments. If you have an eight-foot snake — it’s another story, but me and my brothers did have one once, a Florida diamondback, and we was so scared of him that we would have almost rather been shot at than to work him. It took three of us to handle him. and never a show went by that some smart bastard didn’t pipe up and remark how he killed ‘em bigger than that with his bare feet every morning, right by his kitchen door. “You call that a snake?" they yell. But then that’s part of why they pay, and in show business you got to roll with the punches.

So he just stood there with the money laid out on the glass over them dying snakes, and I finally says, “And they even let you leave with the money.”

“Yeah. I told them my truck was broke down and I had to get it fixed before I could bring up my reptiles.”

“When is the show for?” I says.

“Seven o’clock,” he says, “in the Hartsville High auditorium.”

“You handled reptiles much?” I says.

“You bet your boots. Hell, it’s practically all I ever done.”

“You want hot snakes?” I says. There was two kinds, the fresh hot ones, straight up from the Mexican border and feisty as a coon dog pup, and the old ones, so weak you couldn’t hardly put them into a coil unless you just took and wound them up like a piece of old rope.

“Whatever you can spare. Snakes, lizards, anything you can lend me. I’m willing to pay. The money’s right there,” he says, tossing his long sand-colored hair out away from those eyes where it had drooped while he was looking down.

THE crowd was grouping up real nice about the arena next to us. I could see the glare off the white sand floor lighting their faces. I took a red balloon out of my pocket and blew it up and tied it. Then I stepped out into the middle of the arena and let it drift down onto the sand floor. Their eyes all went after it like a bunch of bees swarming with their mother queen. “Now folks, the show starts in just a few minutes,” I says. Nothing can get quiet so quick as a crowd around a snake arena.

Then a kid yells: “Where are the snakes?”

“Now just be patient, Sonny. I’ll be rounding up the stars of the show right away,” I says, and this woman give a hysterical laugh, something like a coyote, and I ducked back into the reptile shed. The stranger had put one of the hot snakes into a coil, a four-foot Mexican green rattler.

“Now there’s a hot one, ain’t he?” I says, trying to cheer him up.

“Yeah,” he says, “he’s a jim-dandy.” He turned his eyes on me and brushed his hair back from his forehead. “How much?” he says.

“I ain’t going to charge you nothing,” I says. “I know what it’s like to be down.”

“Well say, that’s mighty swell. I ain’t no beggar, understand.”

“Naw,” I says, “I’m glad to do it. Only thing, I don’t see how I could get anything over there to you much before seven thirty, daylight lasting like it does now. But if seven thirty won’t be too late, I’ll box up some stuff and hustle it over to the schoolhouse for you in my car. How’s that sound?”

“I can hold them thirty minutes easy.”

“Well, I got to get started. This here is a continuous show all afternoon, so I’ll see you at half past seven.”

“Couldn’t be better,” he says. “Mind if I watch your act?”

“Help yourself,” I says. I saw him sticking his money back into that rear pants pocket as I picked up my snake box. I left him there in the shed and stepped back into the arena and put my box down. They were still watching the balloon. I took out my snakes and put them each one in a coil by slapping my foot down at them, making a semicircle of coiled rattlers and starting my spiel. I looked up and saw he had elbowed his way to the rail. When I looked up the next time he was gone.

Before the milking act I took out one of my new iguana lizards. You got to be careful about how you hold an iguana because he’s got a bite like a bulldog. The only difference is he don’t give you no warning first, no growl, no frown, no hiss. He don’t even quiver his eyes or show his tongue before he bites the very bee-devil right out of you. I held his head with all the iron I could get into my grip, and when I was done I took out a Gila monster. The old Gila was strong as a young steer. I held him the same way because a Gila is just like an iguana, only worse — once he gets his fangs into you he starts chewing like you was a plug of tobacco or something and you haven’t got no alternative but to cut his head off to get him aloose. By then you’re poisoned sure enough. So I was glad when I had worked the lizards and got them back in the box. I announced the milking act, and the old man came stumbling out with the kid right behind him and damned near scared the crowd to death. The kid brought the little milking table with the cocktail glass clamped to it, and I milked one and the old man did one, or made out like he did, and then I squirted a little stream of it right out in the air, just to prove to them it was real, squirted it right out of the snake’s fang and got another coyote laugh out of the woman. I had just turned around when the old man started to howl and stuck his hand in his mouth. The crowd laughed some because they all thought it was a phony. They always think the real thing is phony, but I didn’t even have to look at his hand to know it was real. The old man’s face looked like a batch of cold grits at four A.M.

“Oscar,” I says to the kid, quiet-like, “drive him to the hospital and don’t worry about blowing out no tires.” They went out and directly I heard the car take off outside and I had lost my best helper, probably for the rest of the season. I had it to myself for the rest of the afternoon, for when Oscar come back from the hospital he was too shaky to do nothing but stand around trembling like a tramp in January. He said the old man was in awful shape, that he was having a rigor and they had cut his arm open and all. “Don’t tell me about it,”I says. “I ve been bit before. But he kept on, which is the trouble with them natives in the Smokies, that they can’t shut up once they get shook. So finally I had to either tell him to go home or get my own self bit just to get away from him. So on the Fourth of July, like it will always happen in show business, I lost my extra help and had to clean out the cheetah’s cage and tend to the armadillos all by myself and doctor the bear cub’s paw where some tourist had give him a lighted cigar, until I was plumb whipped.

IF JERRY, my wife, hadn’t asked what that guy wanted I guess I would have forgotten him all the way. As it was I didn’t start putting anything in the boxes until seven thirty, and then it was harum-scarum. I just grabbed up the first things I could lay my hands on and marked the cardboard boxes on the lids. Since I hadn’t had no assistants to go behind the crowd and start them clapping, there hadn’t been no applause all afternoon and Jerry could see I was whipped out. It’s that applause that keeps you going in show business anyway. I went on marking the boxes, and Jerry says, “I hope he realizes what a favor you’re doing him, after what all happened. You look wore out, Jake.”

'•Look,” I says, “will you just start putting these here boxes in the car? I promised him seven thirty. He’s up there on the ridge now trying to hold his audience.” I was in a hurry, so I just put on MO for Mexican green and TDB for Texas diamondback and c for Gila monster and so on, right on the top where he could read it before he took the lid off. I took the hottest stuff we had and piled it in the back seat and grabbed a snake hook and we took off, me and my wife, Jerry, fast as the old car would run. The last word the Cherokee yelled when we left was one I don t like to hear said around Jerry. I could tell that Indian squaw was against us giving any helping hand to a walking tourist. “He had a nice way of talking,” Jerry said while we rolled up the mountain. “Texas,” I said back to her and reached out for her little hand and give it a big squeeze.

I guess it was eight o’clock anyway before we got to the schoolhouse, and he had crowded more natives into it than I would have thought was staked out in all them hills. Not only that but they were waiting just as faithful and polite as a bunch of treed house cats. A few had stood up and were jawing a little, but when Jerry and I came in they sneaked on back and sat down like they was trained that way.

The reason was right up there on the Hartsville High School auditorium stage, and when he opened his mouth it wasn’t any wonder. If his spiel was a little wild, it was anyway one of the best I ever heard. Before Jerry and I could get the car unloaded and get the boxes on the stage, he had me believing I really was his “assistant, as he called me. Not only that, me and Jerry both hurried whenever we went out to the car for more boxes, so we wouldn’t miss too much of what he said in his introduction. It wasn’t any question but what he was good. And every time I took him a box onto the stage I tried to take him aside to explain about the markings on top, and every time he gave me the most elegant my-good-man treatment, waving me off and telling me where to set the box, until I just finally gave up.

I’ll say this much for him. He did save us two seats down front which I appreciated, for I was in a notion to have a little nap during the show. In fact, if somebody had of told me anything could keep me awake, I would of laughed. But we hadn’t sat down good and I hadn’t closed my eyes quite shut, listening to him run on about Africa and Tibet and Peru and Norway and jungles and all, until Jerry’s elbow, which is a sharp little thing, come into my side like a pool cue. I snapped open my eyes and started to say something rough to her, and then I looked at the stage and swallered my words whole. For he had put a Mexican green rattler into a coil and set a four-bit piece on its head. I heard him say it three times: “Now folks, I’m going to push that fifty cents off on the floor with my nose.”

“Aw, why don’t he do something,” the woman on the other side of me says.

Jerry had hid her face against my shoulder. There just wasn’t no way for the Mexican green to miss hitting him in the face. I figured we wouldn’t get him outdoors until he’d be dead. And there his crowd was, already bitching and griping and him up on the stage like somebody bobbing apples without no tub, right over that snake’s head, and it rattling so fast it was singing. He was doing a stunt that I had not seen or heard of, and which I knew I would not ever see again. In show business you always save your best stunt until last, and so I knew then what he was and where he had probably escaped from. It was the kind of stunt to end your life, instead of your act. I kept wondering if he had got the idea somewhere that their fangs had all been pulled out. The snake missed him three times and three times he put his four-bit piece back on its head. The last time he got his nose down and pushed the money off. By then it had sort of got through to the crowd what he was up to, and when that money hit the floor the last time, you could hear it roll. Then the snake struck and missed. It struck right through his hair, where it was hanging down, and I saw him brush it back with that quick flip of his head. He started up his spiel again, and I started wondering if maybe he used his hair that way on purpose. I didn’t have to wait long. He was talking and opening boxes and the snakes were getting out mostly by themselves. Sometimes he stomped at them and put them in a coil, and other times he just let them come on out like they would or even dumped them. Then he reached in a box and hauled out the iguana by its tail. He held it up right in front of his face and laughed.

“Folks,” he says, “I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t know what this thing is.” It was the truth, because he scratched it on the head. I kept waiting to hear him scream. But the iguana just hung there like he was in a tree at home and let that guy do anything he pleased.

Then he found the Gila monster. “Now,” he says, “I do know what this here one is. This here is a Gila monster.”

He handled it like it was stuffed and had its jaws wired. In fact he sort of waved it about while his spiel went on. I could feel my heart jumping, and Jerry’s fingernails dug into my arm until it was starting to get numb. “You’ve heard lots of folks say Gila monsters is poison? Well, my friends, this little old lizard is not poison at all. People have told a lie on him all these years, and this evening I’m going to prove it to you. I’m going to show you he’s ab-so-lute-ly harmless. Yes, friends and neighbors, I want you to watch me now. I’m going to stick my own tongue into this little feller’s mouth.”

“Anybody knows they ain’t poison,” the woman next to me says. “He sure is a gyp, ain’t he?”

“Well, what did you expect?” says her old man.

It’s the only time I ever left Jerry alone like that since we been married, but I just took her fingers aloose. “You ain’t leaving?” she says.

“Yes,” I says. “I’ll be just outside if you need me.”

“I’ll holler for you when the monster latches on,” she says.

“No need,” I says. “I ain’t going more than a mile. I’ll hear him okay.”

There was several guffaws as I walked out and I turned just once to look, and sure enough, he had that lizard up and was trying to poke his tongue in its mouth. I just hurried on outside and leaned up against the wall of the school building, feeling dizzy. I felt to make sure I had my pocketknife. Somebody would have to catch him and hold him while I cut the lizard’s head off and then prized it off his tongue. I didn’t know if I’d be up to it, and it was right there, the first time, that I wondered if I could stay on with show business. Inside they was busting gussets in all directions, laughing like a bunch of stooges. Then 1 heard his spiel again and risked a look inside the door. He had put the Gila monster up and was moving into something else. He had put a Texas diamondback around his neck like a scarf.

I went on back in and sat down by Jerry.

“Everybody knows he’s yanked the teeth out of every last one of them pore varmints,” the woman by me says. “A fake, that’s all in the world he is.”

“What happened?” I says to Jerry.

“He couldn’t make the lizard open its mouth,” she says.

After a few more things, like’ milking venom straight into his mouth, he wound up his show and Jerry and I started the applause. It was kind of seedy. I didn’t say anything. I just helped get everything off the stage and back into the boxes. Then we loaded the car and he crawled in the back seat instead of sitting up front like I asked him, and we started back down the mountain.

I figured he wanted to get in the back so he could pet the iguana some more. Anyway I was too sore at him to say anything for a while. Finally I asked him what his name was.

“Doug,” he says.

“Where did you say you worked reptiles before, Doug?” I says.

“I ain’t going to lie to you,” he says. T guess he thought it over then, for he paused before he finally said the truth. “Tonight was my first time,” he says.

And then he told us he had worked around oil fields mostly and was just coming East when he saw our place there on the road and saw Lizzie behind the souvenir counter. I felt like stopping the car right there and kicking him off the side of the ridge, but in my business you can’t always yield to temptation and make a go of it. I had to bear in mind that the old man was in the hospital snake-bit and Oscar was so shell-shocked over it there was no telling when he could go back to milking again. So I waited awhile until I could get a hold on myself. We passed the first one of our signs. It drifted by in the headlights. “Doug,”

I says, soft as I could manage, “how would you like to learn the reptile business?”

“By gummy, Mitch,” he says, “I was hoping you would ask me that.”