Family Circus
Let’s hear it for the Fearless Flores, a small South Texas troupe that’s keeping a seven-generation tradition alive. But beware—the Globe of Death is suicide.
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After a few more acts—a freelance foot juggler, a clown and balloon act, and “Miss Linda and Her Terrific Terriers!” in which roughly a dozen shivering, wide-eyed rat terriers wearing ruffles around their necks jumped through hoops, danced, crossed high wires, dove off platforms, and slid down slides to the tune of “Sweet Georgia Brown”—Chela sauntered to the center of the ring, her two-and-a-half-foot-long hair wrapped up in a bun surrounded by silk flowers. Dressed in a white-and-beige-sequin leotard, she swayed and flipped on the rings effortlessly. Again, the crowd applauded. She left the ring. Then Frances came out as “Miss Sendel Sebrine.” She wore a belly-dancing outfit this time, with a red veil that hid her face, and she posed while Linda opened a cage of pigeons. The pigeons, it turned out, didn’t want to perform, and so Frances improvised a belly dance. Tito waited for her choreography to lose its verve, then shouted, “Let’s hear it for Sendel!”
“And now,” Tito said, “please welcome, for your circus entertainment, the Fearless Flores in the Globe of Death!” This was the part of the show the Floreses loved. It was a stunning finish. Tito cued up dance-club music. The spotlight on the globe in the darkened tent gave the appearance of a small space and heightened danger, and when the act was finished and the Floreses pulled the motorcycles into the center ring for their bows, the crowd stood and cheered wildly.
As soon as the audience had left, the Floreses packed up their gear. The warm air had turned thick with humidity, retaining the smell of dirt washed with rain. They ate buckets of fried chicken that had been laid out in the bed of a parked pickup. Tito’s daughter danced with Frances to “You Sexy Thing” and “Respect Yourself.” Tito was joined by Bill Loter, Linda’s 45-year-old brother from Farmers Branch. For a living, he sells cotton candy and delivers cakes. He is a skinny man with wild blue eyes, a freckled and sunburned face, and small teeth strung across a wide, open smile. “Well, Tito, you did a great job in there,” he said. “This is one of the best shows I’ve seen this year, and that’s really saying a lot.”
“We had a good audience here,” Tito replied. “It’s getting harder and harder to draw people out to shows, though. People see a circus tent now and they say, ’Oh, a circus,’ and keep driving. We should have concert lights and techno music. That’s what I play for my globe act. People always compliment me on that.”
“Yep,” Bill said. “It’s just not like it used to be. It’s a dying art.” Tito nodded. “Seriously,” Bill said. “All those folks in Hugo are on oxygen tanks now; you’re the next generation. There was a time when—you know how you used to be able to get into a circus tent for free? Go in and say you were a Loter. Not anymore. The Loters are all getting out of it. Loter blood is down to a trickle.” He stared at Tito hard, almost threateningly, but Tito stood unruffled, perfectly postured. “You’re about all that’s left.”
MOST AMERICANS THESE DAYS ARE nomads. Once they pass high school age, they frequently leave the neighborhood, town, or state in which they were raised and they begin anew. Years ago, when generations of large families populated towns, circus people were considered dangerous: They weren’t tied to one spot where repercussions and responsibilities governed behavior. But the tables have turned. These days, people who were born into circus life have easily adjusted to the road, floating across the states like a roaming neighborhood, while the rest of the country separates and relocates to alien territory, uprooting once every few years to begin all over again. But there is a price to being a resident of a roaming neighborhood. One night on the road, Frances needed some privacy. She called her sister on her cell phone while sitting in the Globe of Death. After she hung up, she stayed perched on the side of the cage and invited me to come in. The metallic glow of a fairground light was just far enough away that the black metal of the globe blended with the dark blue sky. She checked the messages on her green-glowing phone to see if any of her cousins had called. Once in a while, she explained, a towner guy was charmed enough to ask her out on a date, but she knew they’d just hang out a few hours and then she’d never see him again: Circus people date circus people. “My family is dear to me,” she said, “but … my best friend is my sister, Vicky, okay? Once in a while I’ll just fly over to see her because I miss her, and we just hang out. We don’t go out. I like it.” She picked at the calluses on her hands. Her face fell and she shrugged. “I guess … you know. I’m a little lonely.”
IN PONTIAC, MICHIGAN, THIS PAST May, Frances and Victor stayed in Tito’s trailer while the trio performed at the Shrine Circus. Tito watched his wife—by this time six months pregnant—fold baby clothes while Cyndel fell asleep under the soft yellow light of the kitchenette table. Though it was eleven o’clock at night, Victor had just gotten around to eating dinner—chalupas. He balanced a plate on his knees and ate on a couch in the trailer’s shadowy living room. Frances stood in front of the bathroom mirror and brushed her hair. She was excited because the Tarzan Zerbini Circus, in which Vicky and her husband perform, was setting up on the other side of the U.S.-Canadian border that night. Frances had heard that a few of the circus guys her age were going to hit the Canadian casinos, and she wanted to be ready in case they called and offered her a ride.It had been a long week. The family had been performing the Globe of Death and the high-wire motorcycle acts several times a day for a huge, five-ring show in the Silverdome, alongside other group and solo acts, which included two flying trapezes, tigers, elephants, ponies, horses, chimps, baboons, sway poles, magicians, a high wire, three Globes of Death, a space wheel, a human cannonball, and a man who doused himself in a flammable liquid, lit himself on fire, and jumped off a fifty-foot pole. To give the $10-a-head show more pizzazz, the Shriners gave it a modish title: Circus Xtreme.
At the Shrine date, the Floreses were able to chat with other performers between acts, after shows, in the dressing room hallway (which smelled, at various times, like elephant dung, cotton candy, and sweat on metal), and during an elephant keeper’s sixteenth-birthday party, a potluck cookout held in the elephant barn. Almost all of the performers spoke both English and Spanish, even though only half of them were Hispanic. Most of them worked for bigger circuses. Everyone asked questions about who had been traveling with what circus and where they had purchased equipment; they flattered each other’s children, each other’s performances, each other’s homemade outfits. Victor didn’t say much to anyone. He picked up a hamburger and quietly ate in a chair, seeming as content as the elephants that were snorting and swaying in beds of hay five feet away.
Earlier in the day Tito and I had sat in the stands during a lightly attended matinee show. He told me that his dad has passed the baton to him, teaching him how to produce the Fearless Flores Thrill Show at fairgrounds. Soon he would learn to produce even bigger events. “Next year, that’s my goal,” he told me. “To produce a Shrine date. In two years I’d like to have that going all the time, then my dad wouldn’t have to perform if he didn’t want to. Of course, I’d still perform. I mean,” he paused to find the words. He started to laugh, his hands on his chest. “I’d perform if I won the lottery. Okay?”
That night, back in the trailer, his confident half-squint had softened from exhaustion, and he stroked Chela’s arm. He began to talk about what it might take to get by and wondered about the risks of getting ahead. “I want to be consistently good,” he said, “not inconsistent and risky. Fame is not worth it to me.”
Frances yelled from the bathroom, “It is to me.”
“Right,” Tito said gently, with a shrug. “It is to Frances.”
She walked into the living room of the trailer, gesturing with the hairbrush as she got serious, and said, “I want to be the old woman who walks into a show and everyone turns around and says,’That’s Frances. She used to do this and this.’ I work hard. Shouldn’t I let people know it? I want the glory.” Tito looked at her affectionately, and she began to laugh. “Well?” she said. Then she walked back to the bathroom. Victor and Chela said nothing.
“All I want to do is support my family,” Tito said. He thought about it, then he grabbed the table and a smile opened on his face. “No. All I want is a dynasty. Is that too much to ask?”
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