When the circus packs up and leaves town/ part 2

when the circus packs up and leaves town/ part 2

fiction
Edward w Pritchard

repost, edit when the circus packs up and steadily moves out of town:



Farmers, store keepers, women and children milled around a long time after the circus packed up and steadily left town. The ground shook from the trump of the elephants, the squeak of the wagon wheels carrying the fat lady and the fire eating boy could be heard for a long, long way off and you could see the red hair of the world's tallest man for over a half mile before the entire circus retinue was out of sight; steadily traversing Cario hill off southwest to Centerville the next venue, more than 500 miles south by West. Old men shared a bottle of store whiskey, women sat alone lost in private thoughts and children traced notes and pictures with fingers in the rutted dusty roads embedded by the wagon wheels after the squeaking of the circus caravan could be heard no more.

For four glorious days our lives were transformed by all the performers of the three ring circus but now the strongman who wrestles a giant bear, the woman who trains miniature horses, and the rest of the troupe are all gone. Off to the next paying gig. We here in our little town have many new things to think about for our lives have been changed by exposure to the troupe. The wanders stir up new thoughts and philosophies in us and we feel we have a new way of seeing our tired little town. Secretly we hope that we have changed the performers a little; as if they will remember our ordinary town as a special place, not just one of a hundred they have set up and broken down their tents in.   

Back to our lives tomorrow. Bills, lingering illnesses and diet foods will return to our center stage. Still a gleam in our eyes and a smile across the heart is a residual memory of the moment we first heard the thud of the circus caravans rolling into our ordinary insignificant lives.

There is a part of us that likes to believe that the performers in the three ring circus remember us nostalgically too; as if our place is a unique special place and not just one of hundreds they will eventually perform their act in. We know that on cold Winter evenings alone we will take out the old fading circus posters and stare at the bright faces of the performers and late at night we will dream of the sites and sounds of new places where our old friends in the circus troupe sit at small square tables in rickety chairs smoking French cigarettes and drinking  Irish whiskey and share tales of all the places they have been. In their old beaten water soaked trunk, where they store the exploding cigars, collapsible knives and green wigs we secretly hope there is a folded old map of our town, waiting for important use the day, someday in our future, just south of Cario hill that the circus troupe rolls ceremonially into our vanishing lives again.