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I wonder if the clowns laughedwhen they woke to the fire that burned in the caged sleeping room of the Hagnebeck-Wallace circus trainin the early morning before dawn. Laughter, like how one laughs during times of stress,with those large painted on grins,or perhaps as the blood cools to a slow moveright before the capillaries harden and the morphine is no longer needed, or maybe the tittering on about moving from town to townentertaining children for 25 cents a head,not quite enough to dine on home grown corn and steelat the edge of industry—those early years—when the sharp screech of brakes and the smell of hot coal steam enchanted the public’s “freaks” and vagabondsto climb on boardenticing them with the promise of coinand the hope of a place called home, but when hysteria broke,failing to wake the sleepingcarnivale familywrapped in each other’s warmthin those cold corners of morning,burning ensuedto the awe of gathering spectatorswatching timbers collapse on nameless souls, imagining Bombay, the Man from Indiain his last mid-air summersault over the flamesor maybe even a walk on a wire.The singed animal flesh, a feast for the deadcalling all to step right up and witness the last freak show,yet, making certain the black soot and heat of the emberscould not reach or smudge or even mutate the grotesque fascination that the poor and the migrant could tarnish another era of the American ideal.