The Tale of Undroppable Joe

by Rascal Valentine

 

Sure, everybody's heard of Pecos Bill and John Henry. Johnny Appleseed, Mike Fink, they're all old news. But you sit yourself down and I'll spin you a yarn you probably haven't heard - the Tale of Undroppable Joe.

 

What Paul Bunyan was to the loggers, Undroppable Joe was to the traveling circus. I don't mean those high falutin' glitz factories. No sir, Undroppable Joe was the patron saint of the real circus, the one that arrived in a train at midnight and woke you up with the noise of the roustabouts raising the canvas and filled your ears with the cotton candy strains of the calliope parading down Main Street. There, just after the lion tamer with his cracksnap whip, would come Undroppable Joe.

 

He rode a unicycle usually, and decided that a seat 20 feet high was about reasonable, so as to let the crowd see his juggling and avoid the phone wires and occasional phalanxes of ducks. Strong men whimpered and ladies fainted like ice in July at the sight of Joe perched on one hand with his legs pointing straight up and his other hand turning a pedal. Far below, the wheel of his unicycle unerringly ran along the top of a two-by-four so greased up that a schoolboy couldn't walk it.

 

Really, they needn't worry. Joe practiced riding fence rails in his spare time, blindfolded and reciting the Gettysburg Address in pig Latin. Then he'd stop, motionless, and do it backwards, right down to the last "goaway earsyay evensay andyay ourscorefay." Joe was so good they joked that he wouldn't drop a lick of sweat in Hades.

 

Numbers? Joe stopped doing numbers when he was seven­years-old and realized that the audience couldn't tell the difference between 23 eggs and 15. No, Undroppable Joe was into the esoterics of ballistics. In Melbourne he juggled five kangaroos of varying size and ended with a shower that landed each in the other's pouch. In Kentucky he multiplexed seven greased piglets and a hen, and when the hen laid an egg in flight he didn't miss a beat, going into nine just as natural as ice cream on apple pie. And no one - not in the circus, in the audience, or even his parents - ever saw him drop. Gravity declared a holiday around Undroppable Joe, and any circus he joined played to a full house whenever Joe was around.

 

If you weren't watching him juggle, you wouldn't notice him much at all. He wasn't tall, nor short, nor slender, nor especially muscular. His hands were like any other hands, hair bushy and black, neither scandalously long nor tight lacedly short. One curious thing about Undroppable Joe, though, was his mouth. There was a singular lack of activity, other than eating, around his mouth. He never spoke a word, even during a show, and it wasn't until an elephant stepped on his toe that anyone ever heard him speak. The word, of caurse, was "AAAUUUOOOTCH!" and in that brief expostulation the elephant fell over, dead, trunk quivering in the sawdust. Joe looked around frantically, seeking escape, but it was too late ­ two handlers and a midget had seen the whole thing, and even now were running away, doubled over, trying to keep down their lunch, eyes streaming with tears. Joe knew the word was out, literally, and packed up to find another circus.

 

Joe's lack of audible oration was due to his lack of oral sanitation. This lack was as complete and utter as darkness on a moonless night, with neither brush nor soap coming near his lips. Even water was chased immediately with a clove of garlic wrapped in goat cheese dipped in a nice pesto sauce. Joe lived on a diet recommended by his mother, and he honored his parents completely. This is all fine, but combined with his complete hygienic lapse, it became lethal, as poor Jumbo discovered.

 

Ever had a streak? I mean a time when the planets were aligned, you saw seven eagles before breakfast and pennies seemed to grow under your feet when you walked? Undroppable Joe hadn't brushed his teeth in 27 years. He'd not dropped so much as a grain of rice with chopsticks in the same amount of time. If it wasn't true to begin with, his superstition over the coincidence made it real to him.

 

It wasn't so bad, really. Word got around to all the circuses eventually, and Joe found himself still welcome into any ring. If people tended to stand upwind of him, just in case, well, that was the price of greatness. And so he kept on juggling, kept on pedaling, and kept on ignoring the laws Sir Isaac came up with so long ago.

 

Then one day he came to the circus in Peshtewaunoko, Wisconsin. It was an ordinary circus but for one attraction: Lydia the Tattooed Lady.

 

They wrote a song about her, but I've yet to hear of a female less deserving of the title "lady." She was tattooed alright, upside, downside, frontside, backside, even inside I hear. But lady? She'd show anyone anything, just for the asking, and not out of kindness, mind you, but simply because she was as puffed up as Snoopy in a Macy's parade, and liked to flaunt it.

 

When Undroppable Joe arrived on that fateful day in July, she was wearing at least enough to make almost a whole handkerchief, strategically glued to draw attention to the very attributes they concealed. And everywhere were the tattoos, which looked more like a collaboration of Bosch and Escher with Dali doing the details.