Page 54

Excerpt from The Heaviest Weight: A Mighty Memoir by Matthias Martin

On May 27, 1911, Dreamland went the way of dreams. The blaze gobbled up several city blocks, the bathhouse, and the pier before four hundred firemen finally doused the last embers. The Sun blamed it on maintenance workers making electrical repairs on the Fighting Flames ride that night, but two jitneys says Frankie Agostinelli ghostwrote that bullshit.

After that, the scandal of Sam Morgan’s and the Prince of Atlantis’s disappearances swept through Coney Island faster than the fire did. Theories ranged from the mundane to the obscene, with an especially popular thumper claiming Sam had offed himself to escape conviction for setting the Dreamland fire. Those of a more dramatic persuasion started the rumor that Poseidon came ashore and killed Sam as retribution for holding a merman captive. In other, especially secretive circles along the waterfront, folks speculated he’d become obsessed with the merman and died of a busted heart.

Don’t ask me what the true story is, but Sonia—who got to calling herself Mary again after we discovered her on the beach that morning looking rougher than an August pinecone—swears that last one hits closer to the mark than the rest.

The rumor mill didn’t stop the papers from painting a pretty portrait of Sam, with long-winded reflections of his life as “the showman in green whose wit and style was a keystone in Luna Park’s historical legacy.” Only his familiars in the company knew the thorny bit where he’d sold his soul to win a war that had nothing to do with Dreamland in the end.

With his playground in ruins, Reynolds never did resume his mission to out-amuse Luna Park, which opened right on schedule to a crowd that saw the shuttered doors to Morgan’s Menagerie of Oddities and got right on with living, as folks do. The immediate question to answer was, who among us was batty enough to steer our ship into uncharted waters if Sam wasn’t around to do it himself? Personally, I was more interested in retiring after a few more seasons than running a show myself, nor were many of my fellow freaks keen to take up Sam’s distinguished mantle—except for Mary. A year after the Prince of Atlantis act opened and closed on the same day, our establishment was resurrected under a new flag: Schneider’s Wonders of the World. Mary’s show was a near-instant success, though whispers on the boardwalk said a mutually beneficial arrangement with some folks of questionable character had given her a head start once she threatened to take her story to Tammany Hall.

As seasons passed and folks started asking themselves what enjoying a sideshow said about their morals, the crowds thinned, and Schneider’s Wonders became a museum—a time capsule of the days we were gods and millions from all walks of life came for the entertainment and left with that savory taste of hope and possibility that still makes New York City run to this day. But before Thompson and Dundy’s amusement haven went the way of Dreamland, our little company of born and self-made curiosities enjoyed our most fruitful years.

Vera’s Phoenix persona reached immortal status when she chopped off her hair in the ’20s and traded her bustle for a belt of torches and a candelabra hat. It was around that time Lulu finally ditched that fake beard and started spending the offseason devoting her talents to making fine dresses for women of rare size.

Igor and Madam Navya fell in love over a bottle of vodka. Their marriage, apart from prompting gasps from crowds who’d never seen a ten-foot-tall man married to a two-foot-tall woman, ensured they had someone to argue New York baseball with for the rest of their lives.

Meanwhile, Timmy stopped climbing Madam Navya’s bookcases. Once he was big enough, he scratched that itch by joining Schneider’s Wonders as an aerialist. And when science had decided all conjoined twin sets ought to be genetically identical, Eli and Emmett reinvented themselves as the famous juggling vaudeville-style comedy duo the Three-Legged Pants.

As for me, seems the only thing harder than lifting two thousand pounds is writing a goldang memoir nobody’s gonna read. But I’m writing it anyway because when you get to my age, you find out memories are about the only things worth holding onto. And, to that end, I’ll never forget my friend.

The last time I saw Benny Caldera, brother was running barefoot into Hell carrying one of nature’s greatest mysteries on his shoulders, and I don’t mean a merman.

You’d never guess by looking at him—that brown, Caribbean smithy who barely came up to my armpits and fiddled with his chain whenever his nerves got louder than his asthma—that he was made of stronger metal than the iron he hammered. Then again, things in this town are rarely the way they seem. Courage is a weight heavier than anything I’ve ever lifted, and you only had to watch Benny disappear behind that wall of flames to realize he had more of it than most people have need to carry for themselves.

But, wouldn’t you know it, the kid kept his promise. A year after Sam’s show sank, Oscar Barnes showed up bamboozled in his new coveralls at the stage door of Schneider’s Wonders of the World, a sandy absinthe bottle in his fist. Damp and worn inside it was my old flyer for Morgan’s Menagerie of Human Oddities with the instructions written right across my chest: “Pls. deliver to Matthias Martin at Luna Park.”

Dear Matthias,

It’s just like you said. Ain’t no being free on the outside unless you’re free on the inside.

Tell the gang I’ve got no regrets. I’m more myself than I ever was, and I’m never alone.

But if you’re the sort who needs to see to believe, come to the Iron Pier on a clear night when the tide is in, and the moon is full. Look for Río and me.

We’ll be waves on the water.

Siempre ,

Benigno