Larry shook his head at me as if disappointed. Then he jumped off the box and cracked his whip toward the lions, sending them scurrying to the left.
“Life’s like being in a lion cage, mate. Show fear, back down, or turn away from what’s in front of you, and you’re dead.”
Larry advanced directly toward the lions, and the crowd moaned with concern. With a few shouts and some more cracks of the whip, though, he managed to get the lions to line up single file and sit on their haunches. He then made them walk across the top of the jungle gym and jump on and off the large wooden balls at a frenzied pace. He even made Mufasa walk up a seesaw centered over a triangular box, then down the other side as it tilted over.
As Mufasa stepped off the seesaw to my left, Larry walked over to me and pushed me off the box into the middle of the ring.
The crowd gasped.
“What are you doing!” I screamed in terror.
The ringmaster’s voice filled the tent. “Ladies and gentlemen, our brave volunteer is ready to stand up to another monumental challenge!”
“No!” I screamed.
Larry hopped up onto the red box, threw his whip down in front of me, and said flatly, “Your turn.”
“What!?” I took one look at Mufasa, then locked eyes with Larry. “No way! I don’t want to do this, you hear me!?” I turned toward the gate of the cage and saw Henry searching through a ring of keys on the other side. “Henry!” I screamed as I ran toward him, hoping to get the hell out of there.
Just as I reached the gate, Henry looked over my shoulder with fright. “Watch your back!”
I spun around and saw the lions on the other side of the cage eyeing me curiously. Mufasa and two other lions began moving furtively in my direction. They looked up at Larry, then back at me, then took a step, then looked back at Larry, then back at me, then took another step.
“I don’t have the key!” Henry cried out helplessly, his expression telling me I was done for.
Larry called to me, “You’d better start walking over here.”
I looked at him in terror. “Larry, let me out! I told you, I don’t want any part of this . . .”
“You’re in it now,” he said sternly. “You’d better start walking over toward me. Now!”
My legs trembled; I couldn’t find my feet. The image of the lions tearing at the slabs of meat, their heads red with blood, filled my mind.
Mufasa and the other two continued to creep toward me.
“Get over here!” Larry said through his teeth.
The three advancing lions stopped at the sound of Larry’s voice. They looked at him cautiously, but Mufasa didn’t take his eyes off me and took another step. He was now even with Larry on the red box.
“Mufasa is going to attack you if you don’t walk over here like you belong here,” Larry warned. “Now walk!”
I took a timid step forward; Mufasa stopped and cocked his head.
I took another step.
Mufasa lunged toward me.
“Mufasa, no!” Larry screamed.
Mufasa stopped about ten feet in front of me. I stared at him in terror. His mouth was open, and I could see the long, yellowed canines.
“He’s going to charge you if you look at him that way!” Larry hollered.
“I don’t know what to do!” I shrieked. The high, shrill sound of my voice was unrecognizable to me.
“If he charges, you stand tall and scream ‘No!’ at him!”
“I can’t do this!” I shouted.
Mufasa lunged again.
I dropped to the ground and covered my head.
I felt the lion’s whole body run over me. Then a blunt blow to my leg sent me rolling.
Crack!
Larry’s whip. Thank God!
I opened my eyes. Mufasa was standing six feet from me. He roared and flashed his fangs. His eyes were wild.
“Now, damn you, you better stand up!” Larry shouted at me.
I rose to my feet, whimpering, and backed up into the cage bars. Mufasa didn’t take his eyes off me.
“He will attack you again if you don’t show your courage. Take a step into him and scream at him to get back. Scream it with all your soul!” Larry called out.
Larry’s voice seemed muffled to me. My heart beat so loudly that I could barely hear him or the crowd. I just looked at Mufasa in terror.
He lunged again. Spinning around, I gripped my head in fright. I felt a blunt swat on my shoulder and went sprawling to the ground in pain. I looked up, and Mufasa was already in the air, about to land on me. I put my hands over my head and felt his legs slam into mine. He swatted my arms and torso with his powerful paws.
Crack!
Mufasa sprang off me.
I looked through my forearms and saw him crouched and ready to attack, about ten feet in front of me.
“STAND UP OR DIE!” Larry screamed at the top of his lungs. “STAND UP!”
I got up to one knee. Suddenly, Mufasa looked to my right and roared. I turned my head. The ringmaster was thrusting Mary into the cage. She saw Mufasa and let out a high-pitched scream that nearly broke my eardrums.
Mufasa roared at her.
“Mary!” I screamed.
She didn’t seem to notice me. She just froze and stared at the roaring beast.
“Mary!” I screamed again, and got to my feet.
Mufasa took a step toward her and roared again.
“HE’S GOING TO ATTACK HER!” Larry called out.
“NO!”
I ran between Mary and the lion.
Mufasa roared and lunged.
I raised my arms high in the air and screamed, “MUFASA, GET BACK!”
The lion landed right in front of me. His head actually butted into my legs. I barked again, “GET BACK, GET AWAY FROM HER, YOU BASTARD!”
Mufasa’s eyes widened, and he stepped backward and roared at me and at Mary.
I stepped into him and pointed toward the other lions. “Get back there!”
Mufasa looked at me and cocked his head.
“Get back now!” I said, stepping into him once more.
The lion roared and showed his fangs.
I took another step toward him and screamed with all my might, “GET BACK NOW, YOU SON OF A—”
Suddenly, Mufasa backed up several feet. I charged two more steps toward him, and he turned and trotted back to the other lions.
“That’s my boy!” Larry called out.
The crowd came to its feet, roaring louder than the lions.
I looked at Larry and the crowd wildly and felt the blood pumping furiously through my veins. I looked over my shoulder for Mary. . . .
She had disappeared.
I looked back at Larry.
“Something worth fighting for,” he said.
19
THE STRONG MAN
The ringmaster opened the gate, and Larry and I emerged from the cage. The first person I saw was Henry. He hobbled toward Larry and embraced us both in a heartfelt hug.
“You did it!” he cheered.
Larry grabbed my hand and raised it in the air. The crowd was still going wild.
We headed for the aisle leading to the performers’ area. Audience members threw popcorn on us like rice at a wedding. Throngs of people left their seats and patted us on the shoulder.
One of the security guards who had been standing at the entrance to the performers’ area worked his way toward us and helped us get through the crowd. When we reached the flap, he and the other guard had to struggle to keep excited spectators at bay.
Inside the performers’ area, everyone cheered ecstatically for us.
A man holding a handful of long wires tipped with what looked like small, charred marshmallows squeezed past us. He paused, looking at me. “Our hero! Hey, you wanna go back out there now and swallow some fire with me?”
Everyone paused and looked at me expectantly.
“No, thanks,” I said. “After all the action, I’m already a bit burned out.”
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The room erupted in laughter.
After handshakes and backslaps from clowns, acrobats, jugglers, and hoop twirlers, Henry and I finally sat down on two stools in front of the mirrors. Both feeling a little exhausted, we simply sat watching the remaining performers preparing for their acts. There was an unspoken contentment and peace between us.
After a few minutes, Henry chuckled. “I thought Mufasa was going to eat you!”
I laughed. “You and I both!”
“You did good, sonny.”
“Thank you, Henry.”
“I’m proud of you. I knew you could do it. I knew that given the chance and the push, you would do it all—you would take bold steps forward on the tight rope. You would stand up against your fears in the lion cage. I just knew it.”
I sighed. “I don’t even think I knew it.”
“But I bet now you have a newfound belief in what you’re capable of, huh?”
“I do.”
“Good. I really do think you’re strong enough now to stand up to your own fears. There’s just one more thing that might hold you back from changing.”
“What’s that?”
“Are you strong enough to stand up to other people who might prevent you from changing?”
“What do you mean?”
Henry called over a passing juggler. “Hey, Jerry, could you go track down big Mike for me? Tell him I want him to meet someone.”
A few minutes later, a massive man walked over to us. He didn’t really stand so much as loom. Over his huge, muscular bulk he wore a red-and-white-striped shirt, black tights, a big red belt, and black bands around his upper arms. Like everyone else in the park, he looked the part. His barrel chest resembled that of a bull, and his biceps were the size of bowling balls. He looked as if he could throw me across the room like a candy bar.
“Yo, Henry, Jerry said you needed me?” He looked down at me, and I just gaped in awe. He was truly the biggest human being I had ever seen.
Henry smiled. “Well, Mike, I was just wondering if you had a few minutes to talk to the kid here.”
“Sure, Henry. About what?”
“I was hoping you might share your story with him. I think he’s going to have to struggle to change when he gets back home—he might face the same things you did before you were Strong Man Mike.”
Mike nodded and pulled up a stool, and as he sat I couldn’t help worrying whether the legs of the stool would buckle and break. They didn’t, but he presented an incongruous image—he looked like an ox sitting on a toothpick.
Mike sat for several moments, eyeing the ground as though lost in thought. He looked like someone about to undertake an extraordinarily complex task.
“I don’t know your story,” he said, “but maybe you can relate. I didn’t always look like this”—he motioned with his baseball-mitt-size hands. “I wasn’t always Strong Man Mike, jus’ like Henry said. I was a small kid . . . real small.
“The story goes like this. I was born too early. Mom had me two full months before I was due. I was tiny, like a helpless little mouse. The doctors had to put me in a bubble for a few months to keep me alive. There were all sorts of complications. I had a weak heart, a collapsed lung, frail bone structure—stuff like that. I guess that for the first few years of my life my mom and dad were always worried I’d die. Even as I got older there were always trips to the hospital for one thing or another: growing pains, asthma, or just to get medication for everything else. The hospital trips were real hard because we lived way up in the mountains in a small logging town, and the hospital was in a bigger town down in the valley—it took about two hours to get there.
“Anyway, it’s no good being a little mouse when your family runs a timber-cutting business. My dad and older brother, Tom, could have used another pair of hands when they were up in the woods, but Mom always made sure I stayed home so I wouldn’t get hurt. I remember when I was around eight or nine years old, my folks got in a real scruff about me helping out. Dad wanted me to do simple things like haul saws and chains from the trucks to the trees, but Mom was too worried about my weak heart and asthma to let me do anything like that.
“Because I couldn’t help, life was not easy for my brother Tom. He had to do a lot of work. He was only four years older than me, but he always looked like an adult because of all the manual labor he did.
“That came in handy, though, when I hit high school. I was always being picked on because I was so small. Tom, who was a senior by then, would always save the day when I was about to get creamed after school. He was a real guardian angel, the miracle that allowed me to get through freshman year alive.”
Mike paused and fidgeted on the stool as if he didn’t know what to do with his arms. Finally he folded them across his chest and continued, without ever taking his eyes off the floor.
“That summer Dad finally convinced Mom that I should be able to help out. He said that at fifteen years old a boy becomes a man. I was excited to be more helpful—and to be out from under Mom’s wing too. Of course, Dad and Tom still protected me quite a bit. Instead of felling trees with a chainsaw, though, or setting chokers on logs, I got to drive the log truck, or clean equipment, or cut branches or knots off the fallen logs. That summer was the best of my life. I loved being up the mountain with Dad and Tom. It made me feel like a man.
“On one of the last days of the season, there was a big thunderstorm. Dad, Tom, and I scrambled to get all the equipment into the bed of the pickup and the logs onto the truck. By the time we did, the rain was coming down in sheets. Dad told Tom to drive the pickup back home as fast and safely as he could to let Mom know we were okay and coming home. Dad and I always rode together in the log truck—guess he always wanted me around him so he could keep me safe.
“To this day I have never seen a thunderstorm so bad. The rain was coming down so hard that Dad wouldn’t even let me drive—and he was always trying to get me to drive so I could feel like I was being helpful. The dirt road leading down the mountain was steep and treacherous. There were deep, water-filled potholes everywhere. In a lot of spots, little rivers of rainwater were running over the road, and the ditches along each side were beginning to fill with water.
“We were practically crawling down the mountain. About halfway down, we started to hear an odd squeaking noise from the back of the truck. Dad pulled over. Even as slow as we were moving, with all the weight of the logs on the truck, we came to a sliding stop—the road was that muddy.
“Dad said, ‘Stay inside the cab, son. I don’t want you catching cold. I’m gonna check the winches.’ He jumped out of the truck, and a few moments later I heard a snap and a scream. I felt a powerful rocking and looked in the side mirror—logs were falling off the truck.”
Mike paused and wrung his hands.
“I threw my door open and jumped out of the cab, screaming for my dad. He didn’t answer. A couple more logs rolled off the truck and into the ditch at the side of the road. I followed them with my eyes, and that’s when I saw Dad. He was pinned under a bunch of logs in the ditch. His face was covered in blood and mud. I screamed and ran into the ditch. The rainwater runoff was already up to my shins. Kneeling down, I tried to get to Dad through the four or five logs that were on top of him, but I couldn’t reach him. I screamed, ‘Dad, Dad! Are you okay?’
“He opened his eyes and looked at me. He was scared. I had never seen him scared before. Water was running over his legs and waist. He tried to move his arms and screamed in pain. He looked up at me helplessly and said, ‘Son, I can’t move.’
“I said, ‘Dad, I’ll get you out.’ I stood up and wrapped my arms around the log on top of him. I put my whole body, my whole soul, into lifting it. It didn’t budge. I changed my position and tried again. Still I couldn’t budge it. I looked down at Dad. The water was now up to his chest. I ran around the other side of the log and tried to lift it again. I pulled and I pushed and I cried and I screamed for God’s help to move that log. I tore the skin on my han
ds and forearms trying to get a grip on it, trying to twist it or roll it or lift it, but I couldn’t budge it.
“Then Dad screamed for me. I ran back to the other side, where I could see his face. Water was up to his neck. He looked at me . . .”
Mike stopped ringing his hands and lifted them to his face. He sat silent for a few moments. Henry reached over and touched his shoulder, and Mike looked up at him and nodded. The giant was crying.
He looked back to the ground and cleared his throat. “My dad looked at me with the eyes of a man who knew his time had come. He seemed almost peaceful about it. He smiled at me and blinked the tears from his eyes. He said, ‘Son, it’s okay. Don’t you worry. It’s not your fault. No man could have gotten these logs off of me. It’s not your fault. You tell your ma that I loved her all my life, okay? You do that for me, okay?’ I told him I would. Then he said, ‘You tell Tom I’m proud of him, okay?’ I said I would. Then he said, ‘Son . . . Mikey . . . I’m proud of you too. Don’t let anyone ever tell you you’re not strong enough or you’re not good enough. You can do the same things the other kids do. You hear me?’ I cried and said I did. Then he said, ‘I love you, son. I’m so proud of my boy. I’m so proud of you.’
“Then,” Mike said quietly, “I watched my father drown.”
Saying he needed some air, Mike walked through the tent flap to the animal cage area outside. Henry and I sat silently for a few minutes, then walked out to meet him. He was sitting on the back of a wagon full of hay. As we approached him, a lump still remained in my throat.
Mike looked up at me for the first time. “Now, let me finish my story, so I can tell you the lesson Henry wants you to get. After my dad’s funeral, I made a decision in my life. I decided I would never be weak again. I decided to change everything in my life. No more excuses about not lifting or carrying things. No more excuses about not working out or running and playing. I set a goal to be as physically strong as I possibly could—not out of remorse or self-hatred for what happened to my father, but because of his inspiring last words. I could be as strong as anyone else and as strong as I wanted to be. I committed to being that. I had it set in my mind that I could be so much more than a mouse.