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An excerpt from Puppet by Robert Stutt

Everywhere various flying objects spun, fell, and bounced. A couple of unicycles wove through the gathering. I dumped my coat and boots by the door, laced on my court shoes, and headed to the mats for a little stretching. Several of the regulars called greetings. I lay back on a gym- mat and squeezed a thigh to my chest.

Deep breaths, slow count to ten.

Juggling is a kind of meditation for the hyper-active, a physical mantra, a flashy gateway to the moment. When juggling, if you think ahead—you drop. If you think behind—you drop. The only place your consciousness can be is right there inside each flowing tick of the present, each distinct toss and catch. Pure focus. No animal has ever learned to juggle. It’s what separates us from the beasts. The two ingredients required to learn three ball juggling are time and effort. Most people don’t juggle for the same reason they don’t ride unicycles —they’ve never tried.

Juggling five balls, well, that’s different. Adding those two extra balls is what separates the men from the boys in the juggling world. Five balls require real talent. More than a few of the guys here tonight could juggle five balls. Fred Sivel sometimes had moderate success with five clubs. But say you wanted to see a continuous cascade of seven clubs then there aren’t many places you can go. One might be front row at the Moscow State Circus, but another was right here at the Elizabeth Street Public School on this deep winter Tuesday evening in January.

Boslav Indrikov’s arms and hands flashed like manic pistons below the shimmering fountain of seven spinning clubs, his hands catching and throwing twice a second, his legs flexed and solid, very little movement through his chest, shoulders and head, upper-body stillness being essential for such accuracy. Legend has it that, while he was training at the Moscow Circus school, Boslav’s juggling teachers bound his upper arms to his torso for hours at a time, all in the name of precision.

Somewhere inside the spinning tower two clubs touched, igniting an implosion of high impact plastic. Boslav ducked and covered up. We’d all been hit on the head by spinning clubs at one time or another. It’s like being smacked with a Corvette.

The seven clubs bounced and rolled while various whoops and cheers broke out from the assembled jugglers. Everyone had stopped to watch. More than a few mouths hung open.

I howled and applauded with the rest.

“Hey, Jimmy.” Joey Decola, alias Joey Toronto, threw his coat onto the pile.

“Hey, Joe,” I said.

“You want to do some passing?”

“Sure. Just let me warm up a bit.”

He moved closer, lowered his voice. “I got a call from the police on the weekend.”

“Let me guess. They asked about me.”

“Yeah. Wanted to know if you were here last Tuesday night.”

“My alibi.”

“Alibi? For what?” I hesitated, but it was all public knowledge now. “Did you hear about Kurt Heppel?”

“Sure. The sex abuse thing. Wild. What an asshole.” Then the connection came to him. “Oh yeah. That’s your show.”

“I do the puppet, yeah. Wild is right. Anyway, the police are checking out everyone.” At least, I hoped they were checking everyone. I hoped it wasn’t just me. “Sorry about the call. They asked me for some names.”

“Hey, no problem. Don’t worry about it.”

I was trying not to. “So… what did you tell them?”

Joey shrugged. “That I juggled with you here last Tuesday night.”

“Is that all they wanted to know?”

“Yeah. They just asked about last Tuesday. Asked if I thought you could have slipped out for an hour or so. I said, no way.”

Slipped out for an hour? Obviously, something happened last Tuesday night.

Dan Ripley joined us. “Hi, Jimmy. I got a call from the cops about you.”

“Me, too,” said Joey. They smiled at each other. Quite the little fraternity.

“Sorry about that, Dan,” I said. “You heard about Kurt Heppel?”

“I figured that might be it. I always found that guy weird.A bit too suave.” He rhymed it with ‘save.’“What’s your connection?”

“The show,” I said. “‘Beaver Tales.’ The police are checking everyone’s alibi for last Tuesday. I’m not sure why.”

“I told them you were here all night,” said Dan.

“Me, too,” said Joey. Another exchange of smiles. ■