Tiger Story

by David Griffin

 I met an older woman named Crystal in the public day room at the homeless shelter where I volunteered and she told me she had worked with tigers in a circus.  She ran off with her boyfriend at age 16.  He ditched her a month later, leaving her with the bill at a one-star motel on the west coast of Florida.

Rather than fly home to Mom and Dad, she found work as a lady roustabout with a wintering circus.  After the circus management … or what passed for management … realized she couldn’t pound a three foot tent stake into the ground with three whacks of a long handled maul, they put her on the crew of the food truck. There she met the lion tamer.  But the circus could no longer afford lions, so he was now a tiger tamer and was working on his act over the winter.  He’d show up at the food truck for lunch, lay his whip on the counter and order a hot dog, “medium rare and free of all condoms and mints.” She laughed and said it was love at first sight, even though she was unsure if the tamer or his whip was the larger attraction.  His  name was Wesley.  His whip’s name was Saint Francis.

"That's an unusual name for something so cruel," I said.

"He was a  very religious man," she said.

CONTINUED, CLICK HERE.

copyright 2015 by David Griffin