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    Job Hazards
    Job Hazards
    Job Hazards
    Ebook44 pages38 minutes

    Job Hazards

    By Teresa Milbrodt

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Milbrodt's stories probe the impact of job choices on the lives of a love-lorn circus clown, a racecar driver/pole dancer, a retired sideshow fat lady and her “skeleton man” friend, a 60-year-old, cliff-jumping caregiver, and two shopping mall security guards who are single parents.

    From “Job Hazards”:
    “All of us in the circus were there because we needed to be watched, because we craved that treacherous moment in the limelight. She worked with a net for safety. I wouldn’t have asked her to do without one, but we all knew people wanted to see the real danger: if she’d miss the bar. They were waiting for me to make them laugh. They were waiting for her to die.”

    From “Fat Lady to Marry Skeleton Man: Tickets 25 Cents”:
    “I don't know if we were blessed or cursed by genetics. We love our bodies, they earned us a living for many years, but others feel they are acceptable only in a sideshow. Yet where did they expect sideshow performers to go? We can't evaporate, though Errol might come close.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWordrunner eChapbooks
    Release dateNov 14, 2014
    ISBN9781311010438
    Job Hazards
    Author

    Teresa Milbrodt

    Teresa Milbrodt is the author of a short story collection, Bearded Women: Stories, a novel, The Patron Saint of Unattractive People, and a flash fiction collection, Larissa Takes Flight: Stories. Her stories, poems, and flash fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Nimrod, Triquarterly, North American Review, Crazyhorse, The Cream City Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, CutBank, and Sycamore Review, among other literary magazines. Her work has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University.

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      Book preview

      Job Hazards - Teresa Milbrodt

      Job Hazards

      Five Stories

      By Teresa Milbrodt

      Published by Wordrunner eChapbooks

      (an imprint of Wordrunner Press)

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2014 Teresa Milbrodt

      Contents

      Job Hazards

      Charitable Causes

      Fat Lady to Marry Skeleton Man: Tickets 25 Cents

      Bodies in Motion

      On Camera

      About Teresa Milbrodt

      About Wordrunner eChapbooks

      Job Hazards

      As we ate lunch, I told her that the hardest thing in the world was to make people laugh.

      She didn’t believe me, but she flew on the trapeze and had an eye for the sword-swallower who dined on flame in his spare time.

      Those blades can kill, she said. You just have tumbling moves and seltzer bottles.

      If a clown doesn’t get the laugh, I said, that’s it, no career.

      She had been one of those kid gymnasts, short and slender and bestowed with too much pressure at a young age. She was good, but never good enough for medals. I liked her because we’d both known that stress, the childhood burden of wanting.

      When I told her this she said it wasn’t the same.

      I was competing, she said.

      I was too, I said, for the title of class clown.

      No, she said, that’s different.

      All of us in the circus were there because we needed to be watched, because we craved that treacherous moment in the limelight. She worked with a net for safety. I wouldn’t have asked her to do without one, but we all knew people wanted to see the real danger: if she’d miss the bar. They were waiting for me to make them laugh. They were waiting for her to die.

      We were in Kandrakar, which sounded like it should have been a city in some Asian country instead of Indiana. Our nights were tired and boring, too many of us just wanted a drink after each performance. Clowns are faster than you’d think to pick fights; stuffed in that little car so much of the time we got on each other’s nerves.

      At the time our act was a camping skit. We tumbled into the circus campground to pitch a tent, fish for dinner, start a fire. It ended with a guy in a bear costume running after us. I was in charge of the fire, tried to light one but it kept going out. During the skit I was doused with seltzer a few times and chased by the bear.

      I watched her during our breaks. She flung her body through the air with grace, though she said that weightlessness made her too aware of weight.

      Laughter made me too aware of silence.

      All those fliers have their heads up their asses, said Frank. He was one of the tramp clowns and didn’t mince words.

      You need to find yourself a down-to-earth woman, he said. Trapeze artists are fickle.

      I shrugged him away, but now I know he had a point. I always wanted attention from people who didn’t give it to me. The real trick, the real prize, was catching their gaze.

      You’d respect me if I could breathe fire, I told her.

      Don’t be silly, she said,

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