Research: Journals
The Journal
Issue 33.1
J. David Stevens
SpectacleHe spoke the truth, and people applauded.
The next year–to up his game–he spoke the truth from the back of an unbroken mustang galloping around the rim of an active volcano. People applauded.
The year after that, he spoke the truth balanced on a pole, spinning eight model ships on pipe cleaners. From the trees, trained orangutans hurled saw blades at his head. The blades had been left in the rain to rust so even the slightest cut would invite, if not decapitation, sepsis. People applauded.
The following year, he spoke the truth while climbing a rope made of braided death adders. At the summit, he rang a bell attached to a tiger's testicles. People applauded.
One more year, and he stayed submerged in a vat of piranha for forty-seven minutes. Atop the tank, a cadre of certified public accountants folded used checks into Chinese darts and hurled them at him. Still, he spoke the truth, and people applauded.
He continued longer than anyone expected. Rabid porcupines strapped to flamethrowers. Bitter politicians atop steamrollers. Cormorants, their beaks lined with razor blades, and live mackerel pasted to every inch of his body. But otherwise the show never changed: truth, truth, truth.
At last, growing old, he planned a finale. He dove from the KWCH Tower in Burrton, Kansas, into a pen of grizzly bears that had been starved for so long they were no longer hungry but suicidal. The bears, wrapped in C-4 explosive and ten-penny nails, had been trained by counterintelligence agents to detonate themselves at the precise moment of his impact. They also had claws. But still he spoke the truth the whole way down, right into the little ball of dust (his body meeting earth) before the big boom.
The people went home and marveled at the feat for days.
Later, new acts came to town. None was particularly daring or honest, but lacking entertainment, the people concluded the man was grander in their imagination than he'd been in reality. The best of the new acts featured a tricycle, some nose-harp solos, and counterfeit coupons to a restaurant in Uzbekistan. "Sounds like something special," the people ventured.
And one of them said, "You bet your bottom." He hadn't seen the act, but he'd read about it in the newspaper and wanted to appear current. "It's like nothing you've ever seen."
