In the Permanent Collection

Vaudeville

12 VAUDEVILLE Seeing him, smart in his suit tailored to where the surgeon’s cut meets the wooden crutch, you wouldn’t imagine Clayton Bates crying backstage at the Moulin Rouge over the moves that hurt so much, like the signature Jet Plane. His gymnastic hops on peg leg across the Ed Sullivan stage do resemble flight compared with this homeless veteran dragging his wheelchair with the heel of one shoe. Maybe once the man would have worn a bruise-colored coat, red-brown and brown-purple shot with gold, and cranked a hurdy-gurdy, the cylinder’s surging drone marking him to his place in the taxonomy of beggars— not the lowest station, one affording a modest collar and small dog. But he has no strings, no steps, only the fighter pilots and spies in his madcap rant. ...