Unhappy Hooligan by Stuart Palmer Read Free Book Online

women—everywhere.
    At long last he fell asleep again, to dream of being chased by elephants with great greenish eyes…

3
    Oh, the elephants they go by,
    And the band begins to play
    And the little boys under the monkeys’ cage
    Had better keep out of the way.
    —Old Song
    H OWIE ROOK’S FLING WITH the circus had a most auspicious beginning, whatever its ending was to be. He had started out from Los Santelos, with Monday’s dawn, in a crowded Greyhound. Now, after leaving his suitcase at a little hotel in the town of Vista Beach, he had taken a taxi out to the circus grounds, situated on a high plateau above the incredibly blue Pacific.
    Early as it was, the circus people had been earlier. He stood aghast at the pandemonium going on all around him—and then even as he watched, slowly and wonderfully the Big Top began to climb its center poles from out of a welter of rope and canvas; it was a breath-taking moment. Caterpillars roared and skidded, Diesels screamed, and then a vast angular thing mushroomed and swelled and rose into the sky as if it never meant to stop.
    Men scurried here and there like ants in a disturbed anthill; there were incoherent shouts and cryptic signals, and it was hard to believe that anyone had the slightest idea what he was trying to do. But in a matter of minutes the main tent was up. Rook moved cautiously along what was already beginning to shape itself up as the Midway, where lesser tents were springing up on either hand. He felt suddenly awed and a little apprehensive. Was he, Howie Rook, going to plunge into this strange new world which was neither carnival nor zoo nor vaudeville nor parade but a combination of all four? It was a self-contained city, a world of its own, with not one but a thousand secrets.
    A newspaperman—even an ex-newspaperman—is at home almost anywhere, but at this moment Rook felt as out of place as pants at a picnic. On his right the garish banners and fanciful cartoons of the Strange People were being strung, and he paused to ponder the fascinating horrors of Harry the Human Seal, the Alligator Woman, the Armless Wonder and all the rest of the freaks and attractions. There was still a Sword Swallower and a Fire-eater and of course a troupe of Genuine Hula Girls; could they, he wondered whimsically, be the same Hula Girls he had admired in his forgotten youth?
    He went on, dodging trucks and tractors, past candy and concession booths that seemed to spring up even as he watched. Once, at an exasperated hail of warning from an attendant, he had to leap nimbly aside to make room for a long line of elephants which had silently approached his rear. Led by a benevolent but firm old lady elephant, they came swiftly on and past, each with her trunk looped cozily around the tail of the one preceding, moving with a rhythmic swinging, a relaxed grace and balance, that would put a ballet dancer to shame.
    Finally, as the organized confusion of tractors and wagons and rolling cages and trucks increased bewilderingly around him, Rook took momentary refuge in a little cul-de-sac between booths, where a bald man in a bright Hawaiian sport shirt and purple slacks was overlooking the construction of a small booth advertising the sale of live chameleons. The man had the eyes and general expression of a ferret. “Greetings, friend,” he said. “Just what can I do for you?” He was presumably about to go into his pitch.
    “I do not want to buy one of your ‘bugs,’” said Howie Rook, anxious to show off his recently acquired knowledge of circus argot. “I’m just looking for Mr. Timken.”
    The man stared at him critically—as if the reddish little eyes saw the jackdaw’s feathers beneath Rook’s new peacock plumes. “And just what do you want with him, friend?”
    “I have an appointment, if it’s any of your business,” snapped Rook. He disliked this flamboyant gentleman on sight, and more than that he disliked being called “friend” by somebody who obviously