Unhappy Hooligan by Stuart Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

everybody on the circus lot, and upset the show?”
    “Not at all,” said Timken. “The cops didn’t seem to take it very seriously, and they didn’t talk to anybody but me.” He looked sideways. “Don’t you go committing suicide, while you’re with us at any rate.”
    “I doubt if it’s contagious,” Howie Rook said.
    Timken seemed about to say something more, and then evidently thought better of it. “Okay, so you go be a clown,” he conceded. “And have fun. Our people are used to having friends barging in. If there’s anything else I can do for you, you know where I am.”
    Rook thanked him and asked what he was supposed to do first.
    “You’re to report to Hap Hammett, the dean of our clowns, only he won’t be around Clown Alley till about one o’clock. You might wander around what we call the back yard and get the general feel of the place. Oh, one thing—” He took out a card gaudily emblazoned with red elephants and tigers, then scribbled on the back, “Okay for Mr. Rook to go anywhere on the lot,” and signed it. “That means anywhere except the lion’s cage and the women’s dressing rooms.” It was evidently one of his favorite pleasantries. “Good luck.” The interview was obviously over and Mr. Timken was obviously mystified. Rook would have liked to have told him all, but somehow he felt it unwise to show his hand too early.
    And so Howie Rook was thus embarked on the most exciting adventure of his life. He came out of the silver wagon into a choking dust storm, churned up by the myriad wheels of trucks and tractors, the hoofs of beautiful prancing Arabians and of zebras and dromedaries and hippopotamuses—or was it hippopotami? He wasn’t sure. Sprinkling wagons were doing their best to lay the dust, and half a hundred men were frantically slinging fresh clean sawdust everywhere, but still the general effect was that of a Vermont snowstorm. Rook ruefully realized that his dark pin stripe and gray Homburg and English shoes were hardly the proper costume, after all. They picked up dust, and they set him apart as a dude. So he took refuge inside the main tent, the massive Big Top. It was quieter here and he could breathe more freely. Already the marvelously complicated grandstand and bleacher trucks, Rube Goldberg contraptions that opened up into tiers of seats and dividing aisles, and had dressing rooms tucked underneath, were being jockeyed into place, walling in the vast oval. In all three rings, acrobats were working; smallish, tense, heavily muscled men and women in practice costume were meticulously adjusting and testing the rigging on which, in a few hours, their lives would depend.
    Twice, in his slow promenade around the track—no, he must remember to call it the Hippodrome—he was stopped by guards and had to show his magic card, his open-sesame. The circus, Rook realized, was far from the haphazard, happy-go-lucky world he had imagined. He had made almost a full circle, counterclockwise, and then came at last to a canvas-partitioned addition, a lane where the thirty great elephants, the camels, the giraffes, the hippos, and all the rest of the menagerie stood.
    He stood still for a moment, the strong but not entirely unpleasant smells taking him back through the years to a sunnier, happier time. Nor was the wonder gone even now. The elephants waved graceful, snaky trunks at him, hinting at peanuts. On the opposite side in their barred cage the great bears stood on their hind legs and pantomimed for apples, looking about as fierce as stuffed animals in some department-store Christmas window. A lioness with two cubs flicked wary eyes at him, and a magnificent Bengal tiger arose and padded over to the bars on silent paws; it seemed interested and not at all unfriendly. Howie Rook began to realize, as had many others before him, the difference between being one of a gaping crowd of people pouring through a menagerie and being there comparatively alone. The beasts took