The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [156]
Hank went away wondering how the old man had known he was an Ingledew, but he decided that anybody as old as that man was probably knew everything that was to be known. And then the magic electric bulbs were going out, and Phil told Hank that he would have to do a star pitch. When Hank looked puzzled and asked what a star pitch was, Phil laughed and slapped him on the shoulder and said, “You’ll have to learn the circus lingo, kid. A star pitch is sleeping out in the open, on the grass.”
Hank slept on the grass, sleeping fitfully, having dreams of performing his stunts in his clown suit in front of a whole bunch of people, many of whom might recognize him behind his rubber nose and his greasepaint, as the old man had done. When he woke and rose up from the grass, he discovered that nobody else in the camp was awake even though the sun was well up in the sky. He figured that people who stayed up so late at night probably slept late in the morning. He smelled coffee a-making somewhere, and tracing it, found a trailer with the back end open and a man inside cooking up a bunch of flapjacks.
It was the first time Hank had ever seen or heard of a man doing the cooking; maybe the man was also one of the freaks. But Hank was hungry, and he eyed the flapjacks hungrily, licking his lips, until the cooking man noticed him, and said, “New kid, huh? Welcome to the crumb castle.” The cooking man loaded a plate with flapjacks and gave them to him along with a mug of coffee. Hank sat down at a nearby table to eat but the cooking man explained to him that that was the “long end,” reserved for the circus workmen; the performers had to eat at the “short end.” Hank moved, and ate his breakfast, joined gradually by other clowns and acrobats. He learned that the Midway would not open until noon, and the first performance under the Big Top was not scheduled until two o’clock.
After watering his mule, Hank wandered around the grounds, treating himself to a free preview of the animals. There was a lion in an iron cage on wheels and it roared at him, giving him a slight start. There was an elephant tethered by one enormous ankle to a stake; he had never seen an elephant before, but he knew what it was because he had studied African geography in the fourth grade. It did not roar at him; it seemed to be very slow and calm and gentle, lifting an enormous foot slightly from time to time. He patted it on its tremendously long snout; suddenly the elephant coiled its snout and uncoiled it with such force that Hank was flung through the air a distance of nearly two hats and landed on his back in pain. He got up gingerly, resolved to go no closer to the elephant; he fingered himself all over for broken bones; none were, but his upper lip was beginning to swell, and by the time the Big Top opened his lip would be so swollen that he would have the most comical face of all the clowns. He stared malevolently at the elephant and said to it, “If Godalmighty made you, He orter make one more and quit.” He wandered on, and found a monkey in a cage; the monkey was so small and timid-looking that he couldn’t possibly do Hank any harm, but when Hank tried to shake hands the monkey scratched him, leaving bleeding lines halfway up his arm. Hank decided to leave the animals alone, and wandered over to the area where the sideshow people were loafing around in the morning sunshine. A reporter from the Jasper Disaster had arrived, and was interviewing the fat lady, asking her questions about her diet and how much she weighed, and did she have any trouble rolling over in her sleep at night? Then the reporter