Kirby's Last Circus Read online

  Thirty-Three

  As the opening parade filed from the tent, Kirby was joined on the oblong packing case by Goolenkranz, the Authentic Transylvanian Vampire Boy. It was obvious that Goolenkranz had developed a sincere attachment for Kirby, perhaps seeing in the older man a big brother figure, and this turn of events disturbed Kirby. He understood that Goolenkranz was a stranger in a strange land, and that the youngster probably needed someone to talk to, but he wasn’t at all comfortable in the company of the Transylvanian, especially when he’d turn to find Goolenkranz silently studying him, his dark-liquid eyes focused on the side of Kirby’s neck. But in spite of this, Kirby reasoned that the boy might prove valuable in this ever-thickening Grizzly Gulch eightball stew, because Kirby could recall innumerable instances when Creighton Blackthorn had broken seemingly impossible cases simply by listening and gleaning key tidbits of information from conversation that less observant men might have regarded as so much meaningless drivel. So Kirby gritted his teeth and endured, but from as great a distance as possible, which in this case was approximately three inches, since Goolenkranz was sitting very close to him on the oblong packing case.

  Admiral Doldrum was introducing the aerial duo of Pethermopper and Metherpopper, lithe, long-haired young fellows who scampered briskly into center-ring to discard flowing satin burgundy cloaks and stand resplendent in skintight, snow-white, sequined leotards. They bowed in all directions before parting company to climb fragile looking ladders to platforms at either end of the big top where they turned to face each other across the gulf of the arena. The band began to play “Mexicali Rose” and at the beginning of the second chorus Pethermopper swung far out over the net on his trapeze, and Metherpopper followed suit. When long, graceful arcs had been developed, Pethermopper released, so did Metherpopper, and they flew at considerable speed to collide crunchingly in mid-air, Pethermopper grabbing Metherpopper by an ear, Metherpopper clutching Pethermopper’s nose. They plummeted to the net in a snarling, clawing, biting, hair-pulling, tom-cat tangle. They bounced to their feet, Pethermopper called Metherpopper a rotten peppemrother, Metherpopper called Pethermopper a dirty motherpepper, Pethermopper hit Metherpopper in the eye, Metherpopper busted Pethermopper in the mouth, and Kirby turned away to stare at Goolenkranz. He said, “Well, not to be overly critical, you understand, but if memory serves me correctly, I’ve seen better trapeze acts.”

  Goolenkranz nodded ruefully. “Yes, only one is supposed to release.”

  Kirby said, “I got that impression. Which one?”

  Goolenkranz shook his head. “Apparently that hasn’t been ironed out yet. The act began to deteriorate when Reperthoppem quit.”

  Kirby said, “What happened to Reperthoppem?”

  Goolenkranz shrugged. “No one knows—he eloped with the dancing kangaroo.”

  Kirby yawned. He said, “Well, there’s no business like show business.”

  The night throbbed along on loud and colorful wings, the band playing with gusto, the clowns cavorting, Admiral Doldrum swaggering about like a magnificent gold-braided peacock, motioning acts on and off with the gestures of a Roman emperor, Nero Claudius Caesar, in all probability, and Birch Kirby knew that nothing casts a spell like an evening at the circus, even a less-than-mediocre circus. He looked around the tent, over the sea of raptly intent faces, trying unsuccessfully to find Dixie Benton. She was somewhere on the premises, he was certain, disguised, possibly, as a pile of sawdust. He sneaked a quick peek at the bat-wing hands of Goolenkranz’s wristwatch—five minutes south of nine o’clock—a trifle less than two hours until the big Soviet move, and Kirby could see nothing in the way of unusual activity. He sat crosslegged on the packing case, elbows on his knees, chin cupped in his hands, doing his damndest to determine how a two-bit circus in a dusty field on the outskirts of a southern Illinois crossroads town could possibly pose a threat to the United States of America.

  The Great Blizzardo’s World Champion Canine Act was going through its paces. The Great Blizzardo was three feet tall, considerably shorter than Alexander Pope, and he was the same midget who’d stolen the bandmaster’s baton. His World Champion Canine Act amounted to two dozen sleek Doberman Pinschers leaping through hoops, climbing ladders, doing back-flips, catching frisbees, the usual routine, and it was progressing in fine style until an old friend of Kirby’s strolled nonchalantly through the tent’s main entrance—the scrawny black cat he’d met while sitting on a log behind the Grizzly Gulch ballpark. The Great Blizzardo’s World Champion Canine Act stopped cold before coming apart at the seams to vanish in uproarious pursuit of the scrawny black cat. The Dobermans failed to return but the cat was back in jig-time, leaping effortlessly to the muzzle of Zamaroff’s cannon to perch there, yawning in that vast boredom visited upon all black cats by the Great Creator. The crowd responded with a spontaneous burst of approval and Kirby said, “Was that on purpose or by accident?”

  Goolenkranz smiled wryly. “By accident—just a few nights ago Blizzardo’s dogs took off after a collie bitch in heat.”

  “Did they catch her?”

  “No, she cut through the Grizzly Gulch Car Wash and they had to settle for a Mercury Cougar. I heard that you’ll be driving the tractor tonight.”

  “Yeah, after I’ve worked with Zamaroff. Any ideas why Doldrum decided to move the lion act back to the end of the show?”

  “He thought that Kenyali needed more sleep.”

  “Well, maybe, but I’ll lay twenty, ten, and even that he’s in a coma.”

  Admiral Doldrum was appealing for silence. He announced that Sam, the Dam Beaver, would be unable to appear as scheduled, due to his chipping an eyetooth while felling a utilities pole earlier in the day.

  Kirby said, “What does Sam, the Dam Beaver do with the show?”

  Goolenkranz said, “Tonight he was taking tickets—normally he has a swimming act.”

  Kirby said, “Well, that ain’t no great shakes—hell, any old beaver can swim. So can most of the young ones, for that matter.”

  “True, but not like Sam! Sam’s an expert at the Australian Crawl.”

  “I didn’t know that they have beavers in Australia.”

  “Sam learned from an aborigine in Oklahoma City.”

  “What was an aborigine doing in Oklahoma City?”

  Goolenkranz scowled an ominous scowl. He said, “You just never can tell.”

  Zamaroff, the Human Cannonball lumbered over to the packing case to clamp a hay-rake hand on Kirby’s shoulder. He said, “So, hokay, sport, is now time getting cannon ready for breathtaking death-defying act, just like Admiral Dandruff announce.”

  Kirby nodded, peering up at the hulking, blackbearded Russian. “Would you explain my duties, please?”

  “Is simple—is putting gunpowders in cannon, and is pulling lanyard. Is finding whole bunch gunpowders in big bag under cannon.”

  Kirby said, “Lanyard—what’s a lanyard?”

  “I showing yoom lanyard.”

  “Good! One more question—how much gunpowder should I put in the cannon?”

  Zamaroff grinned foxily, giving Kirby a crafty wink. He said, “Juss speck—cannon spring-loaded—gunpowders only for making big boom-booms—is fooling peoples.” He giggled. “Is like P.T. Barnum said—‘Is suckoff borned every minute.’”

  Thirty-Four

  It was ten minutes after ten o’clock on the balmy evening of Smoky Abe Matthewson Day and aside from the Pethermopper-Metherpopper collision and the incident of the scrawny black cat, the performance had gone along without a hitch. Two acts remained on the schedule—Zamaroff and his cannon, then the World’s Most Fearless Lion-tamer, Wolfgang von Meisterrassen with Kenyali, the Devil Lion from Darkest Africa. Following these, the lights would dim and the local yokels would head for the parking lot. And then what? Trouble, according to Dixie Benton—big trouble. The prospect of trouble failed to disturb Kirby as much as knowing that he was expected to deal with it. Somewhere in the overflow crowd were a couple of dozen Governm
ent agents, watching him like so many hawks, waiting for him to jerk a rabbit out of his hat, little suspecting that Kirby didn’t have a hat, let alone a rabbit. Well, what the hell, he’d stumble through it somehow, whatever it might be, and midnight could see him northbound for Chicago and comparative sanity, not one damned moment too soon to suit Birch Kirby. He longed for the quiet warmth and understanding of Tizzie Bonkowski, and buoyed by these, he’d be up to facing the future, Hubbard, Ohio, the Polish restaurant, and all the knuckleballs old Lady Luck could throw his way.

  He stood with Zamaroff beside the gigantic cannon, an impressive hunk of hardware, to say the least—solid blue steel, and obviously machined to tolerances that General Motors had never heard of. Admiral Doldrum had stepped to the center of the enclosure and the band had busted loose with a fanfare on the order of that which may herald the Second Coming of Christ. The Admiral’s gold braid twinkled in the lights, and he reminded Kirby of an oversize lightning bug with a stuck rheostat. He raised both hands, waving for attention, and he launched into a five-minute introduction of Zamaroff, getting into the matters of speed, weight, range, trajectory, atmospheric resistance, and the tremendous thrust required to propel a man of Zamaroff’s considerable proportions more than one hundred feet through the air, repeatedly reminding the gathering that the slightest miscalculation would be certain to result in Zamaroff’s abrupt demise. The band began to play “I’ll be Seeing you,” Zamaroff bowed low, shed his chartreuse cape with a magnificent flourish, yawned, and turned to climb a rickety wooden ladder to the mouth of the cannon, his orange leotards straining across the broad expanse of his backside. He slipped feet-first into the barrel of the gleaming monster, flipping onto his ample belly, and sliding downward until only his head was visible. He peered at Kirby over the rim of the muzzle. He said, “So, hokay, sport, is when I am hollering is when yoom pulling lanyard.”

  The lanyard, it had developed, was a two-foot length of knotted rope, and Kirby gripped it tightly, setting his feet in preparation, because he had no idea whether lanyards were hard to pull, or easy. He waved to Zamaroff and said, “I hope I used enough gunpowder.”

  Zamaroff said, “Juss speck?”

  Kirby nodded. “Yeah, a peck was all she’d take.”

  Zamaroff paled, his eyes bulging, and he let out a hoarse, bloodcurdling scream. At this signal Kirby jerked the lanyard. There was a blinding, earth-shattering explosion as the cannon recoiled onto its haunches. In a twenty-foot vertical sheet of hellish crimson flame Zamaroff, the Human Cannonball departed the barrel of the cannon with the speed of a rifle bullet, the scrawny black cat clinging desperately to the seat of his orange leotards. The cannon arched forty-five feet into the air, performed an impressive series of slow-motion turnovers, and crashed upside down on the hard-packed sawdust floor of the big top, busting into enough pieces to build a bridge from Seattle, Washington, to Port Moresby, New Guinea. Acrid bluish-gray wreaths of smoke writhed to intertwine like angry serpents, and there was a silence that would have choked Grand Canyon. Zamaroff was long gone and so was the scrawny black cat, but through a sizzling, gaping hole in the roof of the tent a single star was visible, sparkling in infinite loneliness, probably like the Star of Bethlehem, Kirby thought.

  Thirty-Five

  Into that vast vacuum of profound hush raced Admiral Doldrum to grab Kirby by the shoulders and shake him fiercely. Doldrum’s eyes were great, wild, staring things, and his voice sounded like a cracked bowling ball skittering down a washboard road. He hollered, “Dear God, DEAR GOD, what the hell, has happened here?”

  Kirby said, “It is my considered judgment that there is something wrong with Zamaroff’s cannon.”

  Admiral Doldrum yelled, “Good Lord, man, how much gunpowder did you use?”

  Kirby said, “Just a peck.”

  The Admiral clapped his fists to his ears. “Oh, Holy Virgin Mother of the Crucified Christ of fucking Galilee, am I hearing right?”

  Kirby said, “Probably not—you got your fists over your ears.”

  Doldrum croaked, “A peck—Judas Priest, did you say a fucking peck?”

  “That’s what Zamaroff told me—a peck! What the hell, it’s Zamaroff’s cannon, ain’t it?”

  “Zamaroff didn’t say a peck—Zamaroff said a speck! Why, a peck of gunpowder would blow a cannon to fucking smithereens!”

  Kirby surveyed the smoldering ruins of the monstrous gun. He said, “How many fucking smithereens in a cannon?”

  Doldrum said, “How did that God damned black cat get into the act?”

  Kirby said, “I can’t tell you how he got in but I can sure tell you how he got out.”

  The Admiral wiped sweat from his brow with a gold braid-edged handkerchief. He said, “Well, the show must go on! Haul that moth-eaten old lion in here and we’ll finish up! On the double, sailor—for the love of John Paul Jones, hurry!”

  “Aye, aye, sir!” Kirby threw the admiral a salute and stumbled toward an exit where he collided with a teenage girl wearing her dark hair in pigtails. Her rosycheeked face was smeared with cotton candy. She winked at him and out of a corner of her mouth she said, “Well done, Kirby!” She smelled of roses and spice.

  Kirby plunged into cool, fresh night air, his senses reeling, his ears still ringing from the cannon explosion. He located the tractors, recalling Admiral Doldrum’s pointer on word association—‘Think of Christmas!’ Kirby thought of Christmas and instantly he was knee-deep in the clean and squeaky snows of his childhood, back in the great white night silences, back among the electric trains and the tinkling music boxes and the frost-tipped pines, remembering a youngster’s search for the Star of Bethlehem, remembering Yuletide carols and the colors of a genuine old-fashioned Christmas, green and red—holly and poinsettia—holly with green leaves and little red berries, poinsettia with green leaves and big red flowers, green and red—word association worked, by God! His mind swimming in a bright sea of memories, Birch Kirby whistled a few bars of “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” and swung into the seat of the green tractor.

  He punched the starter button. The engine was cranky, coughing and sputtering before it clattered to life. Kirby revved it a few times and when it backfired, a hair-raising roar rolled like October thunder from the dark interior of the red cage. Kirby grinned. By golly, Kenyali wasn’t in a coma after all, the old bastard could still get his dander up! Kirby eased the green tractor into the thick sawdust of the midway, then backed it cautiously into the coupling knuckle of the red cage. He shifted into first gear and released the clutch pedal. The red cage lurched and Kirby knew that the joint had been made. He pulled clear of the lion’s area and from behind the red cage there came the high-pitched twanging sound of a wire snapping. Kirby didn’t look back—no time to be concerned with busted wires, the Admiral was waiting! He went careening into the bigtop with the throttle wide-open. Admiral Doldrum was completing his introduction of The Most Fearless Lion-tamer in History, and Wolfgang von Meisterrassen was smiling broadly, waving to the crowd. Kirby approached at top speed, the red cage bouncing and swaying behind the thundering green tractor. Admiral Doldrum took one look and turned whiter than a clean and squeaky snow. He threw up his arms and screeched, “Now hear this: Stop! Stop in the name of the USS Enterprise! STOP, you blithering boob!”