Charley de Milo Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Then," the professor said, in a tenser voice, "you think it might be dangerous. You think you might be hurt, or that things might not work out right, or--"

"Gee," Charley said, "I never thought of anything like that, professor.

I know you wouldn't want to hurt me."

"I certainly wouldn't," Professor Lightning said. "I want to help you. I want to make you normal. Like everybody else."

"Sure," Charley said uncomfortably.

"Then you'll do it," Professor Lightning said. "I knew you would, Charley. It's a great opportunity. And I offered it to you because you--"

"Gee, I know," Charley said, feeling more uncomfortable than ever. "And don't think I don't appreciate it. But look at it my way, professor." He paused. "Suppose I had two arms--just like everybody else, the way you tell me. What would happen to me?"

"Happen?" Professor Lightning blinked. "Why, Charley ... why, you could do anything you liked. Anything. You'd have the same opportunities as anybody else. You could be ... well, my boy, you could be anything."

"Could I?" Charley said. "Excuse me for talking about this, professor, but I've had a lot of time to think about it. And it's all sort of new to you. I mean, you weren't born the way I was, and so you just don't understand it."

Professor Lightning said: "But, my boy--"

"No." Charley said. "Let me explain this. Because it's important." He cleared his throat, sat down on the ground and fumbled for a cigarette.

He found one in his s.h.i.+rt pocket, carried it to his lips with his right foot, and lit a match with his left. When he was smoking easily, he went on.

"Professor, do you know how old I am?" he said. "I'm forty-two years old. Maybe I don't look it, but that's how old I am. Now, I've spent all my life learning to do one thing, and I do a pretty good job of it.

Anyhow, good enough to get me a spot with Wrout's show, and probably with anybody else I wanted to work for."

"But your arms--?" the professor said.

"That's what I mean," Charley said. "I don't have any arms. I never had any. Maybe I miss 'em, a little--but everything I do is based on the fact that I don't have 'em. Now, professor, do you know what I am?"

Professor Lightning frowned. "What you are?" he said.

"I'm an Armless Wonder," Charley said. "That's a pretty good thing to be. In a carny, they look up to an Armless Wonder--he's a freak, a born freak, and that's as high as you can go, in a carny. I get a good salary--I send enough to my mother and my sister, in Chicago, for them to live on. And I have what I need myself. I've got a job, professor, and standing, and respect." He paused. "Now, suppose I had arms. I'd have to start from scratch, all over again. I'd have to start from the bottom up, just learning the basic elements of any job I signed on for.

I'd be a forty-two-year-old man doing the work of an eighteen-year-old.

And not making much money. And not having much standing, or respect."

Charley took the cigarette out of his mouth with his right foot, held it for a second and put it back.

"I'd be normal," he said. "I'd be just like everybody else, professor.

And what do I want anything like _that_ for?"

Professor Lightning tried everything, but it wasn't any good. "Fame," he said, and Charley pointed out, calmly and reasonably, that the kind of fame he'd get from being an experimental subject was just like being a freak, all over again--except that it would wear off, and then, he asked, where would he be? Professor Lightning talked about Man's Duty to Science, and Charley countered with Science's Duty to Man. Professor Lightning tried friends.h.i.+p, and argument, and even force--but nothing worked. Incredible as it seemed to the professor, Charley was content to remain a freak, an Armless Wonder. More, he seemed to be proud and happy about it.

It was too bad that the professor didn't think of the one argument that might have worked. In the long run, it wouldn't have made any difference, perhaps--but it would have cleared matters up, right there and then. Because the one workable argument had a good chance of succeeding.

But, then, Professor Lightning really didn't understand carny. He never thought of the one good argument, and after a while he gave up, and went away.

Of course, that was several days later. Professor Lightning told Charley that he was leaving for New York, and Charley said: "What? In the middle of the season?" Then he told Wrout, and Wrout screamed and ranted and swore that Professor Lightning would never work in carny again. "I'll have you blacklisted!" he roared.

And Professor Lightning shrugged and smiled and went away to pack. He took all his notebooks, and all the cages with little animals in them, and he didn't seem at all disturbed. "I'll find another subject," he told Charley, when he left. "When they find out what I've got, in New York, they'll provide me with subjects by the hundred. I did want to help you ..."

"Thanks," Charley said honestly.

"... But that's the way things are, I suppose," Professor Lightning said. "Maybe some day you'll realize."

Charley shook his head. "I'm afraid not, professor," he said, and Professor Lightning shook Charley's foot, and left, and Charley went back to work in the freak show, and for a while he didn't even think about Professor Lightning. Then, of course, the news began to show up in the Chicago _American_, which Charley got two or three days late because his mother sent it to him by mail.

At first Charley didn't realize that Dr. Edmund Charles Schinsake was Professor Lightning, but then the _American_ ran his picture; that was the day Professor Lightning was awarded a medal by the AMA, and Charley felt pleased and happy for the old man. It looked as it he'd got what he wanted.

Charley, of course, didn't think much about the professor's "limb regeneration"; he didn't need it, he thought, and he didn't want it, and that was that.

And then, one night, he was dropped from the bally, and he asked Dave Lungs about it, and Dave said: "Well, we want the biggest draw we can get, out there before the show," and put Erma, the Fish Girl, out in his place. And Charley started to wonder about that, and after a few days had gone by he found himself talking about it, to Ed Baylis, over in the cooktent while they were having lunch.

Baylis was a little man of sixty or so, with a wrinkled face like a walnut and a powerful set of lungs; he was Wrout's outside talker for the girlie show. "Because I'm old," he said, grinning. "I don't have trouble with the girls. And if I got to take one off the bally or out of the show there's no personal stuff that would make it tough, see what I mean?"

"That's what I'm worried about," Charley said.

"What?" Ed asked. He speared a group of string beans with his fork and conveyed them to his mouth. Charley, using his right foot, did the same.

"The bally," Charley said. "The way things are, Dave took me off, and I'm worrying about it."

"Maybe some kind of a change," Ed said.

Charley shook his head. "He said ... he said he wanted the biggest draw out there. Now, you know I'm a big draw, Ed. I always have been."

"Sure," Ed said. He chewed another mouthful and swallowed. "Still, people want a change now and then. Doesn't have to mean anything."

"Maybe not," Charley said uncomfortably. But he wasn't convinced.

The season drew to a close, and Charley went off to the Florida Keys, where he spent a month living with some friends before holing up with his mother and sister for the winter. He was offered a job in New York, at a year-round flea museum in Times Square, but after some thought he decided against it. He'd never had to work winters, and he wasn't going to start.

After all, he was still doing well, wasn't he? He told himself emphatically that he was. He was an Armless Wonder, a born freak, the top of the carny ladder, with a good job wherever he cared to look for one.

He had to tell himself that quite a few times before he began to believe it.

Spring came, and then summer, and Charley kissed his mother and his sister good-by and joined Wrout's Carnival Shows in Summit, Idaho, three days before their opening. He didn't notice much change from previous years, but it took an effort not to notice some things.

Not like the new man who'd taken Professor Lightning's place--a tall thin youngster who had an Electric Chair act. Or like the periodic quarrels between Ned and Ed; it seemed they'd met a girl over the winter season, and disagreed about her. Ed thought she was perfectly wonderful; Ned couldn't see her for beans.

No, things like that were a part of carny; you got used to them, as the show rolled along year after year, and paid no more attention to them than a housewife pays to rather uninteresting back-fence gossip.

It was something else that had changed, something important.

His contract, for instance. It was made out for the same pay as he'd been getting, but the option periods were shortened up; suddenly, Charley was living from season to season, with almost no a.s.surance of continuous, steady work. Old man Wrout had looked a little less than happy when he'd given Charley the contract; he'd almost seemed ashamed, and he hadn't really looked Charley in the eye once. But when Charley asked what was wrong, he got no answer.