Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks)

by Leslie F Stone

  “All right, Yogi, start coming!”

  Obeying him, the Yogi went through the motions of a man climbing up a rope!—using hands and knees as the free end of the rope slowly snaked downward from between his thighs. The two men held its lower end grimly. Once or twice Bolton put a hand to it to keep them from being lifted off their feet! “Thought you were strong men!” he laughed at them.

  It was as if a tremendous weight strained on that rope to pull them upward!

  When the Yogi was half-way down, the free end of the rope reached the platform. A handler came from behind the stage to grab it and coil it on the floor as it dropped.

  At last the upside-down man “climbed” to the level of the stage room. Reaching out, he took hold of the open door, dropped the rest of the rope and swung himself into the room, walking again on its upside-down room.

  Breathing hard, he smiled at the audience, giving them a wide upside-down grin as he waved his hand. The curtain came together and the people were hurried outdoors to make room for those collecting outside the tent. The helper ran up the rope-ladder to refasten the long rope in place again at the top, turning off the floodlights a little later.

  Slipping behind the curtains of the stage, the speiler came into the upside-down room. Above him the Yogi was seated in his chair smoking.

  “Say, Frank,” the “Yogi” said as he appeared, “We’ve got to change that routine a little. Let me get ‘upright’ before you send the men to examine the roof. It gives me a headache standing on my head so long! I told you I didn’t think that idea would work out.”

  Frank Bolton nodded. “All right, Jerry, but for heaven’s sake, wipe that goofy expression off your face next show. It keeps getting worse. You look like a sick cat the way you stare at people!”

  THE upside-down man grunted. “Sorry. But, you know, when I begin to think of those people walking around on the good earth as they please, it gets me! But for two years, I’ve watched them go away from here to comfortable, ordinary homes, sitting down at an ordinary table and eating right-side up while I’ve got to go ‘home’ to my upside-down trailer, sleep under blankets pinned to my bed with cold air whistling up my back where the covers drag away from me! God, what would it feel like to take a bath without almost drowning myself! I tell you—it—it’s—oh, what’s the use . . .?”

  “Aw, forget it, kid. Look at the money we’re salting away! And that isn’t all! Soon, it won’t be umpty—ten shows from ten in the morning until midnight—but four a day! I signed that vodvil contract for you this afternoon, Jerry—52 weeks at $3,000 a throw! Told you I’d put it over! I figure we’ll use the proscenium arch of the theatre for your ‘falling act,’ enlarge your bedroom scene some . . .”

  “Yes, and if I’m not careful, I’ll go flying up among the flies and girds back-stage,” said the Yogi.

  “Oh, we can fix that. Use a canvas roof while you’re on the stage, y’know, and backstage, where you can’t walk ceilings, we’ll use hand-ropes for you. You’ll live in the trailer, as usual. We’ll back up to the stage-entrance and you get out right there. You’ll be a sensation, boy! We’ll get some bona fide scientists to study you and make statements to the papers. You know, that’s why I been holding back on that stuff while we’ve been doing Fairs and Carnivals. It’ll be great stuff, all right!”

  “Sure, great stuff. Great if you can stand it. But how you can go out front and tell ’em I’m not a freak is beyond me. And I don’t like you telling ’em I learned my stuff in India!”

  “Now, look, Jerry, it’s good advertising, that’s all. Tell ’em you’re a freak and you’re just another one. This way it looks like it’s really scientific. Look, we’ll change the speil, put in all that stuff you told me about space-time—con—continuum. . . .”

  “Why don’t you tell the truth? Why don’t you say I’m a crack-brained experimenter who tried to nullify gravity, and I degravitated myself with the radiations of an unknown substance?”

  “Oh, that’s all right for these here scientists, kid,” observed Bolton, “but the public’s different. Believe me, I know. And your contract, if you remember, says I’ve got full say about these things. . . .”

  “Yeah. Well, whatever you say, Frank. To tell the truth, I don’t much care. God, if I could only go out and stand in the sunshine under the open sky once more! But if I did that, I’d shoot straight UP—and never come down again. . . . You know, I was trying to figure out my rate of speed by the time I got a hundred miles up! I wonder just how far I would go before I reached the negative state. I may try it—just stand outside and let go!” As he spoke, the White Yogi’s voice sounded deep with despair.

  Bolton looked startled. “Saaay, none of that! Remember our five-year contract with three years to go yet. Also, kid, I’ve got a big investment in you! Don’t go forgetting that you was stone broke when I took you off the ceiling of Mrs. Heeney’s boarding house, third-floor back! She was ready to ask you to step outdoors, you know that. You wouldn’t do anything like that to me, would you?” His voice was filled with whining anxiety.

  Jerry Moore sighed deeply. “Of course not, Frank. I’m not ready to commit suicide yet. I still hope to get out of this predicament. Y’know, I’ve a standing advertisement in my home-town weekly newspaper promising a hundred dollars to the one finding a stone like the one I used in my machine. It isn’t reasonable that that was the only stone. I’m sure it came from a meteorite. One part was pitted, the other side showed where it had broken off from another piece, maybe bigger. There must have been more to it, and if I could crawl around the spot, I’m sure I could find other pieces.

  “You see, I’ve got to study that stone and find out what its properties are, to get back to normal. I don’t know what possessed me to use the darn thing at all. I’d kept it as a charm since I was a kid on the farm. And one day when I wasn’t getting any results from my Nullifier, the stone dropped from my pocket. I stuck it in the machine, and while I was bending over, adjusting the new tubes I had bought, the thing began to throw off a pink radiation!

  “Before I could back away, though, there was a loud sizzing sound, a roar, and I was flung against the ceiling. When I came to my senses, the radiation was gone, but I couldn’t get down to the floor. And the little stone had dissolved completely—well, you’ve heard it all; you know the rest . . .

  “Sure, I know. My two-headed calf had died and I needed another fr—exhibition. I signed you up after I showed you you’d make plenty in five years to do all the experimenting you want to get down to earth again. I don’t want you forgetting what I’ve done for you. You’ll have plenty in the bank when this is over. Just—three more years. . . .”

  “Yeah, I spoke out of turn, Frank. It’s just that I’m so lonely and disgusted with this upside down living. Think of it—getting red in the face when I stand in a natural position!” he sighed deeply.

  “ ‘S’tough. Shame you didn’t have a girl assistant when the thing happened! You could’ve married her and gone housekeeping in the trailer!”

  THE pseudo-Yogi laughed bitterly. “And we’d raise upside down kids, I suppose!”

  Bolton looked at his watch. “Well, it’s time for the next show. I can hear the crowd. Come on down. . . .”

  As he spoke, the midway concessioner took out a number of curved iron hooks, a few inches long. He began fastening them, one after the other, into holes provided for them in the side wall of the room. Several he screwed into the floor. As he was doing this, the upside-down man came to the wall and by means of the hand-holds, pulled himself to floor level.

  With a twist of his body, he stood in a natural position, sliding one stockinged foot under the first of the floor cleats, then the next, until he stood beside the pair of shoes nailed firmly to the floor. Using Bolton to steady himself, he slipped his feet into the shoes while the other man tied the laces for him.

  “Look, Jerry,” Bolton said on straightening up. “Why haven’t we tried fastening weights on your clothing? Enough of th
em ought to hold you down to earth!”

  “What good’s that with the blood rushing to my head when I stand like this? No, I thought of that long ago, but it’s no go!”

  “I see. Well, try to keep that silly look out of your eyes this show. . . .” He yawned as he spoke, removed the hooks he had inserted, and went through the curtains.

  There were three more shows and it was supper-time. People left the midway in increasing numbers and the midway performers relaxed.

  Bolton fastened a long rope from the side of the upside-down stage to the tent wall where there was an opening. On the other side was a large trailer backed up to the tent. Jerry Moore left the stage dragged himself along the rope until he reached the trailer door. He walked in upon the trailer’s ceiling which was furnished much like the stage room, upside-down. On the floor, however, was a second set of furniture for Frank Bolton. Under his settee was the bathtub both men used.

  As they went into the trailer, a waiter from a nearby restaurant came with a covered tray of food. He grinned at Jerry. “Some show you put on; I took it in today,” he said as he put the tray down.

  WHEN he left, the man on the ceiling sat in a chair above the ordinary table at which Bolton sat, and he performed the rather difficult feat of eating upside down while the speiler ate his own food in the regular fashion.

  A little later, Bolton came outside. He saw a young man coming alongside the tent to the trailer. “Here,” he called to him, “you can’t come back here.”

  The youth stopped in his tracks, waiting for the older man to reach him. “I’m looking for a Mister Jerry Moore, sir. They said this was his trailer.”

  “No one sees him while he’s resting. Wait for the show,” the speiler said brusquely.

  “But I gotta see him,” protested the young man, who was no more than sixteen or seventeen. “I got something for him in—in answer to an advertisement. It said . . .”

  “Ad? Oh, yeah. Let me see it.”

  The young fellow fumbled and brought out an envelope in which was a sheet of paper. Pasted neatly on the paper was a newspaper clipping. Moving over to a light, Bolton read:

  “I WILL PAY $100.00 for a translucent green stone with red flecks showing throughout stone to match one found in the vicinity of the old Moore farm along Beaver Creek. Size does not matter. Stone may be found imbedded in another kind of stone. Address, this week, York Fair Midway, York, Pa. Jerry Moore.”

  “That’s been running in our paper a couple years with different addresses every week . . .

  “I know—I put it there. Did’ya bring the stone?”

  “Sure. Found it in the creek above the Moore place, though some Poles got it now. It was half under a rock in the water . . . “Well, let’s see it,” said Bolton wearily.

  “Hey, I wanna show it to Mr. Moore. My father said . . .”

  Bolton glanced behind at the trailer, ran his tongue across his lips and turned back to the boy. “I’m Moore’s manager, see, and I attend to all his business. Let’s see the stone. If it’s right, I’ll give you your hundred.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a thick roll of bills.

  The boy’s eyes bulged at the sight of the wad. Unhesitantly, he took a fist-sized rock from his pocket. The overhead light showed its rough, deeply pitted black surface, but when he turned it over, Bolton saw a green irregularity imbedded in the roughness. It was translucent, flecked with reddish dots, the size of a small lemon.

  “Paw says he bets the thing’s a meteor. He says I oughta get mom’n a hundred because a museum would pay a lot of money . . .”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” said Bolton, ripping five twenties from his roll. “It’s worth a hundred to Kent, and museums don’t go throwing money around.”

  “Shall I look for any more of ’em?”

  “Well, I guess Mr. Moore only wants one. You may try selling the others to the museums,” he laughed pleasantly.

  For several moments, the man stood where he was. He glanced toward the trailer speculatively, then from a pocket brought out two more green stones that matched the one in the rock. “I’d like to stop that damned ad, but if I did, Jerry’d get hep to the fact I got these rocks. But anyway, these are my insurance that he keeps our contract! At that,” he added to himself, “they may come in handy to show him if the fool wants to take a walk into the sky! I wonder how many more of the stones there are, anyway?”

  He pocketed the three green stones and walked up the midway whistling contentedly, waving an arm to the barker from the freak show.

  THE END