Andy the Acrobat

by John Kendrick Bangs

  CHAPTER II

  HOOP-LA!

  Andy Wildwood passed out of the village schoolhouse an anxious anddesolate boy.

  The brightest of sunshine gilded the spires and steeples of the village.It flooded highway and meadows with rich yellow light, but Andy,swinging his school books over his shoulder, walked on with droopinghead and a cheerless heart.

  "It's pretty bad, it's just the very worst!" he said with a deep sigh,as he reached a stile and sat down a-straddle of it.

  Andy tossed his books up into the hollow of a familiar oak near at hand.Then he fell to serious thinking.

  His gaze roving over the landscape, lit on the farmhouse of Jabez Dale.It revived the recent allusion of the old schoolmaster.

  "I didn't steal that calf," declared Andy, straightening up indignantly."Graham, who boards over at Millville, told us boys how Dale had sold acow to a farmer there. He said they took her away from her calf, and thepoor thing refused to eat. She just paced up and down a pasture fencefrom morning till night, crying for her calf. We got the calf, andcarried it to its mother. I'll never forget the sight, and I'll neverregret it, either--and what's best, the man who had got the cow was soworked up over its almost human grief, that he paid Dale for the calf,too, and kept it."

  The memory of the incident brightened up Andy momentarily. Then, hisglance flitting to the distant roof of a small neat cottage in a prettygrove of cedars, his face fell again. He choked on a great lump inhis throat.

  "Ginger!" he whistled dolefully, "how can I ever face the music overthere!"

  The cottage was Andy's home, but the thought had no charm or sweetnessfor the lone orphan boy whom its roof had grudgingly sheltered for thepast five years.

  Once it had belonged to his father. He had died when Andy was ten yearsold. Then it had passed into the legal possession of Mr. Wildwood'shalf-sister, Miss Lavinia Talcott.

  This aunt was Andy's nearest relative. He had lived with her since hisfather's death, if it could be called living.

  Miss Lavinia's favorite topic was the sure visitation of the sins of thefather upon his children.

  She was of a sour, snappy disposition. Her prim boast and pride was thatshe was a strict disciplinarian.

  To a lad of Andy's free and easy nature, her rules and regulations weretorture and an abomination.

  She made him take off his muddy shoes in the woodshed. Woe to him if heever brought a splinter of whittling, or a fragment of nutshell, intothe distressingly neat kitchen!

  Only one day in the week--Sunday--was Andy allowed the honor of sittingin the best room.

  Then, for six mortal hours his aching limbs were glued to astraight-backed chair. There, in parlor state, he sat listening to theprim old maid's reading religious works, or some scientific lecture, ora dreary dissertation on good behavior.

  She never allowed a schoolmate to visit him, even in the well-kept yard.She restricted his hours of play. And all the time never gave him aloving word or caress.

  On the contrary, many times a week Miss Lavinia administered atongue-lashing that suggested perpetual motion.

  Mr. Wildwood had been something of an inventor. He had gotten up ahoisting derrick that was very clever. It brought him some money. Thishe sunk in an impossible balloon, crippled himself in the initial voyageof his airship, and died shortly afterwards of a broken heart.

  Andy's mother had died when he was an infant. Thus it was that he fellinto the charge of his unloving aunt.

  It seemed that the latter had loaned Mr. Wildwood some money for hisscientific experiments. As repayment, when he died, she took the cottageand what else was left of the wreck of his former fortune.

  Even this she claimed did not pay her up in full, and she made poor Andyfeel all the time that he was eating the bread of charity.

  Andy's grandfather had been a famous sailor. Andy had read an oldprivate account among his father's papers of a momentous voyage hisgrandfather had made to the Antarctic circle.

  He loved to picture his ancestor among the ship's rigging. He had anadditional enthusiasm in another description of his father'sballoon venture.

  Andy wished he had been born to fly. He seemed to have inherited a sortof natural acrobatic tendency. At ten years of age he was the best boyrunner and jumper in the village.

  The first circus he had seen--not with Miss Lavinia's permission--setAndy fairly wild, and later astonished his playmates with prodigiousfeats of walking on a barrel, somersaulting, vaulting with a pole, andnumerous other amateur gymnastic attainments.

  For the past month a circus, now exhibiting in a neighboring town, hadbeen advertised in glowing prose and lurid pictures on big billboardsall over the county.

  Juvenile Fairview was set on fire anew with the circus fever. Andy'srope-walking feat and double somersault act from desk to desk thatmorning had resulted, getting him into the trouble of his life. Itfurthermore had interrupted other performances on the programme listedfor later on that very day.

  Andy's head had been full of the circus since he had seen its firstposter at a cross-roads. He could never pass a heap of sawdust withoutcutting a caper.

  In the spelling contest, he had stupefied his fellow students by nimblyrattling over such words as "megatherian," "stupendous," "zoologicalaggregation," and the like.

  One of his sums covered the number of yards a clown could cover in agiven time on a handspring basis. He had shocked the schoolmaster byhanding in an essay on "The Art of Bareback Riding."

  Andy had tried every acrobatic trick he had seen depicted in the glowingadvance sheets announcing the circus. To repeated efforts in thisdirection his admiring schoolmates had continually incited him.

  He had tried the double somersault in the schoolroom that morning. Andyhad made a famous success of the experiment, but with the direful resultof smashing a desk, and subsequent expulsion.

  Thinking over all this, Andy realized that the beginning and end of allhis troubles was his irrepressible tendency towards acrobaticperformances.

  "And I simply can't help it!" he cried in a kind of reckless despair."It's born in me, I guess. Oh, don't I hope Aunt Lavinia turns me out,as she has often threatened to do. Say, if she only would, and I couldjoin some show, and travel and see things and--live!"

  Andy threw himself flat on the green sward. He closed his eyes and gavehimself up to a rapture of thought.

  Gay banners, brightly comparisoned horses, white wildernesses of circustents, tinselled clowns, royal ringmasters, joyful strains of musicfloated through his active brain. It was a day dream of rare beauty, andhe could not tear himself away from it.

  An idle hour went by before Andy realized it. As echoing voices rang outon the quiet air, he got to his feet rubbing his eyes as if theywere dazzled.

  "Recess already," Andy said. "Well, I'll lay low until it's over. Idon't want to meet the boys just now. Then I'll do some more thinking. Isuppose I've got to decide to go home. Ugh! but I hate to--and I justwon't until the very last moment."

  Andy went in among the shrubbery farther away from the road, but hecould not hide himself. An active urchin discovered him from a distance.He yelled out riotously to his comrades, and they all came troopingalong pell-mell in Andy's direction.

  Their expelled schoolmate and favorite greeted them with a genial smile,never showing the white feather in the least.

  His chums found him carelessly tossing half-a-dozen crab apples fromhand to hand. Andy was an adept in "the glass ball act." He describedrapid semicircles, festoons and double crosses. He shot the greenobjects up into the air in all directions, and went through theperformance without a break.

  "Isn't Andy a crackerjack?" gloated enthusiastic little Tod Smith. "Oh,say, Andy, you won't disappoint us now, will you?"

  "What about?" inquired Andy.

  "The rest of it."

  "The rest of what?"

  "Your show. You know you promised--"

  "Oh, that's all off!" declared Andy gloomily. "I've made trouble enoughalready with my circu
s antics, I'm thinking."

  "Don't you be mean now, Andy Wildwood!" broke in Ned Wilfer, aparticular friend of the expelled boy. "Old Darrow has given us a doublerecess. We have a good forty minutes to have fun in. Come on."

  The speaker seized Andy's reluctant arm and began pulling him towardsthe road.

  "Got the horse?" he asked of a companion.

  "Sure," eagerly nodded the lad addressed. "I got him fixed up, platform,blanket and all, before school. He's tied up, waiting, at the end offather's ten-acre lot."

  "Yes, and I've got the hoop all ready there, too," chimed in Alf Warren,another schoolboy.

  "See here, fellows," demurred Andy dubiously, "I haven't much heart forfrolic. I'm expelled, you know, and there's Aunt Lavinia--"

  "Forget it!" interrupted Ned. "That will all right itself."

  Andy consented to accompany the gleeful, expectant throng. They hadarranged the night before to hold an amateur circus exhibition "on theirown hook."

  One boy had agreed to provide the "fiery steed" for the occasion. AlfWarren was to be property man, and donate the blazing hoop.

  They soon reached the corner of the ten-acre lot. There, tethered to astake and grazing placidly, was a big-boned, patient-looking horse.

  Across his back was strapped a small platform made of a cistern cover.This had been cushioned with a folded buggy robe.

  Alf Warren dove excitedly into a clump of bushes. He reappearedtriumphantly holding aloft a big hoop. It was wound round and round withstrips of woolen cloth which exuded an unmistakable and unpleasant odorof kerosene.

  "Say! it's going to be just like the circus picture on the side of thepost office, isn't it?" chuckled little Tod Smith.

  Ned Wilier took down the fence bars and led the horse out into the road.

  Andy pulled off his coat and shoes. He stowed them alongside a rock nearthe fence. Then he produced some elastic bands and secured his trousersaround the ankles.

  His eyes brightened and he forgot all his troubles for the time being,as he ran back a bit.

  "Out of the way there!" shouted Andy with glowing cheeks, posing for aforward dash.

  He made a quick, superb bound and landed lightly on the horse's back.

  Old Dobbin shied restively. Ned, at his nose, quieted him with a word.

  Andy, the centre of an admiring group, tested the impromptu platform. Heaccepted a short riding whip handed up to him by Alf Warren with a trulyprofessional flourish. Andy stood easy and erect, one hand on his hip.All that seemed lacking was the sawdust ring and a tinselled garb.

  "Ready," announced Andy.

  All of the group except Ned Wilfer started down the road in the wake ofAlf Warren. The latter carried the hoop in one hand, some matches inthe other.

  The mob rounded the highway, purposely selected because it curved, anddisappeared from view.

  "Everything all right, Andy?" inquired Ned, strutting about with quite aringmaster-like air.

  "Yes, if the horse will go any."

  "Oh, he'll get up full speed, once started," assured Ned.

  It was fully five minutes before an expected signal reached them. Fromfar around the bend in the road there suddenly echoed vivid shouts andwhistlings.

  "Start him up," ordered Andy.

  Ned led the horse a few rods and got him to running. Then, dropping tothe rear, he kept pace with the animal, slapping one flank and urginghim up to greater speed.

  He fell behind, but kept on running, as Andy, guiding the horse by thelong bridle reins, occasionally gave him a stimulating touch of thelight whip he carried.

  Five hundred feet covered, old Dobbin seemed to enjoy the novelty of theoccasion, and kept up a very fair gait.

  Rounding the curve in the road and looking a quarter-of-a-mile ahead,Andy could see his schoolmates gathered around a tree stump surmountedby Alf Warren, holding the hoop aloft.

  Just here, too, for the space of a mere minute Andy could view theschoolhouse through a break in the timber.

  A swift side glance showed the big scholar, Graham, lounging in thedoorway.

  Just approaching him from the direction of the village was the oldschoolmaster, Mr. Darrow.

  "He has been up to see Aunt Lavinia, that's the reason of the doublerecess," thought Andy, his heart sinking a trifle. Then, flinging careto the winds for the occasion, he uttered a ringing:

  "Hoop-la!"

  Andy felt that he must do justice to the expectations of his youngfriends.

  He swung outward on one foot in true circus ring fashion. He swayed backat the end of the bridles. He tipped thrillingly at the very edge of thecushioned platform. All the time by shouts and whip, he urged up oldDobbin to his best spurt of speed.

  At the schoolhouse door Mr. Darrow gazed at the astonishing spectaclewith uplifted hands.

  "Shocking!" he groaned. "Graham, there goes the most incorrigible boy inFairview."

  "Yes," nodded Graham with a quaint smile, as Andy Wildwood flashed outof sight past the break in the timber--"he certainly is going some."

  "He'll break his neck!"

  "I trust not."