The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  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 interviewed the midget, the bearded lady, the world’s strongest man, and he tried to interview the man who bit heads off of chickens, but the man would answer no questions, so the reporter went on to the World’s Oldest Man and asked him, “How old are you?” There was no response.

  Hank told the reporter, “He’s near deef. Talk loud.” The reporter repeated the question loudly.

  “I can’t be certain,” replied the World’s Oldest Man, “but several years past a hundred, I can assure you.”

  “How did you manage to live that long?” asked the reporter. “Are you an abstainer?”

  “I’ve never tasted alcohol, no,” replied the old man, “but I don’t think that had anything to do with it.”

  “Well—?” the reporter waited, then persisted, “To what do you attribute your longevity?”

  The old man was silent, as if thinking, then he said quietly, “I kept moving. I never slowed down long enough for death to catch me.”

  The reporter admired that answer and commented, “You seem to have all of your wits about you.”

  “Thank you,” replied the old man. “I do.”

  The reporter pursued the question. “But why did you keep moving?”

  Again the old man was silent, as if meditating and discovering the answer for the first time, and when he spoke the answer it was with a self-wonderment. “I felt there was something I had to do. Ought to do. Was foreordained to do.”

  “No fooling?” said the reporter. “And what was that something?”

  “Whatever I have done,” said the old man, and would not elaborate.

  “How long have you been with this circus?” asked the reporter.

  “Oh, it’s hard to remember. Maybe twenty years.”

  “And what did you do before that?”

  “I traveled. I was engaged in various sales campaigns.”

  “Where are you from, originally?”

  “Connecticut.”

  The reporter thanked the old man for the interview and went on to interview the tattooed man. Hank wandered back to the crumb castle or chuck wagon or whatever it was to see if dinner was ready yet. After eating, he saw that the Midway was open, and he strolled it, keeping an eye out for any of his folks, whom he did not want to see until he had his clown suit and make-up on. But there weren’t many people on the Midway. He had two dollars and seventy-five cents in his pocket, which was all of his life’s savings after the stock market crashed, so he spent some of this to ride the Ferris Wheel and get a cone of cotton candy. Then he realized he’d better go practice his juggling before the Big Top opened. As he was leaving the Midway, he passed a peanut vendor and was surprised to discover that the peanut vendor was the World’s Oldest Man, hawking peanuts out of a tray that was suspended from his neck on a string. Not very loudly, the old peanut vendor was calling, “Fresh roasted peanuts! A nickel a bag!” Hank went up to him and gave him a nickel. The old man looked at him and gave him a bag of peanuts but refused his nickel.

  “You’re an Ingledew,” said the old man. “I can’t charge an Ingledew anything.”

  Hank commented, speaking loudly, “That thar sideshow must not pay ye very well, that you’re obliged to sell goobers on the side.”

  The old man shook his head. “No, boy, I don’t need to sell peanuts. I’ve been selling things all my life, and I just can’t give up the confounded habit.” And he hobbled off down the Midway, croaking, “Fresh roasted peanuts! A nickel a bag!” Hank wondered again about how the old man was so old that he knew everything and therefore knew that Hank was an Ingledew, although that didn’t explain why he would give away a bag of peanuts free of charge to any Ingledew.

  Hank went to Phil’s trailer and with Phil’s help put on his clown suit and his rubber nose and greasepaint. He confessed to Phil that he was a bit nervous about appearing in front of all those people. Phil snorted. “What’s the name of this place? Jasper? Well, in circus lingo a ‘jasper’ is a local person who buys a ticket. There’re not many jaspers in Jasper.”

  Phil was right: when Hank went into the Big Top for the first time, he discovered that there weren’t more than fifty people in the audience, and none of them were Stay Morons. Although there were three rings in the circus, only one of them was being used. With the other clowns, Hank went around the ring, doing his elbow-touching and juggling act. Nobody laughed, although the younger members of the audience giggled and pointed. Hank was disappointed; it hadn’t been much of a thrill. He suffered the sourhours while waiting for the evening performance. The attendance at the night show wasn’t much better, and again there was no one from Stay More. Hank knew it had been a bad drought summer and people didn’t have much money, and his own folks didn’t have any money at all. But he wished that at least one of his uncles or brothers would show up in the audience and recognize him. Maybe tomorrow. But when the evening performance was over, Phil assembled all the circus people and said to them, “Okay, let’s blow this morgue. Everybody up at dawn and tear down the rags.” Hank was surprised to discover that his friend Phil was apparently the boss of the whole circus, and he asked him if he meant that they were leaving in the morning, and Phil said, “Yeah, kid, this town is a total blank,” so Hank asked him if he could go with them to whatever next town they were going to, and Phil said, “Sure, kid, but the pay is lousy.” Hank realized that he hadn’t been paid anything for his two performances so far, but he’d had plenty of free food. He went to bed early on the grass and had dreams of doing his act in front of big crowds in the cities.

  He was awakened just before dawn by a hand on his shoulder. It was the World’s Oldest Man. “Get up, Ingledew,” he said. Hank rose quickly to his feet. “Let’s go home,” the old man sa
id. “The circus is over.”

  “But I’m a-gorn with ’em. Phil said I could,” Hank protested, then remembered he would have to speak loudly for the old man to hear him. He began to repeat himself loudly, but the old man hissed “Sshh!” and put a finger to his lips and clamped the other hand over Hank’s mouth. “Wait ’till we’re out of here,” the old man said and took his arm and began to lead him out of the circus lot. Hank couldn’t understand why the old man intended to go with him. Or maybe the old man just intended to escort him out of the circus. If the old man was so old that he knew everything, even Hank’s last name, then maybe the old man knew some reason why Hank should not join the circus for keeps and go with them to the next town. Suddenly Hank remembered his mule, and by mute sign language or pantomime he tried to convey this to the old man, and was finally required to whisper loudly in the old man’s ear, “My mule,” and the old man let him go and get it. Then the old man slipped into a tent and got a fifty-pound sack of peanuts and hoisted it up onto the back of the mule. Hank led the mule and they left the grounds of the circus. When they were out of earshot of anyone in the circus, Hank raised his voice and said to the old man, “I was fixin to jine the circus fer keeps. Phil said I could. Aint he the boss?”

  “Philip Foogle and his brother Charles own the circus, yes,” the old man said. “But he isn’t the boss, and neither is Charles.”

  “Who is?”

  “I am. Or, rather, I’m an agent of the boss.”

  “Why won’t you let me jine the circus? I don’t want to go back to Stay More.”

  “You don’t? That’s dreadful. You shouldn’t have left it in the first place. Didn’t anyone ever tell you the story of your great-great-uncle Benjamin Ingledew?”

  Hank had heard of the story of his great-grandpap’s older brother Benjamin, who had headed for California to hunt for gold and died in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, but he didn’t understand what that had to do with his joining the circus, and he wondered how the old man knew about Benjamin Ingledew, but realized that the old man was so old that he knew everything. They were well outside of Jasper by now, halfway to Parthenon, and the old man was still hobbling along beside him. Was he actually going all the way to Stay More with him? It would sure wear him out.

  “You wanter ride the mule?” Hank offered.

  “Thank you,” the old man said. “I would be very grateful.” Hank helped him to climb up on the mule’s back, and they went on. The sun was rising.

  Hank indicated the fifty-pound sack of peanuts on the mule’s shoulders, and asked, “You aim to sell them goobers in Stay More?”

  “If I can,” the old man said.

  They walked on, and passed through Parthenon. They did not talk much, because the old man would only speak if Hank asked him a question and although there were many questions which Hank could have asked him Hank didn’t know which one to start with, so he remained silent. Hank wondered if the old man was quitting the circus for good, or maybe he just intended to sell his peanuts in Stay More and then catch up with the circus later on. Maybe in the meantime Hank could persuade him to let him join the circus, if he really was the boss.

  It was almost noon when they reached Stay More. Hank began to worry if his folks would give him a licking for sneaking off from home and taking the mule with him. He had a feeling that maybe the old man could protect him, so when the old man asked to get down from the mule at Willis’s store, Hank asked him if he didn’t mind staying with him until he took the mule home, and the old man smiled a small smile and nodded his head. Thus, the old man did not get off the mule until they reached Hank’s house, where Hank’s father and brothers were sitting on the porch waiting for dinner, and Hank’s mother came running out of the kitchen as soon as Bevis Ingledew telepathically informed her that their errant son had returned with the mule and that an unbelievably old man was sitting on the mule.

  “Boy, whar on earth have ye—” Bevis Ingledew started to demand of Hank but then he stared fixedly at the old man for a long moment and exclaimed, “Strike me blind! If it aint ole Eli Willard! But it caint be! I’ve not laid eyes on ye since I was ’bout twenty, and I’m past forty now, and back then you was already senile.”

  “He’s the World’s Oldest Man,” Hank declared proudly, as if he had invented, or at least discovered, him. But he had heard stories about Eli Willard and knew that he had already been in Stay More again and again and again long before Hank was born.

  “Jist in time for dinner,” Emelda remarked, and invited Eli Willard into her kitchen, where she served him and Bevis and the boys a frugal but filling lunch. During the meal, Eli Willard was brought up to date on the current condition of Stay More: who had died, who had been born, the opening and closing of the bank, the closing of the mill, the coming and going of the city-women homesteaders, the Unforgettable Picnic, the making and selling of corn-husk dolls, the failure of crops, and so forth.

  Eli Willard showed no particular interest or emotion at any of this news, although he remarked that he was happy to have noticed that there was now a gasoline pump standing in the road beside Willis’s store, which implied that there was now an abundance of horseless carriages in the neighborhood. He asked if there had been any more lawsuits against hapless motorists whose vehicles had frightened livestock. The Ingledews were embarrassed at his bringing up the subject, and they apologized on behalf of the departed Uncle Denton, and said that there was a legend in the Ingledew family that Uncle Denton had a peculiar sense of humor and had intended the lawsuit only as a joke. Eli Willard smiled a wan smile. Then he thanked them for the dinner and asked Hank to take him back to the general store. Eli Willard’s reappearance had caused so much excitement to Bevis and Emelda that they forgot to reprimand Hank for running away from home, or even to ask where he had been. Hank helped Eli Willard up on the mule’s back once again and took him and his fifty-pound sack of peanuts to Willis’s store, where Eli Willard attempted to buy a hundred small paper sacks from Willis, who was so astonished and delighted to find the Connecticut peddler still among the living that he refused to accept payment for the tiny sacks, but, when Eli Willard had transferred the contents of the fifty-pound sack of peanuts into one hundred half-pound sacks, with Hank’s help, Willis accepted the gift of one sack free gratis. Then Eli Willard sat on the store porch and attempted to sell peanuts at five cents a bag.

  Business was not very brisk. Willis tactfully pointed out to Eli Willard that the word “bag” means scrotum throughout the Ozarks, and that instead of saying “Fresh roasted peanuts! A nickel a bag!” Eli Willard should say “Fresh roasted peanuts! A nickel a poke!” Therefore the peanut peddler altered his pitch, but business did not improve. Willis offered the further opinion that the word “peanuts” itself was suspect, because it suggested not only the testicles but also micturition. “Goobers” also suggested the male genitals, but was not as suggestive as peanuts. So Eli Willard began to say, “Fresh roasted goobers! A nickel a poke!” whenever anyone came along, which wasn’t often. He sold a few pokes. Hank decided that maybe Eli Willard intended to rejoin the circus as soon as he had sold all of the peanuts. To test this notion, he casually asked the old man if he knew where the circus was going after it left Jasper. Eli Willard nodded. Hank left the store and went around from house to house in Stay More, telling everybody that old Eli Willard was back in town, and offering a whole half-pound of goobers for just five cents. Soon the store porch was crowded with people cracking and eating peanuts, and before long they were up to their ankles in peanut shells. As the afternoon waned, Eli Willard sold his last poke of peanuts. Willis Ingledew swept the peanut shells off the store porch, and closed his store and went home to eat supper. Eli Willard and Hank were alone. The profits from the sale of peanuts had come to exactly five dollars, which Eli Willard gave to Hank, saying it was payment for the ride from Jasper to Stay More.

  “How you gorn to git back?” Hank wanted to know.

  “I’m not.”

  “Huh? You
aint givin up on the circus fer good, air ye?”

  Eli Willard nodded.

  “Wal, will ye tell me whar they went, so’s I can fine ’em?”

  Eli Willard shook his head. Then he asked, “What’s your name, Ingledew?”

  “John Henry. Everbody calls me Hank.”

  Eli Willard seemed to be only thinking about that, without comment. Then he unbuttoned his left sleeve and removed from his wrist a dazzling gold wristwatch; even the band was gold. He handed it to Hank. “It’s a chronometer,” he explained. “Keeps perfect time. Never loses a second. Not a fraction of a second. But it isn’t for you, except in trust. Keep it for your son.”

  “My son?” Hank said. “Heck, I ain’t but ten year old.”

  “Yes, but you’ll have a son some day.”

  Hank thought about that. He realized that in order to have a son you first had to find a girl and sweet-talk her into marrying you, and then you had to persuade her to get into bed with you and let you do it to her, and more than once if it wasn’t the right time of month. Hank could never do anything like that, and he told Eli Willard so, but the old man just laughed and assured him that he would indeed eventually do all of those things, and more.

  “But what if it aint a son but a daughter?”

  “Try again. And again. And when your son is old enough to appreciate, give him that chronometer and tell him my story.”

  “What’s your story?”

  “Four score and ten years ago, I sold a clock to your great-greatgrandfather, who, as you probably know, was the first white settler of Stay More. It wasn’t a very good clock, I must confess…” Eli Willard went on, and told Hank the whole long story of his many many returns to Stay More, what merchandise he had offered if not sold, the experiences he had had, not excluding the humiliations and the boredom. He talked through and past suppertime, and Hank was getting mighty hungry, but he figured the least he could do in return for such a fine gold watch, even if he couldn’t wear it himself but only keep it for his son, was to listen carefully to the old man’s story and try to remember it so that he could tell it to his son on the day that he would give him the fine gold watch, and maybe his son could make some sense out of the story even if Hank couldn’t.