CHAPTER X
The Bad Boy and His Pa Drive a Roman Chariot—They Win the Race, but Meet With Difficulties—The Bearded Lady to the Rescue—A Farmer’s Cart Breaks Up the Circus Procession.
Ohio was a hoodoo for the circus business, and Kentucky got the whole bunch ready for a long stay at Dwight, Ill., but the agent routed us into Pennsylvania, and pa has had nothing but a series of disasters since striking the state.
Pa gave notice that when we got to his old home, at Scranton, where he lived when he was a boy, he wanted to sort of run things, so his old neighbors would see that he had got up in the world since he left the old town. So the manager gave pa about 400 free tickets to distribute among his friends, and arranged for pa to show off as the leading citizen in the show. He was offered a chance to take the place of the clown, the ring master or anybody whose duty he thought he could perform. Pa selected the place of driver of the Roman chariot with four horses abreast, in place of the Irish Roman who was accustomed to drive the chariot in the race with the female charioteer, a muscular girl who used to clerk in a livery stable at Chicago.
The chariot race is a fake, because it is arranged for the girl to win, so the audience will go wild and cheer her, so she has to come bowing all around the ring. The way the job is put up is for the two chariots to start, and go around twice. On the first turn the man driver is ahead, and takes the pole, and on the second turn the girl’s ahead, and she takes the pole, and on the third turn the man is ahead, and they begin to whip the horses, who seem crazy, and on the last stretch the man holds his team back a little, and the girl passes him and comes out a trifle ahead, and the crowd goes wild.
Well, the master of ceremonies coached pa about the business, and told him what to do. They knew he could drive four horses, because he said he was an old stage driver, and when he got in the chariot with the Roman suit on gleaming with gold, and the brass helmet, and the cloth of gold gauntlets, and stood up like a senator, gee, I was proud of him, and when he and the female drove out of the dressing-room and halted by the door for the announcer to announce the great Ben Hur chariot race, I got into the chariot behind pa, and told him he must win the race, or the people of Scranton would mob him. For they knew these races were usually fixed beforehand, but since he was to drive one of the teams, all his friends were betting on him, and if he pulled the team and let that livery stable lady win the race, they would accuse him of giving free tickets to get them in the show and skin them out of their money.
Pa said to me: “This race is going to be on the square, and you watch my smoke. Do you think I would let that red-headed dish washer beat me? Not on your life.”
The play is to have a little boy kiss the male driver good-by, and a little girl kiss the female driver good-by, as though they were taking their lives in their hands. I had climbed up to pa and put my arms around his neck, and kissed him, and a girl kissed the female, when the gong sounded, and both four-horse teams made a jump, before I could get out of the chariot, so I got right in front of pa and peeked over the dashboard of the chariot, and, gee, but didn’t we fairly whizz by the poles, and the audience looked like a panorama.
Pa got the pole and kept it, and we went around three times, and found the female chariot ahead of us, cause pa had gone around twice to her once. She turned out a little right by the band-stand, and pa run his team right inside her chariot and caught her wheel, and when he yelled to his team, her cart, team, and all were thrown right into the band, which scattered over the backs of the seats. The horses were all mixed up with the instruments, and the female driver was thrown into the air and came down in a sitting position right into the bass drum. She went right through the sheepskin, so her head and hands and feet were all of her that remained outside the drum.
She yelled for help and the circus hands rolled the drum, with her in it, into the dressing-room, where they had to cut the sides of the drum with an ax, to get her out, while others caught her horses and pulled the chariot out of the band, and the music stopped; but pa went on forever.
He went around six times yelling like an Indian at a green corn dance, and when he thought it was time to let up, because he had missed the other chariot, he pulled so hard he broke the lines on the two inside horses and then it was a runaway for sure, and the audience stood up on the seats and yelled, and women fainted.
Finally the circus hands grabbed some hurdles, and threw them across the track, near the main entrance, and when we came around the last time, two of the horses jumped the hurdles all right, but two fumbled and fell down, and there was a crash, and I didn’t know anything until I felt cold water on my face that tasted sour, and colored my shirt red, and I found the lemonade butcher was bringing me to by pouring a tray of lemonade over me.
When my eyes opened, I saw a sight that I shall never forget. It seems that when the horses fell down, the chariot and the other two horses and pa and I had landed all in a heap right on top of the lemonade and peanut concession, and carried it up onto a row of seats near the main entrance from the menagerie. The elephants that were to come on next were in the door waiting for their signal, and they were scared at the crash, and they came in bellowing, the keepers having lost all control of them. The audience was stampeding, and the circus men were trying to straighten things out.
Pa struck on his head against a wagon wheel and his brass helmet was driven down over his face, so when he yelled to be pulled out of the helmet his voice sounded like a coon song, coming from a phonograph. It was the closest call from death pa ever had, ’cause they had to cut the helmet with a can opener to let pa out, like you open a can of lobsters. When they got the helmet opened so pa could come out, he looked just like a boiled lobster, and when the chief owner of the circus came up on a run, and asked if pa was dead, pa said: “Not much, Mary Ann; did I win?” and the manager said it was a pity they ever opened that helmet and let pa out. The man told pa he won in a walk, but the chief of police of Scranton was going to arrest pa for exceeding the speed limit.
They took pa to the dressing-room on a piece of board, and when the woman driver saw him, she got an ax, and wanted to cleave him from head to foot, but the bearded woman stepped in front of her and said: “Not on your life,” and she shielded pa from death with her manly form, which pa says he shall never forget. Pa’s old friends in Scranton gave him a banquet that night, but pa couldn’t eat anything, cause the rim of the brass helmet cut a gash in his Adam’s apple.
After the chariot race the managers concluded they wouldn’t let pa have any position of importance again very soon, and I made up my mind you wouldn’t ever catch me in any game that pa was in; but in the circus business you can never tell what is going to happen from one day to another.
On the train on the way to Wilkes Barre there was a hot box on one of the sleepers, and the car was side-tracked all night.
When we arrived at the town about 40 wagon drivers that were in the car did not show up, and they had to press everybody that could drive a team into the service to haul the stuff to the lot, and pa drove four horses so well with a load of tent poles that the manager complimented pa, and that gave pa the big head. When the parade was all ready to start through town, and the drivers had not arrived, the manager asked pa if he thought he could drive the ten gray horses on the band wagon, to lead the procession, and pa said driving ten horses was his best hold, and he got up on the driver’s seat, and called me to get up with him, and I hate a boy that will disobey a parent, so I climbed up and began to jolly the band about the chariot race, and I told them pa wouldn’t do a thing to them this time.
The manager of the show always rides ahead of the parade, with the chief of police of the town, and the band horses follow him, so it is easy enough to drive ten horses, cause all you have to do it to hold on to the 20 lines, and look savage at the crowd on the sidewalks, and the horses go right along, and the people think the driver is a wonder. So when the manager started in his buggy pa pulled up on all the lines he could hold on to,
which filled his lap, and made him look like a harness maker, and he yelled: “Ye-up,” and the procession moved, and the ten teams pa was driving went along all right, and pa looked as though he owned the show and the town.
We got downtown, to a wide street, and there was a fire alarm ahead, or something, and the procession stopped, and the manager and chief of police disappeared, and there was a wagon load of green corn stalks right beside the lead team, which a farmer was taking to a silo, but he had stopped his team to see the parade. The three teams of pa’s leaders, six horses, began to eat the corn stalks, and the camels, that were behind us, worked along up by the band wagon and began to eat, and the farmer got scared to see his corn stalks disappearing, so he drove off on a side street, and started for the silo, and by ginger, pa’s team turned onto the side street and followed the wagon of corn stalks, and pa couldn’t hold them, and the band played, “In the Good Old Summer Time, There Will Be a Hot Time in the Old Town.”
The camels kept up with the farmer’s wagon, too, and the whole parade followed the band. The farmer started his horses into a run, and the team of ten horses that was driving pa started to galloping, and I looked back, and the elephants were beginning to gallop, and all the cages were coming whooping, and it was a picnic. The band stopped playing, and the players were scared, and as we were crossing a little bridge over a small stream, on the edge of town, I turned around to the band and told them to jump for their lives, and they all made a jump for the stream, and the air was full of uniforms and instruments, and they landed in the stream all right.
We went on up a hill, and were in the country, and the farmer turned into a farmyard, and the band wagon followed, and the farmer jumped off the corn stalk wagon and rushed for the house, and pa’s ten-horse team surrounded the wagon, and every horse was eating corn stalks, and the team was all mixed up. The camels and the elephants crowded in for the nice green lunch, and the farmer’s wife came out with her apron waving, and said “Shoo,” but none of the animals shooed worth a cent, and pa pulled on the lines, and yelled, while the rest of the parade came into the farm and lined up. The drivers yelled at pa to know where in thunder he was going, and pa said: “Damfino.”
Just then the manager and chief of police came up, and the way they talked to pa was awful. Pa couldn’t explain how it was that he took the parade out in the country, and you never saw such a time.
By this time the regular drivers had arrived on a special, from where we left them with a hot box, and they took possession of the teams, and we got back to the circus lot in time for the afternoon performance. I don’t know what they are doing to pa, but they had him in the manager’s tent all the afternoon with some doctors, who seem to be examining him for insanity.
Everybody about the show thinks pa has hoodooed the aggregation, but pa says such things are always happening, and it is wrong to blame him.
The farmer got paid for his corn stalks, and it is to be charged up to pa.
CHAPTER XI
The Bad Boy and His Pa in a Railroad Wreck—Pa Rescues the “Other Freaks”—They Spend the Night on a Meadow—A Near-Sighted Claim Agent Settles for Damages—Pa Plays Deaf and Dumb and Gets Ten Thousand.
It has come at last.
Everybody about the show expects that the show has got to have a railroad wreck every season, and all hands lay awake nights on the cars to brace themselves for the shock. Sometimes it comes early in the season, and again a show goes along until almost the end of the season without a shake-up, and fellows think maybe there is not going to be any wreck, but the engineers are only waiting till everybody has forgotten about it, and then, biff, bang, and they have run into another train, or been run into, and you have to be pulled out of a window by the heels, and laid out in a marsh until the claim agents can settle with you.
I always thought in reading of railroad accidents, that the railroad sent out a special trainload of doctors and nurses, to care for the injured, but the special train never has a doctor until the lawyers give first aid to the wounded in the way of financial poultices for the cripples. People in our business are on the railroads, and we work them for all there is in it; and the man that is hurt the least makes the biggest howl, and gets the biggest slice of indemnity. Some circus people spend all their salary as they go along, and live all winter on the damages they get from the railroads when the wreck comes.
The night of the wreck our train was whooping along at about 90 miles an hour, on a hippity-hop railroad in Pennsylvania, and the night was hot, and the mosquitoes from across the line in New Jersey were singing their solemn tunes, and pa, who attended a lodge meeting that night at the town we showed in, was asleep and talking in his sleep about passwords and grips, and the freaks and trapeze performers in our car had got through kicking about how the show was running into the ground, when suddenly there was a terrific smash-up ahead, an engine boiler exploded, a freight car of dynamite on a side track exploded and there was a grinding and bumping of cars. Then they rolled down a bank, over and over, so the upper berth was the lower berth half the time, and finally the whole business stopped in a hay marsh, and the bilge water in the marsh leaked into the hold of our car; people screamed, and some one yelled “fire!” and I pulled on pa till he woke up.
I thought pa’s head was all caved in, because he talked nutty. The first thing he said was: “Say I, pronounce your name, and repeat after me,” and then he said: “I promise and swear that I will never reveal the secrets of this degree,” and then the conductor pulled pa’s leg and said: “Crawl out of the window, old man, ’cause the train is in the ditch, the car is afire, and if you don’t get out in about a minute with the other freaks, you will be a burnt offering.”
Pa said you couldn’t fool him, ’cause he knew he was being initiated into the 20-steenth degree of the Masons, and he guessed he could tell a degree from a train wreck, ’cause the degree was a darn sight worse than a wreck, but the conductor took one of those long glass fire extinguishers and sprinkled the medicated water on the freaks in the next berth, and then turned it on pa, and pa tasted it, and thought he was at a banquet, and he said “that sauterne is not fit to drink.”
Then when the bearded woman yelled that the fire had almost reached her whiskers, and would nobody save her, pa began to get ready to move on, ’cause he concluded he hadn’t been riding a goat after all, and he told me to hand him his pants. Pa is a man that will never go out among people, no matter how dark the night is, without his pants, and I admire him for it. Some of the circus men didn’t care for dress that night, but got out just as they were, and the result was that when daylight came they had to tie hay around their legs.
Our car was bottom-side up, but I found pa’s pants and he got his legs in, and I buttoned him in, but I felt all the time as though I had buttoned them in the back, so the seat was in front, but the fire was crackling and pa pushed me out of a transom, and then he crawled out, and we sat down in the mud.
The bearded woman came next, with her whiskers done up in curl papers, and then the fat woman got one foot through the transom, and she couldn’t get it back in, and the train hands got an ax and were going to cut her leg off, and save one foot, at least, when pa got a move on him, and took the ax and broke out the side of the car, and got her out. Eight or nine men lifted her tenderly onto a stack of hay, and she wrapped it around her, ’cause she left her clothes in her berth.
Well, it was a sight when the people were got out of our car, and they let it burn, to light up the scene, and pa and I and the boss canvasman went along the ditched train, and helped people out. The giant was in two upper berths, and he got one leg out of the transom over one berth, and one leg out of the transom over the other berth, and we pulled his legs, but he couldn’t make it, so pa took an ax and made both berths into one, and got him out.
The giant shook himself and started on a run across the marsh, but he mired up to his neck, and a farmer who heard the noise came to order us off his hay field for trespass, and yelled:
“Here’s a head of some of your performers cut off away over here,” and he was going to bring it in, when the farmer found the head was alive, and he ran away from it.
In an hour we had everybody out, and made beds for them by spreading out hay cocks, and nobody seemed to be hurt so very much. We heard a locomotive whistle up the road, and some one said the relief train was coming with doctors and nurses, but the show owner who was with us said: “Relief doctors, nothing. That is a train-load of lawyers and claim agents to settle with us. The doctors will not come till to-morrow. Now, everybody pretend to be hurt awful bad, and strike the sharks for $10,000 apiece, and come down to $100, if you can’t do any better.”
It was getting daylight, and the relief train stopped, and the good Samaritans came wading into the hay marsh, bent on settling with us cheap. The first lawyer asked the principal owner how many were killed, ’cause they could figure exactly how much they have to pay for a dead one, but the live ones are the ones that make trouble for a railroad, ’cause they can kick and argue. The boss said nobody was dead, but the giant, who was mired in out of sight. The giant heard what was said, and he yelled that he was alive, and wouldn’t settle for less than $20,000, but the claim agent said the giant would be dead in 15 minutes in that quicksand, so he would let him sink, and pay for him as a dead one.
The giant said if they would pull him out of the mud he would settle for $100, and they pulled him out, and the rest of the injured were going to mob him for settling so cheap.
One of the claim agents found the bearded woman sitting on a hay cock, combing out her whiskers, and asked what it would take to settle, and she said $10,000, and she got up and walked over to another hay cock where the Circassian beauty was drying her hair, and the claim agent looked at how spry the bearded woman walked, and he said to the boss: “I won’t give that fellow with the curly whiskers a single kopeck,” and the bearded woman came back and swatted the claim agent for calling her a fellow. So they compromised on $200, and she went behind the haystack and put it in her stocking, which convinced the claim agent that she wasn’t a man.
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