The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack

by George W. Peck

  And pa came down and took a fence rail and sharpened it with an ax, and he run it into Bolivar about a foot, and Bolivar trumpeted for surrender, and that settled the elephant strike, for pa ordered Bolivar into the road, and in five minutes the whole herd of elephants was following Bolivar back to Washington, as meek as a drunken husband being led home by his wife.

  Gee, what do you think? The president heard how the senator’s boy and I stampeded the elephants and invited the senator’s boy to bring his young friend around to the white house to supper. Well, we went.

  I forgot what we had to eat, I was so interested in the president’s conversation. He talked about the show business as though he had been a ringmaster in a circus. He said he was in the show the day before when we stampeded the elephants, and he told us about his hunting trips in the west, until I could smell bacon cooking at the camp fire, and I could smell the balsam boughs they slept on, on the ground.

  When he let up a little on his talk, I braced up and asked him if he had rather shoot wild cats and bears than be president. He hedged and said both occupations worked pretty well together and he had enjoyed ’em both. Then I asked him if he was going to run for president again, and he winked at his wife, and then he asked me what made me ask the question. I told him pa wanted me to find out. I told him all the boys wanted him to run, ’cause he was a good feller, and not afraid of the cars.

  The president laughed and said: “Well, it’s this way. The president business is a good deal like bear hunting. You get on a fresh track, either in politics or bear hunting, and follow the game with dogs, or politicians, as the case may be. The trail keeps getting fresher and by and by the game is in sight, and the dogs are nipping its hind legs, if it is a bear, or chewing big words if it is an opposing candidate, and nipping him in exposed places. You ride like mad, your clothes or your reputation torn by briars if it is a bear, or by opposition newspapers if it is a political campaign, and you wish it was over, many times, and are so tired you wish you were dead. Finally your bear or your opponent in politics is treed and the dogs are trying to climb the tree, and your bear or your political opponent is up on a limb snarling and showing his teeth at the dogs or the politicians, and then you ride up, look the ground over, wait till your heart stops beating and fire the shot at a vital part, and your bear or your political opponent comes tumbling to the ground. When he ceases to kick you put your foot on his neck and feel sorry you killed him, but you go to work and skin him and hang his hide on the fence. Then you have got to ride all night to get to camp, if it is a bear, and work harder than a man on a treadmill for four years, if it is a presidential candidate you have skun.”

  I had sat with my mouth open while the president talked, and never said a word, but when he quit I said: “Yes, but suppose when you got your bear skun, another bear should come after you and dare you to knock a chip off his shoulder, and growl, and walk sideways with his bristles all up, would you run, or would you stand your ground?”

  “We better change the subject,” said the president, and rose from the table, and we all got up. He patted me on the head, and said: “Tell your pa I will see him later, and in the meantime, you run your circus and I will try to run mine.”

  The queerest thing happened that night. The senator’s boy spoke of our trained seals, that catch a fish if you throw it to them and swallow it whole. He said it would be fun to take a little alarm clock and sew it up in a fish, and set the alarm at seven o’clock p.m., when the crowd is watching the seals swallow fish, and throw it to the big seal, and the alarm would go off inside him.

  Well, I bit like a bass, and said we would do it, so he took a little alarm clock and set it for seven o’clock. We got it into a fish, and I am ashamed to tell what happened. Gee, but that seal grabbed the fish with a clock in it, and tried to swallow it, but the brass ring caught on one of his teeth, and he was trying to get it loose when the alarm went off, and the seal jumped out of the tank and began to prance around the crowd, scaring the women, and making all the animals nervous. He stood on his head and bellowed, and all the circus hands came rushing up. Finally the alarm clock quit jingling, and they caught the seal and pulled the clock off his tooth, and just then pa came up to me and said: “What deviltry you boys up to now? Suppose that seal had swallowed that clock, and you couldn’t wind it up; it might kill him. Now, go to the car, ’cause we are going to get out of this town right off. You make me tired.” And pa helped to lift the slippery seal into the tank, and looked mad at his little boy, and hurt the feelings of the senator’s boy.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  The Show Strikes Virginia and the Educated Ourang Outang Has the Whooping Cough—The Bad Boy Plays the Part of a Monkey, but They Forget to Pin on a Tail.

  Well, I have broke the show all to pieces, just by not being able to stand grief. Everything is all balled up, the managers are sore at me, and afraid of being sent to jail, and pa thinks I ought to be mauled.

  It was this way: When we left Washington we cut loose from every home tie, and plunged into Virginia, and the trouble began at once. We met a lawyer on the train, on the way to Richmond, and fed him in our dining car, and got him acquainted with all the performers and freaks, and he told us that we would have to be careful in Virginia, ’cause all the white people were first families and aristocratic, and if any man about our show should fail to be polite to the white people they would be shot or lynched, but if we wanted to shoot negroes the game laws were not very strict about it, ’cause the open season on negroes run the year around, but you couldn’t shoot white people only two months in the year. He said another thing that scared pa and the managers. He said that if a traveling show did not perform all it advertised the owners were liable to go to state prison for 20 years, and that each town had men on the lookout to see that shows didn’t advertise what they didn’t carry out.

  Pa and the managers held a consultation, and couldn’t find that we advertised anything that we didn’t have, except the ourang outang that we took on at New York, which eats and dresses like a man, ’cause that animal got whooping cough in Delaware and had to be sent to a hospital, but we heard he was well again and would join the show in a week. Pa asked the Richmond lawyer how it would be if one of the animals that was advertised was sick and couldn’t perform, and he told pa the people would mob the show if anything was left out.

  When we got to Richmond the whole population, principally negroes, was at the lot when we put up the tents, and everybody wanted to catch a sight of Dennis, the ourang outang, and the posters all over town that pictured Dennis smoking cigarettes with a dress suit on, and eating with a knife and fork and a napkin tucked under his chin, were surrounded by crowds. It was plain that all the people cared for was to see the monk.

  The managers held a council of war and decided the show would be ruined if we didn’t make a bluff at having an ourang outang, so it was decided that I was to be dressed up in Dennis’ clothes, and put on a monkey mask, and go through his stunt at the afternoon performance.

  Gee, but I hated to do it, but pa said the fate of the show depended on it and if I didn’t take the part he would have to do it himself, and I knew pa wasn’t the build of man to play the monkey, and so I said I would do it, but I will never do it again for any show. The wardrobe woman fixed my up like Dennis, and I had seen him go through his stunt so often I thought I could imitate him, and of course there was no talking to do, but just to grunt once in awhile, the way Dennis did, and have an animal look.

  Well, sir, the keeper who trained the ourang outang took me in hand, and in an hour I was perfect, I had rubber feet and wore black gloves, and had a tail fastened with a safety pin, that would deceive the oldest showman in the business. When the crowd was the biggest, in the middle ring, the keeper led me out of the dressing room with a chain. The announcement was made by the barker that Dennis, the educated ourang outang, that had performed before crowned heads in Europe and sapheads in Newport, the only man-monkey in the known world, would now en
tertain the most select audience that had ever been under the tent. Then I was dragged into the ring and put on the platform.

  They didn’t put on my dress clothes at first, but had a little screen on the platform for me to go behind to dress, and I appeared first in the natural state of the ourang outang, with a suit of buffalo robe stuff that looked exactly like a big monkey. I bowed and the audience cheered, and I stood on my hands and scratched at an imaginary flea, and pa, who was leaning against the platform, whispered to me that I was making the hit of the season.

  Then the attendants set the table and the keeper took me behind the screen and dressed me, and the old fool forgot to put on my tail. He led me out and I sat up to the table, hitched up my cuffs, put a napkin under my chin, took a knife and fork and began to eat, just like a human being. The audience cheered, and the circus people crowded around and said I was just as good as Dennis himself. I went through the whole of Dennis’ performance and never skipped a note, until a smart white man yelled: “Where is the tail of your ourang outang?” and the crowd began to be suspicious, and more than a thousand yelled. “There is no tail on your monkey.”

  That rattled the trainer and he remembered that he had forgotten to pin the tail on me, so while I was using the finger bowl he went to the screen and got the tail and came out and was pinning it on to my dress pants, when the audience began to yell: “Fraud! Fraud! Kill the monk!” and a lot of stuff.

  Then pa got on a barrel the elephants had been performing on and got the attention of the audience and told them not to be unreasonable. He said the management had found by experience that after the ourang outang had been trained to eat like a man and wear men’s clothes, that his tail was in the way, so at a great expense the management had caused Dennis’ tail to be amputated at a New York hospital, and while we always carry the tail along, it was only used when a critical audience demanded it, but if this refined audience so desired the tail would be attached to the intelligent animal.

  The crowd yelled: “Pin on the tail; the tail goes with the hide,” and the trainer began to pin it on. Say, I could have killed that trainer. He run that safety pin about an inch into my spine, and I jumped into the air about four feet, and I was going to use a cuss word that I learned in Philadelphia, but I had presence of mind enough to grunt just as Dennis used to, and chatter like a monkey, and the day was saved. The tail was on and I turned my back to show that it was on straight, like a woman’s hat, when pa said to hurry the performance to a conclusion, because he could see that there was a spirit of unrest in the audience, and he would not be surprised any moment to see Virginia secede and go out of the union.

  There was nothing more for me to do except to drink my cup of after-dinner coffee, and smoke my cigarette, and quit, and I was patting myself on the back at my success and squirming around in the chair, ’cause the pin in my tail hurt my back but I never said a word. The attendant brought in the coffee and I took a couple of swallows, when I realized that somebody had put cayenne pepper into it, and I was hot under the collar, but though I was burning up inside, I never peeped, but just choked and took a swallow of water and vowed to kill the person that made the coffee.

  I kept my temper till the trainer handed me the cigarette and a match, and the first puff I realized that they had filled the cigarette with snuff, and after blowing out the smoke I began to sneeze, and the audience fairly went wild. I sneezed about eight times, and at every sneeze the pin in my spine hurt like thunder, but I never lost my temper, till about the seventh sneeze, when my monkey mask flew off, and then a boy about my size, right in front of me, yelled: “It ain’t a monkey at all, it is a little negro,” and he threw a ripe persimmon and hit me right in the eye. I said right out in plain English: “You’re a liar and I can knock the stuffing out of you.”

  I pulled off my dress coat and started for him, but pa grabbed me on one side and the monkey trainer on the other, and they tried to get me to return to the monkey character, and chatter, and pa put my monkey mask on me, but I struck right there, and pulled it off, and told him and the managers that I would not play monkey any more with a tail pinned to my spine, my stomach full of cayenne pepper and my nostrils full of Scotch snuff, and my face all puckered up with persimmons.

  The crowd yelled: “Fraud! Fraud! Kill the bald-headed old man who is the father of the monkey,” and they were making a rush to clean out the show when the dressing-room door opened to let the hippodrome chariot racers out, and the way the chariots scattered the crowd was a caution.

  That saved us from serious trouble, for the chariots run over a lot of negroes, which pleased the audience, and they let us off without killing us. They got me back to the dressing-room and had to take a pair of pinchers to get that safety pin out of my spine, and on the way to the dressing-room some one walked on my monkey tail and pulled it off, and that was a dead loss. Pa sat by me and fanned me, ’cause I was faint, and then he said: “My boy, you played your part well, until the persimmon hit you, and then you forgot that you were an actor, and became yourself, and I don’t blame you for wanting to punch that boy who called you a little negro, and said I was your pa. After this chariot race is over we will go around in front of the seats, and find the boy, and you can do him up. Your monkey business was the feature of the show to-day.”

  We went out and found a boy that looked like the one that sassed me, but he must have been his big brother, ’cause when I went up to him and swatted him on the nose, he gave me a black eye, and I am a sight.

  That evening, at the performance, we cut out the educated ourang outang, and the lawyer we met on the cars came to the show, and said we would all be arrested for not performing all we advertised, but he could settle it for a hundred dollars, and pa paid him the money, and he went out and got a jag and came in the show and was going to make trouble, when pa took him to the cage where the 40-foot boa constrictor was uncoiling itself, and the Virginian got one look at the snake and went through the side of the tent yelling: “I’ve got ’em again. Catch me, somebody.”

  We got out of town before morning, and nobody was arrested, except the negroes that got run over in the chariot race.

  CHAPTER XIX

  The Circus People Visit a Southern Plantation—Pa, the Giant and the Fat Woman Are Chased by Bloodhounds—The Bad Boy “Runs the Gauntlet.”

  Gee, but pa is sore at me. He has been disgusted with me before, but he never had it in for me so serious as he has now. I guess the whole show would breathe easier if I should fall off the train some dark night, when it was stormy, and we were crossing a high bridge over a stream that was out of its banks on account of a freshet.

  It was all on account of our taking an afternoon off on a Sunday at Richmond. An old planter that used to be in the circus business before the war thought it would bring back old recollections to him and give us a taste of country life in the south if he invited all of us, performers, managers, freaks, and everything, to spend the day on his plantation, and go nutting for chestnuts and hickory nuts, pick apples and run them through a cider mill and drink self-made cider, and have a good time.

  We all appreciated the invitation, and after breakfast we rode out in the country to his plantation in carriages and express wagons and began to do the plantation. The fat lady and the midgets rode out together in a load of cotton, and when they got to the house they had to be picked like ducks, and they looked as though they had been tarred and feathered.

  The planter gave us a fine luncheon of fried chicken and corn pone, and cider, and pa acted as the boss of the circus folks, while the planter and his family, with about 100 negroes, passed things around. They all seemed to be interested in seeing how much stuff the giant and the fat lady could hold without putting up sideboards to keep the food from falling off. If pa hadn’t told the negroes not to feed the fat lady and the giant any more, there would have been two circus funerals next day.

  I got acquainted with a boy that was the planter’s son, and while the rest were eating and drinking
the boy showed me a pack of hounds that are kept for trailing criminals and negroes who have looked sassy at white women. The trouble with negroes is that they all look alike, and if one commits a crime they can prove an alibi, ’cause every last negro will swear that at the time the crime was committed the suspected man was attending a prayer meeting, so they have to have hounds that can be taken to the place where the crime was committed, and they find the negro’s track, and they follow it till they tree him. The hounds do not bite the negro, like we used to hear about, but they just follow him till he is treed, and then they bark, as much as to say: “Ah, there, Mr. Blackie, you just stay where you are till the sheriff comes to fetch you,” and Mr. Blackie just turns pale and stays on a limb till the sheriff comes with his lynching tools. When the sheriff pulls a gun the negro confesses right there, and the deputy sheriff brings the rope.

  I asked the boy if the hounds would trail a white man without hurting him, and he said if you put anise seed on their shoes the hounds will trail ’em all right, so we put up a job to have some fun. The boy gave me some anise seed, and told me to put it on the shoes of anybody I wanted trailed, and after they got out in the woods he would put the hounds on the trail, and the people would have to get up trees, or have their pants chewed, but the dogs would not hurt anybody.

  Well, it made me laugh to think about it. I went to pa and told him his shoes were all covered with red Virginia dust, and I took my handkerchief and dusted them off, and made him hold up his foot like a horse that is being shod. Then I put a handful of anise seed around the sole, and in his shoes. He said it was mighty kind in me to do it. Then I went to the giant, and brushed the dust off his shoes, and put two handfuls of anise seed in them, and he said I was a nice boy. I told the fat woman about the dust on her telescope valises, and I rubbed it off, and gave her feet a dose of anise seed that ought to have paralyzed a pack of hounds. She wanted to hug me and let me kiss her, but I said I passed, and she said she would do as much for me some time.