Sylvia looked puzzled for a second, then correctly figured the idiom out. “I’m from Boston,” she told him.
“That makes it right,” Harry said. “I reckoned as you weren’t from around here by the way you talk. Not,” he added quickly, “that you sound funny or anythin’, just different.”
They insisted about then that I go upstairs and rest, and I didn’t put up much of an argument except to assert that we’d stay one more night, thank you very much, then stop imposing on their hospitality. Harry reckoned as how we’d see about that.
Sylvia came upstairs later with a dinner tray and I repeated the same thing to her between mouthfuls (mouths-full? whatever), throwing in words like “mission” and “duty” and the like. She agreed that we should leave as soon as possible, but said it would be silly if I was too weak to do anything but collapse further on. She made it sound like a cavalry officer assessing the strength of his mount. No emotional appeals from this girl. I went to sleep feeling the need to be cuddled and reassured and bravely not mentioning it to anyone. It was sometime later before I realized that Sylvia probably could also have used some reassurance about then.
The next morning I felt as strong as a lion. A sick lion. But I was resolved that today we would continue our quest. “Today,” I told Sylvia when she came in, “we split. Where are my clothes?”
“Split,” she said. “I like that.” She went off to fetch my wardrobe. It had, I found when she returned, been all neatly washed, patched and pressed. Just the way I like it: no starch. I dressed, trying not to wince at the sore spots, and came downstairs.
Over a hearty breakfast of quick-setting cement, pancakes, eggs, ham and coffee, I told our host and hostess that I was fine, that we had to continue on our way east today, and that I didn’t know how to repay them for their kindness. The last was literally true, as I was sure that I didn’t have anything that would pass for cash in this world.
Our host was glad I was so much better, happened to be going to town early afternoon, where we could get a train, and wouldn’t think of accepting anything for his help. I got around this moral dilemma by making him accept a ring I’d been wearing for the past ten years. It was very fine silver, worked intricately into the shape of two dragons grinning at each other. I picked it up during an occult phase I had wandered through. He admired it and, since the representation was rather obscure, I left it to him to decide what two creatures were accomplishing what ends.
The car which we settled in back of, Harry and his son rather thoroughly taking up the front, was an honest-to-gosh Model T. They started it up and we drove out onto the road, waving our frantic goodbyes to Mrs. Siddens, who stood by the kitchen door wringing her apron.
Many rattles, gasps, wheezes and bumps later, a town appeared ahead of us; sticking up through the flat land like a child’s play village on a table top. We passed a series of signs that welcomed the Lions, Elks, Moose, Rotarians and other animals to Ogallala, Nebraska, and told us where the Baptist, Reform, Congregational, Methodist, Catholic and Non-Denominational churches were. Five minutes later we were noisily proceeding down the main street of Ogallala, Nebraska, and being chased or stared at by an assortment of small dogs, large cats, dirty children and several less identifiable objects.
The car rattled, gasped and wheezed to a stop in front of a long-unpainted building with two shiny new tin signs tacked to the front. One said SPUD and the other MOXIE. “This here’s where I’m goin’,” Harry declared. “Station’s down t’other end of the street.”
We thanked him again and headed down t’other end of the street.
“Where are we going?” Sylvia asked me. I admired her for not bringing it up before.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “Except east. The blips seem to be moving east, and taking us a bit further that way each time, so we’ll either keep up with them or head them off. I want to get a closer look at one of those flying saucers. Beyond that, I have no plan.”
“May I, perchance, mention two small concerns?” Sylvia asked so quietly that I knew I had overlooked something important.
“What?” I asked, assuming my Fount of all Knowledge guise.
“The first is that I’d just as soon not be on a rapidly moving vehicle when we go through another blip.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “Although you can’t really call these trains, if I remember correctly, rapidly moving vehicles.”
“The second,” she continued, “is: how are we going to pay for a ticket?”
I honestly hadn’t thought of that. “I’ll think of something,” I assured her.
We went into the station and confronted the dour looking man with a peaked hat several sizes too small for him who resided behind the barred window. “When is the next train east?” I inquired.
“Tomorrow,” he divulged. “About noon.”
“Oh,” I said intelligently. “Then we’ve missed today’s train?” Harry had said that he thought it left late afternoon.
“Nope,” Dour-Puss informed us, tilting the cap back to a rakish angle over his ears, “leaves tomorrow, ‘bout noon. Tomorrow’s train leaves ‘bout six, if it comes in.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Could you recommend a hotel in town?”
“Nope.”
“Thanks again. See you tomorrow.”
“Yup,” he said sorrowfully.
“Well,” Sylvia said, as we walked back up the hot pavement. “What do we do now?”
“I’ll think of something.”
“You said that.”
I glared at her. She glared back at me. I sighed. “I think our tempers could use a cool drink,” I suggested. “Let us find a place to sit down.”
“And use what for money?”
“I knew it,” I said. “Our first fight, and it’s about money.”
We trudged on for a while, then came face to face with a sign that swung gently in the slight breeze.
OGALLALA MANSIONS
TRANSIENT—PERMANENT
Rooms-$1.00 up. In Advance
Sylvia stopped and stared wistfully at it.
I stopped. “Well, we could always rob a bank.”
“Humor!” Sylvia snorted, and we walked on.
Sylvia grabbed my arm. “Look,” she said, pointing down a side street. I looked, ready for anything from a tank to a moving blip. What I saw was a collection of tents, two large surrounded by numerous small. “A circus,” Sylvia exclaimed happily.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. Nothing looks like a circus but a circus.” She was, I realized, right. One, or even two, large tents could have been anything from a revival meeting to a National Guard outing, but that collection could have been nothing but a circus or carnival. Particularly, now that I got a good look, with that erratic swashing of primary colors over everything. This was the one thing that looked pretty much the same throughout most of recorded history. The attractions it offered didn’t vary much either.
“Should we go?” I asked, thinking that a walk around the grounds might cheer both of us up.
“Of course,” she said. “Circus people always help each other. It’s an ancient tradition.” By Godfrey, she was from a circus. This wasn’t just a show to cheer her up, this was the closest thing to home she could find on this world. We headed to the main gate.
A bored man in an American flag striped suit stood behind the raised ticket stand. “Ten cents admission,” he said in an impossibly animated voice. “The greatest show on Earth. Toured before the crown heads of Europe. Two rings, in which you will see performed the feats of skill and daring which have amazed and astonished the most hardened, the most cynical, the most blasé audiences from New York to the New Hebrides. Only ten cents, one thin dime, one-tenth part of a dollar for admission to the midway, where you can see, before the main show starts, some of the most startling, enlightening, educational personalities that have ever graced the concert stages of the world. Melton’s world-famous menagerie, where the wild beasts of the fores
t and jungle are kept in their native habitats. Dr. Samuel Johnson’s educational freak show, where unbelievable oddities, both bestial and human, are exhibited while the doctor discourses on the wonders of God’s world in the lecture he has been called upon to deliver before learned men of science both here and abroad. See Malik, the India-rubber man; Georgiana, half man, half woman; the Wild Man of Borneo, who will devour a live chicken before your very eyes. The main show starts in ten minutes. Only ten cents, one thin dime, one-tenth part of a dollar....”
Sylvia shouldered her way through the small crowd at the gate, towing me in her wake. “Palley!” she said in an urgent whisper. “I’d like a glim at the strawboss. We’re looking for a grift.”
The barker leaned forward. “What’s your hustle?” he asked, in a normal voice.
Sylvia shrugged. “I work with animals,” she said. “But we’ll take about anything: shill, runner, wipe-out, any grift short of geeking for a little bread.”
“A little bread is all you’ll get from this tinplate outfit,” he said, nodding us through. “The wheel’s behind the main tent. If he’s not there, ask.” He straightened up. “The greatest show on Earth. Only ten cents....”
We hurried down the midway, past signs with too many coats of gaily-colored paint, platforms with almost-scantily clad girls and an incredible din of competing attractions. Suddenly something caught my eye and I stopped. On a platform in front of a small tent a tall, thin man in the robes of a mystic, with the erratically-trimmed ends of thinning, blonde hair sticking out from under his turban, was discoursing to a small, but interested crowd. I stepped closer.
“Come along,” Sylvia said, with the annoyed air of a mother whose son has stopped to look in a candy store window when she’s in a hurry. “You can look at the acts later; we have to see the strawboss.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Just be quiet and have faith; I think the improbable is happening again.” We approached the man, who was declaiming a set speech in a trained, powerful voice:
“Throughout the ages, Man has always tried to peer beyond the veil that separates him from eternity. Some have used the crystal to help clear away the mists; to sharpen their vision. What is it that makes this possible? Could it be some unknown, undiscovered property of the crystal glass that penetrates the fog, or does the crystal merely serve as a focus for the inner concentration of the mystic? It doesn’t matter; what is important is that some people have been gifted with the ability—with the crystal’s aid—to peer into the future and to survey the past. To such people both future and past lie as an open book, to be read at will and to provide the answers to those perplexing questions that trouble us all.
“For the small sum of ten cents, to be paid to my lovely assistant here, I will endeavor to take a small group—no more than seven at a time—on a trip into the innermost reaches of the mind itself, and lay bare the secrets of past and future. For those who desire a more complete reading, private sessions are available at a small additional fee, and can be arranged on request.
“Thank you for your patience, my friends. And now I must enter the inner chamber to have a moment for meditation and prepare myself for our trip into the unknown depths of the human mind, into the innermost reaches of the crystal; which is an ancient glass, sacred to the goddess Sekmet, which I received as a reward, a gift, for my services over many years to the Department of Egyptian Antiquities of the British Museum. A token of their esteem for the small aid I was able to render them, because of my years of study of the great, lost secrets of the past, in deciphering and unraveling the mysteries of that ancient civilization which passed with all its glories and feats as yet unduplicated by our modern science, many centuries before the dawn of the Christian Era.
“My assistant will take your money.” With a last grand gesture, he disappeared behind the folds of the tent. “Very impressive,” Sylvia admitted. “Can we go now?”
“Come with me,” I said, pulling her toward the tent. The crowd was breaking up now, but a good number of them had stayed to form a sort of ragged line to the left of the tent, where a pretty brunette in circus tights was exchanging dimes for tickets.
“Don’t tell me,” Sylvia said. “Perchance are you going to ask the seer, Professor,” she read the small sign, “Waters, for a glimpse into the future to advise us?”
“You’re not so far off at that,” I said, pulling a disgusted Sylvia to the front of the line.
“Twenty cents, please,” the brunette said, smiling sweetly and holding two tickets out to us.
“Would you please deliver a message to the professor?” I asked, putting on my most winning smile. “It’s very important, and he’ll be glad to get it, you have my word.”
Her smile disappeared. “Right now?”
“Yes, please.”
“Well, okay. I’ve sold about three groups ahead anyway.” She stood up, gathering tickets and money box about her. “Would the first seven please enter the tent? I’ll be right back out to sell tickets to the rest of you, please be patient. Thank you.” She got halfway to the tent door before she stopped and turned around. “Say, what’s the message?”
“Tell him,” I told her carefully, “to watch out for the revolving door.”
“The what? Say, is this a gag?”
I assured her that it wasn’t. I had to assure her several times before she turned and went into the tent.
“All right,” Sylvia said. “To me you can explain it. Is that another one of your idioms?”
“You should talk after that exchange with the guy at the gate,” I told her. “No, it’s a private joke between Tom and me.”
“Tom?”
‘Unless I’m going blind as well as deaf,” I explained, “the good professor is none other than my old friend Tom Waters. He disappeared about two weeks ago, and this might explain why—or, at least, where.”
“I see,” Sylvia said. “He took an earlier blip.”
“Hrmph!” I said.
“But, about this revolving door....”
Brunette came out, swinging her hips in a much more friendly manner. “The professor will see you,” she said in a low, suggestive voice. Now I was someone. Sylvia glared. “Go back around the tent,” Brunette said “There’s an entrance.”
We clambered over the platform and rounded the tent. Tom, minus his turban, was standing by the flap. In an extreme display of joyous delight at seeing each other again, we shook hands. “That’s no revolving door,” Tom informed me, continuing the old vaudeville riff we’d used as a catchphrase to these many years, “that’s my mother!”
“Your mother?” I questioned, unbelievingly. “What’s her name?”
“Sam.”
“Sam? That’s funny, that’s my name!”
Tom opened his arms wide. “Mother!”
“Son!” We pantomimed an embrace.
We both faced out toward an imaginary audience and broke into a softshoe routine. “We are the joyboys of radio,” we sang/ hollered in unison, “so let’s go, let’s go, let’s go-oh-oh!”
Tom bent over and marched solemnly in place. “Trudging through the muck and mire....”
“Hello, Muck,” I interrupted, extending my hand.
“Hello, Mire!” Tom took the hand and we gave a quick, stiff arm, double up-and-down.
I did a breakaway fast shuffle and started a two-step.
“Hello, Joe; what do you know?”
Tom faded his palms in and out, in the ancient Eddie Cantor gesture. “Just got back from the animal show!”
“Rah-di-dah, rah-di-dah....”—and we both did a slow shuffle off our imaginary stage.
Sylvia was standing ten feet away with her mouth open. It was the first time I’d seen her entirely nonplussed. “What,” she was finally able to gasp out between the combined tears of laughter and rage that our routine usually provoked in the unwary, “do you call that?”
“That,” Tom informed her, drawing his usual somber pose back around himself like a mantle, �
��was a demonstration of what killed vaudeville. We’ve always had a soft spot for funerals.” He turned and looked me over very carefully. “It is you. Anyway, it has to be you; no one else could possibly know that routine or have the brainless abandon to do it. How did you manage to get thrown into the past, too?”
“That’s not exactly where it’s at,” I told him. “It’ll take a while to explain. Any place where we can sit down over a cup of coffee?”
“You know my famous habits,” Tom said. “Soft drinks, only soft drinks. I’m developing a taste for Moxie. Don’t introduce me to the lovely young lady; I’m not sensitive.”
“Tom,” I said, “Sylvia. Sylvia, Tom. You won’t like each other.”
“When you cop other people’s lines,” Tom said severely, “at least give credit.” He kissed Sylvia’s hand. “Lovely child,” he said. “I must leave you to earn some filthy lucre, but I shall be with you in but a brief time. Take heart! You can wait for me over there in the cook tent. Tell Fran to give you a couple of mugs of coffee. Who knows; she might even spring for a few doughnuts. I’ll be with you as soon as I tell a few of the marks that there’s oil on the land, love in the air, profit in taking that big step, and life in the old girl yet. Whatahell, whatahell. What a racket. Be with you faster than you could possibly believe.” Tom disappeared behind the flap, and we headed over to the cook tent. Sylvia seemed slightly stunned.
After I had seated her at a long, wooden table and brought over two mugs of coffee from an incredibly ancient urn and its incredibly fat watchwoman, she came out of her trance. “I like him,” she said.
“That’s nice,” I said. “Try not to overdo it. You wouldn’t want to see two old friends fighting over a woman, would you?”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Not like that! I just like him.”
“Ha!”
“I think he’s good for you,” Sylvia explained. “And anything that’s good for you, I like.”
Hmm. I drank my coffee, slightly reassured.
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