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But it did look as if he'd slipped a couple of cogs for sure and for real. "Where?" Charley said. "Washington," the professor said instantly. "New York. London, Paris. Rome. The world, Charley. The world that's going to do us homage." Charley shifted a little in the bed. "Look, professor," he said, "I've got a job, right here in the carny. I couldn't leave here. So suppose we just "
Maybe I miss 'em, a little but everything I do is based on the fact that I don't have 'em. Now, professor, do you know what I am?" Professor Lightning frowned. "What you are?" he said. "I'm an Armless Wonder," Charley said. "That's a pretty good thing to be. In a carny, they look up to an Armless Wonder he's a freak, a born freak, and that's as high as you can go, in a carny.
No, things like that were a part of carny; you got used to them, as the show rolled along year after year, and paid no more attention to them than a housewife pays to rather uninteresting back-fence gossip. It was something else that had changed, something important. His contract, for instance.
He never thought of the one good argument, and after a while he gave up, and went away. Of course, that was several days later. Professor Lightning told Charley that he was leaving for New York, and Charley said: "What? In the middle of the season?" Then he told Wrout, and Wrout screamed and ranted and swore that Professor Lightning would never work in carny again.
Leaving the carny lot, of course, he put on his sandals; outside the carnival, he had to wear shoes. They were laceless, of course, and made to be kicked off easily. Charley slipped into them and thought wryly of the professor and his "scientific Renaissance." The shoes were a new plastic, lightweight and long-lasting, but the dyeing problem hadn't quite been solved.
How he just gave up and got a nice little white cottage some place and got a nice little low-paying job and lived unhappily ever after, because a carny isn't a healthy, well-adjusted life? Is that it, Ed?" Ed Ribbed at his chin. "No, Charley," he said. "No, kid. Not at all. But I think you ought to " "Well, I won't," Charley said. "Look, Ed: I want you to get this straight.
I don't think he'd interfere. Then the clock down stairs would strike 'three, and he felt thankful, with a great sigh, that so much of the night was over, and yet dreaded the morning. And then he would con over his chances again, and think which was most likely to give him a month or two. Old Dyle 'Bah! he's a stone, he would not give me an hour. Or Carny, curse him, unless Lucas would move him.
In one two tree month, you shall see a young captain returned to his contray dominion, and then you will go to his side and say Jacks, and he will make present to you a sack of silver. Well, I hailed the chance of this pretty smart, you may suppose, and I asked him what the sailor's name would be, and surprised I was when he answered Carne, or Carny, for he gave it in two syllables.
Went to the Flea Museum ... you know, the sideshow here, on Forty-second?" "I know it," Charley said. He'd been offered winter work in the place several times, though he'd never accepted. Everyone in carny life knew of the place. "And, anyhow, I went down the other day, and there was this guy ... he was like you, Mac, I mean no arms. You don't mind me talking about it?"
He'd never had to work winters, and he wasn't going to start. After all, he was still doing well, wasn't he? He told himself emphatically that he was. He was an Armless Wonder, a born freak, the top of the carny ladder, with a good job wherever he cared to look for one. He had to tell himself that quite a few times before he began to believe it.
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