Fredric Brown - The Fredric Brown Collection

He’d tasted champagne once, even, and it had tasted like soda pop. This stuff—

“Thanks, Jabe,” he said. “Be seeing you.”

He strolled back to the crap game. Whitey Harper stood up as Pop came under the sidewall.

“Bust,” Whitey said. “Keep track of those dice for me, Bill. I’ll get ‘em later. Hi, Pop. Stake me to Java?”

Pop shook his head. “But have a slug of what’s good for what ails you. Here.”

Whitey took the offered drink and headed for the cookhouse. Pop borrowed a quarter from Bill Rendelman, the merry-go-round man, who was now winner in the crap game.

He took two come-bets, one for fifteen and one for ten, and lost both.

Nope, tonight wasn’t his night.

Somewhere toward town, a clock boomed midnight. Pop decided he might as well turn in and call it a night. He could finish what was left of the pint in his bunk.

He was feeling swell now. And, as always, when he was in that first cheerful, happy stage of inebriation, he sang, as he crossed the deserted midway, the most lugubrious song he knew. The one and only grand opera song he knew.

The aria from Pagliaccio.

Yeah, that guy Pagliaccio was a clown, too, and he knew what it was all about. Life was beautifully sad for a clown; it was more beautifully sad for an ex-clown, and most sadly beautiful of all for a drunken ex-clown.

He’d finished the third full rendition by the time, still fully dressed except for his shoes, he’d crawled into his bunk under the No. 6 wagon back of the Hawaiian show. He forgot all about finishing what was left of the liquor.

Overhead the dim, gibbous moon slid out of sight behind skittering clouds, and the outside ring of the lot, shielded by tents from the few arcs left burning on the midway, became black mystery. Blackness out of which the tents rose like dim gray monsters in the still, breathless night. The murderous night—

Someone was shaking him. Pop Williams opened one eye sleepily. He said, “Aw, ri’. Wha’ time zit?” And closed the eye again.

But the shaking went on. “Pop! Wake up! Lil killed—”

He was sitting bolt upright then. His eyes were wide, but they wouldn’t focus. The face in front of them was a blur, but the voice was Whitey Harper’s voice.

He grabbed at Whitey’s shoulder to steady himself.

“Huh? You said—”

“Your bull killed Shorty Martin. Pop! Wake up!”

Wake up? Hell, he was wider awake than he’d ever been in his life. He was out of bed, almost falling on Whitey as he clambered down from the upper bunk. He jammed his feet into his shoes so that their tongues doubled back over the instep; he didn’t stop to pull or tie the laces. And he was off, running.

There were other people running, too. Quite a few of them. Some of them from the sleeping cars, some of them from tents along the midway where a good many slept in hot weather. Some running from the brightly lighted cookhouse up at the front of the midway.

When he got to the Hawaiian show, Pop stole a glance around behind him to see if Whitey Harper were in sight. He wasn’t.

So Pop ducked under the Hawaiian show sidewall, and came out at the side of the tent instead of the front of it, and doubled back to Tepperman’s private trailer. Of course, Tepperman’s wife might still be there, but there was something Pop had to do and had to do quick, before he went to the bull. And in order to do it, he had to gamble that the boss’s trailer would be empty.

It was. And it took him only a minute to find the high-powered rifle he was after. Holding it tight against his body, he got it under the Hawaiian show top without being seen.

And hid it under the bally cloth of the platform.

It wasn’t a very good hiding place. Someone would find it by tomorrow noon, but then again by tomorrow noon it wouldn’t matter. They’d be able to get another gun by then.

But this one was the only one available tonight that was big enough.

And then a minute later, Pop was pushing his way through the ring of people around old Lil. A ring that held a very respectful distance from the elephant.

Pop’s first glance was for Lil, and she was all right.

Whatever flare of temper or cantankerousness she’d had, it was gone now. Her red eyes were unconcerned and her trunk swung gently.

Doc Berg was bending over something that lay on the ground a dozen feet from the bull. Tepperman was standing looking on. Someone called out something to Pop, and Tepperman whirled.

His voice was shrill, almost hysterical. “I told you that damn bull—” He broke off and stood there glaring.

“What happened?” Pop asked mildly.

“Can’t you see what happened?” He looked back down at Doc Berg, and Berg’s glasses caught and reflected the beam of somebody’s flashlight as he nodded.

“Three ribs,” he said. “Neck dislocated, and the skull crushed where it hit against that stake. Any one of those things could’ve killed him.”

Pop shook his head, whether in grief or negation he didn’t know himself.

He asked again, “What happened? Was Shorty tormentin’ her?”

“Nobody saw it,” Tepperman snapped.

“Hm-m-m,” said Pop. “That where you found him? Don’t seem likely Lil’d have throwed him that far if she did it.”

“What do you mean, if she did it?” Tepperman asked coldly. “No, he was lying with his head against the stake, if you got to know.”

“He must’ve been teasin’ her,” Pop insisted. “Lil ain’t no killer. Maybe he give her some pepper to eat, or—”

He walked up to Lil and patted her trunk. “You shouldn’ta done it, old girl. But— Damn, I wisht you could talk.”

The carney proprietor snorted. “Better stay away from that bull till we shoot her.”

Pop winced. That had been the word he’d been waiting for, and it had come.

But he didn’t argue it; he knew there wasn’t any use, now. Maybe later, when Tepperman’s anger had cooled, there’d be a chance. An outside chance.

Pop said, “Lil’s all right, Mr. Tepperman. She wouldn’t hurt a fly. If she did… uh… do that, she sure had some reason. Some good reason. There was something wrong about that there Shorty. You should’ve never let him ride her in the parade, even. She never did like—” And realizing that, by emphasizing Lil’s dislike of Shorty, he was damaging his own case, Pop let it die there.

There was, blocks away, the clang of an ambulance bell.

Tepperman had turned back to the doc. He asked, “Had Shorty been drinking, Doc?”

But Berg shook his head. “Don’t seem to be any smell of liquor on him.”

Pop’s hopes went lower. If Shorty’d been drunk, it would have made it more likely he’d been teasing the bull deliberately. Still, if he hadn’t, why’d he gone by there at all?

Especially, at that time of—

“What time is it?” Pop asked.

“Almost one.” It was the doctor who answered. Earlier than Pop thought; he must have barely gone to sleep when it happened. No wonder so many of the carneys were still awake.

The ambulance drove up, collected the thing on the ground, and drove off again. Some of the crowd was drifting away already

Pop tried again. “That Shorty was a crook anyway, Mr. Tepperman. Didn’t he get hisself arrested when we was playin’ Brondale a few days ago?”

“What are you driving at, Pop?”

Pop Williams scratched his head. He didn’t know. But he said, “Only that if Lil did anything to him, she musta sure had a reason. I don’t know what, but—”