And in many ways, Mr. Indrasil had the roughest row to hoe of all.
The cats were nervous and short-tempered, and every time he
stepped into the Demon Cat Cage, as it was billed, he took his life
in his hands. He was feeding the lions ordinate amounts of raw
meat right before he went on, something that lion tamers rarely do,
contrary to popular belief. His face grew drawn and haggard, and
his eyes were wild.
Mr. Legere was almost always there, by Green Terror's cage,
watching him. And that, of course, added to Mr. Indrasil's load.
The circus began eyeing the silk-shirted figure nervously as he
passed, and I knew they were all thinking the same thing I was:
He's going to crack wide open, and when he does ---
When he did, God alone knew what would happen.
The hot spell went on, and temperatures were climbing well into
the nineties every day. It seemed as if the rain gods were mocking
us. Every town we left would receive the showers of blessing.
Every town we entered was hot, parched, sizzling.
And one night, on the road between Kansas City and Green Bluff, I
saw something that upset me more than anything else.
It was hot -- abominably hot. It was no good even trying to sleep. I
rolled about on my cot like a man in a fever-delirium, chasing the
sandman but never quite catching him. Finally I got up, pulled on
my pants, and went outside.
We had pulled off into a small field and drawn into a circle. Myself
and two other roustabouts had unloaded the cats so they could
catch whatever breeze there might be. The cages were there now,
painted dull silver by the swollen Kansas moon, and a tall figure in
white whipcord breeches was standing by the biggest of them. Mr.
Indrasil.
He was baiting Green Terror with a long, pointed pike. The big cat
was padding silently around the cage, trying to avoid the sharp tip.
And the frightening thing was, when the staff did punch into the
tiger's flesh, it did not roar in pain and anger as it should have. It
maintained an ominous silence, more terrifying to the person who
knows cats than the loudest of roars.
It had gotten to Mr. Indrasil, too. "Quiet bastard, aren't you?" He
grunted. Powerful arms flexed, and the iron shaft slid forward.
Green Terror flinched, and his eyes rolled horribly. But he did not
make a sound. "Yowl!" Mr. Indrasil hissed. "Go ahead and yowl,
you monster Yowl!" And he drove his spear deep into the tiger's
flank.
Then I saw something odd. It seemed that a shadow moved in the
darkness under one of the far wagons, and the moonlight seemed to
glint on staring eyes -- green eyes.
A cool wind passed silently through the clearing, lifting dust and
rumpling my hair.
Mr. Indrasil looked up, and there was a queer listening expression
on his face. Suddenly he dropped the bar, turned, and strode back
to his trailer.
I stared again at the far wagon, but the shadow was gone. Green
Tiger stood motionlessly at the bars of his cage, staring at Mr.
Indrasil's trailer. And the thought came to me that it hated Mr.
Indrasil not because he was cruel or vicious, for the tiger respects
these qualities in its own animalistic way, but rather because he
was a deviate from even the tiger's savage norm. He was a rogue.
That's the only way I can put it. Mr. Indrasil was not only a human
tiger, but a rogue tiger as well.
The thought jelled inside me, disquieting and a little scary. I went
back inside, but still I could not sleep.
The heat went on.
Every day we fried, every night we tossed and turned, sweating
and sleepless. Everyone was painted red with sunburn, and there
were fistfights over trifling affairs. Everyone was reaching the
point of explosion.
Mr. Legere remained with us, a silent watcher, emotionless on the
surface, but, I sensed, with deep-running currents of - what? Hate?
Fear? Vengeance? I could not place it. But he was potentially
dangerous, I was sure of that. Perhaps more so than Mr. Indrasil
was, if anyone ever lit his particular fuse.
He was at the circus at every performance, always dressed in his
nattily creased brown suit, despite the killing temperatures. He
stood silently by Green Terror's cage, seeming to commune deeply
with the tiger, who was always quiet when he was around.
From Kansas to Oklahoma, with no letup in the temperature. A day
without a heat prostration case was a rare day indeed. Crowds were
beginning to drop off; who wanted to sit under a stifling canvas
tent when there was an air-conditioned movie just around the
block?
We were all as jumpy as cats, to coin a particularly applicable
phrase. And as we set down stakes in Wildwood Green, Oklahoma,
I think we all knew a climax of some sort was close at hand. And
most of us knew it would involve Mr. Indrasil. A bizarre
occurrence had taken place just prior to our first Wildwood
performance. Mr. Indrasil had been in the Demon Cat Cage,
putting the ill-tempered lions through their paces. One of them
missed its balance on its pedestal, tottered and almost regained it.
Then, at that precise moment, Green Terror let out a terrible, ear-
splitting roar.
The lion fell, landed heavily, and suddenly launched itself with
rifle-bullet accuracy at Mr. Indrasil. With a frightened curse, he
heaved his chair at the cat's feet, tangling up the driving legs. He
darted out just as the lion smashed against the bars.
As he shakily collected himself preparatory to re-entering the cage,
Green Terror let out another roar -- but this one monstrously like a
huge, disdainful chuckle.
Mr. Indrasil stared at the beast, white-faced, then turned and
walked away. He did not come out of his trailer all afternoon.
That afternoon wore on interminably. But as the temperature
climbed, we all began looking hopefully toward the west, where
huge banks of thunderclouds were forming.
"Rain, maybe," I told Chips, stopping by his barking platform in
front of the sideshow.
But he didn't respond to my hopeful grin. "Don't like it," he said.
"No wind. Too hot. Hail or tornadoes." His face grew grim. "It
ain't no picnic, ridin' out a tornado with a pack of crazy-wild
animals all over the place, Eddie. I've thanked God mor'n once
when we've gone through the tornado belt that we don't have no
elephants.
"Yeah" he added gloomily, "you better hope them clouds stay right
on the horizon."
But they didn't. They moved slowly toward us, cyclopean pillars in
the sky, purple at the bases and awesome blue-black through the
cumulonimbus. All air movement ceased, and the heat lay on us
like a woolen winding-shroud. Every now and again, thunder
would clear its throat further west.
About four, Mr. Farnum himself, ringmaster and half-owner of the
circus, appeared and told us there would be no evening
performance; just batten down and find a convenient hole to crawl
into in case of trouble. There had been corkscrew funnels spotted
in several places between Wildwood and Oklahoma City, some
within forty miles of us.
There was only a small crowd when the announcement came,
apathetically wandering through the sideshow exhibits or ogling
the animals. But Mr. Legere had not been present all day; the only
person at Green Terror's cage was a sweaty high-school boy with
clutch of books. When Mr. Farnum announced the U.S. Weather
Bureau tornado warning that had been issued, he hurried quickly
away.
I and the other two roustabouts spent the rest of the-afternoon