'Keep running, John-O,' Ronda said.
'There's thirteen of them,' I said. 'Only five women and eight men,' I said. There's at least three men for you!'
'What size are they?' Ronda Ray asked.
'That's a surprise,' I said. 'Come see.'
'Keep running,' Ronda said. 'All of you -- keep running.'
Max Urick went and hid with Mrs. Urick in the kitchen; they were shy about being introduced, but Father dragged them out to meet the midgets, and Mrs. Urick marched the midgets through her kitchen -- showing off her stockpots, and how plain-but-good everything smelled.
'They are small,' Mrs. Urick conceded later, 'but there's a lot of them; they'll have to eat something.'
'They'll never reach all the lights,' Max Urick said. 'I'll have to change all the switches.' Grumpily, he moved off the fourth floor. It was clear that the fourth floor was the one the midgets wanted -- 'suited to their tiny washing and tiny peeing,' Max grumbled, but not around Lilly. Franny thought Max was only angry that he was moving closer to Mrs. Urick; but he moved no nearer to her than the third floor, where, (I imagined), he would be forever blessed to hear the patter of little feet above him.
'Where will the animals go?' Lilly asked Mr. Worter. Fritz explained that the circus would use the Hotel New Hampshire only for their summer quarters; the animals would stay outside.
'What kind of animals are they?' Egg asked, clutching Sorrow to his chest.
'Live ones,' said one of the lady midgets, who was about Egg's size and appeared to be intrigued with Sorrow; she kept patting him.
It was the end of June when the midgets made Elliot Park look like a fairground; the once-brightly-colored canvases, now faded to pastels, flapped over the little stalls, fringed the merry-go-round, domed the big tent where the main acts would be performed. Kids from the town of Dairy came and hung around our park all day, but the midgets were in no hurry; they set up the stalls; they changed the position of the merry-go-round three times -- and refused to hook up the engine that ran it, even to test it out. One day a box arrived, the size of a dining-room table; it was full of large spools of different-coloured tickets, each spool as big as a tyre.
And Frank drove carefully through the now crowded park, circling the little tents and the one big tent, telling the kids from the town to move on. 'It opens the Fourth of July, kids,' Frank would say, officiously -- his arm hanging out the window of the car. 'Come back then.'
We would be gone by then; we hoped that the animals might arrive before we had to leave, but we knew, in advance, we were going to miss opening night.
'We've seen all the things they do, anyway,' Franny said.
'Mainly,' Frank said, 'they just go around looking small.'
Lilly burned. She pointed out the handstands, the juggling acts, the water and fire dance, the eight-man standing pyramid, the blind baseball team skit; and the smallest of the lady midgets said she could ride bareback -- on a dog.
'Show me the dog,' said Frank. He was sour because Father had sold Fritz the family car, and Frank now needed Fritz's permission to drive the car around Elliot Park; Fritz was generous about the car, but Frank hated to ask.
Franny liked to take her driving lessons with Max Urick in the hotel pickup, because Max was nervy about Franny driving fast. 'Gun it,' he would encourage her. 'Pass that sucker -- you've got plenty of room.' And Franny would come back from a lesson, proud that she had laid nine feet of rubber around the bandstand or twelve feet around the corner of Front Street verging with Court. 'Laying rubber' was what we said in Dairy, New Hampshire, for leaving a black stain on the road with squealing tyres.
'It's disgusting,' Frank said. 'Bad for the clutch, bad for the tyres, nothing but juvenile showing off -- you'll get in trouble, you'll get your learner's permit revoked, Max will lose his license (which he probably should), you'll run over someone's dog, or a small child, some dumb hoods from the town will try to drag-race you, or follow you home and beat the shit out of you. Or they'll beat the shit out of me,' Frank said, 'just because I know you.'
'We're going to Vienna, Frank,' Franny said. 'Get in your licks at the town of Dairy while you can.'
'Licks!' said Frank. 'Disgusting.'
HI
Freud wrote.
YOU ALMOST HERE! GOOD TIME TO COME. PLENTY OF TIME FOR KIDS TO GET ADJUSTED BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS. EVERYONE LOOKING FORWARD TO YOU COMING. EVEN PROSTITUTES! HA HA! WHORES HAPPY TO TAKE MATERNAL INTEREST IN KIDS -- REALLY! I SHOW THEM ALL THE PICTURES. SUMMER A GOOD TIME FOR WHORES: LOTS OF TOURISTS, EVERYONE IN GOOD MOOD. EVEN EAST-WEST RELATIONS ASSHOLES SEEM CONTENT. THEY NOT SO BUSY IN SUMMER -- DON'T START TYPING UNTIL 11 A.M. POLITICS TAKE SUMMER VACATIONS, TOO. HA HA! IT NICE HERE. NICE MUSIC IN PARKS. NICE ICE CREAM. EVEN BEAR IS HAPPIER -- GLAD YOU COMING, TOO. BEAR'S NAME, BY THE WAY, IS SUSIE. LOVE FROM SUSIE AND ME, FREUD.
'Susie?' Franny said.
'A bear named Susie?' Frank said. He seemed irritated that it wasn't a German name, or that it was a female bear
. It was a disappointment to most of us, I think -- a kind of anticlimax before we'd really gotten started. But moving is like that. First the excitement, then the anxiety, then the letdown. First we took a cram course on Vienna, then we started missing the old Hotel New Hampshire -- in advance. Then there was a period of waiting -- interminable, and perhaps preparing us for some inevitable disappointment on that day of simultaneous departure and arrival, which the invention of the jet plane makes possible.
On the first of July we borrowed the Volkswagen bus belonging to Fritz's Act. It had funny hand controls, for braking and acceleration, because the midgets couldn't reach the foot pedals; Father and Frank argued over who would be more dexterous at driving the unusual vehicle. Finally, Fritz offered to drive the first shift to the airport.
Father, Frank, Franny, Lilly, and I were in the first shift. Mother and Egg would meet us in Vienna the next day; Sorrow would fly with them. But the morning we were leaving, Egg was up before me. He was sitting on his bed in a white dress shirt, and with his best dress pants and black dress shoes, and wearing a white linen jacket; he looked like one of the midgets -- in their skit about crippled waiters in a fancy restaurant. Egg was waiting for me to wake up so that I could help him tie his tie. On the bed beside him, the great grinning dog, Sorrow, sat with the frozen idiot glee of the truly insane.