Free The Thicket by Joe R. Lansdale Page B

my ears bleeding. My father took a quirt and whipped me with it until I bled so bad the blood came through the back of my shirt. I climbed back on the horse, went to the cotton field, and put in a full day’s work. That is how it was for me. Hard work, and there were few considerations. A year later my father told me we were going to the circus. I cannot explain the sort of excitement I felt, as it was not only the fact that I was a child and we were talking about the circus, which at that time was mysterious to me, but also that my father had made the plans and had included me to be with him. We did in fact go, but he left without me. I stayed. He sold me to the circus, and for not much money. Can you imagine? I was not the Reginald he had expected, and with my loving mother gone, he couldn’t abide me and sold me like a household trinket. I was kept there like a wild beast, at the mercy of the owner. Let me tell you, in short order I decided the circus was nowhere as fun as I had anticipated. Not by a long shot.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    Shorty sat down on the ground, and I did the same.
    “No use to be sorry,” he said. “It is what it is, and if you look at it at a proper angle there is a humor in it. It gave me my philosophy in life: trust no one completely. I have made some exceptions. I trust Eustace mostly, though when he drinks, he cannot be trusted by man or beast. Even Hog hides then, and Hog is fearless. I trust the sun to rise and the sun to set, though I know one day it will do these things without me, and I find that peculiar to think about. Do you?”
    “Haven’t never given it consideration,” I said.
    “Not a man of deep thoughts, huh?”
    “I don’t actually know,” I said.
    “You have not given your consideration much consideration,” Shorty said, and gave out with a laugh that sounded a little like a bark. “When I was in the circus, a man named Walter the Midget taught me to think about such things. I do not know if I should be glad of it or if it would have been better to have been bathed in the shadow of ignorance. He once said those who refuse to consider what they do are cloaked in the shadow of stupidity, but they enjoy the shade. It is cool and comfortable there. He and the circus were my teachers. I do not say this expecting to be considered wise, but to suggest that most of us merely travel through life without much thought—or perhaps we consider some silly promised land where we will go when we die, knowing in our heart it is only one of those wishes I spoke of but trying to convince ourselves of its authenticity because we are afraid of the void.”
    “As I said, I believe God watches over us.”
    “If he is up there, he has certainly looked the other way during the course of my life. To begin with, he started me out with a handicap, or at least what others would think of as being one.”
    “He gave you a challenge.”
    “I did not want a challenge,” he said. “I wanted to be tall. But what I got was Walter the Midget, the other midgets, and the circus. But Walter, he was educated, and he educated me with Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, books of poetry and philosophy, and his practical experience. He taught me how to be a clown as well, to make people laugh at my smallness. I have since then had very little to laugh about, and have been uninterested in making others laugh.
    “Walter the Midget gave me the only true education I ever received. But the circus, I hated it there. I hated the people we worked for, if you can call what we did honest work. One time, a lion being whipped and poked with a chair, killed and ate part of the ringmaster right in front of a large audience, who did not leave during the event but acted offended at the same time they watched the lion have his dinner. It was for us, the midget clowns, a red-letter day, and we drank to it. We were sadder when they killed the lion. He had only done what most of us wanted to do, and that was kill one of the