Walking Wolf (8 page)

The Professor's way of making a living was unique, to say the least. Traveling from one pissant settlement to the next, peddling cure-alls to illiterate sodbusters and syphilitic townies, hardly guaranteed a steady or stable income, but it
was
exciting. And, in its own way, it reminded me of my boyhood, wandering from place to place on the plains.

Every now and again, we'd catch distant glimpses of Comanche hunting parties in pursuit of buffalo and antelope, but they never offered to come near us. I'd watch from the wagon, part of me aching as I wondered if my adopted father, Eight Clouds, or my old childhood friend, Quanah, was riding past.

But back to the medicine show: People didn't get much in the way of outside entertainment in those days, so even the lamest of diversions was apt to draw a crowd and generate some interest. The Professor did business this way: We would camp well outside the city limits of his intended venue. He'd ride in and pay the sheriff a visit and offer him a dollar or three for permission to stage a show. If the sheriff wasn't agreeable, we'd set up shop just outside the town's dividing line and do it anyways.

Then he'd hand a stray kid two bits to paste up handbills advertising Professor Praetorius' Hard Luck Elixir Traveling Show's imminent arrival, and give it a day or two for the news to percolate amongst the locals via word of mouth. Then we'd ride into town.

Most of the Professor's wagon was taken up by a portable wooden stage he'd had made special back in Philadelphia that was designed so it only took fifteen minutes to set up (a half-hour if it was raining), so he could address the crowd from a platform almost as high as their heads without leaving the safety of the wagon. There were holes drilled in the stage so you could fix poles with banners stretched in between them that advertised the Hard Luck Elixir and Whatisit.

One such banner read:
PROF. PRAETORIUS' HARD LUCK ELIXIR—STRONG MEDICINE FOR THE WEAK! $1-FREE TO ALL VETERANS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR
. But seeing how this was the late 1850s, the Professor rarely had occasion to part with a complimentary bottle of his precious snake oil.

The show would begin with me coming out onto the stage dressed in a bright blue frock coat with a double row of brass buttons and shoulder epaulets, a pair of shiny Wellington boots, and a brushed beaver high hat with a bedraggled peacock feather tucked in its brim. (That last touch of theatricality virtually begged to be shot off my head—and was so, on more than one occasion.) I would then take up a drum and begin beating away on it, drawing a crowd as I did. Once the crowd was of a decent size, I would stop drumming and announce, as loudly as I could: “Ladies and Gentlemen! It is my honor to present to you the one! The only! The esteemed Professor Praetorius!”

The Professor, who'd been waiting inside the wagon behind a blanket curtain, would then step out, accompanied by a drum roll. The Professor had a special white linen suit he kept stowed in a trunk and only wore for shows. He kept it clean by boiling it in so much starch it could damn near stand up on its own. At every show, he'd present himself to the audience as an immaculate tower of medical knowledge, his elbows and knees crackling like dead leaves with every movement.

Of course, the damned suit chafed like a bear. After each show, when the crowds had left and we were on our way to our next destination, the Professor would be busy smearing salve on his neck, johnson and other tender parts that had been rubbed raw during his presentation.

Watching the Professor work a crowd was a real education. He definitely knew how to talk a man into reaching into his pocket and handing over hard-won money for what amounted to rotgut whiskey mixed with horse liniment. I credit most of his success to his way with words. Only the Professor could get away with calling a simple glass of water “a chalice of Adam's ale.” And for those unwilling to part with a dollar for a bottle of Hard Luck Elixir, there was always a nickel's worth of amazement in the form of Whatisit.

In order to lure the townies into surrendering their change, Praetorius puffed up Whatisit's pedigree from pinheaded imbecile to captured ape-man. To hear the Professor tell it, you were a cast-iron fool is you missed this chance of a lifetime to gaze upon such a unique specimen from Borneo, or Sumatra, or Tierra del Fuego or wherever the hell the Professor decided Whatisit was from that day. He made coughing up five red cents to stare at a caged freak sound not only educational, but morally uplifting to boot.

In order to show Whatisit, the Professor rigged up a special canvas enclosure to one side of the stage large enough to allow up to twenty people to pass through at a time. Those foolish enough to crowd too close usually ended up splattered with pinhead shit, to the amusement of their companions. It was my job to be sure that the line kept moving and that no one did anything to Whatisit while they took their peek, like poke him with sharp sticks or give him broken glass to play with.

After the Professor had finished his pitch and wrested what money he could out of the crowd, we packed up and got moving to the next stop as fast as possible. The Professor's official motto was “Always leave the customers happy,” though the practical translation was closer to “Always leave them before they find out what they've really bought.”

Although Whatisit and I had gotten off on a bad foot, I soon grew fond of him. As far as the Professor could tell, Whatisit was probably in his late twenties, which was fairly old for a pinhead. By and large, he was easy to control and wasn't hard to feed. The only time he got out of hand was when he had to be washed, but that wasn't often. Every now and again, I'd take him out of his cage and put him on a leash so he could exercise, but he didn't seem to like being outside his box. He'd scuttle about on his hands and knees like a dog and make a high-pitched whining noise, occasionally clinging to my pants leg and walking semi-upright.

The Professor told me Whatisit's lack of enthusiasm for the outdoors was on account of his natural parents keeping him in what amounted to a crate ever since he was a baby, showing him at fairs and carnivals from the back of a wagon. They sold Whatisit to the Professor a few years back in order to clear a debt. Whatisit's parents weren't too broke up over parting with their only son since they had a younger daughter with a parasitic twin that could clog. (The daughter, that is, not the parasitic twin.)

I traveled with the Professor for close to two years, doing things like tending the mules, mending the banners, walking and washing Whatisit, decanting the foul-tasting Hard Luck Elixir into bottles and pasting labels on them. The elixir itself varied from brewing to brewing, depending on what the Professor could lay his hands on at the time. Often it was little more than watered-down rotgut, but I recall a couple of times when oil of turpentine and green vitriol were tossed in to the mix—not to mention the occasional rattlesnake to give it some extra “bite.”

During the time we were together, we traveled throughout most of Texas and into Oklahoma, putting on shows wherever there were enough folks with coins in their pockets to make an audience. As I stood on the stage before an endless parade of poverty-stricken farmers, illiterate ranchers and pig-ignorant townies—each of them watching me, listening to my every word, memorizing every gesture and nuance so they could repeat it, verbatim, to their kin stuck back on the homestead—I came to see myself through their eyes. I was no longer a skinny teen-aged boy dressed in outlandish clothes that did not belong to him, but the herald of miracles, transformed by the glamour found in even the tattiest of traveling shows. It was the same magic that could turn a con man into the wisest of sages and a congenital idiot into a missing link from a nameless land.

With all this folderol about cure-alls and tribes of monkey-men, no one knew—not even the Professor—that locked within me was a genuine miracle. I kept my condition to myself during my time with the traveling show, occasionally slipping away in the dead of night to hunt rabbits or howl at the moon. Once I shapeshifted in front of Whatisit's cage without checking to see if he was asleep. Whatisit frowned at me and sniffed the air, looking more confused than usual. When I reached between the bars to scratch him behind the ears, he whimpered and drew away. After that I made a point of waiting until I was several hundred yards away from the camp before changing.

Professor Praetorius was careful to keep a step ahead of irate customers. We'd done our share of time in jail, here and there, none of it coming to more than a day or two. But jail was actually the least of our concerns, since most of the towns we visited didn't even have proper law. What the Professor was more worried about were angry customers who would show up with a bucket of tar and a sack of feathers. And when our time finally came, being tarred and feathered would have seemed like a pretty fair shake.

I don't recommend getting lynched.

Even for folks such as myself, who are notoriously difficult to kill, being hung is hardly a picnic. While a werewolf can't die of a broken neck, I am here to tell you it hurts like hell. Besides, whoever's doing the lynchin' doesn't know his onions, you're more apt to get your head yanked off instead of a snapped neck. And that'll kill
anything,
human or not.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We were camped in the Oklahoma territory, near the Red River. We spent a lot of time crossing the Red in and out of Texas and Oklahoma, as it tended to put off dissatisfied customers intent on reclaiming their money. Two days before we'd sold twenty bottles of Hard Luck Elixir in Turkey Creek, Texas, and the Professor had considered it prudent to cross back into Oklahoma. Just in case, mind you.

We were feeling pretty good about that little bit of salesmanship. So good, in fact, we'd elected to give ourselves a break and rest an extra day. We'd found a nice little campsite, sheltered by a copse of trees, with plenty of game nearby. It was spring and the wild flowers were in full bloom, carpeting the banks of the river for as far as the eye could see. It had been such a fine day I'd taken Whatisit for a little walk, which he actually seemed to enjoy.

It was getting dark, and the Professor and I were eating supper by the campfire. I reached out to pour myself some coffee, when there was this sound like the devil hacking into a spittoon and the coffee pot leapt four feet into the air.

“Put yore hands in the air and keep 'em that way!”
thundered a voice from somewhere in the trees.

The Professor and I did as we were told. A half-dozen men emerged from the surrounding twilight, each of them pointing a rifle in our direction. I recognized most of them as being members of the audience in Turkey Creek.

“What's the meaning of this?” The Professor demanded, doing his best to keep a waver out of his voice.

A tall, grizzled man in buckskin pants and a homespun shirt stepped forward and pointed his rifle square at the Professor's head. I knew right then these unhappy customers weren't going to be satisfied with just getting their money back.

“I'll tell you what the meaning of this is about, Mister Perfesser!” he snarled. “It's about how that elixir of yores poisoned my little gal!”

“That is—unfortunate,” the Professor admitted. “However, did you follow the directions on the label? I definitely draw a distinction between adult and child dosages—”

The man's face turned red as he cocked his rifle. “Shut up! I don't wanna hear no more of yore fancy talkin'! You done enough talkin' already!”

A second man, this one with watery eyes and carrying a burlap sack, stepped forward. “Jed's girl ain't the only one you hurt, neither! My Doris paid good money to see that freak of yores—we weren't home an hour when she went into labor! And look what she delivered me!” He took the sack and dumped its contents onto the ground in front of the Professor.
“You
did this!” he sobbed, pointing at the stillborn pinhead lying in the dirt. “This is
yore
doin, mister'!”

The Professor's eyes narrowed at the sight of the tiny corpse. “How much—how much would you take for it?” he asked, licking his lips. “With a little pure alcohol and formaldehyde—”

“You goddamn murderin' bastard!” shrieked the dead child's father, catching the Professor square in the chest with his boot. “I'm gonna kick you yeller!”

The one called Jed grabbed his friend by the elbow and pulled him away. “Hold on, Ezra! Everyone here wants a piece of that sumbitch. And there's only one way we're gonna get satisfaction, and that's lynchin' 'em good and proper.” He turned to look at me. “You pick yore friend up and stand where's we can see you. And don't try no funny business, y'hear?”

I nodded my understanding and went to help the Professor off the ground. He was bleeding from the nose and mouth and his spectacles were busted, causing him to squint so hard that his eyes were slits. He shook his head and patted my hand.

“I'm sorry you're gonna die, Billy,” he sighed. “I kinda always knew this would be how I'd leave this world. Goes with the territory. But you—you're a young man. You got your whole life ahead of you. At least you did.”

“Don't go talkin' like that, Professor,” I whispered. “We can get outta this.”

“My luck's played out, son. It's what I get for leavin' Jack to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

I frowned. “You mean your old partner? I thought he died of a broken neck when his horse threw him.”

“The broken neck part was true enough. But it was more on account of his horse being rode out from under him. I left Jack to hang in Burning Water, Texas, damn my soul. I make it a policy never to visit the same town twice, but it turns out some of Burning Water's citizenry had moved there from one of our previous engagements. They recognized me when I rode into town to distribute fliers and followed me back to camp. They got the drop on Jack and I left him, curse me for the coward that I am!”