A Boy Named Gary
Jerry looked long into the face of the lady. It was all pink and white and her lips were very red. Her hair was a golden brown and it was long and thick and hung down her back.
"Are you my mother?" asked Jerry wistfully. He would like very much to have a mother as beautiful as this.
"Oh, yes, I am! I am!" cried the lady and clasped Jerry close to her breast.
"Helen," said Whiteface, "you mustn't let your hopes get too high."
"He is an orphan," observed Mr. Burrows, "his brother here said so," and he pointed at Chris.
"He's not my brother," interposed Chris quickly. "Father found him before he died and brought him home."
"Then it is Gary! It is!" exclaimed the beautiful lady. "As if I wouldn't know him—his eyes, his hair and his lips! Or as if Sultana could be mistaken. What is your name, dear; do you remember that?"
"Jerry Elbow," replied Jerry.
"What is yours?" Whiteface asked Chris.
"Chris Mullarkey," he replied.
"How long has Jerry been with you?"
"Three years," put in Danny.
"He was only three and a half then," said the woman, "and probably couldn't say his name very plainly. He couldn't at the time he was stolen. Gary L. Bowe would sound very much like Jerry Elbow to any one who didn't know."
"You're right," said Whiteface. "I believe he is our boy."
Jerry looked up at the clown and such an expression of delight came over his face at the idea of the clown being his father that Whiteface's voice went all husky and he took Jerry in his arms.
"Do you remember anything about your parents?" he asked.
"Seems as though there was a man with a white face," replied Jerry.
"That would be you, Robert," said the woman named Helen.
"Are you my father?" Jerry asked, putting an arm timidly about the clown's shoulder.
"Of course he is!" cried Mr. Burrows, blowing his nose until it made a formidable sound. "Bowe, you take your wife and child into the dressing tent, so the circus can go on. Sultana is getting restless."
Whiteface took Jerry up in his arms and his new-found mother clung to his hand as they started to leave the arena, tears still in her eyes. She stopped to call to Danny and Chris to follow them. Sultana lifted up her trunk and trumpeted. As they tramped along, the spectators craning their necks to get a better view, Jerry heard Mr. Burrows saying in a loud voice to the audience in the section where he had sat:
"Ladies and gentlemen, there is no occasion for alarm. The elephant, Sultana, recognized in the boy, Jerry Elbow, the son of our famous clown, Robert Ellison Bowe, who was stolen from the circus in a neighboring State three years ago by a disgruntled employee. The police of the country had been searching for him and Mr. Bowe had spent thousands of dollars in the effort to find him. What money and mind and trained detective intelligence failed to do, the retentive memory of the elephant, Sultana, has accomplished and, thanks to her, a grieving father and mother are reunited with their long-lost son. The performance will now continue and you will see what a great degree of intelligence is possessed by these pachyderms in the tricks which they will now perform for your gratification."
And how the people shouted and applauded at that!
"Bow to them. They are cheering for you," said Whiteface to Jerry. "They are glad you have been found."
Jerry waved his hands to them and bowed and a patter of hand-clapping ran along the audience as they passed until they reached the entrance.
Chris suddenly cried, "Danny! Look at them el'funts! They're standin' on their heads! Lookee!"
Jerry just had to see that and he squirmed around in Whiteface's arms.
"They're funny!" he laughed. "Which one is Sult Anna?"
"She's the one at the table," replied his mother, "ringing the bell for a waiter to bring her something to eat."
"Can el'funts do that?" Jerry asked amazed.
"Much more than that, Gary," she responded.
"I guess el'funts know more'n some people," Danny remarked.
Jerry craned his neck to see the elephants.
"Are they going to jump the fence now?" he asked.
Whiteface burst into a joyous laugh.
"Helen, I told you my idea for a circus poster would fetch the children!" he said. "They don't jump a fence," he explained to Jerry.
"Oh, yes!" exclaimed Jerry. "The picture shows them doing it!"
"They don't really, Gary," said his mother. "The picture was just drawn that way to fit the old nursery rhyme about the elephant's jumping up to the sky."
"Then it ain't so?" Jerry asked, terribly disappointed.
"No," replied Whiteface, "but they do other things more remarkable than that."
"What?" asked Jerry. "I want to see them."
"Of course you do," said his father. "You want to see all the circus and you shall to-night, and Mrs. Mullarkey and Celia Jane, too."
"All of it?" questioned Jerry. "The little man no bigger than a two-year-old baby and the sword-swallower and all?"
"And all," replied Whiteface. "The menagerie and the side show and the main performance."
"Will Nora and Kathleen see it all, too?"
"Who are Nora and Kathleen?" his mother asked.
"Why, they're Danny's sisters!" he replied. "Didn't you know that?"
"You hadn't mentioned them before," said Whiteface, "but they'll see it, too. Are there any more in the Mullarkey family?"
"No," answered Jerry, "just Danny and Chris and Nora and Celia Jane and Kathleen and Mother 'Larkey."
By that time they had reached a part of another tent which was all screened off into small rooms, into one of which Whiteface and the lady carried Jerry, followed by Danny and Chris, who, torn between their desire to see the elephants perform and their curiosity about Jerry's new-found father and mother and their desire to obey the beautiful lady, had kept close at their heels.
"Now," said Mrs. Bowe, seating herself on a bench and taking Jerry on her lap, addressing Danny as the oldest, "tell me all you can about Gary."
"Father found him one night along a country road, cryin' in a fence corner, and brought him home," said Danny, "an' he's lived with us ever since. That's all."
"How long ago was that?" she questioned.
"It was when I was five an' a half," replied Danny.
"How old are you now?" Whiteface asked.
"Eight and more'n a half."
"Three years ago," said Mrs. Bowe. "That was only a few months after he was stolen. How did he happen to be alone in a country road?"
"I don't know," replied Danny.
"Perhaps your mother knows," suggested Whiteface.
"I don't think so," Danny replied. "Father always said it was a mystery. It was very late at night—almost midnight, I guess."
"We must see her, Robert, and thank her for taking care of Gary."
"Yes," said Whiteface, "she kept him after her husband's death—with five children of her own. She must have liked him very—"
"She does," Chris interrupted eagerly.
"We all do," Danny stated.
"How could you help it?" asked Mrs. Bowe. "Now, Gary, can you tell me anything about what happened to you? Think hard."
"Yes," said his father. "We left you in the dressing room with one of the girl acrobats while we were on and when we came back you were gone. The girl had been called out for a few minutes and got back just as we did. We hunted all over the circus for you and got the police to help us."
"Do you remember any one taking you away?" asked the beautiful lady who was now his mother.
"No'm," replied Jerry.
"Say, Mother, Gary," pleaded her low, beautiful voice close to his ear.
"No, Mother," Jerry repeated obediently.
"Try to think awfully hard," said Whiteface; "was there a man with a big mark across his forehead—"
"A red mark?" interrupted Jerry eagerly.
"Yes!" cried his mother. "Robert, it was John Rand! I knew it was that low creature."
"I feared it," said the clown.
"What did he do to you, Gary? Was he kind to you?" asked his mother.
Jerry seemed to see in a flash a man with a red mark across his forehead cuffing him over the head and twisting his arm till he cried out from the pain.
"I'll pull your arm right out if you ever tell any one you ain't my brat," a coarse, thick voice seemed to be saying in his ear, "or if you ever let on as how I ever hurt you in anyway at all."
Jerry cowered down in his mother's arms and hid his face against her breast. He did not answer her questions. His heart was galloping with fear. The man with the red scar might come back.
"Why don't you answer, Gary?" asked the clown gently. "Don't you remember?"
Jerry felt the lady who was his mother holding him tighter in her arms and then she gave a sudden start. He did not answer. He was afraid to.
"Robert!" she cried. "His heart is beating as though it would burst! The memory of that beast must frighten him terribly."
"He can never hurt you again, Gary," Whiteface assured him. "You will always be with us from now on and we won't let him ever come near you again. Did he ever hurt you?"
Jerry, remembering now vividly what the man had done to him, became more frightened than ever and, instead of answering, began to cry.
"We must not hurry him into confidence," said Whiteface.
"Oh, my boy!" wailed the elephant lady. "How terribly you must have suffered when my heart was aching so to know you were safe and to comfort and love you!"
She kissed him passionately and squeezed him so hard that his breath went entirely out of his body for a moment.
"Has Gary ever told you anything about the man who stole him?" asked Whiteface of Danny.
"No," he replied, "but Jerry ran away from him."
"How do you know that?"
"He said he had when he was going to run away from us."
"Why was he going to run away from you?"
Danny swallowed rapidly but didn't answer.
"Because Danny wouldn't let him be el'funt in our play circus," Chris explained for his brother.
Mr. Bowe took Chris' words up so quickly that Jerry thought his father was angry with Chris.
"Wouldn't let him be the elephant!" he exclaimed. "Why did Gary want especially to be the elephant?"
"I don't know," Chris answered.
"Remember, if you can," urged Whiteface. "It will help me to prove to every one that Gary is our boy."
"I guess it was because he knew something about el'funts," Danny ventured. "He knew that el'funts' tails are small and round like a rope, but he didn't know how he knew."
"I see," said the clown. "That is an important fact. I'm glad you told me."
"An' he said 'O Queen' when he saw the picture of the el'funt jumping the fence!" cried Danny excitedly. "Just the same as he did at the circus when the band stopped playin' an' before the el'funt picked him up."
"He didn't know he said it," Chris added, "an' he couldn't tell Danny what he meant by it, could he, Danny?"
"No," Danny replied.
"That clinches it!" exclaimed Whiteface, and took Jerry from his mother's arms. "Don't you cry any more, Gary-boy. Nobody shall hurt you again. O'Queen was what you used to call Sultana, the elephant—'Sult Anna O'Queen,' as though that were her name. It was the way you said a part of one line in my elephant song: 'Great Sultana, Oh, Queen of the jungle!"
"Carryin' water for the ellifants," said Jerry, through his tears.
"Do you remember any of the chorus?"
Jerry thought hard, but finally shook his head. Whiteface then started to repeat the chorus:
| "'Ho, ye drowsy drones! The Queen is a-thirst; |
| A penny for him who brings a pail first. |
| Hurry and scurry—'" |
Jerry suddenly found that he did remember what came next and interrupted his father:
"'—an' go at a prance!'"
"That's it!" cried Mrs. Bowe.
"'Run to the spring,'" quoted Mr. Bowe and Jerry finished:
| "'—an' back at a dance. Bringing water for the ellifants!'" |
Jerry felt so proud of himself for having remembered so much that he forgot all about the man with the red scar and being afraid of him.
"I 'membered it, didn't I, Whiteface?"
"Yes," answered the clown, "you did, and it proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that you are my lost little son and you've got the right to call me father."
"Father," said Jerry experimentally, trying to see how it sounded. And then "Father!" he cried exultantly.
"And not mother, too?" asked the elephant-lady in a reproachful tone.
"And Mother!" cried Jerry, sliding out of his father's arms and running to her. He climbed upon her lap and buried his face on her shoulder and gave her neck a very hard hug, just to show how much he was going to love her.
"Oh, you are my own darling, loving Gary!" she cried in a voice that was tearful, but very joyful through the tearfulness, while she almost squeezed the breath out of Jerry again. "And now we must go at once and thank kind, good Mrs. Mullarkey for caring for our boy."
"Yes," said her husband. "The circus is out and we will have time before the evening performance."
"Mother 'Larkey will be awful glad to see the circus," Jerry remarked. "She ain't seen none since just after she was married. An' so will Nora and Celia Jane."
