Читать книгу Pee-wee Harris, Mayor for a Day - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 4

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But Pee-wee was not only a bold originator of stage effects (reproducing the marvelous resourcefulness of scouts); he was brave as well. And the very next time that he saw Tasca and Bruno he accosted them with charges of their theatrical connection.

They were dark-skinned, brown-eyed boys, these brothers, with a handsome foreign look. Tasca threw his head back and stared at Pee-wee with his lustrous eyes as if receiving a challenge.

Pee-wee went straight to the point. “Do your mother and father act in shows?” he asked. “In real shows that you have to pay to get in?”

“They’re as good as your father and mother,” Tasca answered.

Pee-wee received this as a compliment, for indeed he thought that people who acted in shows and were all dressed in gold and stuff, were infinitely above the prosaic folk among whom he lived.

“Do they act in big shows where you have to buy tickets and where they have private boxes and everything?” he asked.

“They’re artists,” said Tasca.

“Do they paint pictures?”

“No, they’re music artists.”

“I got up lots of shows,” Pee-wee said. “I got up shows where you had to pay ten cents, I did; scout shows. I bet you’re not scouts.”

“Nobody asked us,” said Bruno.

“I ask you,” Pee-wee promptly announced. “I got a right to ask anybody I want to. Will you show me your mother and father some time—if I get you into the scouts?”

Here was a proposition. Bruno and Tasca looked with favor on joining the scouts. They knew so little about scouting that they were ready to believe that influence was necessary to get them into the scout ranks. And Pee-wee spoke as if he had unlimited influence. But Tasca, knowing his parents to be ordinary human beings, was a little perplexed.

“What do you want to see them for?” he asked.

“Do they wear all gold and stuff?” Pee-wee inquired. “What do they take off when they act?”

“They don’t take off anything,” Bruno said.

“You got to take off something,” Pee-wee persisted. “I took off a lion once—how he roars.”

“You mean imitate?” Bruno said.

“They play bells and the concertina,” said Tasca, cutting the matter short, “and they’re on Keith’s circuit.”

“You mean circus?” Pee-wee demanded.

“No, I don’t, I mean circuit,” said Tasca. “It means the different places they travel around to—all different theaters.”

Pee-wee gazed at the brothers almost with awe. “Can you do acting?” he asked.

“We can play the marimba,” Bruno said; “our father showed us; he’s giving us lessons.”

Pee-wee’s look of awe intensified. Here he was actually face to face with two future actors, who would in the fullness of time be all dressed in gold and stuff and go on a circuit—whatever that was.

“What’s a marimba?” he asked.

“It’s all wooden bars and you hit them with hammers,” said Bruno. “We got one belongs all alone to us; my father doesn’t use it any more.”

“Can I see it?” Pee-wee asked. “And can I see your mother and father?”

“You can see them Sunday when they get home,” said Tasca.

“And I’ll get you in the scouts,” Pee-wee said; “I’ll get you in the new patrol I’m going to start, and you can be the band of it.”

“A marimba isn’t a band,” Bruno said.

“Sure it is,” said Pee-wee; “ain’t music a band? I know all about bands because I’m a scout. Did you ever act in real shows—in big shows?”

“We did, only the Society wouldn’t let us because we have to go to school,” Bruno said.

“Anyway you did act in real shows?” Pee-wee persisted, gazing at them with extraordinary interest.

“And we’re going to when we grow up,” Bruno said.

“Well anyway,” Pee-wee said, “the Society can’t stop you from being scouts, that’s one sure thing. Societies have got nothing to say about scouts; I got more to say about it than they have, I’m a first-class scout, so will you join? If you’ll show me your mother and father you can be in the new patrol I’m starting, and we’ll get up a show and you can act in it, because anyway I’m going to get up a show up in Little Valley, in a church up there. And if any society tries to stop you,” Pee-wee added darkly, “I’ll show them, I will. So do you want to join? Because I’m starting a new patrol that’s going to be called the Chipmunks? So what do you say?”