Bernie looked up and gave a double take, for the face looking down belonged to a beardy man, but with a woman's body, then it became apparent, the bearded lady. Stood beside her was the man called Hank that the hairy woman had addressed her remarks to, he looked fairly ordinary until Bernie caught sight of his hands, if you could call them that, for instead of the regulation eight fingers and two thumbs arrangement, Hank had something closer to crab's pincers or something akin to that. Then Bernie remembered that the carnival people travelled with the circus and these two must be part of some kind of side-show, Bernie recalled a school friend Tommy Knockerbottominsky talking about the 'Lobster-man', this thought Bernie must be the very fellow.
'What you doin' in there kid?' asked the hirsute woman.
'I want to join the circus and get away from my folks, I want to be a clown and make all the little children laugh when I pretend to throw water over them, but really it'll be tinsel, I've always wanted to be a clown.'
You are in the right place for it, but I think that we'd better send you back kid, what do you think Pammy-Jo-Sue-Annelene?'
'I think that it'd do now harm for the kid to knock around for day or two, looks like a spunky one to me and maybe could fit in well with this kinda life.'
The bearded woman, Pammy-Jo-Sue-Annelene Stipovitz Cleandoor McEarfarm Drydyke Piewornwurst O' Toyleg, or simply Old Beardy to her friends, was a kindly soul with a few teeth but a lot of heart and even more ex-husbands, all deceased and carnival/circus men. She was born in a circus and love the life on the road. Old Beardy's current husband Hank O'Toyleg, the oddly handed fellow, the offspring of victims of an atomic accident, which left him with his crustacean hand design and condemned him to a life of ridicule in normal society and forced him to a life as a curiosity object and a laughing stock , but at least this way, they could laugh at him, but only after they'd paid their fee. Hank liked it that way.
So it seemed for now Bernie was safe at the circus, the O'Toyleg's offered a corner of their trailer and said they would put in a good word with the owner and ringmaster cum lion-tamer Ivor Chipperdick and with Bozo the head clown to see if there was room in under the big top for another lost soul. Chipperdick was a big strong red-faced gentleman, who liked to drink strong liquor and talk with ladies of the night when he wasn't sticking his head into the gaping jaws of wild animals. It just so happened that when Hank and Beardy took Bernie to see him he was onto his second quart of whisky and ready to head downtown to some honky-tonk bar to talk with the pretty painted ladies, that his dear old momma had once warned him about but that he had ignored.
'Hell yeah the kid can stay, as longs as money gets made and the kid ain't livin' off us I don't give a darn about it!' And off he went into the night. Bozo the Clown, was a slightly tougher prospect, a clown's clown from the old school, didn't approve of young whipper-snappers coming in and getting to be clowns without going through all the apprenticeships necessary, but what could he do, Chipperdick paid the wages and Bozo didn't have anywhere else to go given his circumstances, however he did have the run of the clown act so he made Bernie grannie clown, the lowest and most pointless clown role on the show, but Bernie didn't care, it was a start on a ladder that would hopefully lead right to the top of Clowndom.
