Bernie had been with the show for a few weeks, travelling through the stark yet beautiful landscape of the pacific North-West of America. At the insistence of Mr O'Toyleg a letter was sent home saying the Bernie was okay and there was no need to get the police and that Bernie would be home after the summer season, (but of course there was no forwarding address, nor any mention of what circus Bernie had joined. Bernie had almost settled into the role of mummy clown, but the part was less than demanding, consisting mainly of being drenched with buckets of water, hit with rubber truncheons and getting run over by the clown-mobile.
Sometimes Bernie would almost cry at night, upset at not getting to be a real clown, but through the tears, Bernie just became more determined to show Bobo and the others that becoming a proper clown was all that mattered, despite Bobo's persistent comments about Bernie being a sissy and other not very nice jibes. Bernie had become friends with Alfie, the wolf-cub boy and his parents Harvey (the hairy wolf man and Monica the monkey woman).
Bernie and Alfie knocked around getting into all sorts of juvenile scrapes and pranks, often incurring the wrath of Mr. Chipperdick, who more than once threatened to feed them to the lions. Mr. Chipperdick seemed to be a creature of the night, rarely, if ever seen during the day. Alfie said this was because he was always so drunk that he had to sleep it off. Bernie had noticed that a lot of the people with the circus and the sideshows had very odd nocturnal habits, but decided that since so many of them were so unconventionally beautiful, going out during the day, save to appear in the shows probably wasn't a safe option, 'We usually scare people's children!' as Mr. O'Toyleg had said on numerous occasions. The police were also frequent visitors to the circus, not as paying patrons, but in search of various missing persons.
'Every time somebody goes for a walk or runs away and we've been in town, the law is always hot on our tails, they don't like folks like us, folks that don't fit in nowhere, go from town to town, we ain't no 9 to 5 people, but we ain't the monsters they think we are, we'll at least not as bad anyway.' Mr. O'Toyleg would repeat these sentiments like a mantra, and it sometimes appeared to Bernie that he was trying to convince himself of it. Nevertheless in Bernies case the runaway thing was true and Bernie was always secreted away until the forces of law and order were safely out of the picture.
It was a bright sunny morning and the there was hardly a cloud in the sky as the Chipperdick Circus and Freak-show rumbled into the sleepy streets of Tree Falls, ready for another weekend of bringing a bit of fun and an element of the bizarre into the probably dull lives of the loggers who lived in this back-of-beyond town (and of course empty their wallets of some of their hard earned cash!) All in all this promised to be a memorable visit, as no circus had been to the town for years, something was in the air.
The first night of the show had gone well, Bernie thought, with all the townsfolk appearing to lap up all the high jinks. The elephant review, the lion and tiger taming and all the other mad animals like the dancing bears and chimps, the acrobats (The Flying Trampolinie Family, the only midget acrobats in the world, according to the poster) and of course the clowns, with all their zany antics, and for once Bernie didn't feel to bad about it although the taunts about looking too girlie were beginning to become tiresome. The sideshows also did a roaring trade, scaring and amusing in the same breath. All was going so well, that Bernie began to think that this circus could well be the only place to be. Then the night began in earnest and in that darkness events transpired that meant that things would never be the same again for Bernie, for the circus and for the people of Tree Falls.
