Charley said uncomfortably. But he wasn't convinced.

* * * * *

The season drew to a close, and Charley went off to the Florida Keys,
where he spent a month living with some friends before holing up with
his mother and sister for the winter. He was offered a job in New York,
at a year-round flea museum in Times Square, but after some thought he
decided against it. He'd never had to work winters, and he wasn't going
to start.

After all, he was still doing well, wasn't he? He told himself
emphatically that he was. He was an Armless Wonder, a born freak, the
top of the carny ladder, with a good job wherever he cared to look for
one.

He had to tell himself that quite a few times before he began to believe
it.

Spring came, and then summer, and Charley kissed his mother and his
sister good-by and joined Wrout's Carnival Shows in Summit, Idaho, three
days before their opening. He didn't notice much change from previous
years, but it took an effort not to notice some things.

Not like the new man who'd taken Professor Lightning's place--a tall
thin youngster who had an Electric Chair act. Or like the periodic
quarrels between Ned and Ed; it seemed they'd met a girl over the winter
season, and disagreed about her. Ed thought she was perfectly wonderful;
Ned couldn't see her for beans.

No, things like that were a part of carny; you got used to them, as the
show rolled along year after year, and paid no more attention to them
than a housewife pays to rather uninteresting back-fence gossip.

It was something else that had changed, something important.

His contract, for instance. It was made out for the same pay as he'd
been getting, but the option periods were shortened up; suddenly,
Charley was living from season to season, with almost no assurance of
continuous, steady work. Old man Wrout had looked a little less than
happy when he'd given Charley the contract; he'd almost seemed ashamed,
and he hadn't really looked Charley in the eye once. But when Charley
asked what was wrong, he got no answer.

Or none that meant anything. "It's just the way things are," Wrout
muttered. "Don't make no difference, kid."

But it did make a difference. Charley wasn't out in the bally any more,
either; he was backstage among the second-rate acts, the tattooed man
and the fire-eater and the rest, while Erma and Ned and Ed and the
top-liners took their bows out before the crowd, pulling them in, and