Tales of Petupia: Fundy & The Wandering Sideshow By Marten Go Page 2

Fundy & The Wandering Sideshow		Page 2
	2 THE HARD WORKING CAST ──────── Tavio wasn’t the only hard-working miserable performer at The Wandering Sideshow. His peers: the tattooed man, the pretzel woman, the man with two faces, the moustache princess, the octopus lady, the girl with tangerine skin, the fire-eating family, the giant dwarf, the caterpillar boy, the little lion, the prize-fighting kangaroo, and the big bear all shared the same misery. When the fire-eating couple asked for a day off to take their son, Baby Cole to the doctor, Magnificent Wintia barked: “The doctor?! Do you have any idea what that’ll cost me? And your work, who will do your work?! Just take him to the boiler room where it’s warm. It’ll heal a cold in no time.” The male performers spent just about all their free time in the boiler room. The heaps of coal they shoveled into the furnaces only kept The Wandering Sideshow from going kaput—it was an old caravan after all. Probably a day without coal would mean the end of it for good. So even the caterpillar boy who hasn’t any arms and legs needed to shovel coal. How you ask? With a plastic shovel in his mouth, you know the kind you find at the beach. With Magnificent Wintia’s stooge, Gedly watching, no one dared slacking off.

	And the female performers didn’t have it any easier. They cooked all day long to feed the ever-growing belly of Magnificent Wintia, and then they washed and scrubbed The Wandering Sideshow from top to bottom. Even the top tents. And lurking around corners with her beady little eyes was Nurse Beadil keeping a close watch on them. When the girl with tangerine skin asked for a short break, Nurse Beadil snapped: “A short break?! Magnificent Wintia doesn’t pay for breaks! A busy man like him never wastes money, so you can all take breaks when you go to bed!”

	So, you see that’s the kind of treatment the performers of The Wandering Sideshow received on a daily basis. And after years of hard work and bad treatment, their wonderful spirits and enthusiasm had dwindled away—leaving only the misery and sadness on their faces. But believe it or not, no one could possibly have it worse than the odd sideshow act, the stick man.