§ 19 The Poor Aim of Mr. Zeno
When the circus reached the small New Hampshire town the proprietor feared that his afternoon performance might lack its chief feature. The star of the aggregation was Zeno, the Mexican Knife Thrower, answering in private life to the name of Hennessy. Twice a day Zeno, dressed in gaudy trappings, would enter the arena accompanied by his wife, a plump young woman in pink tights, and followed by a roustabout bearing a basket full of long bowie-knives and shining battle-axes. While the band played an appropriate selection of shivery music the young woman would flatten herself against a background of blue planking which had been erected in the middle of the ring. There she would pose motionless, her arms outstretched. Then Zeno, stationing himself forty feet from her, would fling his knives and axes at her, missing her each time by the narrowest of margins. Presently her form would be completely outlined by the deadly steel, but such was Zeno’s marvelous skill that she took no hurt from the sharp blades which pinned her fast.
But on this day Mrs. Zeno had fallen ill and although the circus owner offered a reward for someone who would take her place, he could find no volunteers among the members of his staff. In this emergency the invalid’s mother, who traveled with the show in the capacity of wardrobe mistress, agreed to serve as an understudy in order that the performance might not be marred.
Forth came Zeno, wearing his professional scowl, slightly enhanced. His mother-in-law, skinny and homely, with her hair knotted in a knob on her head and her daughter’s fleshings hanging in loose folds upon her figure, followed him closely. She plastered herself flat against the wooden background. Zeno gave her a look seemingly fraught with undying hate. He took up his longest, sharpest bowie-knife. He tested its needle-like point upon his thumb. He poised it, aimed it, flung it.
Like a javelin it hurtled and hissed in its flight through the air. Striking tip first a scant quarter of an inch from the lobe of the mother-in-law’s left ear, it buried itself deep in the tough oaken planking and stood there, the hilt quivering.
The pause which ensued was broken by the astonished voice of a lank native sitting on the lowermost tier of blue seats industriously milking his whiskers:
“Wall, by Heck—he missed her!”