The Fantastic Family Whipple (10 page)

Until that time, however, his sole responsibility was to enjoy the party. With his family now on break to perform various birthday activities, such as showing guests around the estate and posing for photographs in the Whipple Hall of World Records, the boy had been placed in the care of Uncle Mervyn and Mrs. Waite, whose drinks he was presently on his way to deliver.

After passing by a woman on stage who was in the process of eating a school bus, piece by piece, and was at that moment gnawing on the gear lever, Arthur passed a man who had clipped 167 clothespins to his own face and was reaching for another. The next act, however, so piqued Arthur’s curiosity that he put his errand on hold and stopped for a closer look.

On a stage surrounded by over three dozen onlookers stood two suspicious-looking clowns.

Arthur was aware, of course, that many people regard
all
clowns with a great deal of suspicion, without any other reason than the simple fact that they are
clowns
. Indeed, it was a stereotype the IBCPC (International Brotherhood of Circus and Party Clowns) had been trying to quell for years. It seemed to Arthur, however, that these particular clowns—judging on appearance alone—warranted at least some minor misgivings. Their faces were coated with thick, pasty makeup that was cracking in the creases of their skin—and though each of them had a big crimson smile painted around his mouth, neither of them was actually smiling.

What had really caught Arthur’s eye, however, was not the appearance of the clowns’ faces—but the sizes of their bodies. The clown on the right was so tall that on first glance he appeared to be standing on stilts—and it was only upon further observation that his proportions proved otherwise. The clown on the left was standing on a large wooden crate, but he was so short that the tip of his head barely reached his partner’s waist.

There was a sixty-foot pole jutting up from behind the stage, which was labeled in big bold numbers with incremental measurements of height. According to the pole’s markings, the giant was roughly nine feet tall, while the dwarf’s height measured at just over two feet. Each clown’s height was further exaggerated by the close proximity in which they stood—the giant’s massive stature causing the dwarf to seem more like a doll than a man, and the dwarf’s tiny body causing the giant to appear as large as an oak tree.

As Arthur gazed onto the stage, the clowns performed stretching exercises, in apparent preparation for some forthcoming feat. And then, without a word, the giant clown picked up his dwarfish partner from off the wooden crate—and threw him straight up into the air.

The crowd gasped as the tiny clown shot up like a bullet, ascending higher and higher—passing the twenty-five-foot marker—and then thirty—thirty-five—forty—forty-five. He had climbed over fifty feet in the air before his speed began to slow, and he peaked at the fifty-six-foot marker before plummeting back toward the stage.

It appeared for a moment that the dwarf might slam into the stage’s wooden planks on his way back to earth, but the giant, who had not taken his eyes off his partner since hurling him into the air, extended his arms at the last second and plucked the falling dwarf out of the sky. The giant clown then set his partner back down upon the wooden crate, and the two turned toward the audience to take a well-deserved bow.

The crowd erupted in applause. Suspicious or not, these two clowns had just set a new world record for Greatest Height Reached by One Man Thrown into the Air by Another.

Just as Arthur began to clap, however, the small clown looked straight at him—and grinned in such a way that Arthur’s blood ran cold.

The boy stumbled backward. Generally, he was exceptionally fair when it came to clowns and always did his best not to judge them too hastily. He would continually remind himself that beneath all the creepy makeup, a clown is just a pleasant, if misguided, fellow in oversized shoes trying to make people laugh—against increasingly difficult odds. But this time, Arthur felt no such sympathy. His only thought was to get as far away from these clowns as possible.

Arthur sneaked behind the crowd and walked quickly away from the stage and its suddenly sinister occupants. When he felt he had reached a safe distance, Arthur’s curiosity got the better of him. He turned to venture a glance back at the stage and found—to his horror—that not only
was the dwarfish clown still staring at him, the giant had now joined in as well.

A chill ran down Arthur’s spine, and he quickly turned away. He continued on his path and did not look back again.

Uncle Mervyn held a stopwatch an arm’s length from a man on stage who was currently juggling five circular saw blades.

“Forty-one minutes!” cried the world-record certifier as Arthur approached the place where Mrs. Waite stood, just behind the crowd of daring party guests.

Arthur handed a well-traveled glass of ginger ale to the housekeeper. “Sorry it’s not entirely full, Mrs. Waite. I did have a few sips myself,” he admitted.

Mrs. Waite smiled. “Think nothing of it, dear. What a treat to have somebody waiting on
me
for a change! I’m just glad to see you found your way back; I was starting to worry you’d been kidnapped by gypsies.”

Arthur smiled back awkwardly. Unlike some children his age, Arthur never worried about being kidnapped. Indeed, it seemed quite unlikely that, of all the Whipple children, any kidnapper would ever decide to kidnap
him
. Surely a kidnapper would not expect half the ransom he could get for one of Arthur’s brothers or sisters. Of course, it was nice to have one less thing to worry about—but deep inside, Arthur longed to be worthy of kidnapping.

“Forty-two minutes!” shouted Uncle Mervyn up at the stage.

With that, the juggler let each saw blade fall to the stage floor, one after the other. The razor-sharp blades stuck into the floorboards in quick succession, landing in a perfectly spaced line. The juggler bowed low and the crowd cheered.

After filling out the proper paperwork certifying this latest world record, Uncle Mervyn hurried to the back of the now dwindling crowd, to the place where Arthur and Mrs. Waite stood waiting for him.

As Arthur watched his caretakers exchange fond glances with each other, he recalled Cordelia’s assurances that, since Uncle Mervyn was a bachelor and Mrs. Waite a widow, the two were perfect for each other. Arthur, being no expert in such matters, was not so certain—though he had noticed the pair spent a considerable amount of their free time together.

“Ah, there you are, Arthur,” declared Uncle Mervyn as the boy handed him his drink. “You’ve made it just in time! While you were gone, your family achieved the Highest Number of Uniquely Posed Photographs in Ten Minutes, putting them just one record away from their quota. So—as there’s nothing scheduled on this stage for the next half hour—how would you like to get up and have a go at your latest attempt? Think of how thrilled the others will be when they find it’s you who’s ensured their eligibility for the championships!”

Mrs. Waite nodded. “Won’t that be wonderful, Arthur?”

“Oh,” said Arthur in surprise. He had in fact been secretly hoping for just such an opportunity—but to be asked to make an attempt on such short notice in front of so distinguished a crowd suddenly gave him pause. “Well,” he said, “I don’t have my bullwhip or my milk bottle with me—and I’m afraid it will take at least fifteen minutes to go and get them, and by that time…”

“Mrs. Waite’s been kind enough to fetch them for you already,” retorted Uncle Mervyn, grinning warmly at the housekeeper. “You’ll find them over there, just next to the stage.”

“Really?” said Arthur with a nervous smile. “Thanks, Uncle Mervyn; thanks, Mrs. Waite. I’ve never really performed an attempt on stage before.”

“Well, here’s your chance then, lad. But I’ve a feeling,” Uncle Mervyn added with an encouraging wink, “this may end up being more than just an attempt for you.” He had a twinkle in his eye that made it difficult for Arthur not to believe him.

Arthur went to retrieve his bullwhip and milk bottle while Uncle Mervyn took to the stage to gather the crowd. There were only a few stragglers still milling about from the previous act, as most of the audience had since moved on to the next stage, where Mr. Mahankali’s high-diving dogs were attempting a new synchronized diving record.

“Ladies and gentlemen, lads and lasses,” Uncle Mervyn called to the six audience members who apparently did not care for canine acrobatics, “prepare yourself for an act like
none you have ever witnessed before. Watch in amazement as this rarely seen member of the Whipple family strives to break his very first world record and secure his family’s position at this year’s championships by cracking a bullwhip 932 consecutive times while balancing a milk bottle on his head. Please welcome to the stage—Arthur Whipple and his magical bullwhip!”

Arthur’s heart was pounding through his chest. He had not expected his uncle’s boastful introduction, and now he didn’t know how he could possibly live up to it. The time for backing out, however, had long since passed—so he put one foot in front of the other and started up the stage steps.

Reaching into his pocket, Arthur grasped the magical domino his uncle had given him for his birthday—and began rubbing it with all his might. He could only hope some of its magic would now rub off on him.

The tiny crowd clapped indifferently as the boy with the bullwhip stepped onto the stage.

When he had reached the middle of the platform, Arthur placed the milk bottle on top of his head, and the halfhearted applause died down. He suddenly found himself stranded in a sea of silence and realized it was up to him to fill it.

Arthur glanced to his uncle with a look of dismay—but Uncle Mervyn simply looked up from his watch and shouted, “Begin!”

A
rthur cocked back his arm
, then snapped it downward. The tail of the whip shot out in front of him—but to his dread, it made no sound.

He brought the whip up again and snapped his arm down a second time—but again, the whip did not crack.

One of the audience members, an old Chinese man with a long white mustache—who happened to be the owner of the First Motorized Wheelchair Ever Assembled—slowly pivoted his antique wheelchair and inched his way toward the high-diving dog show.

Arthur began to panic. Had he completely forgotten how to crack a whip? What if he couldn’t manage to crack it even once? What was he doing wrong?

He closed his eyes and tried to recall the fundamentals of whip cracking, as taught to him by his uncle.

“I trust you’ve learned,” Uncle Mervyn had said, “that a sonic boom occurs when an object travels faster than the speed of sound—or roughly 761 miles per hour. I imagine you’ve even heard a sonic boom yourself once or twice when a jet plane has torn across the sky above you and broken the sound barrier. But what you might not have known, Arthur, is that common cows have been traveling faster than the speed of sound since the early Roman Empire—long before the First Jet Aeroplane was ever invented. You see, lad, the sound of a bullwhip cracking is actually the result of a small sonic boom. When properly handled, the tail end of a whip can reach speeds in excess of 760 miles per hour, thus breaking the sound barrier and creating the noise we hear as a whip ‘crack.’ And of course, bullwhips are made from leather, and leather is really just tanned cow hide. So, you see, contrary to popular belief, the race to achieve supersonic flight was not won by a man—but by a cow, some two thousand years ago when the First Leather Whip was cracked, and it took us humans till the mid-1940s just to catch up. Now of course, some might say this discrepancy in technological advancement is due to the fact that no cow has ever survived the flight, making it difficult for our scientists to question them about their methods. But I have other suspicions….”

Indeed, Uncle Mervyn believed that some sort of magic
must be involved in order for common cows to succeed at such a complex endeavor. Which is why at Christmas he had presented Arthur with a magical bullwhip.

“But what makes it magical, Uncle Mervyn?” Arthur had asked.