Loonies Read Online Free PDF Page A

lot of the people he encountered during his city beat.
    “It can be quite entertaining,” she said. “The kids love it. He brings along Marshall.”
    “The fire marshal?” he said, perking up a bit. He had loved talking arson forensics with some of the fire marshals in Boston.
    “No, Marshall ,” she replied, as if expecting him to know better. “His puppet. I figured you’d seen him at the fire station. The assistant fire chief is a ventriloquist.”
    Brian sat for a moment, soaking in the information. He grabbed his notepad and camera.
    “This I got to see,” he muttered before leaving the building.
    Simon Runck was the assistant fire chief. He was in his mid-forties, with a square-ish head and sharp jaw, a touch of gray in his hair, and a bit of a paunch. He sat on a stool on the stage in front of the students at the elementary school, his puppet in his lap.
    “Say hello to Marshall, girls and boys,” he said to the audience, which yelled back a greeting in unison.
    Brian stood off to the side of the gym-café-torium. The dummy was dressed in a little fireman’s uniform, complete with a cap perched on the shaggy black hair on its oversized head.
    “Howdy, boys and girls,” the dummy said in a high voice.
    Brian watched Simon and could see his throat moving up and down, as if he were swallowing something, but his mouth, open a small crack, barely moved. Not bad, Brian thought, but knew the kids were fixed on Marshall, so the assistant chief didn’t need to be too convincing.
    Brian began snapping pictures.
    “We all know how important it is not to play with matches,” Simon said.
    “Yes,” Marshall piped in. “Especially since I am mostly made of wood.”
    The students burst into laughter.
    Brian jotted some notes.
    At the end of the show, Brian took more pictures of the students as they approached the dummy. Some of them shook Marshall’s wooden hand. When the kids dispersed and filed back to their classrooms, Brian introduced himself to Simon.
    “Nice to meet you,” the fireman said. “I heard you had taken over at the paper.”
    “Yeah, me too,” Marshall said. “About time they kicked that old loser out of there and brought in some new talent. Maybe that fish wrap will get a bit more interesting.”
    Brian chuckled. “Nice. But I think Beverly Crump really runs the place. She’s the one who told me to come here today.”
    “You should put me on the front page,” the dummy said. “Class up the rag a bit.”
    “I will see what I can do.” He turned to Simon. “How long have you been doing this act?”
    “Act?” Marshall said. “Who’s acting?”
    Simon laughed at his own crack and looked at his puppet. “That’s enough, Marshall. The man’s trying to conduct an interview.” He turned to Brian. “I came to Smokey Hollow about eight years ago. Guess I started with Marshall a few years before that.”
    “What made you come up with this idea?”
    Simon looked deep in thought, and then brought his eyes to meet Brian’s. “I started practicing ventriloquism back in high school. Kind of my way of dealing with teen angst I guess. I was a bit shy and nervous, and Marshall gave me a voice, even though it should be the other way around.”
    Brian jotted his comments down, before looking up from his notepad. “And I guess a career in ventriloquism didn’t look promising, so you decided to be a firefighter?”
    Simon chuckled. “Ventriloquism was more a hobby than anything.”
    “Maybe for you,” Marshall butted in. “This is a way of life for me.”
    “And what brought your act to this exciting town?”
    Brian saw Simon’s eyes drift away in thought, but they came back and he smiled.
    “I had actually become afraid of fire. Not very good for a firefighter. It was somewhat depressing. A town like this, I’ll be honest, does not have a lot of action.”
    “Yeah, I gathered that,” Brian said. Which is why I’m here doing this silly interview, he thought.
    “It seemed perfect