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Coming into a town, he would blow his bugle. Although he knew only that one tune, or melody, it
was another of his several talents, another thing he could do, as protection against feeling that he
wasn't worth nothing. He could have just honked his horn, but the horn was a common thing that said, "Cow, get out of the road," and his bugle, a different sort of dented horn, said, "From far yonder down the road here he comes again, folks, Hoppy Boyd, the happy moving showman of moving pitchers to show you another good'un." That's more or less what that tune or melody was trying to say, although it sounded to him less like a reveille than a taps and spoke of the nameless wistful nightfall reaches beyond these hills.
But he drove the truck easy with one hand so's he could stick that bugle out the window and give
it all those toots that let everybody know he was back again. And as usual they came a-running,
even the grown-ups and womenfolk. This was his favorite part of the whole six days he would play
this town, the jubilation that grabbed everybody when they first learned he was here. Yonder was
Billy Millwee jumping up and down beside his little wagon, which he'd somehow painted white
just so's it would look like Hoppy's truck, the only white truck in the Ozarks, an old ordinary
ton-and-a-half flatbed Chevy whose back end he'd carpentered himself to make a little house, a
combination projection booth and traveling home, with his bed and kerosene stove and all. And Billy had done more or less the same to his little wagon, and even rigged up a play-like projector out of
tin cans and spools and junk. Hoppy had named his truck “Topper” after the real Hoppy’s fine big
white horse, and little Billy Millwee called his wagon “Topper-Too,” and Hoppy was so pleased
with him he’d offered to let him in free to the shows, but Billy was a proud little cuss who had
him a rat terror named Jack and went around to henhouses catching rats for five cents per, the price
of a kid’s ticket to the pitcher show. Now here was Billy acting like it was Christmas and his birthday
and the Fourth of July all rolled together, and Hoppy stopped blowing his bugle long enough to wave at him. Billy was even wearing a cowboy hat, a black one like Hoppy’s, not a ten-gallon of course because his head was so small but leastways five gallons.
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