Dunc and Amos Hit the Big Top (5 page)

And it didn’t have to be done. It didn’t make any sense. The wall had been up perfectly, and Blades had just been making more work to do.

Because he doesn’t like me
, Amos thought. But the truth was, Blades didn’t know him, and he probably didn’t like anybody very much. Probably had dreams about doing
things to all the people he didn’t like. Probably turned them into frogs, and …

He shook his head.

It wasn’t just Blades. All the men must be involved in whatever it was, or they would have been mad when Blades knocked the wall down. They did all the work of putting it up and just laughed when he knocked it down.

It didn’t make any sense.

He looked around, hoping to see Dunc come walking up. Dunc might know what was happening, what this all meant. That was the sort of thing Dunc did the best. Figuring things.

But he wasn’t there. Amos was alone with an impossible job in an impossible situation that didn’t make any logical sense. He frowned, thinking of what Dunc had said to do. What was it?

Oh yes, the notebook. He had to keep track of all these weird things.

He took the notebook out of his pocket and the stub of pencil and began to write:
Men doing work over they don’t need to do
. He thought a moment, then added:
Men not doing work at all?

So intent had he been on writing that he didn’t realize he wasn’t standing alone. Somebody had come up on his side and was reading over his shoulder.

“What’s this—you writing a book, kid?”

Amos looked up to see Blades again.

It was impossible. He had just walked away in the opposite direction and yet here he was—he must have run around the big top to come up in back of him that way.

“Just some ideas I had.” Amos flipped the notebook shut and started to put it back in his pocket. “I haven’t had time to start on the curtain.”

“Not so fast. Let me see that.” Blades grabbed for the notebook, but Amos jerked it away and took off.

He made four steps, and Blades caught him by the back of the shirt and pulled him up, clawed the notebook out of his hand, and held Amos kicking under one arm while he read what Amos had written.

“I thought so.”

“Thought so what?”

“I thought you and that other brat were spies. Are they on to us?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you don’t. You just happen to be where I’m working, and you take a note like this, and you don’t know what’s happening? Let me change the question. How long have the Bobbsey Twins known what’s going on?”

“Bobbsey Twins?”

“Willy and Billy—the two do-gooders who own this pile of junk they call a circus. How long?”

“I really don’t know what—”

Blades shook him, once, and it felt as if his eyeballs were going to fall out.

“Talk, kid!”

“If I knew anything, I would tell you. Honest.”

Blades ignored him and started walking, Amos tucked under his arm like a suitcase.

“Where are we going?”

“Where you and the other little monster won’t cause any more trouble.”

Which, Amos thought as Blades carried him around the end of the big top and toward the small enclosed area—which didn’t sound good at all.

•
9

Blades threw Amos into the back end of a camper shell that was sitting on top of an ancient pickup parked near the back edge of the animal enclosure.

“Oooofff!”

Amos landed face-first in a pile of dirty T-shirts and socks mixed with empty bean cans and part of what he thought might be an antique slice of pizza.

He rolled over and sat up, then pulled himself up onto the small bench next to the table.

The inside of the camper looked about like Amos thought the inside of Blades’s camper should look—a dump. There were empty beer
cans and food containers everywhere, and six or seven used tubes of hair grease thrown on the floor mixed in with other dirty laundry.

He heard a key in the lock and realized that Blades had locked him in the camper. This alarmed him until he saw that the window over the table was broken out and it would be a simple matter to slip across the table and out the window.

He climbed onto the table and stuck his head out.

“Get back in, kid.”

One of Blades’s men—he could have doubled for Blades himself—was standing by the window.

Amos ducked back in.

There was another window over the double bunk, and he clambered up onto the bunk, but the same man could see that window as well.

Amos moved back down to the table and sat on the bench.

A cockroach that seemed the size of a small puppy crawled off a chewed piece of chicken on a paper plate on the table, and Amos slid farther off to the side.

Well, he thought, it was bad, but it
wouldn’t be long. He was supposed to meet Dunc, and when he didn’t show, Dunc would come looking for him and probably call the police, and before long the whole place would be upside down.

He stopped thinking as a key clicked into the lock and the door opened and Dunc came barreling in to land in the same place as Amos had landed.

“Oh, man,” Dunc said, sitting up, “this is disgusting.”

“You think that’s bad—wait until you see the cockroach. You could ride him.”

“How long have you been here?” Dunc asked.

“Just a few minutes. I was figuring you’d come to rescue me.”

Dunc ignored the dig. “I’ve figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

“What’s going on here. It threw me for a little while because what seemed to be happening wasn’t really happening and only
seemed
to be happening, but once I gathered some data—”

“Dunc.”

“—the data backed up my calculations
completely. It’s just that I had a little initial confusion because the data indicated what it didn’t really
seem
to indicate—”

“I’m going to kill you and feed you to the roaches if you don’t stop and tell me what you’re talking about.”

Dunc stopped. “I’m telling you.”

“So I can understand it.”

Dunc sighed. “Well, look—what did you find out before they caught you?”

“Nothing.”

“No, really. What did you see?”

“Nothing.”

“What did you put in your notebook?”

“Oh. Something I didn’t understand. I just said the men seemed to be working but weren’t really working or doing work over they didn’t need to do over.”

“My point exactly!”

“It is?”

“Sure. Don’t you see what it means?”

Amos looked out the window where the sun shone off the greasy head of the man guarding the camper. “No. I don’t.”

“Why would they do something over and over?”

“Maybe because they’re stupid? I mean, some of these guys are pretty bad—right down there with bacteria and one-celled animals.”

“It’s to ruin the circus.”

“What?”

“Sure. It’s simple once you figure it out. They do work over and over, seem to work when they aren’t, but in the end they get it done, or pretty much get it done. And Willy and Billy told us they were having trouble financially.”

“You got all this from seeing the men work the way they work?”

Dunc smiled. “Not exactly. I overheard two of them talking about how they were pretty close to ruining the circus so some other guys could buy it out cheap. But when I heard that, it was easier to put it all together.”

“So you weren’t all that far ahead of me.” Amos moved to the front of the camper and looked out the window. “The trick is, what are we going to do about it?”

“We have to get away and tell Willy and Billy.”

Amos pointed outside. “That guy is still out there watching.”

Dunc lifted an incredibly filthy curtain and nodded. “I see.”

“So what do we do?” Amos looked at his watch. “They’re going to start selling tickets soon. Melissa will be there, and the trapeze acts are first, right after the entrance parade. I have to get my tights from the service trailer and put them on and get into the tent before it all starts.”

Dunc stared at him. “Are you still talking about doing the trapeze?”

Amos nodded. “It’s bound to work. I’ll be the only one up there, and she can’t help but see me.”

“I thought the elephant would have changed your mind a bit. He threw you close to two hundred feet.”

Amos shrugged. “I don’t remember much except a kind of swirling of things—like the ground above me and the sky below. But it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m going to do this or die trying.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. That second part.”

Amos ignored him. “So think up a way to get out of here. I have barely enough time to get into my tights.”

“It’s not possible.”

“Sure it is. It’s like putting on a big stocking. I watched the gymnasts in the locker room one time. You just stick a foot in and kind of peel them on.”

“No. I mean getting away. That guy is watching like a hawk.”

“Come on, Dunc. Quit fooling around. You
always
know what to do.”

“Not this time. We’re locked up, and the only way out is to risk getting caught while we do it. We wouldn’t get ten feet.”

“Oh man.” Amos shook his head. “I don’t believe you. All we need is a little razzle-dazzle and some frown-thinking by you, and we’d be right out of here. All you have to do is think of a diversion, catch the guy’s attention, while one of us gets away and goes for help.”

Dunc snapped his fingers. “I have an idea.”

Amos smiled. “Great. What is it?”

“We just create a diversion, catch the
guard’s attention, and one of us gets away to go for the authorities.”

“Sounds good to me.” Amos nodded. “You create the diversion, and I’ll escape.”

“Why you?”

“I run faster because I’m more afraid, and if I don’t get away soon, I won’t make the trapeze act.”

“Oh. Yeah. All right.”

Dunc moved to the window again and studied the guard for a moment. The man took a pack of cigarettes from the rolled-up sleeve of his T-shirt—which showed a tattoo of a snake swallowing a small town—and began to light it with a match that he flicked with his thumbnail.

This simple act provided the diversion needed—actually, more than they needed.

When the guard flicked the wooden match with his thumbnail, it flared up, and he started to light the cigarette with it. But part of the phosphorous head of the match stuck beneath his thumbnail and lit as well the main part of the match head.

Which effectively cooked the tip-end of his thumb to a well-done state and sent daggers
of pain shooting up his arm to his brain. Even his not-too-bright intellect knew about pain, and he let out a bloodcurdling scream and started running in circles holding his hand.

“Now”—Dunc turned to Amos—“out the window over the sink. Hurry!”

Amos stood on the small bench and dived for the window. The glass part had been pushed open, but the screen was there.

Amos took the screen with him, landed on the ground outside in a rolling ball, and was up and running before he had time to think of getting rid of the screen, which was still around his face and kept him from seeing.

At a dead run he drove the top of his head straight into the support arm of a rearview mirror on another truck parked nearby, and his mind exploded in colors and stopped thinking of anything and everything except pumping his legs and running.

Amos was on full automatic.

•
10

It was probably just as well that Amos was running on full automatic. Things happened that he was better off not knowing.

He moved fast. Years of answering the phone through disaster after disaster, trying to make it on that all-important first ring, had given him skills far beyond those of normal people. On more than one occasion he had dreamed that he was answering the phone and awakened to find that he had run out of his room, down the stairs, through the living room, and picked up the real phone to answer the dream ring—all without awakening.

Nobody, not even Dunc, could catch him.
While the guard was still running around in little circles, Amos ricocheted off the mirror, hesitated while his thinking stopped and his instincts took over, and within two steps was again running full speed.