Strange Country Day (16 page)

“Don’t,” his wife said soothingly. “It’s Christmas. She’s probably gossiping with Kate, talking about what Santa will bring them.”

“Fine,” Mr. Tam sighed. “But next time, it’s gone for a week.”

As the house settled back into a peaceful slumber, Phil wiped the sweat off his forehead. “There. Crisis averted.”

Walt raised one eyebrow. “Are you positive?”

“Well...” Phil surveyed the screen, which showed Santa still packing Tracy’s stocking. Depending on how fast he worked, she had time to sneak out again. Phil ordered up another camera, this one in the bird’s nest just outside Tracy’s window. He had a clear shot of the curled up lump lying in her bed, and her long black hair trailing out from under the comforter and across her pillow. “Now, I’m positive.”

“Good,” Walt said. It was the closest to a compliment he ever gave on Christmas Eve. “Now, get Santa out of there and on to the next house.”

Phil cracked his knuckles. “Bring it on.”

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

HOW TO EXPLAIN MYSELF

Most people call me a freak.

Or a mutant.

Or a monster.

But I think of myself as a rock star—totally tricked out and freaking unique. After all, norms pay big bucks just to see my act at the circus. And, seriously, how many kids do you know that have a cult following? How about posters and books and movies about their lives? Sound like a dream to some of you?

It isn’t. It’s time to set the record straight.

See, I never asked to become King of the Mutants.

What makes me so weird? I’ll get to that soon, but first a little warning: if you are faint of heart, can’t handle the unknown, or if you really hate clowns like I do, I wouldn’t turn another page because things are going to get very freakish.

And it’s the story of my life.

I was born with the name Maverick Mercury, and I’m unlike any other kid you’ve ever met.

CHAPTER ONE

HOW TO SAVE A BOY FROM BECOMING A PANCAKE

The day my life took a turn for the worse was the day I met Freddie Finch. It’s not that Freddie’s a bad guy. He’s pretty darn cool in his own Freddie way. It’s just that if Freddie hadn’t run away from home, we wouldn’t have been hiding behind Bobo’s cage. And if we hadn’t been hiding behind Bobo’s cage, we wouldn’t have overheard Grumbling and Yorgi’s conversation. And if we hadn’t heard that particular conversation, there’s a pretty good chance I wouldn’t have become King of the Mutants.

But I’m kind of getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

It was mid-afternoon, nasty hot, and the circus was holed up in this Podunk town in Florida. Sweat poured off my body. My eyeballs were seared to my eyelids. My sneakers practically melted to the asphalt. It would have been cooler dancing inside the Devil’s mouth, and I prayed for rain.

Our “big show” started in two days, but it wasn’t big at all. The lamest of the lame, we didn’t even have musicians, just a crappy old record that always skipped during the opening procession. One of our two lions was blind; the other didn’t have teeth. Yorgi’s clowns were just plain diabolical. And don’t get me started on the Flying Forsinis. Seriously, trapeze artists weren’t supposed to be that accident-prone.

Grumbling’s Traveling Circus and Sideshow was a pathetic joke. A dog and pony show would have been more entertaining.

Thing was, even at the cruddiest of circuses, you worked eleven months straight regardless of weather, sickness, or even the lack of paying customers. A day off? Getting one of those was like winning the lottery. So on that scorcher of a day, I just had to suck it up and get back to my list of never ending chores in the menagerie—the tent where our limited collection of “exotic” animals hunkered down during the run of a show.

I stood knee deep in a mound of sawdust in the center practice ring. The strong scent of animal urine wafted up to my nose, the stench even more rancid because of the heat. Surrounding me on all sides—once bright blue, red, yellow, and green—the paint on the animals’ enclosures peeled off like sunburned skin. Inside the cages, shrieks, growls, and roars came at me from every direction.

My head felt like it was going to split open.

And then it went numb with dread.

A loud, hacking cough warned me of Burt’s looming approach. That would be Burt Grumbling, the boss man, the Grumbling in Grumbling’s. He limped into the menagerie, his lame foot scraping behind him because it couldn’t keep up with the rest of him. All the animals fell silent. Even they knew the consequences of irritating Burt. I held my breath and kept on sweeping, hoping he’d go away.

“Mutant,” Burt bellowed, “some of the midgets are under the weather. Stayed out all night partying in town. If you don’t pull ten times your weight today, you won’t get any dinner.” He hacked up another cough. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, you ignoramus. Show some respect.”

Luck just wasn’t on my side. I turned to face the satanic ringmaster of doom.

Pug-dog-ugly, Burt was as tall as he was wide and his face looked like it had been run over by a steamroller. He may not have been fast, but he was quick on the draw and always dressed for the kill. Skull-shaped, silver buttons decorated his knee-high, black leather boots. A two-foot long, spike-knuckled trench knife stuck out of a leather holster and attached to his flame-patterned riding britches. To top off this murderous look, he wore a sweat stained white tank that brought attention to his heavily inked arms.

An art gallery from my worst nightmares, every tattoo pictured an evil looking clown. The most messed up of them covered his entire left shoulder. Colored black, red, and orange, the clown’s mouth twisted into a vicious smirk.

Like Burt, the clown clenched a cigar between his jagged teeth.

Unlike Burt, blood dripped out of its mouth.

“Did you hear me, mutant?” Burt scraped closer. “Don’t just stand there looking like a mental midget when you have work to do.”

Wait a second. I wasn’t a First of May—a newbie to the show. Performers, even sideshow attractions like me, supposedly had rank. I crossed my arms over my chest. “What about those roustabouts? Don’t the new guys have to do the grunt work?”

“All the workers went out last night too. Everybody did.”

The tone in Burt’s voice indicated everybody meant everybody but me.

You’d think I’d be used to being an outcast at the circus, but I wasn’t. Even so, I had to hide my feelings. If Burt sensed a chink in your emotional armor, an ounce of insecurity, it got you more than trouble; it got you a beating. I pretended to wipe sweat from my brow. In reality, a giant alligator tear crept down my cheek.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Burt. “You feeling under the weather?”

“It’s so hot out. I feel like I’m going to puke,” I said.

Burt slapped his thigh in laughter and snorted. “Awww, the poor little monster can’t handle the heat? You want to cool off, do ya? How about I turn you into bloodsicle treats and feed you to the lions?”

I hung my head lower and avoided his gaze.

Burt lifted up my chin, his meat-pulverizing grip tight. “Once you’re done cleaning out the animals’ cages, pick up the garbage and elephant crap off the midway. Then set up the stands in the Big Top. When you’re finished doing that, scrub them all down. If they’re not spic-and-span, even one piece of gum left under the seats, I’ll use that giant hammer from that Whack-A-Mole game to pound you into a pulp.”

“Can’t anybody help me out?” I pleaded in a lame attempt to get some sympathy. But, like trying to calm down our hyperactive chimpanzee, I knew it would be useless.

Burt’s bloodshot eyes smoldered with hate. He got right up in my face. If he wasn’t still holding onto my chin, his rotten breath would have knocked me over. “You’re the human marvel, you figure it out on your own. Unless you have a death wish, slacking off isn’t an option.”

In his customary mode of pushing meanness to whole new levels, Burt punched me hard on the back of the arm before lumbering out of the tent.

Depression sunk in.

One day I hoped this place would become a nightmarish memory, but until I could gather up the courage to leave, I was stuck. Where on earth would a boy like me go? I wasn’t even accepted at the crappiest of circuses. The dreams I had of a better life were just like the pile of empty peanut shells scattered by my feet. Crushed.

One of the lions let out a pathetic roar—his reminder it was feeding time. Tough as it was, when you had eight messed up animals counting on you to take care of them, you had to put personal issues aside. I sighed, got back to my work, and everything went like clockwork until I heard it.

“Ohhhhh-argh-ahhhh.”

It came from behind Bobo’s enclosure.

Just great, I thought, somebody’s trying to pull one over on me again. The other performers’ idea of a good gag usually involved getting me in trouble with Burt. I crossed my arms over my chest, bracing myself for any attacks, and yelled, “Whichever one of you jokers is hiding, you better get out now! ’Cause if you don’t, my dog’s going to rip you to shreds. Either that, or I will.”

I expected one of our midgets to pop out, say “Hahaha, sucker, we got you good,” and kick me hard in the shins with a steel-toed boot. But nothing happened. Total silence. Curiosity got the best of me. I pointed toward the small opening in between the cage and the tent and whispered, “Snaggletooth, make yourself useful, go check it out.”

A mess of a mutt, Snaggletooth adopted me somewhere between Kansas and Nebraska. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t shake the beast. His brown and black hair matted down onto his body. His eyes were as yellow as Burt’s sallow skin. And his jagged teeth, what he had left of them, stuck out every which way—kind of like mine, except I have all my clackers. Needless to say, we made a good pair.

“Ohhhhh-argh-ahhhh,” came the groan again, this time even louder.

My dog raised his ears in alarm, scampered between my legs, and trembled against my knees so violently my own teeth began to chatter. Then, the gangly, three-legged beast lost his balance and tipped over.

“Please help me—” squeaked a high-pitched boy’s voice. Which really flipped Snaggletooth out. The useless mutt ran as fast as a three-legged dog could and hid in a corner behind a pile of sawdust.

I stood in angry silence and flicked quarter-sized flies away, my patience worn thin. “Whoever you are, you better get your lame butt out here now,” I snarled between clenched teeth.

“I c-c-can’t,” said the voice.

“Why? What’s your problem?”

“Well, for one thing,” he said, wheezing. “I can tell by your tone that you’re ticked off. You may want to go all medieval on me and beat me up.”

He had a point.

“And the other?” I asked.

“I’m stuck under something massive, I’m having trouble breathing, and I think my ribs are breaking.”

Bobo chose that exact moment to go ballistic and shake his cage with manic force.

“W-w-what’s going on out there?” the boy whimpered.

“Uh, yeah, about that…” I said, glaring into the eyes of the crazed, cross-eyed bear. Although he stood over seven feet tall, and his four-inch long claws could rip your throat open in one quick swoop, my fear of the grizzly passed a long time ago. We sort of had this unspoken agreement. I gave him berries. He wouldn’t gouge my eyes out. Plus, “the bumbling-bear-of-a-ballerina” looked ridiculous in the pink tutu and rhinestone-encrusted tiara he always wore.

“In order to get by the grizzly, I have to calm him down,” I explained. “By the way, I’m Maverick. What’s your name?”

“Freddie. Freddie Finch,” he said. “Did you say grizzly?”

“Don’t worry about him. He’s harmless unless he hasn’t had his medication or if he’s really irritated.” I handed Bobo a bushel of strawberries through the feeding hatch. “He’s just spazzing out a little now. He’ll be fine in a second.”

Freddie didn’t respond.

“Freddie? Can you hear me?” I asked. “Freddie?”

The pain-in-the-butt perpetrator didn’t utter a sound. My heart jack-hammered against my ribs like swift punches. If something happened to this kid, the blame would be directed at me like a heat-guided missile. Facing Burt’s fiery wrath was the last thing I needed on this scorcher of a day. In an instant, I got down onto all fours. My hands slid across Bobo’s regurgitated strawberry mush and I inched my way in between the side of the tent, into the gap between the canvas and the enclosure. That’s when I saw a tuft of blond, fluffy hair covered in red ooze.

A sickening pit of dread grew in my stomach.

There was too much blood. I was too late and this Freddie kid’s death now weighed down upon my shoulders. Paralyzed with fear, I closed my eyes and did the only thing that came to mind.

“Dear God,” I said. “Please don’t let this chicken-haired kid die. He seems all right, just a little stupid. I guess you did what you could to save him from becoming a First of May at Grumbling’s. But what were you thinking? Why did I have to discover him? I have enough—”