by Gary Paulsen
“So,” Amos gasped. “What have you figured out?”
Dunc neatly stuffed his napkin and paper hot-dog holder into his empty paper Coke cup and shrugged. “I said I think I’m starting to figure things out, but it’s not all clear to me yet.”
“Well, that’s good, because nothing is clear to me—I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.” Amos wadded his trash into a ball and threw it at the trash barrel, missed, picked it up and tried a hook shot, missed, picked it up and stood over the barrel and dropped it, and a gust of wind blew it sideways and he missed again. He finally picked it up, leaned over the barrel, and threw the cup and napkin straight down as hard as he could. It went in. “Two points.”
“The problem is, we aren’t covering enough ground,” Dunc said, flipping his own trash cup over his shoulder to fall delicately into the exact center of the barrel.
Amos turned from the trash in disgust. “I still don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“What’s going on here at the circus.” He turned to face Amos. “I need more information, more data, and we aren’t covering enough ground.”
“Oh, man, give it a rest!”
“What do you mean?”
Amos held his hands up. “You’re always seeing mysteries in everything. There’s nothing strange going on in this circus unless you count some of the men working for it. It’s just a tacky old circus getting tired and run down.”
Dunc shook his head. “No. There’s something else going on here, something I can’t quite pin down. Something just … that … little … bit wrong.”
“Right,” Amos said. “Like when the parrot made me swear a lot and talked to us and told us about a buried treasure, and we wound up blowing half the town away for some moldy wheat—that little bit wrong?”
“No.”
“Or when you got me snotted by a rotweiler?”
“No.”
“Well, then—admit that you’re wrong this time and that nothing strange is happening.”
Dunc shook his head. “I can’t. I just know it, Amos—there’s something odd happening here, and I can’t figure it out. We need more information.”
“We? I don’t have a problem. I don’t think there’s anything wrong happening. Why do we have a problem?”
“Because we’re partners—I’m helping you on the trapeze, and you’re helping me on this.”
Which of course was true and Amos knew it was true—they were partners, best friends for life—and Amos knew he was going to help, knew he had to help.
“All right.” He sighed. “What do you need?”
Dunc went back to the table and sat down, using his fingers to make imaginary diagrams. “The secret to everything, about everything, is knowledge. I have a feeling that something is going wrong, but we need to spread out our efforts and learn more.”
“How do I spread out my effort?”
Dunc smiled. “Not like that. We’ve been working together, and what I mean is, we should split up. You work one side of the circus and I’ll work the other, then we’ll get together this evening and compare notes.” He dug in the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small notebook and a stub of a pencil. “Just write down anything that looks a little odd to you, all right?”
Amos nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
Which turned out, all in all, to be just about the biggest mistake he’d ever made.
•7
The plan initially worked so well that Amos literally didn’t see Dunc for nearly two hours.
Dunc had headed for the big top, and Amos had moved toward the sideshow tents. Both boys pointedly and carefully avoided anything to do with the animal enclosure and the wrong ends of the animals.
Amos stopped next to the banner advertising the sword swallower and the fire eater, looking up at the paintings.
They look, he thought, as if I’d painted them myself. The paintings on the banners showed a man about to swallow a sword longer than he was, painted as if it had been done with poster paint and a thick brush. Next to it, a man who looked very similar was about to shove a flaming torch down his throat while a girl—or it could have been a car or a lamp (Amos couldn’t be sure)—looked on in horror.
He shook his head. Farther down the banner, there was a painting showing what was called the smallest horse in the world. Amos thought it could also be a duck or an alligator with its tail cut off or a really sick chicken or even a parrot. (He knew rather more than he wanted to know about parrots since his run-in with the treasure-hunting variety.) And beyond that was a painting of what could have been either a bowling ball with a neck and head or a black hole with lettering that proclaimed: UNKNOWN SPECIES! SEE IT ON THE INSIDE!
Amos shook his head and took a step to leave—he wanted little to do with the sideshow—when the whole banner system—poles, signs, and all—wavered once, twice, and fell over directly on top of him.
“Wh—”
Amos went down beneath canvas, poles, and paintings of ruptured ducks bowling balls.
For a moment he was confused, couldn’t seem to find his way out. Then he heard a voice.
“Not to worry, everything will be all right, just fine, don’t worry.”
A large hand came under the canvas, caught Amos by the back of his T-shirt, and plucked him out into the sun.
“See? Right as rain, right as rain.”
Amos found himself looking at a man with dark hair, an almost perfectly square face and head, and a lower jaw like a bear trap.
“Clive,” the man said, holding out his hand for a shake. “Clive Haskins, but they call me The Throat. I swallow things. Swallow lots of things.”
He reached down, took a handful of dirt, put it in his mouth, and swallowed. “See?”
Oh, Amos thought—oh good. Another circus person. Of course they were all circus people, and maybe it would be nice to just meet a normal person, but no, here was Clive, another circus person.
“Just pick them up and swallow them. That’s how I got started when I was a kid. Swallowing things. Be walking along, see a bug—bam! Pick it up and swallow it. See a nickel—bam, swallow it. See a pretty marble—bam, swallow it. Here, hold this rope.”
He handed a rope to Amos, who was wondering just how odd things had to be before he wrote them in the notebook for Dunc. Note one: I met a man who swallows things. Sees a bug—bam, swallows it. Sees a quarter—bam, swallows it. Sees a parrot—bam.… He shook his head.
“You a rousty?” Clive asked.
“I don’t know,” Amos said, shrugging. “What’s a rousty?”
“Roustabout—you know, helper. You a helper?”
Amos nodded. “I was just on my way to work on the—”
“Never mind that. I need help setting up the geek show. You can do it.”
“What’s a geek show?” Amos looked around, half expecting to see a bunch of geeks coming at him.
“This—the sideshow. They call it a geek show because that’s what they used to show—a geek.”
“Just exactly,” Amos asked slowly, “what is a geek?”
Clive snorted. “Man, you kids don’t know nothing.”
I know enough not to swallow dirt, Amos thought, but he remained quiet.
“Geeks was wild men, kid.” He rolled his eyes and pretended to be crazy. “Wild men from the Borneo jungles. They sat in a cage with a chicken, and when the crowd was pitched right, they’d grab the chicken and bite the head off it.”
So that, Amos thought, is what my sister means when she calls me a geek.
“ ’Course they didn’t swallow it,” Clive said sarcastically. “They just bit it off and spit it out. Your basic geek or even your top-line geek wouldn’t hold a candle to a good swallower.”
“Oh.” Amos was again working mentally on the notes. Geeks, chickens, swallowers.
“It’s the puking.” Clive pulled the banner up and tied a rope off.
“Pardon?”
“It’s the puking that mak
es the difference. Some will get sick when a man bites the head off a chicken, but to really make them puke, you got to swallow a sword. It’s a real gagger.”
Maybe, Amos thought, if I go away quietly …
“Proudest I ever been was when I had a full ten banger. Ten people, and all ten blew chow. Let’s see a geek top that!”
All the time he was talking, Clive kept working, and the banner was now fully back up and tied down.
“Come inside the tent.” He moved back into the tent, and Amos followed. He didn’t want to follow, he was sure something awful would happen if he followed, was sure he would be a gagger if he followed, but he followed just the same. He couldn’t help it.
But inside Clive just helped him set up panels to make booth areas for each sideshow. There were no other acts around, and when he had finished helping, Clive waved him away. “Go help somebody else. You got to keep moving, you want to be a circus man—got to keep moving. Of course, if you want to stay and learn how to swallow, I could teach you.”
Amos shook his head. “No—I’m not cut out for it.”
Clive looked at him suspiciously. “You ain’t a geek, are you?”
Only if you ask my sister, Amos thought, but he shook his head. “No. I’m just a rousty and maybe going to be a trapeze person.”
“Fallers,” Clive said. “That’s what they are. Do good until they slip, then they’re fallers. Splatter all over the place. Biggest mess you ever saw. No, you want job security, you got to be a swallower.…”
He was still mumbling as Amos moved around the corner of the tent, took two steps, and ran face-first into a man’s chest.
“Watch where you’re going, kid.”
Amos looked up and found himself staring directly into the eyes of Blades.
•8
Amos gulped, wondering if that made him a genetic swallower. “Nothing.”
“You rousting?”
Amos nodded. “I was helping put up the geek—I mean, the sideshow.”
Blades studied Amos. It was, Amos thought, about like a snake studying a frog it was about to eat. Oh great. Another swallowing joke.
“It doesn’t look to me like you’re doing anything. Come on.”
Blades waved Amos to follow and moved off down the midway away from the big top to where some men seemed to be working. They all looked like Blades. Dirty jeans, dirty T-shirts, hair back in ducktails with lots of grease, scuffed and dirty engineer boots. All of them, every one including Blades, had a cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth.
They were putting up a canvas wall to shield the side of the circus from people who would try to get in without paying, and when Blades approached them with Amos, one of the men laughed.
“Hey, Blades—we’re almost done. What do you want us to do?”
Blades looked at what they had been doing and shook his head. “Naw, it’s all wrong. Tear it down and do it over.”
“But—” Amos started to say. Even with no experience, he could tell the job was done right and would force people to go through the ticket booth.
“But what?” Blades turned on him, his eyes flattened into narrow slits, the smoke from his cigarette passing in front of them. “Have you got something to say?”
Amos shook his head. Quickly. “No. Not me. I’m fine. I was all wrong. I can see how it needs to be done over.”
“Then you do it.”
“What?”
“We’re going to take a break. You take down this whole canvas wall and put it up again the right way.” While he spoke, he moved from tie rope to tie rope, untying them and letting them drop until there was nothing holding the curtain up. It wobbled back and forth and fell to the ground in a crumpled heap. “There. And I expect it to be done when I get back, understand?”
He waved at the other men, and they left Amos standing there looking at the canvas and poles.
“It’s impossible,” he muttered. Even with three or four men it would have been hard. Alone, it simply couldn’t be done.
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 th
rown 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.”