Dunc and Amos Hit the Big Top

by Gary Paulsen

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.

  He cut to the right through the area where the campers were parked, catching his form and pulling it into a near classic movement—knees well up, spit flying out of the side of his mouth, eyes glazed and straight ahead (normal, although this time it was from the blow to his head)—and ran full on into Blades.

  “Hey! How’d you get out?”

  Amos didn’t hear him, and there was no way Blades could slow him down or catch him.

  He bounced off Blades, knocking him down, and was out of sight between cars in an instant.

  Dunc was in back of Amos, not gaining but moving with good speed, so fast that he ran up to Blades just as the man was getting up. Dunc was moving too fast to turn, and at the last possible instant he jumped, trying to clear Blades, but he was just a bit too low, and his foot came down directly on top of Blades’s head.

  Dunc compensated, lunged, putting all his weight on Blades’s head, and powered over, jamming Blades’s head down between his shoulders so hard that Blades’s eyes crossed, and he dropped on his face.

  The lunge slowed Dunc. He had been almost holding his own with Amos, but now the half-beat required to push Blades’s head down into his chest caused Dunc to lose two steps, and when he looked up, Amos was gone.

  Still, Dunc thought it was not so bad. But he had not seen Amos hit the mirror bracket, did not know Amos was running on automatic.

  Dunc remembered the plan and assumed Amos would go for the authorities, try to find the police.

  The security guard.

  There was a s
ecurity guard by the ticket booth to keep people in line, and Dunc was sure that was where Amos would go.

  He gave up following Amos and cut to the left, headed for the ticket booth to find Amos and tell the security guard what was happening.

  It was too late.

  When Dunc rounded the corner of the big top, he found the front area jammed with people. The crowds waiting for tickets were packed back to the parking lot, and Dunc couldn’t see either the security guard or Amos anywhere.

  He stood on a small stool for a few minutes, scanning the crowd, but he still didn’t see anything and was about to jump down when he recognized somebody.

  Melissa.

  She was getting her ticket and moving to the front opening on the tent.

  And he knew.

  Seeing Melissa triggered his thinking and he knew.

  Amos wasn’t coming to look for the security guard.

  Something must have happened. There hadn’t been time, or he got his wires crossed, and Amos would go to the service truck and then head for the trapeze.

  Dunc knew.

  He wheeled around, cut in front of the crowd, and ran into the tent just as Melissa passed through the opening with the rest of the crowd.

  Of all the directions where Dunc didn’t want to look for Amos, most of all he didn’t want to look up.

  He looked up.

  There, standing on the small platform near the top of the tent, holding on with one hand and waving down at the crowd, smiling widely—his eyes still vacant—glittering in spangly tights that caught light from the lights aimed at him and only looked a little bit tacky and worn; there bigger than life, there what seemed hundreds of feet above the ground …

  There stood Amos.

  “Oh,” Dunc said—whispered to himself. “Oh no. Amos. Not really. Don’t do this, Amos.” He’d have to get Amos down, get him down without hurting him, but even as he thought it, he saw how impossible it would be.

  Amos was near the top of the center pole on the small stand, his head up close to the canvas of the roof, and the only way up to him was right up the center of the pole on a small ladder.

  Dunc would have to get to the center of the tent and climb the ladder and somehow drag Amos back down against his will.

  Just impossible.

  Still, Dunc thought, they were best friends for life. He had to try.

  Dunc made his way through the crowds, which were already taking their seats while the small band—Willy and Billy with trumpets—finished the fanfare. Willy jumped from the bandstand out into the middle of the ring and took a microphone from a stand.

  “Ladeeees and gentlemen! Welcome to the Classic Grand Old Circus! Before the grand entrance parade, hold on to your hats and watch the top of the tent—”

  Dunc was at the pole. He grabbed the metal rungs of the ladder and started climbing.

  “—for our first act. The death-defying high-bar trapeze performed by the bravest of the brave, a young man from your own home town. His name is Am—”

  The microphone cut out. Willy kept talking and hit it with his hand, but Amos’s name was lost.

  Dunc was at the platform. Don’t look down, he thought—just don’t look down. His hand was reaching up on the platform, was an inch from Amos’s ankle.

  “Amos!” Dunc yelled. “Amos, don’t do this!”

  Billy ran back to the bandstand and picked up his trumpet and joined Willy, and the music swelled higher and higher, and Amos nodded, grabbed the bar with both hands.

  “No! Amos, don’t! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

  Amos stepped off into space.

  •11

  Dunc scrambled up onto the platform, still not looking down, just in time to see Amos swinging, growing smaller as he swung away.

  Maybe, Dunc thought, if I don’t look, maybe it won’t happen.

  But he had to look, and Dunc was stunned to find Amos doing everything perfectly. He acted as if he’d been doing trapeze acts all his life.

  Amos swung away with almost perfect rhythm, arching his back and kicking to make the bar go higher.

  Dunc stole a quick look down at the crowd, and they had gone silent and all had their faces up, hundreds of silent faces watching Amos. Just in back of the bandstand, Dunc thought he could see Melissa.

  Amos finished the swing out, kicked up at the canvas of the top of the tent, and started back. On the way back toward Dunc he curled up and stuck his legs through and hung by his knees.

  The crowd oohed.

  Amos’s swing brought him close to Dunc, and Dunc made a grab but missed. For a moment Amos hung at the top of the swing, upside down, facing Dunc, and his eyes were still glazed.

  He started the swing back, the speed picking up rapidly, and halfway through the swing he suddenly straightened his legs and dropped to hang by his ankles and feet wrapped around the ropes.

  The crowd gasped.

  Dunc looked down and saw that Melissa was standing, one hand to her mouth. Well, he thought, Amos had gotten her attention.

  It was on the fourth swing back that things began to go wrong.

  Perhaps because of the wind rushing past his face, or just the passage of time—whatever the reason, the dazed condition wore off.

  Amos swung back toward Dunc, hanging by his heels, and as he came up to Dunc, his eyes cleared and he recognized his friend.

  “Dunc, what’s happening?”

  He looked down.

  His eyes came back to Dunc, wide with fear and horror. Amos was at the top of the swing, pausing before the swing down again, hanging full down so his face was even with Dunc.

  “What am I doing here?”

  He started the swing back.

  “Helllllllllppp!”

  Except that this time he was not in good form, not classic at all.

  He was like meat on a hook.

  The trapeze bar swung away, then back, then away again like a pendulum and back, and each time it went less and less until it hung straight down over the center of the ring, over the net.

  With Amos hanging by his ankles below it.

  “You’ve got to swing, Amos!” Dunc yelled. “Swing a little and get back to where I can grab you!”

  Amos hung silently.

  “Just a little, Amos—just swing a little.”

  Amos didn’t move. He hung upside down, looking over at Dunc, then at the ground, then back at Dunc.

  “Come on, Amos.”

  Amos’s ankles slipped a bit.

  “Reach up and grab the bar!” Dunc yelled. “You’re slip—”

  Amos dropped.

  Like an arrow, like a shot, like seven pounds of garbage in a three-pound bag, like a spear heading for a target Amos dropped exactly straight, head down, perfect, and hit the net at about seventy-two miles an hour, arrow-true, with his face.

  For half a second it seemed that he would go through. The net plunged with him, down and down until Amos’s nose was exactly two inches from the dirt of the floor of the ring.

  Then the spring ties at the corners of the net took over and snapped him back up with a force very nearly equal to the speed with which he’d come down.

  Except that his body had angled over, and he did not head straight back up. Instead, he went off at a forty-five-degree angle, arms and legs flailing in a great cartwheel, up over and off the net, across the side of the ring, wheeling end-over-end to land in a heap.

  Directly beneath the elephant Biboe, who was waiting to do his bit with the entrance parade.

  It was all too much for Biboe. First the business of Amos running beneath him earlier, and now he came flying out of nowhere and landed in a cloud of dust and animal droppings.

  Biboe snaked his trunk back and down and wrapped it around Amos’s middle and flicked him like a booger, back cartwheeling through the air, across the bandstand, across Willy and Billy into Melissa’s lap.

  The bleachers couldn’t take the sudden strain, and Amos and Melissa went through, down in a pile with eight or
ten people on top of them in a cloud of dirt and dust and popcorn.

  All this time, Dunc had been coming down the ladder. He arrived just in time to see Amos push his head out of the pile of splintered boards and tangled people, look up, and say:

  “Was it too showy?”

  Before he passed out.

  •12

  Amos raised his face and aimed it at Dunc. “So what do you think—are the lines gone?”

  They were at Dunc’s house, in Dunc’s room. Dunc was working on a model of a World War II fighter plane. He was just finishing it, and the workmanship was, as usual, perfect. No extra glue, all the joints tight and sanded smooth. Perfect. Amos was also working on a model—same war, different fighter. His model looked like a blop of glue with a piece of plastic stuck to it.

  But Amos wasn’t talking about the model. He was talking about his face. It had been a week since the circus disaster—as Dunc and the newspapers thought of it—and Amos was worried about the grid lines in his face. When he hit the net face first, the cords had made deep impressions and left him looking like a waffle with eyes.

  “The lines are almost gone.” Dunc set his model on the desk.

  “Good—I want the lines all gone before I call Melissa and apologize.”

  Dunc shook his head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  “Why not? We saved the circus, didn’t we?”

  “Well … yes. We told Willy and Billy, and they fired the guys who were trying to ruin them. So we sort of saved the circus.”

  “And I did the trapeze like I said I would, didn’t I?”

  Dunc stared at him. “That’s where the trouble starts. You didn’t exactly do the trapeze.”

  “I most certainly did! Willy and Billy both said it was the greatest trapeze act they’d ever seen.”

  “No.” Dunc shook his head. “What they said was it was the most incredible trapeze act they’d ever seen.”

  “It means the same thing.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Close enough for me to call Melissa.”

  “Amos, you broke her ankle when you fell on her.”

  “I didn’t fall—Biboe threw me.”

  “Still—”

  “And I didn’t mean to break her ankle. It was an accident. And that’s what I want to apologize for—she’s just waiting for me to call. I can feel it.”