by Gary Paulsen
“Did he take all his equipment?”
Billy shook his head. “No. We own the equipment. He just left a note saying he thought he’d try brain surgery for a while and pinned the note to my door.”
Dunc had been quiet all this time, but he looked intently at Amos and shook his head. “No, Amos.”
Amos ignored him and spoke to Billy. “So all the equipment is still here, and you just need somebody to jump around to have a show, right?”
Billy sighed. “Exactly. We need a trapeze artist.”
“No, you don’t,” Amos said. “I’ll do it.”
“No.” Dunc held up his hand. “Amos, don’t do this.”
Amos smiled at Billy. “Would you excuse us for a moment?”
He turned and dragged Dunc back out of earshot. “What are you trying to do—kill the whole deal?”
Dunc nodded. “Yes. Are you completely insane?”
Amos looked at the top of the tent, then back down to Dunc. “Don’t you see? This is my best chance ever to get Melissa to see me. There she’ll be, sitting in the audience, and I’ll be in center ring with the spotlights on me.”
“Above center ring,” Dunc corrected. “Way above.”
“So?”
“If you fall—”
“I’m not going to fall. Remember, you’re the one who dragged me umpteen million miles dangling from a hang-glider. This is nothing—plus, there’ll be a net. Just a minute.”
Amos turned and trotted over to Billy. “There’s a net, right?”
Billy nodded. “A good one.”
Amos trotted back to Dunc. “So there’s a net. Even if I fall, I’ll just bounce a little.”
Dunc shook his head again. “It’s still crazy. You’ve never been on a trapeze in your life, and you’re going to do a quadruple somersault?”
“Don’t be silly. I can’t do that. I’ll just swing around a little while in the spotlights and make sure Melissa sees me, then do a death-defying drop into the net, and that ought to about do it. She’ll be mine.”
“What’s left of you.”
“Don’t worry,” Amos said over his shoulder as he moved back to Billy and Willy. “It can’t go wrong.”
•3
Willy and Billy had not been easy to convince.
“There’s the insurance,” Willy had said.
“And your bones,” Billy had said. “There are so many to break.”
Finally, after what seemed hours to Dunc and days to Amos, the two owners had consented to Amos’s scheme to perform as the solo trapeze artist.
“If,” Willy had insisted, “you show us what you can do on the trapeze and work with us for the next few hours until showtime.”
“Work?” Amos had been turning away and he stopped. “What do you mean, work?”
“Help us set up,” Willy said.
“Yes,” Billy nodded. “Help us set up. We always seem to have trouble setting up, don’t we, Willy?”
“Oh my, do we. Setting up is one of our most difficult parts. Along with selling tickets and keeping track of the money and doing the show and taking it down, I should add. And of course, traveling.”
“Ah yes.” Billy sighed. “There’s the traveling. We always seem to have trouble with that as well, don’t we?”
“We certainly do.”
Dunc stepped forward. “Is there a part of the circus, you know, that you don’t have trouble with?”
Willy rubbed his chin, thinking. “Well, now that you mention it, no—we seem to have trouble with just about everything, don’t we, Billy?”
Billy rubbed his chin in exactly the same way. “Now that I think of it, you’re right there, too. We seem to have difficulties with everything, don’t we?”
“We’ll be glad to help you,” Dunc said. “We have to go home and change into work clothes.”
Dunc turned and left. Amos followed with a bewildered look on his face.
“What was that all about?” Amos asked as they approached their bicycles.
“What do you mean?”
“One minute you’re trying to stop me, and the next minute you’re volunteering us for work with the circus.”
Dunc smiled, wide-eyed and innocent-looking. “I thought you wanted to get involved with the circus.”
“Not like this—not with work. I just wanted to be the trapeze artist and get Melissa’s attention. I didn’t want to work.”
Dunc unlocked and straddled his bike and flicked the shift lever into second gear and kicked off and started pedaling. He never started in low unless he was starting up an almost vertical hill. He said it was too inefficient. As always, Amos started in low and stayed there too long before he shifted—until his legs and feet were a blur trying to catch up with Dunc.
“You’ve got to pay your dues,” Dunc said.
“What dues?” Amos shifted but went too far, got the lever into fourth, and had to click it back and forth several times to hit second and then third.
“Your dues to be a star.” Dunc coasted for a moment. “You’ve got to work to learn the circus business before you can be a star.”
Amos stared at him. “Are you nuts? I just want to swing on the trapeze bar a few times and get Melissa to call me. You sound like my father, with all this dues stuff. He’s always saying I’ve got to settle down and pay my dues and learn and study and get ready for college.”
Dunc wiggled a finger at Amos. “He’s right, Amos. You’ve got to settle down and pay your dues and work.”
Dunc kicked down hard and pedaled ahead before Amos could see him smiling.
•4
Dunc and Amos were in Dunc’s room. Dunc was sitting on the footlocker at the foot of the bed, and Amos was sitting at Dunc’s desk, wondering at the neatness. His own room looked as if it were hit daily by a hurricane. In Dunc’s room nothing, not a thing, was ever out of place or mussed. Amos was idly wheeling a Rolodex, watching the cards flop. “Man, you’ve even got me on this thing—don’t you know my number by heart yet?”
Dunc had been writing on a piece of blank paper on a clipboard, and he stopped the pencil and looked up. “What?”
“You have me on the Rolodex—don’t you know my number by heart yet?”
“Sure, why?”
“BECAUSE YOU HAVE ME ON THE ROLODEX!” Amos spun the Rolodex. “You haven’t heard a word I said—what’s the matter with you?”
Dunc went back to the clipboard. “I’m working on this circus problem.”
Amos leaned over to see the paper. “What circus problem?”
“The whole thing.” Dunc held the clipboard up. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Amos studied the paper. It was covered with numbers and abbreviations and equations. “You’re right there,” Amos said. “I can’t make head or tail of it. What does ‘Wk. plus Csh. equals S.’ mean?”
“It’s a formula for business. It means work plus cash—money—equals success.”
“Oh. Stupid of me not to see that. Here I was, thinking I ought to be trying to find some tights for my trapeze act tonight, but I should have been thinking of a formula for business.”
“Well think of it, Amos.” Dunc held up the paper again. “Any business works that way. But if you apply it to the circus, it isn’t working.”
“What do you mean?”
“The circus has people working and people coming to watch the shows and spending money on tickets, but they aren’t having success.”
Amos nodded. “So?”
“So why doesn’t the equation work? That’s what’s bugging me.”
“And that’s why you said we’d come and work. Not because of me, but because you think there’s a mystery here?”
“Well—”
“You just can’t leave it alone, can you?” Amos snorted. “You’re going to get us in another mess—I just know it.”
“Me?” Dunc threw the clipboard on the bed. “You’re the one who wanted to kill himself on the trapeze. I just happened to be there.”
&nbs
p; “Great, just great—you’ll mess this one all up, too. Every time I get a chance to do something that will get Melissa to notice me, you come along and booger it up. All I need is some kind of costume to make me look good, and you’re off on one of your mysteries. It’s always a mystery. Everything is always a mystery to you. Well just this once, Dunc, just this once, why don’t you admit you’re wrong and I’m right, and there isn’t some big hairy mystery going on that requires clipboards and formulas and—”
Dunc threw his arms in the air. “All right, all right. I’ll help you with your costume. But first we have to get back to the circus and get to work.”
Dunc motioned to the door, and Amos moved ahead of him out of the room, and Dunc started to follow, but as he reached the door he stopped, turned, went back to the desk, and tore the paper with the formulas off the clipboard, folded it, and put it in his pocket.
Then he followed Amos outside where their bicycles waited.
•5
“Those guys were nuts,” Amos said.
“What guys?” Dunc paused and looked up.
“The ones who always wrote in books that it was fun to run off with the circus. It’s not fun at all.”
“Maybe we have to be more patient.”
“I’ve been here two hours, and all I’ve seen is the wrong end of these animals and this shovel and rake.”
“You found out about your costume,” Dunc said. “They’ve got one here in the service truck that will fit you.”
“Still.…”
They had not been back to the circus for more than two minutes when the tall, thin, evil-looking man named Clyde but who everybody called Blades—neither of the boys wanted to know about the nickname—had handed them shovels and rakes and pointed to the animal enclosure.
“Willy and Billy said to put you to work—so clean.”
“We’re supposed to be helping set up,” Dunc said.
“It’s all the same circus. So pick it up.”
It seemed to measure in the tons, and the boys had been busy for over two hours, putting it in large plastic bags to stack where a garbage truck would pick it up in the evening.
“Man,” Dunc said, heaving a sack onto the pile, “think what this would do for Mom’s garden.”
Amos was looking down at his pants. “A lot more than it does for my clothes. I’ve got to be honest, I’m not sure even Melissa is worth all this—”
They would argue later over what word, what precise word Amos had been about to use next, but it didn’t matter.
What mattered is that at that exact moment a phone rang.
It is true that the phone was a temporary one set up on the side of a power pole strictly for the use of the managers of the circus, true that it was good for local calls only and did not have a public number or even a permanent number, and also true that nearly nobody in town knew it was there, and also true that nobody who knew Amos knew the phone was there, and absolutely positively completely certain that Melissa Hansen didn’t know the phone was there, and if she did would not have used it to call Amos.
None of that mattered.
Dunc was convinced that genetic codes were involved and that in Amos’s DNA there were ancient phone-answering links that made it impossible for Amos not to answer a phone. No matter where, when, or how—when a phone rang, Amos had to answer it on that all-important first ring because he knew, even when it couldn’t possibly be, he knew that it was Melissa trying to call him.
“Amos—” Dunc started when the phone rang, but it was too late.
And even then it might have been all right.
The phone on the pole was exactly thirty-seven yards and four inches from where Amos stood, holding the shovel, and while it is not likely that he would have made it on the all-important first ring, he had a good chance of at least coming close, which was as good as he ever did.
And his form was good. Not quite classic, with both legs pumping, knees up by the side of his head, tongue out the corner of the mouth with a little spit flying through the air—not that good, but not too bad.
He dropped the shovel, which was better than he usually did—he once ran into the living room to answer the phone and forgot he was mowing the lawn, taking the mower inside with him.
He dropped the shovel. His ears and brain located the phone to the exact millimeter, noted the quickest possible way to the pole and phone, and his left leg dug, bunched, and propelled him off to the right. His right leg contracted, dug, and pushed off, and in half a second he was at full speed, arrowing straight for the phone as if he were tied on a wire.
Directly under Biboe.
The quickest way to the phone was exactly through the animals and the mess they were cleaning up. There were llamas and camels and some goats for a petting zoo, and three horses and a couple of ostriches and Biboe.
Biboe the elephant.
Biboe had been up and down the river. He was pushing forty years old and had been raised in circuses and lived there the whole time and knew the routines perfectly.
Twice a day he went into the big tent and stood up on his back legs and twirled around with a girl on his head while some guy in a turban yelled at him, and then he came out here and they hosed him down and gave him hay and peanuts.
It worked for Biboe. He did his gig twice a day and sometimes got extra peanuts from kids who came by the petting zoo, and that was how his days went.
More to the point, he didn’t like changes. Once the guy with the turban had actually hooked him in back of the ear with the little metal hook he carried just for show, and Biboe had objected so forcefully, it took four men to get the man with the turban out of a garbage can, and he still walked funny and wouldn’t go anywhere near the elephant enclosure.
But more than just disliking changes, Biboe hated rapid changes. Any sudden movement startled him, and any quick alteration in routine upset Biboe, and an upset Biboe was a problem Biboe.
A problem Biboe that weighed close to four tons.
And a phone ringing, coupled with a shovel and rake dropping to the ground and a boy starting to run, were all elements of rapid change.
Perhaps it still would have worked out all right, except that the straightest line from Amos to the phone went directly beneath Biboe, and without thinking, all on reflex, Amos made for the phone in the shortest possible direction.
Straight under Biboe.
It was too much, far too much. Amos ducked to clear Biboe’s hay-full belly, dug with his right foot, and started for the pole with the phone.
But Biboe was faster. Like a striking snake, his trunk whipped back and wrapped around Amos, going under his armpit and back up and around his neck.
“Gurrrk.” It was not a word so much as a choke, and it was very nearly the last thing Amos said. Luckily for Amos, there were no garbage cans nearby, or he probably would have gotten stuffed.
“Biboe!” Dunc yelled. “Drop him!”
Biboe ignored Dunc, held Amos for a second, a full six feet off the ground, looked around for a can or Dumpster, and when he could find nothing suitable, he made a couple of swings around in the air and threw Amos away. It was the same gesture he might have used to get rid of rotten hay or bad peanuts.
Except that Amos—still wondering what had happened to him since one second he’d been running for the phone and the next he was hanging by his neck well off the ground—had mass and weight going, and when Biboe threw him, he kind of flipped him as well.
Amos left the animal enclosure in a spiraling forward somersault that took him forty feet into the air, across the open compound, to fall on the roof of the big top almost perfectly flat on his back, where he bounced once, slid down softly and gently, and landed perfectly on his feet.
Directly in front of Billy and Willy, who had not seen Biboe throw him but had seen Amos flying through the air in a perfect forward somersault and a likewise perfect landing on the tent.
“Oh, my,” Willy said to Billy. “Isn’t he just the one to take Spangliny�
�s place?”
Billy nodded. “Goodness yes. That was simply classic. Young man, you needn’t give us a demonstration of your abilities. We’ve just seen all we need to see.”
Amos smiled faintly and tried to nod. In his mind he was still back, walking beneath the elephant and suddenly flying. “Thank you. I think.”
On the power pole a circus worker hung up the phone and turned to another worker.
“Wrong number.”
•6
“I think I’m working it out,” Dunc said.
“Working what out?” Amos took a bite of a hot dog with red-hot chili sauce on it. They had finished cleaning the animal enclosure—Amos had moved very carefully around Biboe—and gone to the food trailer for a snack.
Amos chewed the hot dog until the sauce hit his tongue, then drank some Coke, then chewed, then drank. His forehead broke out in sweat and he grimaced, but he kept eating it.
It was part of his theory of life, which he actually thought of as The Theory of Life—in capital letters. It was simple. When you didn’t like something, you did it until you liked it.
Dunc thought he was crazy. “So what about getting sick,” Dunc asked him, “or hitting your thumb with a hammer?”
“Same thing,” Amos had told him. “If you want to learn to like it, you just put your thumb on a rock and start hitting it with a hammer. It might take a while, but you’ll come to love it.”
“You’re nuts.”
Amos didn’t care. He believed in it. “You get your better brand of immunities that way. It’s called the doing-it-immunities. I got it from my uncle Alfred—the one who picks his feet? He’s never been sick a day in his life, and he swears by it.”
“He swears about everything.”
“Still …”
Amos had always hated spicy food, couldn’t stand to sprinkle even a little pepper on it, and was applying his theory to eating the chili dog.
He turned bright red. “It’s the sauce with the little seeds in it that’s bad. If you swallow the seeds whole, they don’t hurt, but if you bite them …”
He trailed off and took another gulp of Coke and a deep breath while Dunc shook his head.
