THE BULL WAS the size of a small tractor but had a significantly faster maximum speed. Nilly realized that even if he ran as fast as his tiny legs could carry him, the bull was still going to overtake him. The ground beneath him shook and he could hear the animal’s terrible snorting. Bees and butterflies darted out of the bull’s path in fear as Nilly raced through the flower-filled meadow that just seconds ago had seemed so idyllic and peaceful.
“Help,” Nilly cried, but only very softly, because he knew that no one could help him, and that he should save his breath. He would need it if he was going to reach the fence before that beast of muscles and horns that was rapidly approaching him from behind. So he very quietly called “help” one more time, before he accepted that no matter how much air he had left, he was not going to reach the fence first, that very soon he would be dangling from one of those massive barbecue skewer horns. So Nilly prepared himself and then leaped up into the air, tucked his legs up, wrapped his arms around them, curled himself into a ball and screamed (without saving any breath): “Cannonball!”
With that, the tiny little boy disappeared. The bull stopped and stared down at the hillside that was covered with tall Bermuda grass, wild begonias, lily of the valley, and other stuff that grows in French meadows and that the bull didn’t even know the name of. The bull rummaged around in this salad with one of his horns, all the while realizing that he was feeling even madder. Where the cow buttocks had that unbelievably irritating little chap gone?
Nilly wriggled through the grass, and he didn’t stand up again until he was sure that he had crawled under the fence and past it. He turned toward the bull, who was still standing out there in the meadow sniffing the ground.
“Hey, yoo-hoo! Hey, Mr. Beef, Medium Well!”
The bull raised his head and stared at Nilly, who put a thumb in each ear and wiggled his fingers and said “nyah, nyah” as he stuck out his tongue and gave a Bronx cheer. The bull responded by blowing hot steaming air out of his splayed nostrils, positioning his legs on the ground, and lowering his head. What an insufferable, poorly behaved, rude young man, he thought. Then he came barreling. But he never made it to the red-haired boy. Seconds later, his enormous bull horns struck that idiotic bathtub that for some reason or other had suddenly appeared in the meadow. The bathtub was lifted up into the air, whirled around, and then came down to land upside down so that all the water and soap bubbles ran out.
Nilly was going to laugh, but instead he stiffened. He dug around desperately in his wet pockets, but found only small things that started with P: a parking stub, a plum pit, and a sealed plastic bag of fartonaut powder. But not what he was looking for. Of course not, because Lisa was the one who had brought the jar of time soap. All he had was an empty time-traveling bathtub! How was he ever going to get back?
Nilly stuck his index finger into his ear, rotated it around and pulled it out again. Plop! But even that didn’t help. His brain didn’t give him any answers. He was doomed. So Nilly wasn’t laughing, not one bit.
But there were some other people who were.
Nilly turned to see where the laughter was coming from. And saw a short, thin man who was lying on his back in the grass with a blade of grass in the corner of his mouth. He was wearing a blue bicycling jersey with a number on it.
“Great sprint.” The man laughed. “You ought to take up biking, kid.”
“Thanks,” Nilly said. And since he was a born optimist who also liked company and a good conversation, his outlook on the situation had already started to improve a bit.
“Do you know why bulls like that get so mad?” Nilly asked. “Did I do something to that sack of beef, or what?”
The guy said, “Red hair” and pointed at Nilly’s head. “Bulls see red when they see red.”
Nilly cocked his red-haired head to the side and looked at the man. “Um, how come you’re speaking Norwegian?”
The man laughed again. “I’m speaking French, my friend. And so are you.”
“I am?”
“You’re certainly a very funny clown. What’s your name?”
“Nilly. And I’m not a clown.”
“You’re not?” the man said. “You’ll really have to excuse me, Nilly. I thought that was a clown nose.”
Nilly reached up to feel his nose. He’d totally forgotten about the nose clip. Something was slowly starting to dawn on him. He pulled off the nose clip and tried: “And what’s your name, man in the blue bicycling jersey?”
The man looked at him blankly. “Keska too ah dee?”
“Aha!” Nilly shouted triumphantly. It wasn’t just dawning on him, it was broad daylight inside his head. He understood everything. Well, almost everything. At any rate, he understood why he had understood what the cancan dancer had said, and what Juliette had meant when she’d said a lot would become clear to them if they kept the nose clips on. That was because these really were French nose clips. While you wore them you could understand French and you could speak French. What do you know, another ingenious Proctor invention!
Nilly was so excited that, as usual, he forgot all about his problems. He put his nose clip on and asked the man what his name was and why in the world he was lying here in the grass when all the other bicyclists he’d seen were riding as if their lives depended on it.
“My name’s Eddy. And my bike has its third flat of the day.” He pointed over by the road where a racing bike was lying on its side. “I just couldn’t take anymore. The finish line is at the top of that mountain over there.”
Eddy pointed again and Nilly had to bend his neck back to see the peak of the snow-capped mountain in front of them.
“What about you, Nilly?”
“I came from the future,” Nilly said. “I think I came to the right time, but the wrong place. What year is it and what’s the name of this place?”
Eddy laughed even louder. “Thank you, Nilly. At least you’re cheering me up!”
“I’m not kidding.”
“Well,” Eddy said. “The year is 1969 and we’re in Inndarnit. Where were you supposed to be?”
“Inndarnit?” Nilly mumbled, scratching his left sideburn. “I was supposed to be somewhere that started with ‘Inn,’ but I forgot the rest. Lisa must be there now, you know?”
“Lisa?”
“Yeah, we’re supposed to find Doctor Proctor. Maybe she’s already found him, and now they’re just waiting for me to show up. It’s actually totally crucial that I find them. Without them I’m going to be stuck here in 1969.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Eddy said. He took a little drink from his water bottle and passed it to Nilly. “1969 really sucks.”
“Oh?” Nilly asked.
“Nothing but flat tires in every single race,” Eddy said. “Just as bad as 1815 was for Napoléon.”
“1815? Napoléon?”
“Don’t you remember?”
Nilly thought about it. “I don’t think I was born then.”
“From history class, silly! June eighteenth, 1815. That was when Napoléon led his troops …”
“… across the Alps?” Nilly tried.
“No,” Eddy said, waving away a bumblebee. “That was when he took a licking in the Battle of Waterloo. And I know that quite well, because Waterloo is just a few minutes of Eddy-biking from my dad’s bike shop in Belgium. Totally flat country. You know what? Now that I’m giving up biking, I think I’ll go home and see if I can get a job there.”
“Good thinking,” Nilly said, taking a drink from the water bottle. “Because, really, what’s the point of biking up and down all these mountains? They’re way too big.”
“The point?” Eddy was staring at Nilly as if Nilly had reminded him of something he’d forgotten.
“Yeah,” Nilly said, gulping down more water. All this time travel had made him unusually thirsty.
“This is the Tour de France,” Eddy said. “Whoever wins this mountain stage wins money, gets kissed on the cheek by cute girls, and will be interviewed on TV while everyone in France watches.”
Nilly thought about that, and began to see that perhaps there was some point to it after all. Especially the part about being kissed by cute girls. And being seen on TV by everyone in France couldn’t really hurt either….
“Hey!” Nilly cried. “Did you just say everyone in France?”
“Absolutely everyone,” Eddy said. “Every TV in France is on for the Tour de France. You can’t not see it.”
“Even if you don’t have a TV at home?”
“They set up TVs in every single café, restaurant, and country store. Merde! You’ve got to stop making me talk about this stuff, Nilly! Now I just want to fling myself back on my bike and win this darned race!”
“That’s exactly what you’re going to do!” Nilly shouted. Then he ran over to Eddy and pulled him up onto his feet.
“What?” Eddy asked.
“First I’m going to help you patch your tire, and then we’re going to fart our way up to the top of this mountain and be interviewed on TV.”
“We?” Eddy asked as Nilly pushed him toward his bike.
“Yup. Because I’m going to sit in on the interview. And I’ll say that Lisa and Doctor Proctor have to come and pick me up, so we can return to our own time.”
“You sure say a lot of funny-sounding things,” Eddy mumbled and took out his patch kit. “But at least you’ve given me back my desire to win.”
TWO MINUTES LATER, two cud-chewing sheep raised their heads as a bike passed them on the road just outside their fence.
“Did you see that?” the one cud-chewing sheep said to the other. “Two people on one bike. Isn’t that cheating?”
The other sheep blinked his eyes sleepily. “Baaa, why? It makes the bike even heavier when you’re going uphill. Besides, they’re dead last.”
“That’s not the point,” the one sheep said. “Is it allowed?”
The other chewed his cud for a bit while he contemplated this.
“No idea,” he finally said. “I’m a sheep, you know? We don’t know that kind of thing.”
EDDY STOOD ON his pedals and pushed as hard as he could. Not just because standing on the pedals helped him go faster, but because his seat was occupied by a red-haired little guy with a nose clip who was screaming into his ear:
“Come on, Eddy! Faster, Eddy! You’re the best, Eddy!”
And when Eddy tried to ease up on the pace a little:
“Pull yourself together, Eddy! Do you want a licking, Eddy? Do you want this to be your Waterloo, Eddy? Do you want to be a full-time tire-patcher, Eddy? You can do more! It feels gooood to be tired!”
And, truth be told, it was helping. Soon they started overtaking cyclists who stared openmouthed at the strange two-man team with the little boy screaming:
“Push, Eddy! The other cyclists are even tireder! Think about the girls waiting at the top, Eddy. They have soft lips. Soooooft lips, Eddy. Faster, faster, otherwise I’m going to give you a noogie! And we’re not talking about a little love noogie, we’re talking about a massive, sasquatch noogie!”
Eddy, who wasn’t really sure what a noogie was, but didn’t particularly want to find out either, pushed. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth, and his breath had started making a strange, rasping sound. But they were still passing cyclist after cyclist and had made it quite a ways up the mountain, to where there were still patches of snow in the shadows. Even though Nilly’s clothes had dried in the sunshine, he was now so cold that his teeth chattered as he chanted his mixture of encouragement and threats. Until a wheezing Eddy interrupted him:
“I can’t do it….”
“What?” Nilly yelled through his chattering teeth. “Do you want a n-n-noogie, you B-B-Belgian waffle!”
“The finish line is too close …,” wheezed Eddy. “We won’t be able to pass everyone.”
“Nonsense,” Nilly said. “I said we would fart up this mountain, and when Nilly says we’ll fart up a mountain, you’d darn well better—”
“Fart all you want …,” Eddy groaned. His tongue was hanging down to the handlebars, and the bike had started wobbling ominously. “Look at how steep this is.”
Nilly looked. The road was so steep that it looked like a wall. And way, way up ahead, high, high above them he saw the yellow jersey of the guy in front.
“Hm,” Nilly said.
“Hm what?” Eddy wheezed.
“I’m going to fart.” Nilly stuck his hand in his pocket and fished out a plastic sack, which he resolutely opened, and then poured the contents into his mouth.
“What was that?” Eddy asked.
“That was a little carry-on item starting with P,” Nilly said, and burped. “Hold on tight. Six—five—four—three—two …”
Eddy didn’t have a chance to say anything else. There was a bang so loud that it felt like the earwax was being pushed into his ears and his eyes bulged out of his head. And then there was a roar, like from a speeding rocket engine. The reason he thought of a rocket engine specifically was that they were rushing up the mountain sort of like—well actually, exactly like—a rocket!
“Yippee!” Nilly cheered in his ear.
“Yippee!” Eddy cheered as they passed the cyclists ahead of them and had only the one in the yellow jersey left to overtake. But there was the finish line! And the guy in the yellow jersey had only a few yards to go.
“Give it all you got, Nilly!” Eddy yelled, steering the bike as best he could so they wouldn’t run right off the side of the mountain. “Full fart steam ahead! Otherwise it’s noogie-time for you!”
“I’m trying,” groaned Nilly, who was very red in the face.
“Faster, Nilly, we’re not going to make it! Think about those soooooft lips!”
And Nilly thought. He thought that if they didn’t manage this, he would probably never get to see Lisa or Doctor Proctor again. This thought made his intestines give one final effort, and he pressed out a little more gas so they shot ahead with a little more speed. The spectators watching would talk about it for years afterward—that they had been witness to the fantastic sprint in the Provence mountains at the 1969 Tour de France, when the legendary Eddy and his strange red-haired passenger, whose name no one could remember, had flown toward the finish line as if they had a jet engine on their bike. Some even claimed that the bicycle had lifted off from the ground. Yes, a few even imagined that a strange white smoke had trailed from the seat of the pants of the little boy on the bike seat. Even so, it had appeared hopeless, up until the final yards when they had managed to increase their speed a tiny bit more and at the finish line they had beaten the yellow jersey by a gumillionth of a millimeter. It was the first victory for Eddy, who would go on to became the world famous Eddy who would win bike races around the world, but who in his memoirs would say that it had been that win in Provence that had made him believe in himself and stick with cycling.
But all that was in the future (or the past, depending on how you looked at it). Right now (or then) Eddy and Nilly were reveling in their win. They were both lifted off the bike and carried by the cheering crowd over to the winner’s platform, where they were given a medal and each given a teddy bear and kissed on the cheek by soooft lips. Then someone thrust a microphone in their faces, and Nilly immediately pushed his way forward.
“Hello,” he said. “Is this TV?”
“Yes,” said the woman behind the microphone. “Can you tell the French people who you are, actually?”
“Certainly,” Nilly said. “Where’s the camera?”
“Over there,” the woman said, and pointed toward an enormous camera set up in the back of a nearby truck behind her.
Nilly looked directly into the camera and stood up straight.
“Hi there, people of France,” he said. “I’m Nilly, and I think you should make a note of that name. Especially if there’s anyone out there named Lisa or Doctor Proctor, I think they should pay attention now. I—Nilly, that is—am coming to you live from the top of a mountain named—”
“We know the name of the mountain,” the woman with the microphone said impatiently. “You entered the world of cycle racing like a comet, Muhsyuh Nilly, but have you come to stay?”
“No,” Nilly said. “Actually, I would like to get out of here as soon as possible, so if Lisa and Doctor Proctor could come and pick me up, I’ll be waiting at the top of … What mountain is this, actually?”
“Moe Bla,” Eddy whispered into his ear.
“Moe Bla!” Nilly shouted. “To be precise, I’ll be at the …”
“Hôtel Moe Bla,” Eddy whispered.
“Hôtel Moe Bla!” Nilly yelled.
“My buddy and I will be staying in the tower suite,” Eddy told the camera. “The winner always gets the tower suite. Hurry, Lisa and Doctor Proctor!”
AFTER THE INTERVIEW was over, they were whisked off for massages and a wonderful hot bath in the tower suite. A tailor came up to the room, took Nilly’s measurements, and shook his head, laughing, before disappearing again. When he returned a few hours later, he brought a suit and shirt and shoes that Nilly was told to wear to the victory dinner.
“Cool!” Nilly cried as he looked at himself in the mirror. “Will there be cancan dancing?”
Eddy laughed and shook his head exactly the way the tailor had. “The next stage starts tomorrow at eight a.m. sharp. I’m going to eat four French fries and then turn in for the night.”
“Party pooper!” Nilly complained, tap-dancing in his new patent leather shoes so they clicked on the marble floor. “Let’s get this party started!”
The victory dinner was being held in the restaurant of the Hôtel Moe Bla. There were lots of people in fancy party clothes who wanted to shake Nilly’s hand, but there was no cancan content as far as he could tell. Some of the other cyclists came over to Nilly and asked him in a whisper about the powder they’d seen him take, wondering if they could buy some from him. They snarled “cheater!” when Nilly shook his head. Actually the whole thing was pretty boring. Nilly’s head was already nodding as he started dozing off during the appetizer course. He eventually slid down in his seat, unnoticed, and disappeared out of sight under the edge of the table. Eddy discovered the sleeping Nilly. After three attempts to wake him, he slung Nilly over his shoulder and carried him up the stairs to the tower suite. There he placed Nilly in the bigger of the two beds and crawled into the smaller one himself. Then he yawned twice and turned off the lights.
NILLY WOKE UP and opened his eyes. A strip of sunlight was coming in through a gap in the curtains in the tower suite and shining right on his freckled face. He stretched and discovered that someone had put a teeny tiny yellow jersey on his nightstand. It said TOUR DE FRANCE 1969 on it, and next to it there was a note that said:
Good morning, Nilly! Thanks for your help. I didn’t want to wake you, so by the time you read this we’ll already be out riding the next stage. I hope Lisa and Doctor Proctor come soon.
Your friend always,
Eddy
Nilly stretched, feeling fit, like he was in great shape, but also, truth be told, like he could do with a little more sleep. He thought about it a little, yawned, and closed his eyes again. And then he thought about breakfast. The second he thought about that, he heard the door open quietly and smelled the familiar scent of food. He smiled and dreamed of what types of delicious dishes were being wheeled in to him now. Yes, he didn’t even need to open his eyes to tell that it was a wheeled cart. He could hear the wheels squeaking.
The squeaking wheels …
Nilly’s eyes shot open and he stared at the ceiling. He inhaled the scent of food again. It wasn’t bacon and eggs. It was … rotten meat and stinky socks.
He jumped in bed as the door slammed shut and the key turned. There, right in front of him, stood a tall person in a long, black trench coat with a wooden leg sticking out the bottom.
The person’s red made-up lips were stretched into an unusually big grin that revealed those sharp, chalk-white teeth. In her hand she was holding a long-barreled pistol that looked like it had been stolen from a museum. The person’s voice was as hoarse as a desert wind:
“Good morning, Nilly. Where is he? Where’s Doctor Proctor?”
“R-r-r …,” Nilly said. “Ra-ra-ra …”
There was no doubt about it. His stutter was back.