“WHAT ARE YOU gawking at?”
John gulped. He had temporarily forgotten that Great-Aunt Beauregard was sitting next to him on the hotel terrace. Perhaps that was because she’d spent the better part of the hour arguing with the waiter about the freshness of her cocktail shrimp. Great-Aunt Beauregard spent a lot of time arguing with people.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Nonsense! You have had your head cocked sideways for the past five minutes. Unless you’ve developed rigor mortis, you were staring at something.”
“Well . . .” John swallowed and gestured hesitantly with his finger. “I was looking at him.”
“Him” was a tiny figure, no larger than John himself, who was standing upside down on the wall of the terrace. Despite his hat being squashed against the stone and his feet waving dangerously in the wind, he seemed perfectly comfortable. In fact, he was grinning—although at this angle it looked like a gigantic frown.
“Cease and desist that immediately!” Great-Aunt Beauregard bellowed.
The feet waved in friendly reply.
Great-Aunt Beauregard rose in a tsunami of fury from her patio chair. The figure—with considerably more flexibility than John would have thought possible—leaped upright and did a two-step along the length of the wall. When he reached the end, he skipped over the saddle of a tethered horse, dipped in and out of the hotel fountain, and disappeared down the drive.
Great-Aunt Beauregard sat back down in high dudgeon and raised a toothpick menacingly.
“If I ever catch either of you two behaving in such a manner, no law will hold me responsible for the consequences.”
She stabbed the body of a large shrimp and proceeded to gnaw off the head. “Now, where was I?”
“You were going to tell us something about our future,” replied John.
“Ah, yes.” She swallowed and picked up her beer. “I had hopes of discussing it in detail before my afternoon appointment. But our addlepated waiter and that . . . thing . . . have ruined my moment. So we will delay the announcement until dinner.”
“Are we moving here?” Page asked. John pinched her to be quiet.
“Oh, no,” said Great-Aunt Beauregard from beneath her foam mustache. “It’s much, much better than that.”
For the life of him, John couldn’t read what his great-aunt was thinking. Her whole body seemed to be fissuring with excitement. He’d never seen her like this before.
After the beer was through, Great-Aunt Beauregard cornered a brass salesman in the hotel lobby. John and Page were instructed to stand near the palms.
“John,” Page whispered, “who was that boy on the wall?”
“I don’t think he was a boy,” John whispered back. “I think he was a little person.”
“Wrong on both counts!” a voice trumpeted from behind a palm. John and Page jumped.
Peeking out from between the leaves was a squashed lettuce of a face. Two blue eyes, spaced peculiarly wide apart, rose up over a nose and mouth so tiny they could scarcely be seen. It was as if someone had punched them in and forgotten to pull them back out.
But what the face lacked in drama, the scalp made up for. In all his life, John had never seen such hair. It sprouted and curled and frizzed and twisted and exploded in waves of orange. Whenever the head moved—and it always seemed to be bobbing—a fire of split ends moved with it.
“Greetings. I couldn’t help but observe your predicament and thought it a fitting moment to offer my employment services.”
“Who are you?” Page asked. She was hiding behind John’s shirt.
“Name is Boz.” He emerged from the palm and made a strange half bow, half curtsy.
“Short for?” John asked.
“Short for my size, but strong for my years. I once heard the president of Patagonia proclaim that she had never seen such biceps on the body of a biped.” Boz flexed his muscles in a helpful manner.
“What kind of employment?”
“Well, as I was cruising the perimeter of this fine establishment—not for any piratical purpose, mind you, but merely to admire the proportions of the Augustan facade—I happened to observe you and your sister tripping the light fantastic in aquamarine waters.”
“You were watching us swimming?”
“And turning some rather impressive somersaults. My dear boy, do you know that you and your acrobatic sister would make a fabulous headline on the touring circuit? Jill and Jackanapes. Or Contortion Cuties. Or maybe Twisted Sisters.”
“I’m not a girl,” John interrupted.
“Oh, we can fix that,” Boz said airily.
“Are you an acrobat?” Page asked.
Boz grinned. He was missing two of his teeth.
“Madam, I am a scholar and a gentleman. I have sailed the seven seas to the sands of Samarrand. I have surveyed the Matopolo Mountains and hurdled the Runyon Canyon in a single bound. I am every man’s friend and no man’s slave.”
“But are you an acrobat?” Page insisted.
“On occasion,” Boz said, conceding the point. “At this particular moment, I happen to be engaged in a more varietal occupation under the benevolent dictatorship of a circus impresario.”
“You’re with the circus?” It was the only word in the speech that John could be sure he understood.
“Correct!” Boz twirled once, the bushel of hair twice. “However, Colonel Joe prefers to call them the Wandering Wayfarers, ‘circus’ being a rather hackneyed term for a group of their caliber. A roving, rummaging lot with bells on their toes and bursitis in their hearts. You’d fit right in.”
John opened his mouth . . . and closed it. It was hard to concentrate on Boz’s words with his hair still gyrating.
“So, do I have your considered assent? Shall we sign, seal, and deliver ourselves to the adventures of the open road?” Boz pulled hard on John’s sleeve, tugging him toward the hotel’s front door.
“Wait,” John said, pulling back and sending Boz sprawling on his bottom. “We don’t know you from Adam.”
Boz sprang to his feet.
“Oh, that’s quite all right. I don’t know Adam either.”
“But why should we join the circus?”
Boz raised what was left of a scraggly eyebrow.
“Well, my dear boy, forgive my unforgivable presumption, but it seems your mother—”
“Great-aunt,” Page corrected.
“Pardon me, great-aunt—may not exactly be the most congenial custodian of filial responsibilities.”
“What?”
“She appears to be a hag,” Boz explained.
John wrinkled his nose. This was undoubtedly true.
“And correct me if I am mistaken, but living with a hag does not strike me as being all barleycorn and brilliantine hair wax.”
John wasn’t sure what barleycorn had to do with anything, but he nodded in agreement.
“Then why delay?” Boz shouted, his red head bobbing up above the leaves. “Life and linseed oil wait for no man. Let us sally forth and seek new lands!”
Page looked up at John. “Should we go, Johnny?”
For a moment, John was tempted. He’d heard of the Wandering Wayfarers. Though he’d never been allowed to see their act, they were often in town for Pludgett Day. It was possible that this . . . person . . . belonged to their troupe. And it was alluring to imagine a life free of toe boards and trimming.
Then John glanced at Page’s face, her wide-eyed trusting gaze, and he had his answer.
“No.”
“You cut me to the pectoral,” Boz said, clutching his hand to his breast. “Why not?”
John weighed his words.
“Great-Aunt Beauregard is horrible. But she’s the only family we have. Besides, she might be changing. She took us on this vacation. And she said she was going to tell us something important about our futures. Maybe we’ll be moving away from Pludgett.”
Boz was unimpressed. “It has been my experience that a sloth never changes his claws, nor is the future a gift. You make your own luck in this world, even if you have to steal the parts.
“But I can see that I am not going to be able to solder my suggestions of sojournings to your iron will. Au revoir, my little amis, may your hearts be free from sclerosis and your thoughts ever pure.”
And with that, he did a triple backflip into the legs of a bearded businessman. The hat went flying, the beard went flying, the businessman went flying. But when the dust had settled, Boz—and the businessman’s briefcase—were nowhere to be found.
“Johnny,” said Page, “what does sclerosis mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Coggins! Where are the Coggins?” came the roar of Great-Aunt Beauregard.
John took Page’s hand, swallowed hard, and they both went forward to meet their fate.