THIS TIME, JOHN knew, there would be no amazing escape.
“How dare you shame the family name with your antics! Remove yourself from that contraption!” John felt his feet fly out behind him as he landed with a thud on his great-aunt’s shoulder.
“Where is your sister?” she demanded, dumping him like a sack of nails on the ground.
Oh, no, Page! thought John. She might return at any moment. He had to warn everyone. Quick as a blink, he said very loudly, “I asked Boz to take her back to the Wayfarers.”
Would it work?
It would.
“First sensible thought you’ve ever had,” Great-Aunt Beauregard grunted. “I will have to collect her later. You, on the other hand”—she hauled him up by the scruff of his neck—“are coming with me.”
Please, Page, please keep yourself hidden, John prayed as he was pushed and prodded and pinched toward the station.
“Are we going back to Pludgett on a train?” he yelled. If nothing else, at least Boz and the others might realize where he was headed.
“Did you lose your hearing as well as your wits?” his great-aunt snapped. “YES, WE ARE GOING BACK TO PLUDGETT!” she bellowed. “IMMEDIATELY!”
She wasn’t joking. The Riverton to Pludgett train was sounding its final whistle as she lugged John into a weather-beaten carriage and plonked him on a stained leather seat.
“Now,” Great-Aunt Beauregard said, removing a hat festooned with a catatonic cardinal and a trio of yellow finches. “We have a couple of days before we reach Pludgett. So you and I are going to have a little talk.”
John darted a glance toward the window. Had Boz returned yet? Catching his look by the tail, his great-aunt reached over and jammed the blind down.
“Answer me, boy!”
“Yes, Great-Aunt Beauregard.”
She thrust out her jaw and nodded. “Better.”
“Riverton to Pludgett Express!” the conductor trumpeted. “Making scheduled stops at Weekeg, Oilston, Mummer, Howst, and Pludgett. All aboard!”
Thug, thug, thug went the colossal wheels along the iron tracks. John knew that, unlike the mayor’s baby, this vehicle could only take one road—and that road dead-ended in a coffin.
“I’m not sure if I impressed upon you the magnitude of our contract,” his great-aunt began. “You, John Peregrine Coggin, are the eldest living descendant of our line. As the heir apparent, it is your moral duty to contribute to the family business.”
John bristled.
“Says who?”
If it was possible for an impenetrable slab of granite to look puzzled, Great-Aunt Beauregard looked puzzled. Bravado, apparently, had not been what she was expecting. She shifted tack.
“Consider, boy, what I have been through to locate you after Hayseed. First, I had to establish your coordinates. The sheriff searched the Wayfarers’ camp from top to bottom but could find no trace of your existence. It was equal odds you had run away on the mayor’s horse or fled with your ginger-nut companion.
“Laid up with my discombobulated peritonia, I sent word to every police station within a hundred-mile radius to be on the alert. And think! Think what a reception I was given from some of our so-called protectors of life and property!”
John could well imagine what the police had said after receiving a communiqué from Great-Aunt Beauregard. No doubt she had informed them that they were all a bunch of lily-livered, saw-kneed, crackpot constables who didn’t know their tasks from their hacksaws.
“Faced with rank incompetence, I was forced to turn to my colleagues for help. From an embalmer in Herriot, I discovered that a figure answering the description of your scarlet confederate had been spotted in the north. It took me six months—”
Here she dropped any pretense at civility and discharged a full round.
“SIX MONTHS! To track that fox to Littlemere. And even then I didn’t know where you were holed up.”
Much as he fought against it, John had to respect his great-aunt’s dedication. It was not every woman who could follow the trail of Boz.
“So how did you find us?”
His great-aunt’s attempt at a smirk cracked a minuscule line in her top lip.
“You should stay away from fire.”
John sighed a heavy sigh. This was rapidly becoming a theme in his life.
“At the epicenter of your ill-timed eruption, I spoke to a sensible fellow named Leslie who reported you fleeing in the direction of the depot.”
“Did you meet Maria?”
The words flew out of John’s mouth before he could stop them.
His great-aunt tilted her head.
“I encountered a person of that name,” she said slowly.
“What did she say?”
The crack in her lip widened.
“She said she never wanted to see you again.”
The universe exploded. It was confirmed, then. Maria hated his guts. John had had one shot—one shot—at saving her business, and he’d manage to destroy it with a heap of dried poo. He didn’t blame her for hating him. He hated himself.
Great-Aunt Beauregard was oblivious to his distress.
“. . . then I found out from the stationmaster where the hobos usually stopped for food, took a fast passenger service to Riverton, and there, as you are no doubt aware, I discovered you.”
The finches shimmied and shook as she opened her handbag and laid the contract on the seat beside her.
“And now let us proceed to the matter of the partnership. . . .”
John was barely paying attention. Memories of his disasters were flooding fast and furious through his mind. The sputters of his broke-backed Autopsy. The glistening ripe tomato hovering above the mayor’s baby. The panicked squawk of the Henrietta hens.
“. . . furthermore, I have decided to allow you to begin working on the shredder thingymabob.”
This yanked him back to reality.
“What?”
Great-Aunt Beauregard leaned back and folded her arms across her remarkable bosom. “As much as it pains me to say it, I have decided to give you one half day on Sundays to model improvements. Congratulations, John. Your imagination is going to make us very rich.”
Although you wouldn’t have believed it to look at him, there was a desperate war being waged inside John.
On the one side was his brain.
Go back to Pludgett, it demanded. You’re finished being a boy. Sign the contract, ask the police to find Page, and give up on impossibilities.
On the other side was his heart. It didn’t have anything to say. It simply fought like a hero.
For several agonizing minutes, the two warriors remained locked in battle. The brain thrust, and the heart parried. The heart charged, and the brain blocked.
Finally, with a stunning blow, the brain cleaved John’s heart in two. And there, inside, was the one feeling that common sense could never defeat.
Hope.
“No!” John shouted.
He was almost loud enough to wake the catatonic cardinal.
“No?” Great-Aunt Beauregard repeated.
“No! I won’t do it.” John had reached the end of the line. “I won’t let you get ahold of Page and I won’t become a partner in the family business. I’m not a train you can push down a track—I’ll take my own road! I’ll run away and run away and run away again. You can’t make me sign that contract!”
“YOU!” bawled his great-aunt, tearing off a finch and hurling it at his head. “You are just like your father! Your pie-in-the-sky, gim-whacked, used tea bag of a father!”
John was not going to take that sitting down. “My father was not a used tea bag!”
His great-aunt snorted. “Really? The scribbling storyteller? The so-called writer? I remember the day he said he was getting married and leaving Pludgett. I told him the same thing I’m telling you now: the only certainty in life is death. Your father and mother lived on air and dreams, boy, and look where that got them. Six feet under and food for worms.”
John lashed out with a kick, but his Great-Aunt Beauregard caught him by the ankle and tossed him back on the seat.
“You, at least, have some vestiges of the family’s cranial capacity. Wake up to the world! I have a sturdy, steady business that will keep you and your sister occupied for the rest of your existence. And you wish to give up this security to chase after Page’s rainbows? If you think that kind of life will make you happy, you’ve got mush for brains.”
John refused to be defeated.
“Well, you know what? You’re just like me! You dream too, Great-Aunt Beauregard! Only you dream about death and money. At least Page and I believe in rainbows!”
“Tickets, tickets.”
John didn’t hesitate. Head down and heart pounding, he bashed past the conductor and out into the corridor. Down to the end of the carriage he ran, lurching sideways into the walls as the train jerked and swayed.
A strong shove of his shoulder sent the door flying open. And now he was standing on the metal platform between the cars, wind rushing through his hair, white water churning in the gaps below his feet. Over the bridge the locomotive charged, full steam ahead.
It’s now or never, John thought as he stared at the frothing fury of the river. “Now or never,” he repeated over and over, more to gird his loins than anything else. His great-aunt’s caterwaul was growing louder. She’d be here in a couple of seconds.
You know, he told himself, I might die. He stood on the last step of the train and looked up at the cotton-candy clouds. It was almost a relief to know that he didn’t have to fight any longer.
If this is it, he thought, then I will miss Colonel Joe. I will miss Maria and the chickens. John paused with his foot extended over the raging surge. I might even miss Boz. Even though he’s insane.
But most of all, he thought as he closed his eyes and stepped into the abyss, I will miss Page.