RICOCHETING DOWN A sewage pipe was not as uncomfortable as John had thought it might be.
Sure, it smelled like the inside of a dog’s dinner and there was suspiciously squidgy stuff coating the interior, but the pipe was remarkably roomy. It rapidly dropped them down a story; then the steep gradient eased up a little.
PLOP!
They fell headfirst into the bubbling brown stew of the canal.
Gasping for air, John struggled to the surface and looked around for Boz’s head. He spotted the braids first, then the squished-in eyes, then the freckled grin.
“I’d like to see your great-aunt try that one!” Boz shouted.
John paddled his way over to his friend. “Are you okay?”
Boz whipped his head around, smacking John in the mouth with his braids. They didn’t taste nice.
“All parts intact. All systems are go.”
John assessed their situation. The canal was drifting them downstream, down toward the town of Howst. Seen from a distance, Leslie’s real estate purchase did nothing to inspire confidence. It was a squat, brutish thing, with a rickety stone tower and a crumbling foundation. John had a brief twinge of pity for his captor. Nobody in their right mind would want to live in that dump.
“How far are we from Pludgett?”
Boz turned toward the land, again catching John in the mouth with his hair. “Heading north on a horse? I’d guesstimate around a week or two.”
“Do you have any money for the train?
“None! But not to fret, my dear boy. We need only fetch Rosinante.”
“Rosinante?”
“My latest love,” Boz said, flailing toward the shore. “The lady who led me to your door. I confess she’s not particularly pulchritudinous, but she has a sturdy heart and the loveliest pair of brown eyes.”
John learned the truth of this statement a few minutes later, as the old brown horse tried to chew his pants off.
They made it to Howst in good time. It hadn’t been difficult to avoid people—wherever they had gone, their smell had gone ten feet before them. Strong-armed men and long-legged children fled in equal terror from the horrific stench.
Rosinante didn’t seem to mind John’s lack of personal hygiene. That was probably because she reeked just as badly.
“Isn’t she a sweetheart?” Boz said, patting the back of the mare. “Borrowed her at the train station from a charming gentlemen. Said she’d only had one previous owner—an antiquarian lady who exercised her on Sundays.”
John pushed Rosinante away and evaluated her stance. Her mangy coat and bowlegged hindquarters suggested she’d seen more than an occasional Sunday walk.
“I don’t think she’ll take the weight of both of us.”
Boz scratched Rosinante’s ears. “No, my darling, I don’t suppose you will. But no matter.” He turned to John. “As your faithful servant, I shall walk and you shall ride.”
John jumped on the mare. A reaction, it seemed, Boz was not expecting.
“Do you mean you’re content to let me trudge through the wasteland, even after I came to rescue you?”
John leaned down and, for once, said precisely what he wanted to say:
“Boz, after abandoning me in Hayseed, blowing up my invention, and leaving my sister with the worst woman on the planet, you think you should be the one to ride?”
Boz tapped his index finger on the side of his mouth. “Well, seen in that particular prismatic light, I suppose it would be more appropriate if you rode.”
“Good choice,” John said, tightening the reins and giving Rosinante a firm kick.
Their pace was about as quick as a snail in salt, but they reached the main north road faster than John had expected. He even judged Rosinante strong enough to allow Boz on the saddle.
“Froggy went a-sporting and he did ride, a-hum,” cried Boz. In a single bound, he was up behind John. Rosinante reeled, staggered, and chomped her yellow-stained teeth together, but she hung on.
“Like the good old days with the mayor’s baby!” cried Boz. “Onward and onward rode the six hundred.”
“So you’re ready to help me rescue Page?” John asked.
Boz swallowed. “Well, I suppose the situation might merit—”
He was cut off by the thundering hoofbeats of a horse. John tried to whip Rosinante around, but she only responded by blundering amiably toward a blackberry bush.
So it was too late to do much but panic when the stallion reared up in front of them. It was so close that some of the foam from its nostrils spattered John’s face.
“You aren’t going anywhere!” Leslie squawked. He was jiggling and joggling on the back of his mount, waving a riding crop, and trying his best to look menacing.
“Yes, we are!” John shouted back, bracing for the smack of the crop to the head.
Which never came. Baked by the sun, the leftover stench of the sewage pipe—combined with the already pungent fumes of Rosinante’s hide—had turned the trio into the equivalent of an eight-legged stink bomb.
Having done his valiant best, Leslie’s horse could take the smell no longer. He turned a sickly shade of pea green and fainted.
Down went Leslie, his body trapped under the considerable weight of his mount.
“Oh, I give up,” moaned a voice from beneath the stallion.
With the mere hint of a sneer, John led Rosinante past the prostrate figure of his former captor.
“You’re more trouble than you’re worth, John Coggin!” Leslie croaked.
John’s sneer cleared to a sunny smile. “Tell that to my great-aunt,” he said.
And off they went.
John’s good mood lingered for a long while, only fading as the effects of the sun and an empty belly began to take their toll. By the time he drew Rosinante to a halt at a consumptive creek, John had passed from hunger into a fugue state of willpower.
He wasn’t defeated—that was the wrong word for it. He was bound and determined to stand up to his Great-Aunt Beauregard. She could hammer on him until doomsday. John would not be broken.
He was, however, worried. He had Boz and an ancient horse—those weren’t exactly the best assets to effect a daring rescue. If he was going to save Page, he would need a little bit of help from the heavens above.
“Don’t count the end of the day out.”
John lifted his head. That hadn’t sounded like Boz. He looked toward the east. Rosinante was slurping sludge and Boz was sprawled, facedown and fast asleep, on the ground. He looked toward the west. The sun was creating puddles on the parched landscape.
It was the sun that did it. Suddenly John found himself back near the old yellow house at the edge of the sky-blue sea.
He and his father had been out for hours, searching for butterflies in the afternoon light. In hopes of better luck, they had gone farther and farther into the tall grass beyond the house.
As the late summer’s sun began to wane, they reached a dirt road. Daring John to race him, his father headed off toward the west. It seemed to John they were playing chase with that great, glowing ball, trying to catch it before it fell to the earth.
They lost the game. The sun slipped below the trees, leaving only the memory of warmth behind.
“Why does it set so fast?”
“What?” asked his father. “You mean the sun?”
John nodded, watching the sky shade from orange to aquamarine.
“It goes real slow and then, whack!” John clapped his hands together. “It’s gone. And there’s nothing.”
“Well . . .” His father gazed at the sunset. “I guess nature doesn’t want you to take her for granted.”
He smiled.
“But I’ll tell you what, John my lad, there are consolations. You’re not likely to forget a sky like this anytime soon.” He pointed to the first star glinting above them. “And,” he added, “I’ve always thought there’s magic in the gloaming.”
“The gloaming?” John asked.
“What you’re looking at now. Twilight. The time before dark.”
“I don’t see any magic,” John retorted.
His father refused to take the bait. “The world can surprise you. Wherever you may be, don’t count the end of the day out.”
Splossshhh!
A handful of muddy water slapped him in the face.
“Yoo-hoo! Earth to Planet John!” Boz sang. He was standing on the opposite side of the creek. Freed from the braids, his hair had morphed into a crimped mass of seaweed.
John kicked at the water.
“You were in the throes of deepest, darkest introspection. Something bothering my fine feathered companion?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” John said sarcastically. “Maybe because I don’t know how I’m going to save Page? Maybe because I know it could end in disaster?”
Boz grinned. “My dear, dear boy, you seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that life is about success.”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“Of course not!” Boz leaped over the creek. “What a dull and dreary existence I might have led if I had encountered only fair winds.” He stuck his fists on his hips and puffed out his chest. “If you are to get anywhere in this unquestionably ridiculous world, remember that life is about failure. As a bosom companion of mine once said, ‘Fail. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’”
“That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”
Boz shrugged. “In my experience, dumb ideas are sometimes the best ones of all. But whatever you may decide, fearless leader, remember that I shall be here.” Boz punched one of those fists into the air. “Maintain your sangfroid, my friend. It’s not over until the obese rooster crows.”
“And when will that be?”
“Maybe after you’ve b-b-both had a b-b-bath!”