“YOU KNOW, I’VE never driven one of these before,” Boz confessed. “I had assumed the sheer weight of the internal elements would affect its aerodynamic qualities, but it seems to handle quite well.”
Boz yanked the engine around a corner, jolting Page’s elbow into John’s liver.
“If you’ve never driven one, then why did you steal—”
“Borrow.”
“—borrow it?” asked John.
“Logic!” Boz exclaimed, urging the horses over a stone bridge and sending a flock of ducks squawking in protest. “The last refuge of the enlightened man. What method of conveyance can go as fast as it likes without fear of being stopped?”
“A fire engine—look out!” John yelled, and Boz turned his attention to the large pile of manure lying in their path. He hauled on the reins and the horses skittered sideways, barely missing the steaming pile.
“Correct!” Boz smiled. “An inspired, if elementary, chain of deduction. And now we are off to find adventure in the evening air. Girls in white in a perfumed night where the lights are bright as the stars.”
“How long will it take us to get to the circus?” John closed his eyes against the sight of the rutted road in front of them.
“A couple of hours,” Boz answered jovially, bouncing in his seat as they took the first pothole at a gallop. “If fortune favors the brave, we might be in time for the late show. They have two on Fridays,” he added, clonking his hand against John’s skull, “when the barometric pressure is behaving itself.”
“Johnny?”
“What is it, Page?”
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
There is nothing like watching your younger sister vomit great quantities of peas and carrots over the side of a fire engine to make you doubt your sanity.
Yet once she was righted, Page insisted on enjoying the ride. She whooped and hollered and waved at the gulls as the engine barreled along the seashore.
John was less excited. He had gained enough breath to question whether being on a runaway vehicle driven by a long-winded maniac was such a good idea. Information was needed. Quickly.
“How long have you been with the Wandering Wayfarers?”
“The who?” Boz shouted back.
“The Wandering Wayfarers! The circus we might join!”
“Ah, yes. The name had somehow slipped the cogs of my mind.”
Since they were making rapid progress toward their destination, John had difficulty believing this.
“I go back and forth and back again,” Boz said, swaying in time with the engine. “Though I haven’t set a pair of retinas upon Colonel Joe and his merry band for some months.”
“But you’re an acrobat with them,” John protested.
“Am I?”
“That’s what you said!” John smacked his hand on the seat.
“No need to ping the paintwork, my dear boy. If that’s what I said, then that’s what I said. Whether it has any firm tether to reality is, as they say, a whole ’nother cauldron of cod.”
John chewed on his lip and studied Page’s face.
“Are we going to be okay, Johnny?”
“We’ll be fine,” he tried to say quietly, but the noise from the road and the horses and Boz clanging the bell drowned him out.
“What?” she said.
“We’ll be fine!”
Boz grinned and flung his arm around John’s shoulder.
“Why, of course you will, my bonny wee bairns! By now, that formidable fortress of formaldehyde—your great-aunt—will have retreated to her discounted digs. There she will assemble the constabulary to pursue you. She will think it a mere doddle to reclaim the genetic remnants of her family.
“But she will be wrong!” Boz shouted, almost strangling John in his enthusiasm. “For she has not reckoned with the life force that springs eternal for the young at heart! Am I not right, comrades?”
“Boz,” Page said slowly.
“Yes, my dear?”
“I think you’re choking John.”
“Oh, I do apologize,” Boz said, releasing John’s neck. John hacked and sputtered a little while Page patted him on the back. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” croaked John. “In about three hours,” he added wryly.
“I’m afraid we can’t wait that long. We’re here.”
Under the slim curve of a crescent moon, a flea-bitten tent rose up from a fly-ridden field. Apart from an odd assortment of caravans and grazing horses, there was little to see except a faded canvas gate marked
Wande ing W yfar rs
along with an ancient cannon and a rusty barbed-wire fence around the entire enclosure. Laughter from within the tent indicated a show was in progress.
“Isn’t she a pretty peach?” Boz sighed, reining in the horses. “Though I believe we’ve missed most of the second sitting.”
Since John was finding it incredibly difficult to say anything nice, he responded by helping Page down from the seat.
“This place looks awful,” Page said.
Boz feigned hurt.
“Well, I admit that the bloom of her youth has somewhat oxidized, but she is home for many a meandering mountebank.”
He gestured to the fence.
“Shall we go under?”
“Why can’t we go through the gate?” John demanded.
“On any other evening, I would agree with you,” Boz said. “Only it happens that tonight, Alligator Dan is at the box office. And he may still be mad about the incident with the fire ants.”
John was going to ask about the fire ants when Page cut him off.
“Alligator Dan is a funny name.”
“And he, my fine friends, is only the first member of these self-proclaimed dirty tramps.” Boz gallantly lifted the barbed wire for Page to crawl under. “Although I doubt that even the powers of bleach would help,” he continued. “They’re strung together with twine and a prayer by the good Colonel Joe.”
Down came the barbed wire, pinning John to the ground.
“Now, we’ll just pop our cerebelli under the big top to see if I can spot the man in charge.”
John lifted a feeble hand.
“Oh, my dear boy,” Boz lifted the fence once more. “Was that me?”
John was too busy removing a hunk of mud from his mouth to answer. When he finally had the means to reply, Boz and Page were already halfway across the field, making their way toward the big top.
John followed as fast as he could, but the pale light of the June evening made it difficult to see. He might have tripped over their decapitated forms if he hadn’t spotted the light seeping under the tent. Dropping to his stomach next to his sister, he thrust his head under the flap.
A heady scent of popcorn smacked him full in the face. As a stream of soda percolated down his back, John realized they were under a bench set up for spectators. Between a pair of bowed legs, he caught a glimpse of a dirt ring backed by a red curtain.
Btwang. A discordant burst from a ukulele silenced the crowd. The curtain was dragged open to reveal a set of pretty teenage girls, dressed in band uniforms, marching in military fashion and twirling batons.
This wouldn’t have been unusual except for the math.
For by John’s count, they had two heads, four legs, and only two arms. From shoulder to hip, they were fused together.
“The Mimsy Twins,” Boz noted.
“John, they’re glued,” Page whispered. John squeezed her arm to show her that he’d heard.
In spite of their adhesion, the Mimsy Twins were incredibly talented. John watched in awe as they performed an intricate tap dance, their batons crisscrossing high above their heads. A surge of joy rushed through him. So this was what the circus was like!
Up, up went the pinwheels of light . . .
Out went John, yanked backward by his feet.
“Colonel not in attendance,” Boz explained. “We’ll proceed to the potentate’s fire.”
There was no time for John to argue. Off they went again, trotting toward the dim flare of a bonfire. Stumbling and bumbling, John felt his left foot sink into a squishy mound and tried not to imagine what it was.
“Remember to let my powers of oratory persuade him,” Boz instructed as they drew nearer to the fire. “Oh, and keep your fingers away from the dogs.”
“Dogs?” John asked, but the baying of hounds interrupted him. A pair of slavering German shepherds rose up from nowhere and charged. Boz scrambled onto John’s back as John tried to thrust Page behind him.
Ruff! Snarfff! Raaarrk! went the dogs. Then they stretched their mouths wide, giving John a glimpse of rows of lethal teeth. He closed his eyes in terror.
“Hello, puppies. It’s nice to meet you.”
John opened his eyes. Page had stepped out from behind him and was extending her small, delicate fingers toward jaws that could easily devour her arm.
But the dogs didn’t swallow her arm. Instead they wagged their tongues, dropped their ears, and rolled over in delight. Page knelt down in the dust to scratch their bellies.
“Heckuva animal trainer you got there, Boz.”