Dunc and Amos Hit the Big Top Read online

  OTHER YEARLING BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

  THE COOKCAMP, Gary Paulsen

  THE VOYAGE OF THE FROG, Gary Paulsen

  THE WINTER ROOM, Gary Paulsen

  THE BOY WHO OWNED THE SCHOOL, Gary Paulsen

  BOBBY BASEBALL, Robert Kimmel Smith

  MOSTLY MICHAEL, Robert Kimmel Smith

  CHOCOLATE FEVER, Robert Kimmel Smith

  THE WAR WITH GRANDPA, Robert Kimmel Smith

  JELLY BELLY, Robert Kimmel Smith

  THE SQUEAKY WHEEL, Robert Kimmel Smith

  YEARLING BOOKS/YOUNG YEARLINGS/YEARLING CLASSICS are designed especially to entertain and enlighten young people. Patricia Reilly Giff, consultant to this series, received her bachelor’s degree from Marymount College and a master’s degree in history from St. John’s University. She holds a Professional Diploma in Reading and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hofstra University. She was a teacher and reading consultant for many years, and is the author of numerous books for young readers.

  For a complete listing of all Yearling titles,

  write to Dell Readers Service,

  P.O. Box 1045, South Holland, IL 60473.

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  666 Fifth Avenue

  New York, New York 10103

  Copyright © 1993 by Gary Paulsen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

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  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-80414-3

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Yearling Books You Will Enjoy

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  •1

  Dunc folded the newspaper neatly, exactly as it had been folded when it was fresh, and placed it on his desk carefully, the edge of the paper lined up with the edge of the desk. Then he rearranged his pencil holder—an old distributor cap off a car—so that the older pencils, the shorter ones, were in front and the longer new ones were in the rear …

  “Stop it!” Amos, his truly best friend for life, except for the time Dunc made Amos go hang-gliding and they got lost in a wilderness area and Amos was rich but grabbed a can of Spam instead of a bar of gold—Amos couldn’t stand it when Dunc was being neat.

  “You’ve been fiddling with that desk and stuff for hours and hours.”

  “No,” Dunc said, looking at his watch. “Altogether I spend about thirty-five seconds a day straightening my desk, and by rough calculations that thirty-five seconds saves me nearly seventy-four minutes through the day because I don’t have to hunt for things—”

  “I’m going to strangle you.”

  “—the way you have to search for things. Besides, what does it matter how much time I spend straightening my desk?”

  Amos moved to the desk and picked up the paper, jerked it open, ripped a page loose (Dunc winced at the sound of the tearing paper), and held it out to Dunc. “This is why it matters.”

  Dunc took the page of paper and scanned it. “It’s an advertisement. So what?”

  Amos looked at the ceiling, started to think of a word to say that he’d seen written on a locker in the gym, then sighed. “What is it an advertisement for?”

  Dunc shrugged. “A circus.”

  Amos shook his head. “No, Dunc—not just a circus. This is the circus. This is the annual Chamber of Commerce circus.”

  Dunc shrugged again. “Like I said, so what? A bunch of tacky costumes and bored animals and stale popcorn. We go every year, and every year it’s the same thing.”

  Amos shook his head. “Not this time. This time, if you had taken the extra moment to read the small print at the bottom of the ad, you would have found that they are going to include a special section for amateur talent.”

  Dunc nodded. “I read that. So?”

  “Man—sometimes you are so dense. So every year Melissa goes to the circus, and I have been trying to get her to notice me.”

  Dunc nodded again. Amos had long ago decided that Melissa Hansen was pretty much the cosmic center of the universe as he’d come to know it, and she pretty much didn’t think of him at all. Ever.

  “So,” Amos said. “I’ve signed up for the amateur talent night at the circus. Melissa will be sitting right down front, and there I’ll be, right out there where she can’t miss me.”

  “Amos …”

  “On the trapeze.”

  “The trapeze?”

  Amos smiled. “You bet—I need something that shows, something great. I figured the trapeze was the best way to go. I thought about lion taming, but I’m not sure they’ll let you in with the lions—you know, if you’re an amateur.”

  “Trapeze?” Dunc repeated, shaking his head slowly. “Amos, you can’t be serious.”

  “Dead serious.”

  “That might be exactly what it comes to—dead. Amos, you just got the neck brace off, or have you forgotten last week?”

  Amos rubbed his neck. “No. I haven’t forgotten.”

  “That was in the privacy of your own home, your own room—what will it be like on a trapeze?”

  Amos held up his hand. “That was a fluke.”

  “You were answering the phone and almost killed yourself.”

  Amos rolled his neck from side to side and shook his head. “That isn’t quite right. I was trying to answer the phone, and I had a little accident.”

  “Little accident? You totaled the house!”

  “No—it wasn’t even close to the whole house. More just the kitchen and the back porch and part of the garage and the trash cans in the alley.” He paused, remembering.

  Amos was always certain Melissa was going to call, and he always tried to get to the phone by the end of the first ring.

  And never made it.

  This had been a classic case of phone answering. Amos had been walking down the hallway that led off the front door to the house when he heard the phone ring.

  Many things happened when the phone rang in Amos’s house. First, anybody and everybody in the house froze where they were in terror, wondering if they were in the line of travel between Amos and the nearest phone. This included Scruff, the family dog, who had been run over so many times, he almost no longer bit Amos when he went by.

  In Amos’s mind the ringing phone triggered a whole different set of responses. First, as the ring started, almost automatically his legs began to pump, driving him into a run before he really knew which direction to move. Second, within a split instant, his brain registered the closest phone ringing—his father had no less than four phones in the house (he kept increasing the number as the disasters occurred)—and the direction and exact distance to the phone.

  All this happened in the first second.

  It was during the second second that things usually began to fall apart, and this time had been no exception.

  He’d had good form, almost classic, knees pumping, tongue out the side of his mouth, a good lungful of air for the start.
r />   But he’d been going in the wrong direction when the phone rang.

  Dunc had tried to explain inertia to him many times. A body in motion tends to stay in motion; every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

  But applying it was always hard for Amos, and he’d made two good pumps, his hand out for the phone, when his brain ordered him to turn and go the other way.

  The top half of his body began the turn, but his legs took one more step before swinging around, and in that step he came down on Scruff, who had stopped dead in the middle of the hallway when the phone rang.

  Scruff reacted normally, violently. He started down with Amos on his back and reached up and around and grabbed Amos’s foot, catching a fang in the looped end of Amos’s shoelace, then cutting sideways to get out of the way.

  The fang pulled the shoelace with it, and the shoelace pulled the shoe, and the shoe pulled the foot, and the foot pulled the leg.

  Like falling dominoes, Amos came over and down.

  Except that he was still moving in full stride, his body still propelled forward, and his eyes widened in horror as he saw he was aimed at the center of the kitchen table, where his mother was busy preparing a snack after a hard day at work. She was holding a butcher knife.

  She turned, her own eyes widening to see a careening pile of boy and dog and shoes coming at her end over end. She moved deftly sideways, throwing the knife into the sink to get it out of the way just in time for Amos and Scruff to hit the table, driving it through the kitchen and onto the back porch, through the back porch and out across the small back yard into the trash barrels, swiping the trim off the side of the garage as they passed.

  On the way by, Amos had snagged the phone from the hook, and he held it to his ear in the middle of the pile of wreckage in the alley, Scruff still hanging on his foot. He said: “Hello?”

  But the wire had torn from the wall, and he’d been talking to nobody.

  “No,” he said now, remembering, “it wasn’t the whole house at all. Now, let’s go to the circus—I’ve got to sign up for the trapeze.”

  •2

  The circus was on the edge of town and was almost not a circus. At one time it had been a big, three-ring spectacular show—but that had been back in the fifties.

  It was down now to a tired bigtop tent with patches here and there and a few animal cages and a bunch of men that Dunc thought either had been in prison, should be in prison, or would be in prison soon.

  But it was a circus, and Amos’s nostrils flared with excitement as they chained their bicycles to a telephone pole and locked them.

  Dunc stopped at the rope-gate area leading into the circus compound and held Amos back. “Amos, I’m not certain this is a good idea—actually, I’m positive that it’s a bad idea.”

  Amos stopped and turned to Dunc. “Oh, sure—every time you have an idea it’s a good idea, and every time I have an idea it’s a bad one. Well, let’s just review things a bit, shall we? Who did the hang-gliding disaster, me or you?”

  Dunc hesitated.

  “Come on.”

  “Me. But—”

  “And whose idea was it to mess with a stinking old parrot and look for buried treasure?”

  “Well …”

  “Whose?”

  “All right, that was me too.”

  Amos nodded. “I think you’ll find that most of the ideas that have led to our nearly dying came from you. So this time let me have an idea.”

  “But Amos—there are people here who haven’t had a bath since last year.”

  Amos shrugged. “So what? You’ve always spent way too much time on hygiene. It might do you good to get a little dirty.”

  Amos left Dunc standing with his mouth open, turned, and went through the gate. Or tried to.

  A thin man—Dunc thought he probably hadn’t eaten anything in a week—held out a gray hand. “Wait a minute, kid—where you going?”

  Amos had the clipping from the paper about the amateur talent. “I’m here for the amateur talent event.”

  “What part?”

  “The trapeze.”

  The man studied Amos for a long time, then shook his head. “I don’t know. A lot of kids are trying to get in free by using that amateur thing.”

  Amos drew his shoulders up. “I’m not lying—I’m an expert tumbler and gymnast. Ask my friend.” He motioned back to Dunc.

  The man looked at Dunc.

  Dunc stared at Amos. As far as he knew, Amos had never tried gymnastics or tumbling in his life. Unless you counted the times answering the telephone.

  Amos turned and stared back at Dunc.

  Dunc nodded.

  “Well …” The man still hesitated, unconvinced, but a second man came up to him. If anything he was grayer and thinner than the first, and he had a lit cigarette with a long ash hanging from the corner of his mouth.

  “Come on, B.J.—let’s get some food down. I’ve only got twenty minutes before I have to dress up for the geek show.”

  B.J. waved Amos past. “All right. You can go in, but your friend has to have a ticket. You get it over there.” He pointed to a small booth at the side of the entrance.

  “I’m not buying a ticket for this,” Dunc said to Amos, turning to leave. “Why should I pay to watch you die? I can come and watch you answer the phone for nothing.”

  Amos grabbed his arm. “Come on—I’ll pay for the ticket.”

  And finally, Dunc leaving skid marks with his heels, Amos bought him a ticket and dragged him into the big top.

  Inside the tent it was cool and dark and almost completely insane with noise and movement. It was close to noon, and the first show of the day started at four o’clock, and even Dunc could see they would be lucky to make it.

  One crew was trying to erect an animal cage in the big center—and only—ring but there were just four men, and they seemed to be spending most of their time running in circles and swearing at each other.

  “Reminds me of the parrot,” Amos said. “The language, I mean.”

  Dunc nodded. “I’ve even heard some new ones.”

  “I wonder who’s in charge?” Amos asked.

  “From the way it looks, nobody.”

  One of the men working on the ring saw the boys and yelled at them. “Don’t just stand there—come on, take a strain!”

  His voice was like a whip, and Dunc and Amos were moving before they thought to question it. Amos grabbed a section of the cage and tried to lift it, but it was too heavy, so Dunc helped him. No sooner did they have it up than another man came and pulled it down.

  “Not yet—it’s too soon.”

  “Too soon for what?” Amos asked.

  “Too soon to put the cage up, dummy.”

  “Oh.”

  “We don’t want to do it too soon, or they’ll start expecting it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Didn’t they tell you anything when they hired you on as rousts?”

  Amos shook his head. “Nope.”

  The man turned and walked away to tip over another section of cage that two other hands were raising. “Not yet—it’s too soon.”

  Dunc whispered to Amos. “We’re not hired on as rousts.”

  “Who cares? If they think we work here, we can move around easier. Come on, let’s find somebody who knows about the talent contest.”

  Amos moved away from the ring and into the back of the tent, near where a small stand had been erected for the band, except that there wasn’t a band. Instead there were two men with trumpets and a set of drums that looked as if they’d been used in the Civil War.

  The two men could have been twins. They were both short, round, and bald and had bellies hanging over their belts. They were dressed in tired suits, and one of them was tightening the head on a snare drum.

  “Hi,” Amos said. “We’re looking for somebody in charge.”

  Both men looked up at the same time. “That’s funny, you don’t look like a bill collector.”

  “I’m not—I
’m here to sign up for the amateur talent event.”

  “Ah, Willy, he’s here for the amateur talent event,” the man on the drum said to the other.

  “Yes, Billy, I heard that. Tell me, young man, what event do you wish to work in?”

  Amos coughed. “The trapeze.”

  “Ah, Willy, he wants to do the trapeze …”

  “I heard that, Billy.” He turned to Amos. “Is it possible, young man, that you have had some experience on the trapeze?”

  Amos nodded. “Oh, yes. I’ve been—trapezing—for a long time. It’s a hobby, and it’s always been my dream to work in a circus, flying around from swing to swing, wearing tights.”

  “Ah, Willy, he’s had experience.…”

  Willy nodded. “I heard that, Billy.”

  “So if you’ll just tell us where to find the man in charge,” Amos said, “we’ll sign up and get ready for the show.”

  “Ah, Willy, he wants to see the man in charge.”

  “Yes, Billy, I heard. Well, you see, young man, it would seem that you’re speaking to him. Or them. We own the circus. Or we will until the bill collectors take it from us, which they have been trying to do for years.”

  “Oh. Well then, where do I sign?”

  “There’s a problem with that,” Willy said. “We are fresh out of trapeze acts at the moment for you to work with as amateur talent.”

  “Yes,” Billy said. “Fresh out.”

  “It would seem,” Willy said, “that the Great Spangliny had an attack of good sense and last night left before his bluff was called.”

  “Bluff?” Amos asked.

  “Yes. The Great Spangliny had talked, no, bragged about doing his most death-defying and gravity-cheating performance this very evening.”

  “What was he going to do?” Dunc cut in.

  “A solo-four somersault forward dive from one bar to another, with both bars swinging in full arcs.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yes.” Billy nodded, sighing. “It would have made the show.” He looked at Amos. “But now I’m afraid it’s all off. Spangliny is gone—left this morning.”

  “When you say ‘gone’ ”—Amos rubbed his chin—“how do you mean that?”

  “Gone. He pulled out this morning.”