Coach Amos Read Online Free

and caps for our T-ball team,” Dunc said. “Mr. Posey told us he’d have them for us by our first game tomorrow.”
    Jimmy didn’t look up. He jerked his thumb toward the back of the store. “They’re probably in the storeroom somewhere. You’ll have to come back when Mr.Posey’s here. I’m too busy to help you right now.”
    Dunc straightened a key-chain display on the counter. All the chains were crooked, and he pushed each one into line. “Yeah, we can see that you’re awful busy. Would you mind if we looked for them? We’re in kind of a hurry.”
    “I guess that would be okay. But don’t mess anything up.”
    The boys stepped into the back room. Merchandise was piled haphazardly all over the place. Shipping orders were thumb-tacked to the walls.
    “How does he find anything back here?” Amos asked.
    Dunc moved some empty boxes. “The question is, how are
we
going to find anything back here?”
    “Oh, no.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “I found them.” Amos held up one of the jerseys. “It says Posey’s. Our team is called The Poseys.”
    Dunc laughed. “Just be glad Mr. Butts over at the meat market didn’t sponsor you.”
    “Cute.”
    “It’ll be okay, Amos. The kids won’t care.”
    “I care. How am I supposed to impress Melissa with a team name like The Poseys?”
    “She’ll think you’re too grown-up to need one of those macho team names.”
    Amos smiled. “You think so?”
    “Sure. Girls go for the mature type every time. You gather up the stuff. I’m going to leave a note for Mr. Posey so he’ll know we took the jerseys.”
    Dunc looked around on the desk for a pencil. He pulled open the top drawer. “Look at this, Amos. Mr. Posey has a list of every game that’s been played in this town since football season. And all the ones that haven’t been played yet. Everything from chess to soccer. He must really be into sports.”
    Amos glanced at the list. “Hey, there’s our first game. I wonder why he wrote ‘ten-to-one’ out beside our team’s name?”
    “Hmmm. Every game has a note like that beside it. Here’s one that says ‘five-to-one.’ ”
    Amos put his finger on the last high school football game. “This one says ‘even money.’ ”
    Dunc pulled out his note pad and started writing furiously.
    “Now what are you doing?”
    “Amos, I think this means something. There’s a phone number here. I’m not sure, but it could be important. I’m going to try and copy down some of this information. Watch the door.”
    Amos started for the door. He didn’t make it. A barbell was lying on the floor. He caught his foot under it and sprawled into a stack of athletic shoes.
    Jimmy Banes came barreling through the door. “What’s going on back here?”
    Dunc moved around in front of the open desk drawer. He carefully reached his right arm behind him and slid it shut. “Nothing, Jimmy. We were having a little trouble finding the jerseys, that’s all.”
    Jimmy picked up the bag near where Amos had gone down. “They’re right there in front of you. You two get out of herebefore you wreck the place and get me in trouble.”
    Dunc helped Amos up. He picked up the bag of jerseys and headed for the door. “Thanks, Jimmy. Try not to work too hard.”

“Amos, see if you can hit your mouth more often.”
    Amos was in Dunc’s room throwing cheese popcorn in the air and trying to catch it in his mouth. Dunc was following him around the room with a dust blaster, sucking up the pieces that didn’t quite make it. Normally, Dunc was too neat to go for something like this. But today he was torn between neatness and the world record.
    Somebody in Duluth had caught one hundred and fifty-seven pieces of popcorn in his mouth, nonstop, without dropping any.
    Dunc figured, with a little practice Amos should be able to top that easily.
    Amos wasn’t into world records, but he was into eating popcorn. So far, he had made it to forty-three pieces straight.
    Dunc turned off the dust