Dunc and Amos Hit the Big Top Read Online Free

legs and twirled around with a girl on his head while some guy in a turban yelled at him, and then he came out here and they hosed him down and gave him hay and peanuts.
    It worked for Biboe. He did his gig twice a day and sometimes got extra peanuts from kids who came by the petting zoo, and that was how his days went.
    More to the point, he didn’t like changes. Once the guy with the turban had actually hooked him in back of the ear with the little metal hook he carried just for show, and Biboe had objected so forcefully, it took fourmen to get the man with the turban out of a garbage can, and he still walked funny and wouldn’t go anywhere near the elephant enclosure.
    But more than just disliking changes, Biboe hated
rapid
changes. Any sudden movement startled him, and any quick alteration in routine upset Biboe, and an upset Biboe was a problem Biboe.
    A problem Biboe that weighed close to four tons.
    And a phone ringing, coupled with a shovel and rake dropping to the ground and a boy starting to run, were all elements of rapid change.
    Perhaps it still would have worked out all right, except that the straightest line from Amos to the phone went directly beneath Biboe, and without thinking, all on reflex, Amos made for the phone in the shortest possible direction.
    Straight under Biboe.
    It was too much, far too much. Amos ducked to clear Biboe’s hay-full belly, dug with his right foot, and started for the pole with the phone.
    But Biboe was faster. Like a striking snake, his trunk whipped back and wrapped around Amos, going under his armpit and back up and around his neck.
    “Gurrrk.”
It was not a word so much as a choke, and it was very nearly the last thing Amos said. Luckily for Amos, there were no garbage cans nearby, or he probably would have gotten stuffed.
    “Biboe!” Dunc yelled. “Drop him!”
    Biboe ignored Dunc, held Amos for a second, a full six feet off the ground, looked around for a can or Dumpster, and when he could find nothing suitable, he made a couple of swings around in the air and threw Amos away. It was the same gesture he might have used to get rid of rotten hay or bad peanuts.
    Except that Amos—still wondering what had happened to him since one second he’d been running for the phone and the next he was hanging by his neck well off the ground—had mass and weight going, and when Biboe threw him, he kind of flipped him as well.
    Amos left the animal enclosure in a spiraling forward somersault that took him forty feet into the air, across the open compound, tofall on the roof of the big top almost perfectly flat on his back, where he bounced once, slid down softly and gently, and landed perfectly on his feet.
    Directly in front of Billy and Willy, who had not seen Biboe throw him but had seen Amos flying through the air in a perfect forward somersault and a likewise perfect landing on the tent.
    “Oh, my,” Willy said to Billy. “Isn’t he just the one to take Spangliny’s place?”
    Billy nodded. “Goodness yes. That was simply classic. Young man, you needn’t give us a demonstration of your abilities. We’ve just seen all we need to see.”
    Amos smiled faintly and tried to nod. In his mind he was still back, walking beneath the elephant and suddenly flying. “Thank you. I think.”
    On the power pole a circus worker hung up the phone and turned to another worker.
    “Wrong number.”

• 6
    “I think I’m working it out,” Dunc said.
    “Working what out?” Amos took a bite of a hot dog with red-hot chili sauce on it. They had finished cleaning the animal enclosure—Amos had moved very carefully around Biboe—and gone to the food trailer for a snack.
    Amos chewed the hot dog until the sauce hit his tongue, then drank some Coke, then chewed, then drank. His forehead broke out in sweat and he grimaced, but he kept eating it.
    It was part of his theory of life, which he actually thought of as The Theory of Life—incapital letters. It was simple. When you didn’t like