The Mechanical Mind of John Coggin (16 page)

“I don't know how.”

“Balderdash,” Boz retorted. “It's very simple. You begin at the beginning and end at the end.”

“And what's the end?”

“My dear boy, I haven't a clue.”

John sighed again and closed his eyes. “Once upon a time, there was a boy who made coffins. . . .”

Boz chuckled.

“Now
that
is an excellent way to begin.”

A
ND SO
J
OHN
told the story of his improbable adventures, from the perils of Great-Aunt Beauregard to the wanderings with the Wayfarers to the bakery of Maria Persimmons to the dig with Miss Doyle. And for the most part, Boz stayed mercifully silent.

Until, that is, John reached the point in the tale where they lay shackled to a wall in Leslie's timeshare dream.

“You haven't finished!” Boz wailed.

“That's it. I don't know what comes next.”

John peered between the window bars. Dawn was curdling in the sky. Suddenly, a tiny bug flitted in and landed on the floor near John's foot.

“Nonsense. You're simply not seeing the covert for the cover.”

“The what?”

“The forest for the firs, the coppice for the copper beeches, the wood for the trees.”

“That's because I'm chained to a stone wall.”

John could tell what the insect was now—it wasn't the black beetle; it was a ladybug.

“My manacled young miscontent, you merely need to parse your story to see that the solution to our predicament is right in front of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“How many times in your chronicle did you risk death and dismemberment in your escape? And how many times were you saved by your own inventive cunning and the kindness of chance?”

John watched the ladybug waddle onto his pants. “A lot.”

“Egg-zact-edly. Pree-seye-sly. So if your narrative holds true—as any good narrative should—you will now put your nostrils to the grindstone and devise a cunning plan that will bust us both free.”

“Sure, no problem, and I guess I'll rescue you with my feet dragging three tons of lead behind them,” John blasted. The ladybug rose in fright and darted to the window.

“Well, it's an admirable aim, but I thought you'd prefer to use this.”

There was a short silence, then a clatter, then another short silence, and then a
whump
, as a small, heavy object
clonked John on the temple.

“O
wwww.”
John rubbed his forehead.

“My apologies!” Boz called out. “My knuckleball is not what it used to be.”

John sat up and peered into the gloom. Resting at his feet was Colonel Joe's jackknife.

“Where did you get this?”

“I may have borrowed it when we were lurking outside the station.”

“You
what
?” John yelled.

“Well, you know, off to fight for kin and country and all that. And the thought arose that I might need to saw off some important limbs at a critical juncture, and wouldn't it be helpful to have a jackknife.”

“So you stole mine?” John picked up the knife and held it gently in his palm.

“Borrowed, my dear boy. Borrowed. And aren't you glad I did? For I doubt you would have had the foresight to store it in your bum crack while you were being searched.”

John dropped the knife.

“But why didn't you give it to me earlier?” he asked, using the cuff of his pants to wipe every inch of the knife's surface.

“Course, I meant to, but I became so caught up in the perils of your peculiar adventure that I completely forgot I had it until you mentioned the lock-picking lesson on
the train. Have you finished extricating yourself yet?”

“Almost,” John muttered. In the time it had taken for Boz to yammer, John had inserted the knifepoint into his lock and maneuvered his way around the interior mechanism. “There!” he called out. “I'm free.”

“Excellent. Now what?”

“Shhh. I'm thinking.”

Thinking was an understatement. Steam was seeping through every follicle in his head. The lock on his cell was impossible to reach from the inside. And even if he did succeed in releasing Boz, it was no use trying to fight their way back up the stairs—they'd be nabbed in two seconds flat. They needed an alternative route.

“Any luck?”

“Shhh! I'm still thinking.”

“Capital,” Boz replied. “I will sit here like patience on a monument and contemplate the outflow of sewage.”

John looked up. “Boz. Did you say there was an outflow pipe outside your window?”

“I did. It appears to be issuing from the opposite wall. And the stench, I must say, is enough to choke a crocodile.”

“Where does it go?”

“I assume it sallies forth into the canal that I passed on my approach.”

John said nothing. If it wouldn't have sounded so crazy, he could have sworn he heard Boz turn white.

“My dear boy, please don't tell me you're cogitating an escape by that means.”

John was, until he remembered the first problem. “It doesn't matter—I can't reach the cell door lock.”

“Is that all?” Boz chuckled.

“Why?” John snapped back. “Do you have a brilliant suggestion?”

“Naturally, but I'm not sure I should relate it if you're going to be ornery.”

“Boz!”

“Play dead.”

“What?”

“Imitate one of your great-aunt's finer specimens. Pretend you are deceased—Leslie will not want a decaying corpse stinking up his tourist establishment. I will alert him to the issue, and when he comes to collect your remains, you can use the dark arts of defense to disarm him, snatch the keys, and release me. Then, ahem, we will attempt your descent.”

John had to admit it was a good plan. Of course, it also involved him risking his life. Again.

“Why don't
you
take out Leslie?”

Boz laughed. “Truly, my dear boy? You wish me to be the one in charge?”

John paused, flexing his muscles to get the blood moving to his hands and feet. He hated to admit it, but any physical activity involving Boz ran a high risk of failure.

“Fine. I'll do it.”

“Capital!” Boz cried. “Now, if you will arrange yourself in a position of prostration, I will alert Leslie. But remember to be nonreactive to any experiment I might attempt.”

John hardly had time to roll himself into a ball before Boz let forth a screeching, ear-shattering wail, like six dozen cats being run through a meat grinder.

“Boz!” John raised his head and hissed. The caterwauling stopped. “What are you doing?”

“I'm keening, my dear boy.”

“It sounds horrible.”

“It's meant to. Now, if you don't mind awfully, you're supposed to be dead.”

John put his head back down on his arm while Boz resumed his wailing, this time at triple the volume.

It didn't take long for the noise to achieve the desired result.
Thunk, thunk, thunk
went a pair of boots down the staircase.

“What are you doing?” Leslie shouted at Boz.

“Oh, alas and alack!” John heard Boz lament. “I believe John is dead! He was fading fast a few hours ago—suffering from dehydration, desolation, and a perforated glottis—and I have not heard from him for some time. He is gone, I'm sure of it. No longer will we walk the moonlit prairies. No longer will the bells of St. Helen's sing out with the feats of our felonies. Oh, perish the
hour, perish the day—”

“Would you be quiet?”

The jangle of keys and a clang told John that Leslie had opened his cell door. He tensed as he heard the boots come nearer—

Thunk.

THUNK.

Then . . .

WHAM!

Just as he had with Miss Doyle, John brought his left foot out in a sweeping motion, neatly tripping Leslie. The Pig went down hard, hitting his head on the chamber pot with a thud.

“Oh, dear,” Boz said through the vent. “That had every indication of being rather painful.”

John jumped up and cautiously approached the figure sprawled out on the floor. For an anxious moment, John thought he had killed Leslie. But then he noticed the steady up-and-down movement of Leslie's chest.

“I think I knocked him out.”

“Marvelous,” Boz cried. “Then let us sally forth into—”

“Sewage,” John completed. He heard Boz gag.

Leslie's key chain had ricocheted into a corner when Leslie went down. It took but a moment for John to release a rather bedraggled Boz. Along with his piratical black eye, Boz was sporting a gash in his knee and a crop of tight braids.

“What did you do to your hair?”

Boz sheepishly tugged on a braid. “I had some time on my hands.”

“Let's go!”

Off they sprinted down the corridor, diving around a spiral staircase and through a dingy door. There was no time to waste—John could hear the thunk of more boots coming down the stairs.

Round a corner they hurtled, picking up speed on the straightaway. They were going so fast that they almost missed the access door to the sewage pipe. It was only the foul smell that alerted John.

“Wait!” he said, skiddering to a halt and feeling Boz smash into his back. “Look up there!” He pointed to the cast metal door in the side of the wall.

“My dear boy,” Boz said, “you cannot truly expect me to descend by these means.”

“We don't have much choice,” John said, listening to the raised voices through the walls. “We're either dead roses or live stinkbugs.”

Boz grinned. “What a wonderful turn of phrase—I find it immensely flattering that you are inheriting my oracular tendencies.”

“Boz! Would you get in the pipe?”

“Of course, of course,” Boz said, opening the door and gasping at the odor. John practically had to push him into the funnel as the footsteps grew louder and
louder. After inserting one leg, Boz paused, swiveling his neck to look at John. “Did it ever occur to you that we spend far too much time with poop?”

“Go!”

Boz went, his lips clamped firmly together and his nose held delicately between his thumb and forefinger. John followed, but only in the nick of the moment. For right as he was going down, he felt someone grip his collar. With no time to think, he raised his hands and allowed his weight to pull him out of his shirt. Down he went, down into the dark.

R
ICOCHETING 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!”