The Middle of Somewhere (21 page)

By the time we got to the fairgrounds, it was almost five o'clock and the fair was in full swing. “Where's the campground?” Pop asked the first orange-vested parking attendant we met, and the next, and the next. Being volunteers from the local 4-H or whatever, none of them knew. Howard had to drive all the way to the gate before we found a guy with OFFICIAL STAFF on his cap. The smell of barbecue and corn dogs hit with gale force, reminding us that we were starving, but nobody suggested we stop for a snack.

Following Mr. Official Staff's directions, Howard drove halfway around the fairground and took a side road that dipped into gullies and made our teeth rattle. Soon we found ourselves in familiar territory—a loop of narrow asphalt road surrounding a shower house, toilets, and drinking fountains—but instead of retired couples with motor homes, these campers hauled huge livestock trailers and trucks with logos on the doors. “‘Happy Times Carnivals,’” Howard read under his breath as he drove slowly past. “ ‘Angus Farms … Eat It and Weep Bloomin’ Onions?'”

“Over there!” I pointed at the spot on the farthest end of the loop, where a very familiar white trailer was parked under a spreading oak tree.

The pickup coughed as we pulled up, motor racing a
little when Howard turned it off. Pop opened the cab door and eased himself out. “Let me handle this.” We watched him limp up to the trailer and knock on the side door, then wait. And knock and wait again.

I got out and let down the tailgate for Leo, who hit the ground and headed straight for the trailer as though on the scent. But once he reached it, he seemed confused, turning circles and trotting from one end to the other, whining.

“Has this dog ever been good for anything?” Pop said, knocking for the third time. I could have reminded him how Leo found him in a ditch that very day, but at the moment the dog wasn't scoring any points with me, either.

“Hey there!” came a voice from the road. “Are you-all looking for Cannonball Paul?”

We turned as one, to see a short white-haired lady in pink polyester slacks and a smock. She went on, “He left a little while ago in his truck. I saw him while I was on my evening walk.”

Pop lowered his knuckles, and I asked her, “Do you have any idea where he went?”

“None in the world,” she said cheerily. As she came closer, I could see that the pattern on her smock was all onions—the bloomin'-onion lady, maybe. “Are you related to that little boy who's lost?”

Wow—Gee was famous. Pop's expression turned grim as he nodded.

The onion lady nodded back sympathetically. “Paul couldn't have had anything to do with that—he's a real nice young man. But don't worry. Those state troopers are on
the job. They spent two hours here this afternoon—why, the whole place was in an uproar.”

“When will Paul be back?” I broke in, before she could describe the uproar.

“Now, now, I'm not his appointment secretary. Here comes his brother—why don't you ask him?”

That gave us all a start; Paul had a brother? Somehow I'd gotten the idea, maybe because of all the Captain America-style pictures, that human cannonballing was a solitary occupation. The onion lady pointed down the road, where a young guy in shorts and sneakers and nothing else jogged toward us. He was all shiny with sweat, which told me he'd been running awhile, but when we called to him he just waved a hand and chugged on by.

“Hey!” Pop shouted again, but the runner either didn't hear or didn't want to break stride. Pop looked at me, and I took the hint.

The last year we were in Lee's Summit I went out for track, but by now I was way out of shape. Catching up with him was easy, but this conversation would have to be quick because my endurance stank. “Hi, Mr.—uh—I'm Veronica Sparks.”

“Hi,” he said, on the beat. “Tim.”

“Why I'm here.” I was already starting to pant. “It's my brother who's lost.”

“Right. We don't have him.”

“Not on purpose, but—I mean—he's got this huge crush on your brother—I mean, on the whole cannonball thing—and—”

“Regulate,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Your breathing. Three beats in, three out.” He demonstrated, drawing long, healthy breaths. “Or three in, two out if you need more oxygen.” However long he'd been running, he didn't even seem winded. Not a big guy, but he had an upper body that wouldn't quit.

“Okay.” I breathed in for three beats. “My brother—is hiding around here—somewhere. That is—I'm almost positive. We need to ask Paul—if he'd let our dog—sniff around the trailer.”

“Looks like that's what he was doing,” Tim remarked.

“I mean—inside the trailer.” Two in! Two out!

“Sorry. We don't let anybody in there.”

“Not even—the highway patrol?”

“Oh yeah. Paul was pretty ticked about that.”

“When's he coming back?” I gasped.

“In time for the exhibition shoot, around seven.”

“What's—an exhibition—?”

“Kind of a teaser. We load the cannon with a dummy and shoot it over a power line. Or something. It flops around like a wild man. People who weren't planning to come to the fair on Friday decide they have to come anyway and see the real shoot. Fair committee likes it—sells more tickets.”

“Ah—” I was about to drop dead. “Could we talk to Paul—like—after—the shoot?”

“Sure.” He reached into his shorts pocket and pulled out a wallet. Never breaking stride, he opened it and took out some slips of blue paper. “Passes. We always get 'em. Never have anybody to give 'em to.”

“Thanks.” That was my last word. I fell back, and Tim waved before swerving onto a path that led into the trees.

I stumbled back to the trailer, where Howard and Pop were looking for traces of Gee. Leo was sniffing busily but not ecstatically, as I was sure he would have if he'd picked up a real scent.

“He's not here,” Pop told me grimly. “We've been calling his name and nobody answers.”

Howard nodded toward Leo. “The dog won't give up, though. I think maybe Gee
was
here. Scent's not strong enough to get Leo excited? But he's sure interested.”

Breathily I told them what Tim said about the exhibition shoot. Howard perked up. “Hey maybe Gee'll show up for that.”

Pop snorted. “Right. They'll be ready to shoot
him
out of the cannon by then.”

An idea struck me. “What if he's at the fair right now?” They looked at me, Pop skeptically, Howard with that gaze that was so wide open a monster truck could drive through it. “Look,” I went on, “all he wants is to see Paul fly. What if he heard something about the exhibition shoot—maybe without understanding it was a dummy going to get shot, not Paul—and decided to hide out long enough to see that. Then after, he could just walk up to the nearest official-looking person and turn himself in and go home. He'd be ready to go home by then. It's not like he's running away— he's running
to
.”

Pop frowned. “Could he …
concentrate
long enough to carry out a plan like that?”

Good question. “I don't know.”

“Well,” Howard suggested after a pause. “We ought to mosey over and see what we can see. And maybe get a barbecue sandwich.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, remembering. “It won't cost us anything, Pop—Paul's brother gave me some passes.”

Pop just snorted. “I'd pay our way in. What kind of tightwad do you think I am?”

He did shell out for the barbecue, even for Howard, who was low on funds. Howard used the dinner break to call home—which he had to do from a pay phone because he'd let the battery on his cell run down. From his side of the conversation, it seemed his mother was having some trust issues. “Uh-huh, Hays … Sorry, I thought I told you that. … Well sure, the interstate's the fastest way to get there. … I know my license is restricted, but this was an emergency… No, it wasn't a problem…. Yes, ma'am, I know, but… but… I can't come home now because—”

Eventually Pop took the phone and convinced her that Howard really was helping out friends in need—especially since he was the only transportation we had now. After promising that he'd take care of their boy, Pop hung up the receiver and said, “Let's split up. Ronnie, you can search the midway. I'll take the exhibit halls and Howard the livestock barns. Meet back here at six-thirty, and if none of us have Gee, we'll find out where this exhibition shoot is.”

Howard took Leo, mainly because he was the only one the dog would willingly follow. I started down the midway feeling reenergized from the food, but after almost an hour of peering behind carnival rides and under ticket booths
and getting yelled at by barkers wanting me to try my luck, I was exhausted all over again. A tall dark bank of clouds had piled up while I wasn't looking. The wind picked up, turning chilly. I shivered, wondering if the exhibition shoot would get rained out—and then what?

All of a sudden I was back where I'd started, at the midway entrance. Exhausted, I dropped down on a bench beside an old man in overalls and a snap-brim hat who seemed to be taking a nap. The sky had grown so dark that the midway lights had turned on. Carnival booths were flashing a gaudy, steady
toc-toc-toc
that almost hypnotized me. Announcements from the speakers, pops from the shooting gallery, and tunes from three different rides were fighting for my attention; the competition was giving me a headache. The Tilt-A-Whirl made me dizzy, the Ferris wheel made me woozy, and the pirate ship made me seasick. The barbecue wasn't setting too well on my stomach, either.

A hard gust of wind blasted us with sudden cold. People stopped and looked up as a slow roll of thunder muttered across the sky. Somebody said they'd heard a tornado watch was in effect. Any minute now, the midway would shut down, and Paul would call off the exhibition and Gee might stay in hiding and who knew what would happen then?

I tried to drum up a pep talk from Kent Clark about silver linings, but the wind suddenly balled itself up and hit the fairgrounds with a punch that sent food wrappers and silly hats flying—not to mention all those catchy phrases
about supersizing your life. “Whoooo!” everybody said, looking up again.

The man beside me on the bench reached up to make sure his hat was still on his head. Then he kind of shook himself, like a dog waking up, and looked over at me. “The wind bloweth where it wills, and thou canst not tell whence it comes nor whither it goes.” He nodded at me with a little smile, then stood up, brushed off his overalls, and strolled away.

Whatever
, I thought. Then I noticed it was twenty after six.

Pop was already waiting, Gee-less, at our meeting spot, and the look on his face when I trotted up, also Gee-less, told me he was pretty worried. Maybe even more than I was. “I don't know what to do after this,” he told me, echoing my own thoughts. Even though it was partly the wind that made his voice sound funny, there was something else in it, too.

Without thinking, I took his hand and squeezed it, and his other hand kind of found my shoulder and pulled it toward him, and soon we were clinging together like orphans in a storm.

That's how we were when Howard turned up. “Hey! Cannonball Paul's in the livestock arena right now! The shoot got moved up 'cause of the weather—come on!” A voice crackled over the loudspeaker, announcing the time change.

We joined a stream of people headed that way. “Where's Leo?” I hollered, to be heard over the noise.

“He's under the stands. Tied him up. So I could come get ya'll? He'll stay put—all the people make him nervous.”

Sure enough, when we got to the arena that scaredy-cat canine was cowering under the stands, trying to ignore the dog-lovers who stuck their hands under his nose. The speakers were playing some big, brassy military number, with cannons firing in the percussion section. Or that's what it sounded like.

The scene in the arena burst like a firecracker on me.

On one end was a net, like a soccer goal, only lots bigger. Smack in the middle stood a tower, about sixty feet high, probably made for bungee jumping or rappelling. The tower was the tallest thing in sight, but all eyes were elsewhere: the big square platform draped with red, white, and blue. On the platform was a huge tube, so white under the lights it was blinding—the famous cannon, of course. And in front of the cannon stood Cannonball Paul himself.

We'd come here to see him. I'd been expecting to see him, just like this or pretty close, and still he took my breath away. After staring at pictures of him all week, it was like a fairy tale coming true. In that silver suit—and yes, with the gold helmet tucked under his arm—he made my eyes hurt.

The cannon looked long enough to hold him, but not wide enough. One end of it was punched with regular round holes—for exhaust, I guess—and the other end pointed up toward the tower. Paul was pointing, too, and talking, but the words that came out of the loudspeakers were buzzy and the background music smudged them up
even more: something about how he designed the cannon with a secret process that was known to him alone. Tonight we would see the stupendous effect, but if we came back tomorrow at one p.m., it wouldn't be a dummy flying over the tower to land in the net, but Paul himself.

Then the music shifted to a long drumroll as he picked up a life-size crash-test dummy and hoisted it to the mouth of the cannon. There, it disappeared—as if the mouth had slurped it right up.

The wind shifted, blowing a puff of cool, damp air in our faces. Thunder rolled slowly across the sky again like a million-pound bowling ball; lightning pulsed behind the clouds that were now directly overhead. “Gee's got to be here somewhere,” I said, tearing my eyes away from Cannonball Paul. “If he's not…” Like Pop, I wouldn't know what to do if Gee wasn't here. It would be like the road disappearing in front of my eyes, dropping into a nightmare of the unknown.

“What's up with Leo?” Howard asked.

The dog had crept out from under the stands and was straining at the leash. His nose twitched, tasting the wind now blowing our way. Noises started coming from his throat: first whimpers, then whines. Howard untied the leash and held it as Leo lunged to the bar that separated the stands from the sawdust. “I wonder if—” he began.