The Middle of Somewhere (22 page)

“Maybe he smells—” Pop suggested.

“The cannon!” I gasped. “What if
Gee
is
in
the cannon?”

Paul was speaking again, a ladies-and-gentlemen-hold-on-to-your-hats kind of announcement, but Leo
was raising such a fuss now that attention in our neighborhood was going to him. Paul began glancing our way in annoyance.

“Pop!” I said. “What if Leo—?”

Pop said quickly, “Let the dog go, Howard. Let him go.”

The dog went, trailing his leash, straight into the arena.

Everything stopped: even the weather seemed to hold its breath as Leo churned up the sawdust, pelted right by the platform with the cannon, and skidded to a stop at the bottom of the tower. Then he raised his head, and out of his throat came the truest, loudest, most honest-to-dog
barking
I've ever heard.

I started to duck under the rail, but Pop put a hand on my shoulder to stop me. I could feel the hand shaking. “My job,” he said. Then he walked down to an opening in the barrier and right out into the arena like the lone sheriff of Dodge. A bolt of lightning cracked over our heads, and the thunder rumbled.

There were suddenly two people on the cannon platform, Paul and another guy in a black skintight outfit— his brother. They were having an agitated conversation. “Where did Tim come from?” I whispered.

“From inside the cannon,” Howard whispered back— even though there was no need to keep it down, with conversations starting to buzz all around us. “I saw him crawl out the other end.”

Pop had reached the foot of the tower, where Leo was still exercising his lungs and two fair officials were trying to pull him away. Pop exchanged a few words with them,
and they stepped aside as he started to climb the steel ladder. I wasn't sure how far up he could make himself go— especially with a couple of fractured ribs—but I noticed he didn't look down. A couple of feet from the top, he paused, and I could hear the tiniest scratch of his voice, calling Gee's name. I stepped out into the arena, and Howard followed me.
Gee's got to be there
, I thought.
Please let him be there
. Another blast of wind shook the stands, throwing cold rain in my face.

The crowd murmured at a movement on the top of the tower: a spot of red that turned into a little boy's T-shirt. “Hey, look!” Howard said beside me.

Suddenly unable to speak—or look—I had to turn around and hug him hard, which surprised him so much he didn't dare say anything more.

After a minute, Gee crawled slowly over the edge of the tower platform, turned around, and clung to Pop's neck. With his left arm around him, Pop began the climb down, one step at a time.

Before things get too sticky around here, I'd better say that Cannonball Paul was
really
ticked off. When Pop finally set foot on solid ground again, Paul was right there, and by the time Howard and I ran up, he was launched. His point was hard to dispute. We'd ruined his only chance for an exhibition shoot—now that the rain was pelting down and the stands were clearing out fast.

But did he expect Pop to just wait calmly for a dummy to fly over the tower before checking to see if Gee was there? Tim, who arrived about the same time Howard and I did, took our side. “Come on, man, this is that kid they were looking for. If it was your kid, would you wait? Even for a second?”

All that time my grandfather held on to Gee, and vice versa, while Leo danced for joy. Finally, Pop reached into his shirt pocket for one of his business cards. “Call me— we'll settle up later.” Then he just walked away and left Paul sputtering behind him.

I found myself holding on to my brother's shoe. Gee seemed more-than-usually shook up, but he gave me a small, sickly smile around the thumb in his mouth, so I figured he'd be all right. He'd better, with all the explaining he
had to do. Leo pranced beside us making
woof-woof
sounds, like he had warmed up to the barking business, but Pop snapped at him to shut up, and he mostly did.

“What now, Mr. Hazeltine?” Howard asked. We were all drenched.

Pop looked kind of shook himself, as if he couldn't believe what he had just done in front of all those people. “Guess we can all squeeze back in your truck and hit the road. You can stay with us in the Coachman tonight, if your mother—”

At that minute an “Official Staff” person stopped us. “Sir? Mr. Hazeltine? This is the boy you were looking for, right?” We all nodded. “Great. We'll alert the highway patrol. But in the meantime, here's somebody who wants to see you.”

He gestured toward a lighted picnic shelter where so many people had taken refuge I couldn't tell which one he meant. My eyes passed right over the lady in the wheel-chair, but Gee, squirming around in Pop's arms, shouted, “Mama!”

More stickiness, which I will skip over—use your imagination. It wasn't the highway patrol who alerted our mother, it was Becki the convenience-store clerk, who turned over my card and saw my number on the front. Smart of me, right? Mama then frantically called the Kansas Highway Department, and kept getting transferred, until she finally got hold of Officer Hadley who told her where we were. He also gave her Howard's cell number, but she didn't get an answer when she called it because Howard's battery had run
down. Then she called Lyddie, who came right over, and they set off for Kansas after stopping at the medical supply to rent the wheelchair. They'd just arrived, after six hours on the road. “That's the most gut-wrenching trip I've ever made,” Lyddie said cheerfully. “You'd better not do this again, Gee.”

Gee, curled up like a rock in Mama's lap, still wasn't talking.

The rain settled into a steady patter and most of the fair-goers under the shelter decided to call it a night. With the additions to our party, and Mama, for one, at the end of her endurance, Pop gave up his idea of Howard driving us back to the Coachman. I guessed he was pretty much at the end of his endurance, too, though he wouldn't admit it. So the adults among us decided to rent a motel room—but since Pop was paying for it, we only rented one.

Fortunately, it was a suite, with a separate bedroom and a foldout sofa. Pop took the sofa, and Howard took the floor. Gee started out with Pop, but he's a very squirmy sleeper, which is why he ended up on the floor, too. Mama and Lyddie got the queen-size bed, and I sacked out with some pillows on the recliner.

But before that, we had to order pizza and deprogram after a very packed day: the same day, remember, that began with Pop installing an alternator in the desolate wilderness of the Chalk Pyramids. Between then and now, we'd been shuffled and reshuffled and wrung through the wringer of human emotion, all because of our smallest and youngest person. Who finally talked.

Just like I suspected, he'd stowed away on the
Cannonball trailer back at the truck plaza—after running almost smack-dab into it when he turned the corner of the full-service restaurant. Luck was with him, if you want to call it that, because the side door was unlocked. Once he was inside, he was so overwhelmed to be among Cannon-ball Paul's stuff, including that silver suit spread across one of the beds, that he didn't start having second thoughts about the wisdom of this plan until someone locked the door from outside and second thoughts wouldn't have done any good anyway.

Once they were on the highway and rolling like gang-busters, Gee panicked and pounded on the door, to no avail. After he realized how unavailing panic was, he did something unusual: he sat down and thought about his situation. If he turned himself in now, Pop would be furious and not only would Gee never see Cannonball Paul, he might never see Pop again. So he decided to be calm, enjoy the ride, and call home as soon as he had a chance so people could stop worrying.

It wasn't until they reached the campground that he came up with the second part of the plan. After the truck had parked and Gee realized where they were, he hid himself in one of the storage bins. When the brothers came in for lunch, he overheard bits and pieces of the conversation and learned about the exhibition shoot. But didn't catch the part about a dummy being shot, not Paul. So at the first opportunity, Gee slipped out of the trailer and hiked across the field to the fairground, slipping in without much trouble because he's a champion slipper.

That's why the patrolmen didn't find him in Paul's
trailer—he wasn't there. He was touring the fair, scrounging bits of food that people had left on their plates (“Oh, Gee,” Mama sighed) and wishing he had enough money for the Scrambler—all with no idea that every gas-station attendant and convenience-store clerk and law-enforcement officer in Kansas was looking for him. He did use the dollar in his pocket to call home—nice thought, but bad timing because Mama had already left with Lyddie.

After scoping out the arena where the shoot was going to be, he decided to get in place well ahead of time—and what better place than the tower Paul would be flying over? He caught the last of a livestock show, then waited through the cleanup. After the maintenance people were gone, he darted out and scurried up the side of the tower, praying nobody would see him, because the place was never entirely empty.

“But, Gee,” I interrupted, “didn't you learn
anything
from Big Brutus?”

“Uh-huh.” He was bouncing up and down on the sofa. “I knew I'd have a hard time getting down. But if I just stood up and yelled loud enough after the shoot, somebody'd come and get me.”

Not bad, I thought, for Gee. But the thunder and lightning he didn't count on, so all the time Paul was going through his opening spiel, Gee was huddled on top of the tower trying to keep from hollering for help (“Poor baby,” murmured Lyddie). Then he heard a dog bark, and the rest is history.

In the silence that followed his story, I listened to the
steady patter of rain outside and thought about what Gee had done. Granted, the whole idea wasn't very smart. But he'd shown a never-before-seen ability to plan and carry out a short-term goal. Pop must have been thinking the same thing, because he finally said, “Don't ever let anybody tell you you're stupid, Gee.”

My brother blinked in surprise. “I don't. I usually pop 'em one.”

It's hard enough living in a house with three people and one bathroom, but imagine the traffic jam the next morning with six. Mama stayed out of it, and Gee slept in, but the rest of us were up and stirring by seven. Pop and Howard were going back to the truck stop to get the RV, and Lyddie decided to go with them—to “keep Jack company on the way back” was the way she put it. Looked like Jack had won another middle-aged lady's heart.

I got up, too, mostly to tell Howard good-bye. “I hope you smooth things over with your parents,” I said as we stood by his pickup, waiting for the adults to come out.

“Not a problem. They can't do without me.” He smiled, and all of a sudden things got awkward. “Think you might come back sometime? Even though you don't like Kansas very much?”

“Who said I didn't like Kansas?” The more I saw, the more I liked: soaring sky, wide plains, the unexpectedness of Big Brutus and the Chalk Pyramids and the World's Largest Hand-Dug Well, which I now wanted to see. The state might look flat and uninteresting, but all kinds of cool things hunkered down waiting to be found. “I
love
Kansas.”

He looked kind of embarrassed, as if I'd said I loved
him
. So I decided to embarrass him a little more, and gave him a great big hug. “By the way, thanks for everything. You're my hero.”

“Right.” He might have squeezed me back before breaking away—hard to tell. “You should see Rock City. It's this field full of huge boulders that look like great big balls of twine. And then there's this
real
ball of twine in Cawker City? Biggest in the world.” He bent down to scratch Leo's ears. “Be good, big guy. And if they decide they can't keep you, come on back.”

Pop offered to drive the pickup, but Howard said he could manage. I guess he couldn't wait to charge onto the interstate again. When he pulled out, with Pop and Lyddie squeezed into the cab, I yelled, “Call me sometime!” then stood on the curb and waved until that blue-and-white pickup was all the way out of sight.

After that, I curled up in bed with Mama and we just talked. It's not often we get to do that, with her work and all the demands of home—not to mention the demands of Gee. But he was still sacked out on the living room floor, and in the stillness of the morning we talked and talked, and I told her everything I could remember about the trip, even the scary parts. She laughed, she cried, she exclaimed, “Oh no!”

Finally, she asked, “So what do you think? Are you glad you went? Did you get what you were hoping for?”

My mixed feelings from yesterday came back to me— when I was furious with Pop and furious with Gee, kind of homesick but at the same time not ready to go back. “Glad
I went, for sure,” was my final answer. “Whether I got what I was hoping for …”