“You’re smiling. Something funny?”
“Just that I’m not ten anymore, Dad.” Actually what made me smile was wondering if there was cell service in the well of the worlds. I was guessing Verizon hadn’t opened that territory yet.
“Sure there’s nothing I can help you with?”
Tell him, I thought.
“Nope. All good. What’s a bonding exercise?”
“I’ll show you. Get up.” He got up himself. “Now stand behind me.”
I put my book on the chair and stood behind him.
“We’re supposed to trust the team,” Dad said. “Not that I actually have one, being a one-man show, but I can be a good sport. We climb trees with a—”
“Trees? You climb trees?”
“On many Overland retreats, sometimes not completely sober. With a spotter. We’ll all do it, except for Willy Deegan, who has a pacemaker.”
“Jesus, Dad.”
“And we do this.” He fell backward with no warning, his hands loosely clasped at his waist. I wasn’t playing sports anymore, but there was nothing wrong with my reflexes. I caught him easily, and looking at him upside-down, I saw his eyes were closed and he was smiling. I loved him for that smile. I gave him a heave and he went back on his feet. Radar was looking at us. She made a rowf sound and put her head back down.
“I’ll have to trust whoever’s behind me—it’ll probably be Norm Richards—but I trust you more, Charlie. We’re bonded.”
“That’s great, Dad, but don’t fall out of any trees. Taking care of one guy who took a fall is my limit. Now can I read my book?”
“Go for it.” He picked it up off the chair and looked at the cover. “One of Mr. Bowditch’s?”
“Yes.”
“I read it when I was your age, maybe even younger. Crazy carnival comes to a little town right here in Illinois, as I remember.”
“Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show.”
“All I remember is that there was a blind fortune-teller. She was creepy.”
“Yeah, the Dust Witch is mondo-creepy, all right.”
“You read, I’ll watch television and rot my brain. Just don’t give yourself any nightmares.”
If I sleep at all, I thought.
2
Although Radar could probably make it up the stairs with the new medicine onboard, I went into the little guestroom and she padded after me, already perfectly at home in our place. I undressed to my shorts, propped the extra pillow under my head, and kept reading. On the tape, Mr. Bowditch said there was a huge sundial in a plaza behind a palace, and it turned like the carousel in the Bradbury novel, and it was the secret of his longevity. The sundial had allowed him to come back to Sentry’s Rest young enough to impersonate his own son. In Something Wicked, the carousel could make you older when it went forward, but younger when it was in reverse. And Mr. Bowditch had said something else, or started to. I’m sure he… never mind.
Had he started to say that Ray Bradbury had gotten his idea for the carousel from the sundial in that other world? The idea of gaining or losing years on a merry-go-round was crazy, but the idea that a respected American author had visited that other place was even crazier. Wasn’t it? Bradbury had spent his early childhood in Waukegan, which was less than seventy miles from Sentry’s Rest. A brief visit to Bradbury’s Wikipedia entry convinced me that that was just a coincidence, unless he had visited the other world as a little kid. If there was another world. Anyway, by the time he was my age he was living in Los Angeles.
I’m sure he… never mind.
I marked my place and put the book on the floor. I was pretty sure Will and Jim would survive their adventures, but I guessed they would never be so innocent again. Kids shouldn’t have to face terrible things. I knew that from experience.
I got up and pulled on my pants. “Come on, Rades. You need to go out and water the grass.”
She came willingly enough, not limping at all. She’d be lame again in the morning, but after a little exercise, her locomotion would smooth out. At least it had so far. That wouldn’t last much longer, if the vet’s assistant had been right. She’d said she’d be surprised if Radar made it to Halloween, and that was only five weeks away. A little less, actually.
Rades sniffed around on the lawn. I looked up at the stars, picking out Orion’s Belt and the Big Dipper, that old standby. According to Mr. Bowditch, there were two moons in that other world, and constellations the astronomers of earth had never seen.