Amos Gets Famous (5 page)

And a bewildered Rocko instantly became an angered Rocko.

There was Amos standing by Melissa’s door with a vacant smile on his face.

Trained by years of football and violence, Rocko grabbed the only weapon that was available to him and threw it at the burglar with the toilet.

He snaked one huge paw around Amos’s neck, picked him cleanly up off the floor, and threw him at the burglar like a spear.

Amos spiraled once, lined up neatly on the target, and with the force of a bullet he jammed headfirst into the open end of the toilet on the burglar’s shoulder.

The burglar stopped momentarily and tried to pull Amos out of the toilet. When he found that impossible, he changed the load so he could carry Amos more or less straight up and leaped through the open door to Melissa’s room with both the toilet and Amos on his shoulder. All the noise had awakened Melissa just in time to
see the burglar and Amos flying through her room toward the window.

Dunc dodged around Rocko and ran into Melissa’s room just in time to see the burglar dive through the window, still carrying both the toilet and Amos, whose head was still jammed into the toilet.

“What …?” Melissa sat up in the bed.

Dunc paused with his hand on the window. “It’s all right. This is all just a dream.”

“Oh.” Melissa nodded and lay back and closed her eyes just as Rocko barged into the room like an angry rhino. Dunc took one look at Rocko coming, saw death in his eyes, and dived full-length out the window. He landed on the ground just in time to see Amos disappearing into the hedges, his head still jammed in the toilet and the burglar carrying both of them easily.

“Don’t worry, Amos!” Dunc yelled. “I’m coming!”

Which he meant to do, hoped to do, wanted to do—wanted to run and save his friend.

But he took one running step, and his foot came down on the same rake, lying in exactly the same place it had been lying for days, and
the handle came up with the force of a bat, caught him vertically across the forehead, and seemed to make every streetlight in town light up in his brain. He went down like somebody dropping a bag full of sand.

“Amos—” he said, and then he said nothing.

.11

The first thing Amos heard was the sound of gurgling.

A little water—or at least later he hoped it had been water, wished it had been water, convinced himself that it had been water—was still in the toilet and seemed to be sloshing around the top of his head.

He was moving.

For a moment that was all he could realize. He had been unconscious when everything had happened—had had no recollection of even going into Melissa’s house, let alone encountering Rocko, the burglar, or the toilet. He remembered
nothing that happened after the rake hit him.

He heard gurgling, and he was moving in some way he did not understand, and for a few minutes that was enough.

Then it came to him that it was dark. Not just dark from night, but
really
dark. He couldn’t see anything.

Something was stuck on his head.

He tried to reach up and feel the object, but something else kept his arms pinned to his side. No, not something else—some
one
else.

Ah, yes
, he thought.
I’m being carried by somebody. There is something jammed on my head, and I’m being carried by somebody. It all makes perfect sense
.

He fought to bring his memory back, but he could remember nothing after taking a step and the rake handle catching him.

All right
, he thought.
Stick with what you know. I’m being carried by somebody, and there’s something stuck on my head
.

Maybe it’s Dunc
.

“Dunc?” he said, or tried to say. The toilet made it impossible to form words correctly. It came out more like
gunk
. “Dunc?”

He heard the sound of an engine, and then he felt himself thrown into the back of a vehicle, headfirst, with whatever it was still stuck on his head.

“Oh, no, Carley—you’ve done it again.”

It was a man’s voice, low and even, as if the man were working to control being upset.

“This makes the fourth time in four months.”

There was a sound without words, a kind of
ooooh-ooooh
.

I’ve heard that before
, Amos thought.
I’ve heard that sound before. Somewhere—where? Ooooh-ooooh. Oh yes, now I remember
.

The zoo.

The monkey at the zoo. A chimp—what was her name? Kissing Gertie or something.

Again he catalogued what he knew. He was in the back of a vehicle that had started to move with something stuck on his head, and he wasn’t alone—he was with a man and what might be a chimpanzee.

“I just wish you’d stick to your instructions a little less and think for yourself once in a while.”

“Oooohhhh.”

“I don’t care how bad you feel. You were told to get the toilet.”

“Oooohhh, ooohhh.”

“I
know
you got the toilet, but you also got a little extra, didn’t you?”

“Ooohhh.”

“Yes. You grabbed a person
with
the toilet.”

“Ooooooooo.”

“You’d
better
be sorry. And you’d also better be thinking of what we’re going to do with him.”

Correction
, Amos thought.
I’m sitting in a moving vehicle with a man and a monkey, and the man is talking to the monkey. Worse, he is asking the monkey for advice
.

It had to be the burglar.

This thought burned across his thinking. What else could it all have meant?

Correction number two
, he thought.
I’m sitting in a vehicle with the burglar, who has somehow gotten a monkey to carry me away from Melissa’s house with something stuck on my head even though he, the burglar, didn’t want me, and he, the monkey, did want me
.

His brain flopped and stopped thinking.

Too much
, he thought.
Too much thinking
.

He lay back and felt the vehicle turn a corner once, then again.

Amos reached up to feel the object on his head, to see how tight it was, to see if it could be removed. But as soon as he moved his arms, rough-textured hands grabbed his wrists and held them at his sides.

“Don’t you hurt him, Carley—remember the last time and how messy it was when you hurt someone.”

Amos felt the pressure lessen but remain firm.

He wiggled his eyebrows. Whatever had his head was cold, hard, and wet and jammed tightly, but he found that wiggling his eyebrows and forehead seemed to make the object pinch less.

He wiggled more.

It gave more, and he worked his eyebrows and forehead as hard as he could, and finally he felt his head come loose and move slightly out of the hole into which it was jammed.

The vehicle suddenly slowed, turned left, slowed still more, and stopped. The engine died.

“All right, Carley—you carried him in, you carry him out. And for Pete’s sake, keep the toilet
on his head. We don’t want him to see anything.”

Toilet? I’m stuck in a toilet?

The same coarse hands grabbed him by the sides and lifted him gently out of the vehicle, balanced the toilet on his head, and stood him on the ground, still holding his arms.

“Watch out,” the man said to Amos. “We’re going down the outside basement steps. Just move slowly.”

How’d I get stuck in a toilet?

.12

Amos felt the steps in front of his feet, and he let the monkey help him down. Then there was a short flat piece, two steps, and he heard a door open, and then four more steps, and the monkey stopped him.

“Winston, what in heaven’s name are you doing with a boy with a toilet on his head?”

“I’m following your instructions, Mr. Waylon. I went to the library and found the message where you left it. You clearly said to steal a toilet from the same address as before.”

“I most certainly did not.”

“You did.”

“I did not.”

“Here’s the note—read it.”

There was a rustling sound of paper, then a snort from Mr. Waylon. “Clearly, Winston, this is not my handwriting.”

“But—”

“Take him back.”

“What?”

“Take the boy back, right now.
With
the toilet. And keep it on his head.”

“But—”

“No
but’
s. You and Carley get him back to exactly the same place you found him, and you don’t harm a hair on his head.”

Amos had stood quietly all this time. He coughed now to clear his throat, the sound ringing inside the toilet. “Excuse me.”

“What?” Mr. Waylon’s voice snapped.

“Would you mind telling me what’s going on?”

“Yes, I would mind. You don’t need to know anything more than you already know.”

“What am I going to tell them when I get back?”

“Tell them you were hijacked by a maniac who thought he had to steal toilets.”

“What about the monkey?”

“You mean Carley? What about him?”

“How does he figure in all this?”

There was a long pause, and Winston finally sighed. “Why don’t we tell him the truth? As long as he doesn’t see us, what can he do?”

Another silence, then Mr. Waylon also sighed. “For once, I think you might be right. All right, listen—what’s your name?”

“Amos.”

“Listen, Amos. Waylon and Winston are not our real names. We used to work in a lab where they did experiments on cosmetics and medical problems. One day they brought in animals and started to use them for the experiments. One of the animals they brought in was Carley. Carley became a good friend and learned to play chess with us, and he would be a better friend except that he beats us all the time. So—”

Winston cut in. “So one day they came and said they wanted to use Carley for some of the testing and that it would injure Carley, and so we—well, kind of took Carley with us and left.”

“But why do you go around stealing things?”

“We steal only luxury items from people who can afford to do without them.”

“A toilet?”

“Well, that was a mistake. But we’re going to return it.”

Mr. Waylon interrupted. “We use the money to try to help animals around the world who are in the same position as Carley. Well, enough is enough, Winston. It’s time to leave, Amos.” Mr. Waylon grasped Amos’s shoulder and turned him around, aiming him at the door. “Winston and Carley will take you back now. It was nice meeting you.”

Winston and Carley guided Amos back up the steps and into the back of the van. The motor started, and the van moved, and it was in this way that half an hour later, Amos was found by a police officer wandering through the Hansens’ backyard with a toilet on his head mumbling about monkeys and animals and saving Melissa.

“You there,” the police officer called. “Hold it right there—I want to talk to you.”

If Amos had done as the police officer had told him and held it right there, everything would have been all right.

But he didn’t.

He turned toward the sound of the voice and reached up to take the toilet off his head and tell the police officer that he was a hero, that he was bringing back the toilet that had been stolen and that Melissa would probably wind up loving him for bringing the toilet back, or at least maybe like him a little or at the very least remember his name or even just learn his name.

But he got none of it out.

He took one step, just one, toward the police officer.

And stepped on the rake, which was lying exactly in the same position that it had been lying when he stepped on it the first time and the second time and when Dunc had stepped on it.

The rake, waiting like a cobra, waiting patiently in the darkness, came up. With the force of a runaway freight train it hit the toilet at exactly, perfectly the point it needed to drive it back into Amos’s forehead. The blow shattered the toilet into a hundred pieces, ruining any chance Amos had of being a hero. But more important, it took away any remaining thoughts
Amos might have had and blew them into the ionosphere.

When he hit the ground, precisely one second after the blow, his brain was a blank space waiting to be signed.