XVII—A SIDE SHOW
Pretty soon you’ll see why I named this chapter “A Side Show.” When we got down to the road all those show people were sitting around on the rocks talking and laughing and telling Westy lots of funny adventures that they had had. Oh, boy, if I wasn’t a boy scout I’d like to be in an Uncle Tom’s Cabin Company, that’s one sure thing. That’s my ambition. Jails and dungeons may be all right, I’m not saying, but anyway, I’d like to be in a show—especially one that gets stranded. They said that they could see the signal away up on the mountain, and the man that had to beat Uncle Tom, he was an awful nice man, he said he could read most all of it because he used to be a telegraph operator. But he said he liked beating Uncle Tom better. Uncle Tom said he didn’t mind being beaten once a day but he didn’t like matinees.
Now I’m going to tell you about how we all got separated together—that’s what Pee-wee said. When we were all ready to go, Harry couldn’t start the engine of the van. He said, “Brent, I wish you’d take a squint at this motor; it heats up and the water boils over.”
Brent said, “I think the timer must have been set by Pee-wee’s watch.” Pretty soon he said he guessed it was just a short circuit.
“Anyway, that’s better than a long one,” Pee-wee shouted.
Pretty soon Brent said he thought the coil was running the battery down. Harry said he didn’t blame the coil.
Then Brent said there was a leak of current somewhere, but that he couldn’t trace it. I said, “Let one of Eliza’s bloodhounds try; maybe he can trace it.” He said anyway the battery was discharging; believe me, if I’d had my way I’d have discharged the whole engine.
After a while Brent got it started but he said it wasn’t running right and he guessed he’d have to get two new plugs. So then we looked at our map to find out if there was a village anywhere near along that road where there might be a garage. Because Brent said there ought to be more grease in the differential, too. But mostly, he said, one of the plugs wouldn’t fire the charge.
Westy said, “If the plug won’t fire it, why don’t you get the battery to discharge it?”
Now when we looked at our map we found that about half a mile east of that mountain a road branched off from the road we were on and went through a place named Barrow’s Homestead. It didn’t bother to stop at Barrow’s Homestead, that road didn’t, but it went on and formed a, you know, a what-do-you-call-it, a junction, with the other road three or four miles farther along. It was just a kind of a loop, that road was, so as to take in Barrow’s Homestead. Only that road was pretty rough.