Culpepper's Cannon (6 page)

He was so cold when he reached the plaza, his knees would hardly bend. He lurched forward like Frankenstein in an old horror movie. The plaza was alive with people, people everywhere, running about as if there were a war going on, and it took him a moment to remember that there was.

“The note,” he said to himself, “I've got to find the note.” He began to look around. There were so many people there, he couldn't see anything but legs and bodies and faces. And cannons. There were three
long lines of cannons, more than fifty of them.

Amos worked his way through the people over to the south side of the plaza and collapsed against a wall in the southwest corner. It was impossible. He was going to have to stay, locked in the past, if he didn't find the note, and he couldn't think, couldn't think.…

He looked at all the people and all the cannons and buried his head in his hands in frustration. It was hopeless. There was no possible way to find a single sheet of notebook paper in all this chaos.

He was stuck in the Civil War until the day he died—which, if Sergeant Bremish had his way, would not be very far away and would not be very pleasant. He heard swearing and looked up to see Sergeant Bremish nearby.
I should surrender
, he thought—
it would be better to die right away than prolong the suffering
. He was so cold, his teeth felt brittle. What was the difference—a world without video games and hamburgers was not a world worth living in.

The people began to move out of the way as team after team of horses were brought in to haul away the cannons. Amos watched the men hook up the horses' harnesses to the cannon frames and drive them away, bumping and clattering and clanking. Cannon after cannon left the plaza, and soon the large yard began to look empty.

Two men were hooking up a cannon right in front of him. He listened as they spoke.

“Why are we moving everything out?” one of them asked. He was only a boy, just a few years older than Amos.

“We have to get them out of here,” an older man said. “The Yankees have their own armored ship. The
Virginia
can't get past it.”

“So?”

“So it looks like the blockade is going to hold. We have to get these cannons to General Lee before everything collapses and the Yankees get hold of them.”

One of the horses in the team, a big mottled gray, whinnied loudly and tried to jump
out of its harness. “Whoa, girl,” the man said.

“What's spooking her?” the boy asked.

“I don't know. Must be the excitement of it all. Let's get this cannon out of here.” They finished hooking up the harness and motioned to the driver to leave. Amos watched the team as it left. The driver was going through the plaza fast—too fast—and as he rounded a pile of crates, the gray mare almost stepped on the brown spotted dog that was rummaging in the boxes. She spooked and jumped into the air. The cannon careened to the side, and the right wheel bounced up into the crates. There was a sharp crack like thunder as the wooden spokes broke and the wheel snapped in half. The cannon skidded to a halt.

The man and the boy ran across the plaza toward the broken cannon. “We'll just pull it over to the side,” the man shouted. “I'll find a wheelwright to fix it later. Let's get the rest of them out of here.”

Amos sat where he was and watched them working. There was something about
the cannon—something about it, like the parrot, that was very familiar.…

He could swear he had seen that cannon before, somewhere in the past …

Or somewhere in the future.

•
10

Amos was on his feet and running toward the broken cannon before he knew what he was doing. It was the cannon, the courthouse cannon, and the mystery of the note he and Dunc had found in its barrel suddenly made sense to him.

The
D
on the note was short for
Dunc
, and Bremish wasn't after them because they stole something from him—he was after them because he thought they were spies.

And Amos had only one chance. Just one chance to go back through and get home. He
ran toward the cannon, and the men that were working on it, as fast as he could. He had to see the note. He couldn't remember which corner of the plaza the time hole was in, and he couldn't remember the code word. He knew it was g-something. He knew it was g-a-z-something.

The man and the boy were frantically trying to move the cannon to the north side of the plaza, out of the way. They weren't having much luck. The gray mare was still frightened and was pulling in the direction opposite from the way the other horse was trying to go. The boy was trying to calm the mare while the man was pushing against the broken wheel.

“What's going on here?”

Amos froze where he stood. It was Bremish's voice.

“What's going on here?” the voice repeated. Amos saw the sergeant striding across the plaza toward the broken cannon. Bremish hadn't seen him yet.

“The wheel broke,” the boy said. “We're just trying to get the cannon out of the way.”

“Well, put some muscle into it,” Bremish said. He had reached the cannon now, and he motioned the man pushing on the wheel out of the way. With a mighty heave he pushed the cannon against the wall.

“There now,” Bremish said, brushing the dirt off of his hands, “all it takes is a little grit, and you can do wonders. Now get this team unhooked, and get back to the other cannons. I—” He stopped in midsentence. He had turned around and seen Amos standing in the middle of the courtyard.

“You!” Bremish shouted. “Come here!” He started moving toward Amos.

“Come here!” Bremish shouted again. He was getting closer now. Amos tried to calculate if he could work his way around Bremish and reach the cannon. He thought he could until the sergeant pulled a revolver out of his side holster and pointed it at him.
It's time
, Amos thought—
time to run
.

“Stop!” Bremish yelled. “Stop or I'll shoot!”

That's where that line comes from
, Amos thought, his legs pounding. He'd heard that
line in every cop show on television:
Stop or I'll shoot
. Bremish had started it.

Amos didn't listen to him. He barreled toward the northwest corner of the plaza.

There were still enough horses and people milling about that Amos had to do some fancy dodging to reach the corner. When he got there, he stood still for a moment. He couldn't remember the code word. He knew it was g-a-z-something.

“Gazelle!” he shouted. Nothing happened. He looked over his shoulder. Sergeant Bremish was getting closer.

“Gazette!” Nothing happened again.

“Don't move, spy! If you move, I'll shoot!”

“Gaz—gaz …” Amos threw up his hands.
Work, brain, before he shoots us. Come on!
Bremish was almost on him, and he couldn't wait any longer. He started running toward the northeast corner.

Amos heard a shot, and a bullet spanged off the wall beside him. He didn't stop. He ran faster.

“Stop!” Bremish bellowed.

When he reached the northeast corner, he was so out of breath, he almost couldn't
say what he thought might be the code word. “Gazelle!” he whispered breathlessly.

Nothing happened.

“Gazette?”

Nothing happened again. Bremish was almost on him, and he took off for the southeast corner.

“Stop him!” Bremish yelled. “Somebody grab him!”

Amos was dodging around traffic so fast, he lost his sense of direction. When he got to the south side, he realized he was closer to the southwest corner than he was to the southeast, so he took off in that direction, shouting as he went.

“Gazelle!”

Again nothing happened. Amos looked at the corner ahead of him. The brown spotted dog was hiding there, watching him.

“Gazette!”

Nothing happened again. Amos was getting tired now, and his wet clothes were slowing him down. Bremish was so close, Amos could almost feel his breath.

“Gaz … gaz …” He just couldn't think of the word—try as he might, he just
couldn't think of it. He felt Bremish's fingertips brush the back of his neck.

“Gazebo!” he shouted. “The word's
gazebo
!”

An outline of a door appeared on the wall directly in front of him. It glowed brightly with yellow light. The dog sniffed and took a step toward it.

“No!” Amos shouted. The dog looked over its shoulder at him for a second, then took another step. The door was still there, so close, and the dog stuck his nose into it.

“Got you!” Amos felt his collar pull tight across the front of his neck as Bremish grabbed his sweatshirt.
The dog will go through
, he thought—
a dog will come walking out of the dressing room, and I'll be stuck here with Bremish
.

He was almost to the door now. A strangled cry escaped his throat, and as he tried to wriggle loose, he stepped on his shoelaces again. His collar tore free of Bremish's grasp, and he fell forward in a perfect swan dive. The dog saw him flying through the air overhead, and it leaped out of the way.

Amos was engulfed in a world of searing yellow light. He felt dizzy.

When his head cleared, he found himself in a little room. There were mirrors on the walls and sweaters on the floor, and he found himself looking at his own reflection —a dripping wet, soggy Amos with mud in his hair.

He was back.

•
11

He was dizzy for a moment and had to sit down on the floor to keep from falling. As he rested, someone tossed a sweater over the door, and it landed on his head.

“Hey!”

“Amos, is that you?” It was Dunc.

“Yeah, it's me.”

“You made it! What took you so long?”

“What took me so long?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm chased around by a man the size of a small mountain range and almost get
trapped in time, and the first question out of your mouth is what took me so long?”

“Well, yeah. I've been waiting for you.” Another sweater came over the top of the door.

“Hey!”

“What?”

“Will you quit throwing sweaters on me?”

“I have to. Ramone is getting suspicious. He keeps asking what's taking you so long.”

“And what are you telling him?”

“That you haven't found the color you want.”

Amos stood up and shook his head. The dizziness was gone. “Well, I'm done trying on sweaters.” He opened the door, and Dunc came in and shut the door behind him.

“You look terrible,” Dunc said. “How'd you get so wet?”

“It's a long story.”

“It turned out kind of funny, didn't it? I ended up writing the note that sent us back there in the first place.”

“Yeah, hilarious.” He bent over and put his hands on his knees. His back ached.
How did that happen? So did his shoulders. It must have been from falling in the water. And he was still soaked.

“Let's try it again.” Dunc said. “I figured it out. We could never have met. I was a few minutes ahead of you in time, so we could never be in the same place. But if we try it again and go through holding hands, we'll come out in the same time—”

“Are you completely crazy?”

“Just to see if it still works. It only pulsed once when I came back through. How many times did it pulse when you came back?”

“It didn't pulse at all.”

“That's what I thought. It pulses one time less every time someone uses it. It should be all used up now.”

“Well, I don't want to find out.”

“We have to. We have to know if anyone else can go through.”

“Why?”

“What if Bremish heard the code word?”

“You've got a point.” Amos tried to imagine Bremish in the dressing room. With a gun. He took Dunc's hand.

“Give it a try.”

Amos took a deep breath. “Gazelle,” he said.