Dunc's Halloween by Gary Paulsen Page A

liked to walk Scruff.”
    â€œShe likes me not liking to walk Scruff more.” Amy was Amos’s older sister. She felt about Amos the same way most people feel about foot fungus, and she worked hard to find names for him that included the word
butt
. Like
butthead, buttface, buttwad
. Her favorite was
buttbrain
, and she once told Amos that if she had nuclear capabilities, his room would be vaporized.
    â€œAnyway,” Amos continued, “we were about two blocks from our house. Exactly six hundred and thirty-seven feet from Melissa’s front walk—I’ve measured it from every angle within a half mile—when I heard a phone ring. It was Melissa’s ring. You know, the one ring followed right away by that all-important second ring?”
    Dunc nodded. Amos was in love with Melissa.He swore that Melissa’s ring was different from everybody else’s. Dunc had given up arguing with him about it a long time ago. It didn’t pay. Melissa spent almost all of every waking moment not thinking of Amos. As a matter of fact, she did not know Amos at all.
    â€œThere was a repairman on the top of the pole in front of Herb and Judy’s corner grocery with a phone in his hand. I started up after him as fast as I could—you have to answer before that second ring or you’ll lose them—and I forgot that I was still holding Scruff’s leash. He came up after me, whining and choking and growling. Halfway up the pole, I let go of the leash so he wouldn’t strangle.”
    â€œThat was nice. Instead of hanging him, you splattered him on the concrete.”
    â€œNo. He grabbed my pant leg. My belt gave out, and my pants worked like a parachute as he dropped to the ground.” Amos shrugged, remembering. “It wasn’t Scruff that was the problem—it was the telephone man.”
    â€œWhat happened to him?”
    â€œHe saw me scrambling up the pole, and just because I was screaming with my pants off, he thought I was crazy. Some people are such poor judges of character.”
    Dunc waited. “And?”
    â€œHe climbed to the top of the pole to get away from me and tried to balance there.”
    â€œTried?”
    â€œWhen I reached for the phone, he fell one way and I fell the other. I landed in the Johnsons’ compost pile across the street. He fell through the awning of Herb and Judy’s, right into the watermelon stand. He goes into surgery tomorrow to get the seeds removed from his ears. They’re sprouting.”
    â€œPoor guy.”
    â€œWhat about me? I never did get to talk to Melissa, and I’ll be spitting compost until I die. What do they put in that stuff, anyway?”
    It comes from horses
, Dunc thought, then he shook his head. It was better that Amos didn’t know.
    Dunc studied the map. The red line ran everywhere. It would have been much easierto highlight the places they
weren’t
going to go.
    â€œMelissa probably wanted to find out what I’m wearing to the Halloween party tomorrow night. She’ll want to recognize me.”
    â€œRight.”
And the moon
, Dunc thought,
rides on the back of a large turtle
.
    A sudden long, lonely howl cut the night.
    â€œWhat was that?” Dunc asked, shivering.
    â€œI’m not sure I want to know.” Amos looked—and tried not to look at the same time—around them on the dark street.
    â€œIt sounded like a dog. Sort of.” Amos shrugged.
    â€œA dog about as big as a Chevrolet, maybe.” Dunc shook his head. “I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t a dog.” He had been kneeling and he stood up. “Right. Let’s go home.”
    â€œHome? What about the rest of the route?”
    â€œForget about the rest of the route.”
    â€œBut what about the candy?”
    â€œAmos, anything that can howl like that will think
we’re
candy. Let’s go home.”
    Amos began to fold the map, then shook his head.