Cuphead in Carnival Chaos by Ron Bates

Author:Ron Bates [Bates, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2020-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

All right, where’s Mugman?” Cuphead demanded.

Cala Maria gave a bored sigh. “Same place he’s been the past half hour.”

She pointed into the air.

Cuphead looked up. There was Mugman, riding in a tiny airplane twirling round and round on a chain. He wore a smile that, if anything, was bigger than his face.

“The kiddie planes?”

“He won’t get off,” Cala Maria said.

It was true. At first, Mugman had been completely under her power. He’d bought her candied crabapples, corny crunchies, butter kabobs, beans-on-a-biscuit, pickle sickles, and lots of other tomfoodery. But all that changed when he spotted the airplane ride.

“It was like… I didn’t even exist anymore,” she said.

Cuphead understood completely. Mugman had always been crazy about flying (he’d once spent a week in a nest of baby birds, hoping the family would adopt him). But this was taking it too far. It was bad enough he’d come to the carnival, but to end up spinning around on a ride meant for babies—well, that was just embarrassing.

“Mugman!” he called out.

Mugman looked down from the tiny aircraft.

“Oh! Hi, Cuphead!” he sang. “Look at me! Look at me! I’m flying!”

Cuphead rolled his eyes.

“You come down from there right now!”

Ms. Chalice, who had been pulling the last of the cotton candy from underneath her armpits, joined Cuphead and Cala Maria beside the ride. She shook her head.

“Airplanes,” she said. “We should’ve known.”

At last, the ride twirled slower and slower until the planes hung down like pom-poms on a lampshade. Mugman crawled out of the cockpit.

“Hello, Ms. Chalice. Have you met Cala Maria?” he asked. “We’ve been seeing the carnival.”

Seeing the carnival? Seeing the carnival? Cuphead’s face turned pink, then red, then purplish mulberry. Finally, a burst of steam blew out of his straw.

“You’re unbelievable!” he snapped. “Do you realize we’ve been looking everywhere for you? We’ve only got an hour until Elder Kettle’s birthday party, we still don’t have a present, and here you were spending good money on kiddie rides!”

“Oh, not just on rides Cuphead,” said Mugman. “Cala Maria won me this.”

He held up a small tin monkey—the worst prize in the entire carnival. It looked like something that might come out of a gumball machine if you weren’t lucky enough to get something more valuable, such as a gumball.

“I told him I’d win him a stuffed animal, but he wanted that instead,” said Cala Maria.

Ms. Chalice looked confused.

“What are you going to do with a tin monkey?” she asked.

“Put it with these,” said Mugman, and he held up a long chain of little tin monkeys linked by their arms. “Look, they’re holding hands.”

He couldn’t have been more pleased. Cala Maria had seen enough.

“Well, it’s been fun, but I have to be going now,” she said. “Oh, I almost forgot. You said if I won you the monkey, you’d buy me a souvenir postcard, remember?”

She pressed Mugman’s nose with her finger. His eyes immediately flashed the word sale, a bell rang like on a cash register, and his tongue popped out like a drawer. There was a dollar on it.

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