Chapter 1

Part 1: Clemsy's First Kiss

No one, that I’ve heard , has had as much practice at landing as Clemsy Diggs. Of course, this is because no one, that I’ve heard, has found himself at the mercy of Wizard Newton’s Law of Gravity half as many times as Clemsy had by the time he was ten. This particular moment's misadventure started, not surprisingly, with Randi, one of the town's more attractive young ladies, walking towards the Post Office. Clemsy was up a ladder cleaning the street lamp and replacing the candle and his particularly sensitive radar picked her out from the other pedestrians on the boardwalk before he was consciously aware she was there. So his blood pressure and heart rate had already started increasing when she entered his field of vision.

Sidetrack, tied to the hitching post nearby, raised his head and looked from the one to the other and waited for the fun to begin.

Clemsy was quite aware of his peril. He reached over and grabbed the lamppost firmly while his head swiveled involuntarily to follow Randi's approach. She looked up and assaulted him with the kind of smile that lit up not only her whole face from her eyes to her ears and chin, but bathed everything within ten yards in a radiant glow. Her brown eyes sparkled and one lock of silky brown hair escaped her ponytail to fall across her cheek.

With a hair-flip of her head followed by a lightly tanned hand which tucked the errant lock behind an ear, cardiac arrest and embolism were racing in Clemsy to the finish line.

"Howdy, Clemsy!" she said as she was just about beneath him. Then time slowed down as it usually does just before a catastrophe. Sidetrack looked up at the sound of a yell, noticed the wagon up the street list to the side as one of its wheels fell off and commenced rolling and bouncing toward them as if it was just as attracted to Randi as Clemsy and was intent on claiming her.

At the sound of her voice, all of Clemsy's being focused on trying to return the greeting, but his mouth could only move up and down soundlessly, at which Randi stopped, crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side with a giggle making everything much worse.

In the meantime, Sidetrack jingled his harness and stamped his huge iron-shod hoof in warning. People started to call out as the wheel made its single-minded way to its destination. Randi glanced first at the horse, then at the people up the street who were starting to turn away from what was very definitely going to happen, then at the oncoming wagon wheel. She had that one thought we all have just before an accident that can't be avoided: "I can't avoid this accident." Indeed, Fate had already put a period on the last sentence of Randi's life and was about to close the book, when the emergency crew in Clemsy's brain, putting all its resources into getting the boy to say, "Why, howdy Randi," sent the parts concerned with holding onto the pole and staying atop the ladder off to help. He leaned to the side away from Randi, the ladder went onto one leg, and his brain sent some attention back to where it should've stayed in the first place. He leaned back the other way, over compensated and, arms windmilling, fell ladder and all towards the boardwalk. The ladder and he parted company midway and his hands, quite without permission, grabbed Randi as he passed by. This spun her around and pulled her off her feet just as the wheel sailed through the space where Randi should have been and smashed through the Post Office window.

Clemsy turned his shoulder into the boardwalk and came to a stop, without so much as mussing his hair more than it was, (Good thing as this would have been impossible anyway.) with Randi face to face on top of him.

Applause erupted up and down the street. Randi, realizing she wasn't going to die today after all, gave Clemsy the first passionate, lips to lips kiss of his life which would have killed him cold if he hadn't already fainted. ("She's lying on top o.............") Fate grumbled and started erasing her last entry. She always used a pencil when Clemsy was around.

Runt arrived on the scene and sat down next to Sidetrack. He looked up as if to say, "Again?"

"What do you think," the horse snorted. "You can't make this stuff up. No one would believe it."

Randi, realizing Clemsy was out cold, looked concerned. "Clemsy?" she asked patting his cheek.

"Ma?" he mumbled.