Like Father, Like Wooton

Rusty Gordon’s book has made Connie worry that Odyssey is too boring for the truthful book she wants to write. Even the local newspaper’s front page offers little beyond pancakes, recycling, and a new assistant librarian. She decides she needs a human-interest story filled with conflict, adventure, and drama, and Wooton suggests that the traveling clowns at the weekend carnival may provide it.

At school, Max proudly discusses his father’s career-day presentation and asks about Grady’s father. Embarrassed that his absent dad is never around, Grady invents an exciting life for him, claiming he works at a top-secret job, rides in rodeos, skydives, and spends plenty of time with his son. The lie grows until Grady promises that his father will attend the carnival.

Grady cannot locate his real father using the last telephone number he left. When Wooton invites him to be partners in the carnival’s father-son laser-tag tournament, Grady sees an escape. He asks Wooton to spend the whole day with him but does not explain that Max will be told Wooton is his father.

Meanwhile, Wooton helps Connie question a funnel-cake seller about the performers. The woman accidentally reveals that a clown named Elise has disappeared. The other clowns refuse to speak, so Connie borrows a costume from Whit’s End, calls herself Lonnie, and goes undercover inside the troupe.

At the carnival, Max meets Wooton and assumes he is Grady’s father. Wooton unknowingly strengthens the story with tales of rodeos, Alaskan moose, bubble-gum animals, and a family butler. When Max leaves, Wooton recognizes what Grady has done. He refuses to continue the deception and says he will tell Max the truth if Grady does not. Grady protests that an invented father is no more unfair than being mocked for the real one who abandoned him, then runs away feeling betrayed.

Connie’s disguise creates its own trouble. The head clown, Horace, mistakes her for Elise’s replacement and expects her to rehearse being shot from a cannon over a trapeze. Connie also finds an accurate tell-all book that reveals the troupe’s guarded professional secrets, including how seventy-three clowns fit into one car.

The funnel-cake seller enters and reveals that she is Elise in disguise. She has left the troupe because she wrote the tell-all book to earn money for her daughter’s medical education. Ashamed of betraying the other clowns, she has hidden nearby instead of facing them. Horace understands the desperate choice, forgives her, and welcomes her back.

Elise’s confession moves Connie to admit that she is not a clown and has infiltrated the group for a story. She accepts the troupe’s demand that its private matters remain confidential. The dramatic material she wanted is real, but she chooses not to exploit people who have trusted her.

Max eventually notices that Wooton’s last name is Bassett rather than McKay and confronts Grady at the laser-tag arena. Grady finally admits he invented the entire story. Max calls him strange, but Wooton arrives and praises Grady for coming clean.

Wooton explains that although Grady is not his son, he would be proud to have a son like him. Their friendship already contains many of the things a father should provide, and Wooton is honored that Grady thinks of him in that way. Together they enter the tournament, defeat Max and his father, and win.

Later, Wooton suggests that Connie could write about a boy who pretends a trusted man is his father and learns to tell the truth, while the man discovers that he already fills a fatherly place in the boy’s life. Connie agrees it would be a wonderful tale but fails to realize Wooton is describing something that just happened in Odyssey. Instead, she races to the hospital when she hears that Eugene has kidney stones, delighted to find the pain, mystery, and drama she thinks her book requires.