“the carnival…the carnival…the carnival has come to town….”

This is what they sing as they walk and skip, but it is the last afternoon, the last night, and they run now past the false storefronts: the Ben Franklin store where the candy sits in the glass square bins for a penny apiece and you can buy a paddle with a ball attached for one dollar of your babysitting money, and there’s the—oh look, Jody thinks, there’s the Scrambler, how you can see the edge of it zooming past the solid, red brick corner of the First Interstate Bank, and then figure-eighting in a rush back in.  The next car zooms into view and she can see kids’ hair flying out over the edges of the cars, their mouths frozen open, unable to close because of velocity and laughter, and horror, too, the fun kind of horror, the kind that makes you want to spend every last cent of your babysitting money on a ride that lasts maybe two minutes, if you’re lucky.  And you have ten dollars in the right-hand pocket of your no-name, Gibson drugstore jeans.   Ten dollars you made watching other people’s kids.  And you have the ten dollars off the bar in the left-hand pocket, too, which goes for Chad and Kelley’s rides and food and sodas and cotton candy.

She had to take them to the bar first, Tom’s Place, to beg Dad for money for them.  He’s in there with her aunt and uncle and Mom.  He turns his pockets inside out and says, “Look, you cleaned me out.”  She knew he’d do this.  Her aunt laughs and then hands Jody her dad’s ten lying on the bar. “That’s one less round on you, Dale,” her aunt says. 

The three of them clear out as fast as they can. Chad is their cousin and Jody has to watch him, and Kelley is her little sister.

“It’ll be gone in five minutes,”
 her father is saying,
“And, they’ll be back for more.”

Jody tries to convince Chad and Kelley not to spend it so fast, to use it to its best advantage.

The guys behind the counter only want a little
kid’s money, and the prizes suck anyway.

She pulls them over to the funhouse.  It is a flat, storefront-looking structure with flat-boarded sides that unhinge and fold inward to try to make it look three-dimensional.  On top is a six-sided, white board cupola with a gray, painted ball and silver and chipped silver, and there is a gray sundial painted on one side that casts no shadow.  A devil’s face painted on the other side in green and black with a forked tongue, a joker’s face on another with his staff and his orange and green costume, then a woman’s face, a fat queen, with a cherry red mouth open and laughing. Jody gives the old man with the gray and grizzled chin her six tickets for three people to get in.  She knows she can still pass for younger than twelve—she is short and small for her age and she has that little kid’s face.

Everyone always thinks she is younger than she is.

They go into the right side entrance and right away at the front are the glass mirrors that curve and stretch and roll their bodies into fat men and fat women and dwarves and tall men.

“I’m a giant,” declares Chad.

            “Look, Jody, I’m bigger than you,” Kelley says.

Jody looks into the mirror and sees her breasts bulge out from flat to large, flat to large. She pulls them away from the mirrors, wanting to see what is down the black, narrow hallways; she pushes the two children in front of her, wanting them to feel what it is like to walk down a darkened hallway in delightful fear; they scrunch back against her, then weasel their way behind her.

“No,” says Chad, with a big round O.

Jody reaches out along the pitch-black hallways’ board walls. They walk through the maze and bump into dead-ends.  Chad and Kelley hold onto the end of her T-shirt.

“I want to go out,” says Chad, but Jody turns them around to get confused.  She moves in front of them.

So they can get their money’s worth.

They hear teenage boys, rough and loud coming through the narrow hall and Jody tries to “turn around,” she says too harshly, but too late, one boy with a wide hard chest bumps into her in the dark.  He reaches out and pushes his teenage palm against her flat chest and Jody feels hurt where he pushes in her nipple.

“Who’s there,” he says and laughs like he knows what he’s doing.

“Get off,” she says angrily and smacks his hand off into the wall.  She moves the children, tripping in front of her, out and around the open corner.

Jody is worried as they pop back into the now dark exterior of the street, which is lit up by the rides’ lights coming on in yellow and red and green bulbs, and music is singing out from each ride having its own tune.  She worries about stretching their money; they have only two of their dollars left, and she has eight of her own.  She likes the scariest ride.  This is the last night. 

She should’ve spent more money last night when she came with her oldest brother Paul, but Paul paid for her ride on the chain swings, pushing off and catching each other’s metal bar as they arced out into the dark night sky.  They had won the right to ride again because of how many times they had caught each other.  She wanted to ride the Rocket because it looped over and upside down on top, and sometimes they leave you upside down while you are screaming and wishing you hadn’t gotten on.

“Cotton candy!” Kelley cries out, and she and Chad break out and run to the glassed-in trailer.

“Are you sure?  That’ll be all your money,” Jody warns, but they bob their heads yes.

Jody has more money. 
Maybe they can get
her to spend it on them.

They walk along the asphalt pavement, carmeled apples in one fist and a floating pink concoction of heaven in the other. 

Jody wishes she could convince Chad and Kelley to ride the Ferris wheel with her.  It looms large over them, its long shadow having disappeared in the darkness.  Its rim lit up in gold and red and blue bulbs.

And there’s nothing quite so beautiful
as a Ferris wheel lit up against the
cooling summer sky.

They shake their heads no, their teeth full of pink and brown goo.

She tries to convince them.  “I’ll let you stay up late when we get home."  She knows she is going to have to watch the rest of the cousins and kids as soon as she gets home because her older sister will take off with her boyfriend.  But Chad doesn’t like the man with the fat face who’s running the Ferris wheel. 

Earlier on the motorcycle ride, he was afraid he would fall off and land on the silver fence or the black cable.  He heard the fat-faced man who smokes a stinky brown cigar say the “F” word that he’s heard his aunt say before and his own mother say, but he doesn’t like to hear the man whose hand is on the handle that runs the machine say it.

“No, I don’t want to.”  His no is firm.

But his firm commitment twists Kelley around. 

She’s not like him. 

“C’mon, Chad.  It’ll be fun.  It doesn’t flip or anything.  It isn’t scary.  We can go up and see the whole town.”  Chad shakes his head no, and Kelley pulls on his jacket, and insists.  “The ballpark, Main Street, your mom and dad’s car is there.”  Chad’s face is turning red and his shoulders bunch up inside his jacket.  He shakes his head, No, no, no, no—side to side.  He clamps his lips shut. 

“Oh, all right,” Jody says, and she’s mad.  She yanks on his arm to come away.  “C’mon, Kelley, he won’t do it.  See if I buy anything for you, Chad!” 

The disappointment weighs
between the two sisters
heavy like a bucket full of feed.

Their father is at the bar;
He is laughing in his Calverts and Coke.
They are shooting pool now;
they are only halfway
through their evening.

She doesn’t want to blow her money on these two kids, especially one who won’t even ride the Ferris wheel.  It is getting late—she knows she should take them home.

They start to walk away from the Ferris wheel, they cut around the Kiddy rides in the middle, and on the side is the duck game, where you pick up a duck and everybody wins. And look, there’s the shovel that picks up prizes, and the one that her dad likes, it pushes off coins.  He always wins at that.  He comes with to the fair in the daytime, but at night he goes with her aunt and uncle, but sometimes he doesn’t even go.  This year he didn’t go at all. 

He used to when
she was little.

And look over there, next to city hall, there’s a stray dog caged up in the pen next to the shaded white brick wall of the Laundry-Mat.  That must be where they keep the strays.  But the cage never had animals in it, so they all run over.  The dog inside is a sweet-natured small black lab whose tail is wagging ferociously as they approach.  He is on the lean side, his ribs are showing a little, but his back end is wiggling nearly as fast as his tail.  He whines and yelps in excitement that he might be let out.  They are all three reaching through the cage’s wire holes and they touch his nose, his paws, as he jumps onto the fencing, trying to feel their touch.  The two little ones reach their five-year-old hands all the way through the holes and pat his sides, his ribs, his hind end.

He turns this way and that to get the most contact.

“Hey look,” Kelley notices that the padlock is on the gate, but the lock isn’t pushed shut.  It’s turned to look locked.  Jody looks around.  They are on the side of the building and it’s darker on this side.  The nearest ride is the Zipper and no one is looking.  The man who runs the Zipper has his back turned, his tattoo shows on the back of his arm, and he’s talking to the high school girls who aren’t afraid of him.  Jody slips the lock open and edges the tall gate outward just enough to let Chad and Kelley slip in past her, and the two grab the dog on all sides, patting him and hugging him.  Jody looks around to see if anyone is watching and occasionally reaches down to pat the dog.  They bend over for several minutes, loving the dog all up, and he is friendly and kissing them with his big tongue, whining in pleasure and hopefulness.

Jody looks nervously at the man with the tattoo and nervously says, “C'mon, let’s go.  I want to spend my money.  Someone will see us.”

But Kelley protests, “No one’s gonna see us.  It’s dark.  Just wait.”  And Chad looks truly happy, maybe for the first time that evening.

Jody looks back at the Ferris wheel.  It is turning high over the top of everything, the main thoroughfare, the City Hall, the First Interstate Bank. 

Probably they could see her junior high.
Or even see her grandmother’s farmhouse.
Is that possible?

Kelley looks, too, and then at Jody.  Out loud she says, “Why can’t you ride the Ferris wheel, Chad?  You’re such a big baby.” 

Chad says, “Go ride it yourself.  I’ll stay here.”

Jody knows it is wrong.  “Would you be okay here?  We’ll come right back.  You can stay in here with the puppy and keep him company.”

Chad looks at her and at the skinny lab and bobs his head yes. 

Maybe she will buy him something too now.

Jody takes off Chad’s jacket and places it on the raised concrete ground for him to sit on.  “Just stay here, Chad,” she says.  “I’m leaving the gate unlocked.  Don’t you leave out of this fence, Chad.”  And he promises he won’t, as he settles his bottom down on the jacket, the lab wiggling against him.

Jody and Kelley dart as quickly as they can back to the Ferris wheel, where Kelley fidgets nervously in line. 

Jody is nervous, too.

Kelley is pulling on Jody’s arm, jumping up and down, giving out an excited squeal as she watches people go over the top.  They wait in the short line and Jody makes sure to look over at Chad, who is standing up now, holding onto the wires of the cage.  She mouths the words, “Stay there,” to him and points her finger down behind her palm, indicating he should sit back down.

They are finishing up their game.
Her uncle clears the table.
They are laughing and telling
crude jokes about
eight-balls and side pockets.
Her father puts some quarters down
 on the edge of the table for another go at it.

She and Kelley walk up the temporary metal ramp, their feet banging as they step up and wait for the fat-faced man to hold the seat still for them to get in and then pull the bar down.  He pulls on the lever, and they start to go up, at first smoothly, then in fits and starts, then lurching finally over the top.  Kelley holds her breath, squeezes the bar as they go over, and Jody puts her arm around her sister’s shoulder to keep her unafraid.  She looks down from the very top to where the dog cage is and she looks at Chad’s form, now seated on the concrete again.  The dog is rambling in small circles around him. 

He’s harmless, she tells herself.
The dog wants company. 
Chad didn’t want to ride.
She had money left to spend.
The ride won’t last that long.

As they come down the other side, Kelley starts to wave and call out, “Chad, Chad, look!  Look up!”

“Don’t,” Jody tells her sharply and yanks Kelley’s hand back down to place on the bar.

“Why not?”  Kelley wants to know.  “It’s not scary.”

“Just don’t.”  Jody looks over at the cage and then she begins to count.  The number of seconds it takes to get to the top again. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…she sees the policeman walking down the sidewalk alongside the long glass front side window of the Laundry-Mat…eight, nine, ten…over the top.  He walks over to the man who is running the Zipper.  Another man walks over to join them. 

He looks like the man who judged the parade yesterday,
where Jody rode her brother’s bike with clothespins holding
playing cards to the front spoke, clacking as she rode.

She counts.  Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…down, down, hurry up down.

Kelley is laughing and chattering now.  “Rock it, Jody, go ahead, rock it.  It’s not even scary.”

But Jody ignores her.  Her eyes are fixed as the two men walk over to the cage, the dog in there.  Up goes the Ferris wheel again.  The men are fumbling with the door to the cage. 

Ferris wheel, go down. 
She wants to tell the man with the fat face
to stop it, but she is afraid.

They are only on their third turn around, going up again rising, rising into the night sky, and there’s nothing quite so beautiful as a Ferris wheel lit up and turning against a cooling summer sky.

“Look, Jody.  They let Chad out of the dog cage,” and Chad is pointing up at them now, at the highest point, and Jody is looking, looks.  The yellow metal slats of the outer wheel go by on the way down and the men are walking over quickly.  Chad has his hand inside the policeman’s hand, and the judge is talking to the man at the bottom of the Ferris wheel now, and the man pulls the lever and they start to slow down.  Down, down, down, down they are going, slower and slower, and people are looking up as they start to descend, and people are peering around in their buckets trying to figure out what is happening.

Why are they stopping so soon?

Jody and Kelley’s bucket comes to a stop with a scrape along the metal platform. 

While the policeman is talking to her, Jody looks down at her sister and notices that Kelley’s shirt is really dirty.  She looks at her own clothes while the policeman talks to her.  Her tennis shoes are really old.  She can see the big toe of her right foot through the hole.  Her Gibson jeans are maybe too tight, there’s a fringe on the bottoms, torn.  She listens to what the policeman is telling her. 

“Right away,” he says.

She interrupts what he is saying about going home, “I forgot his jacket,” and she runs over to the cage.  She opens the door to the cage quickly, slips in and picks up Chad’s blue striped cotton zip-up off the concrete.  The dog is in the corner now, lying down, worn out from loving and his tail thumping, his raily body ready to rise again, and she looks at him in the corner.  And there is something in the corner on the ground, too, some gel-like substance, some bluish glob that looks like afterbirth or the inner lining of a stomach, not throw up, she knows.  She tries to think what it might be, but can’t.  It is thick and mucousy and scary. 

She thinks how she left Chad in there with that.

As she goes through the gate, the dog, who is up now, tries to squeeze through with her, but she closes the gate against his face and works her way quickly back to her charges.

They begin to leave the carnival, walking away from the policeman and the other man, as quickly as they can.

Her dad fishes money out of his wallet.
Set ‘em up, boys, he says.
He orders them to—
Put another song on the jukebox!
His cap is on crooked,
and he can’t see what he’s doing.

As they approach the teddy-bear milk toss in their rush to drape a curtain of distance between them and what made them walk so fast, Kelley remembers, “You said we could stay late.”

And Chad, too, seeing the carousel at the end of the row of rides, “You haven’t spent all your money.  We didn’t get to ride the carousel.”

But Jody shoves him now in front of her, around the corner of the First Interstate Bank.  She pulls on Kelley’s arm, forcing her into a hopping stride.

“Walk,” she says.

 

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