The Night Parade(72)

“Why?”

“Because he knows people are looking for the two of us.”

“Did you tell him about Mom?”

“I did. Anyway, this campground,” he said, quickly changing the subject, “it was a place we’d visited when we were kids. It’s called Funluck Park. Some name, huh?”

“What is it?”

“Just a state park. A campground. But do you know what it used to be?”

“What?”

“An amusement park. You know, with rides and game booths and all that stuff.”

“Like Disney?”

He laughed. “Not even close, sweetheart. It was just an old park when I visited as a kid. But you know what? A lot of the old amusement park rides were still there, left behind. They were sort of like run-down landmarks.”

“Do you think they’re still there now?”

“Could be,” he said. “Hey, do you want to hear a crazy story about what happened there when I was a kid?”

For the first time in a long while, her face brightened. “Sure.”

So he told her about the cross-country trip his family had taken back in the summer of David’s eleventh year. Emmitt Brody had rented an RV and had shuttled his brood—Tim, David, David’s mother—beneath what Woody Guthrie once proclaimed was the “endless skyway.” The trip lasted about five weeks, during which time they made it all the way out to the West Coast and back.

At one point in the trip, during a stop at a gas station somewhere in Colorado, Emmitt Brody got wind of a rinky-dink amusement park that had been closed down decades earlier and now served as a local campground. The gas station attendant who imparted this bit of trivia unto David’s stepfather also added that many of the rides that had serviced the amusement park had been left behind, and while they were all out of commission and beyond repair, they had become a sort of trademark for the little park and the area that surrounded it.

Munching on gas-station hot dogs, they had detoured to the park. Soon, they came upon the ancient wrought-iron fence that surrounded the wooded grounds. There was a sign out front that read FUNLUCK PARK. Within that fence stood the relics of its former incarnation—the undulating roller-coaster tracks overgrown with weeds, the Tilt-A-Whirl cars sunken partway down into the earth, the bumper cars strewn about in a distant field like a herd of buffalo that had died in the middle of some prehistoric pilgrimage, a wooden carousel horse tipped on its side, weather-faded and strangled by vines, or perhaps the garishly painted boards of a gift shop tossed about like so much driftwood washed up on a beach.

They all got sick soon after arriving at the park, undoubtedly the result of eating the gas-station hot dogs, and each of them heaved repeatedly into the underbrush. David and Tim sobbed while David’s mother vomited almost politely behind a lilac bush. Emmitt soon joined them, the sounds of his upchucking like the uncooperative growls of a stalled engine. In the confusion, Emmitt had dropped his lit cigar into a nearby trash receptacle; the debris inside blossomed into flame. After wiping his mouth on his sleeve, David rolled over and watched the flame dancing in the barrel, tongues of fire licking the sky, so bright it hurt his eyes to look at it, to stare— He stared— So bright, he couldn’t— “Daddy.” It was Ellie’s voice, swimming down to him as if from the opening in a well.

David blinked and realized he wasn’t staring at a fire—or even the memory of a fire—at all, but directly at the sun, which filled their entire windshield. The car was positioned at an angle off the highway, facing backward, the vehicle’s nose butted up against the guardrail. His door was open and he had his left foot out on the ground, a cool wind blowing the damp hair off his sweaty forehead.

He looked at Ellie, who stared at him with terror in her eyes.

“Hey,” he said, and rubbed the side of her face.

“What happened?” she asked. He voice was barely audible. “You were talking and then . . . then . . . you just stopped and turned the car around . . .”

He glanced down and saw the car was still in Drive. If he’d taken his foot off the brake . . .

No.

“Jesus, kid,” he said, pulling his leg back in and shutting the door. “I guess I was daydreaming for a second there, huh? Not enough sleep.”

“You just . . . just pulled the car over and turned around and . . .”

“Hey, everything’s okay.” He gave her his best smile. “Why are you so upset?”

“You scared me. You were talking, telling me a story, and then you started talking funny and then you just stopped.”

“I’m tired, El. Very tired.”

He could see that her eyes were searching his. In the end, he looked away.

“Let’s get back on the road, okay?”

After a moment, Ellie nodded.

They got back on the road.





36


Four months earlier


As more and more students dropped their courses, the college granted the remaining students the option of completing the semester from their homes. Certain instructors lectured via Skype while others simply e-mailed assignments to their students and awaited the return e-mails with the work attached. For David, who taught English literature, the change was welcome and easy: There was little he needed to lecture on, and his students could all read the assigned work from the privacy—or safety—of their own homes. Papers were submitted to him via e-mail. When someone failed to send in a paper, David would send a follow-up e-mail as a reminder. If that e-mail went unanswered, David gave up. He assumed he was dealing with your basic collegiate delinquency—there were always a slim few who carried their laziness straight out of high school and into college . . . and, David supposed, throughout the rest of their lives, too—but on the chance that something more profound had come into these students’ lives, he was not going to be the one to inquire about it.