Joyland(22)

Joyland

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I handed over my wallet without protest.

"Now go. But even before you strip down, drink a lot of water.

I mean until your belly feels swollen. And don't eat anything, I don't care how hungry you are. I've had kids get heatstroke and barf in Howie suits, and the results ain't pretty. Suit almost always has to be thrown out. Drink, strip, put on the fur, get someone to zip you up, then hustle down the Boulevard to the Wiggle-Waggle. There's a sign, you can't miss it."

I looked doubtfully at Howie's big blue eyes.

"They're screen mesh," she said. "Don't worry, you'll see fine."

"But what do I do?"

She looked at me, at first unsmiling. Then her face-not just her mouth and eyes but her whole face-broke into a grin. The laugh that accompanied it was this weird honk that seemed to come through her nose. "You'll be fine," she said. People kept telling me that. "It's method acting, kiddo. Just find your inner dog."

?

There were over a dozen new hires and a handful of old-timers having lunch in the boneyard when I arrived. Two of the greenies were Hollywood Girls, but I had no time to be modest. After gulping a bellyful from the drinking fountain, I shucked down to my Jockeys and sneakers. I shook out the Howie costume and stepped in, making sure to get my feet all the way down in the back paws.

"Fur!" one of the old-timers yelled, and slammed a fist down on the table. "Fur! Fur! Fur!"

The others took it up, and the boneyard rang with the chant





STEPHEN KING

as I stood there in my underwear with a deflated Howie puddled around my shins. It was like being in the middle of a prison messhall riot. Rarely have I felt so exquisitely stupid . . . or so oddly heroic. It was showbiz, after all, and I was stepping into the breach. For a moment it didn't matter that I didn't know what the f*ck I was doing.

"Fur! Fur! FUR! FUR!"

"Somebody zip me the hell up!" I shouted. "I have to get down to the Wiggle-Waggle posthaste!"

One of the girls did the honors, and I immediately saw why wearing the fur was such a big deal. The boneyard was air conditioned-all of J oyland Under was-but I was already popping hard sweat.

One of the old-timers came over and gave me a kindly pat on my Howie-head. "''ll give you a ride, son," he said. "Cart's right there. Jump in."

"Thanks." My voice was muffled.

"Woof-woof, Bowser!" someone called, and they all cracked up.

We rolled down the Boulevard with its spooky, stuttering fluorescent lights, a grizzled old guy in janitor's greens with a giant blue-eyed German Shepherd riding co-pilot. As he pulled up at the stairs marked with an arrow and the painted legend WIGWAG on the cinderblocks, he said: "Don't talk. Howie never talks, just gives hugs and pats em on the head. Good luck, and if you start feelin all swimmy, get the hell out. The kids don't want to see Howie flop over with heatstroke."

"I have no idea what I'm supposed to do," I said. "Nobody's told me."

I don't know if that guy was carny-from-carny or not, but he joyland

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knew something about Joyland. "It don't matter. The kids all love Howie. They'll know what to do."

I clambered out of the cart, almost tripped over my tail, then grasped the string in the left front paw and gave it a yank to get the damn thing out of my way. I staggered up the stairs and fumbled with the lever of the door at the top. I could hear music, something vaguely remembered from my early childhood. I finally got the lever to go down. The door opened and bright Junelight flooded through Howie's screen-mesh blue eyes, momentarily dazzling me.

The music was louder now, being piped from overhead speakers, and I could put a name to it: "The Hokey Pokey," that all-time nursery school hit. I saw swings, slides, and teeter-totters, an elaborate jungle gym, and a roundy-round being pushed by a greenie wearing long fuzzy rabbit ears and a powder-puff tail stuck to the seat of his jeans. The Choo-Choo Wiggle, a toy train capable of dazzling speeds approaching four miles an hour, steamed by, loaded with little kids dutifully waving to their camera-toting parents. About a gazillion kids were boiling around, watched over by plenty of summer hires, plus a couple of full-time personnel who probably did have child-care licenses.

These two, a man and a woman, were wearing sweatshirts that read WE L uv HAPPY KIDS . Dead ahead was the long daycare building called Howie's Howdy House.

I saw Mr. Easterbrook, too. He was sitting on a bench beneath a Joyland umbrella, dressed in his mortician's suit and eating his lunch with chopsticks . He didn't see me at first; he was looking at a crocodile line of children being led toward the Howdy House by a couple of greenies. The kiddies could be parked there (I found this out later) for a maximum of two





STEPHEN KING

hours while the parents either took their older kids on the bigger rides or had lunch at Rock Lobster, the park's class-A restaurant.

I also found out later that the eligibility ages for Howdy House ran from three to six. Many of the children now approaching looked pretty mellow, probably because they were daycare vets from families where both parents worked. Others weren't taking it so well. Maybe they'd managed to keep a stiff upper lip at first, hearing mommy and daddy say they'd all be back together in just an hour or two (as if a four-year-old has any real concept of what an hour is), but now they were on their own, in a noisy and confusing place filled with strangers and mommy and daddy nowhere in sight. Some of those were crying. Buried in the Howie costume, looking out through the screen mesh that served as eyeholes and already sweating like a pig, I thought I was witnessing an act of uniquely American child abuse. Why would you bring your kid-your toddler, for Christ's sake-to the jangling sprawl of an amusement park only to fob him or her off on a crew of strange babysitters, even for a little while?