Joyland(52)

The summer employees Fred Dean hired didn't have to know CPR when they signed on, but they had to learn. Thanks to the life-saving class I'd taken as a teenager, I already knew. The half-dozen of us in that class had learned beside the YMCA pool, working on a dummy with the unlikely name of Herkimer Saltfish. Now I had a chance to put theory into practice for the first time, and do you know what? It wasn't really that much different from the clean-and-jerk I'd used to pop the hotdog out of the little Stansfield girl's throat. I wasn't wearing the fur, and there was no hugging involved, but it was still mostly a matter of applying hard force. I cracked four of the old bastard's ribs and broke one. I can't say I'm sorry, either.

By the time Lane arrived, I was kneeling alongside Eddie and doing closed chest compressions, first rocking forward with my weight on the heels of my hands, then rocking back and listening to see if he'd draw in a breath.

"Christ," Lane said. "Heart attack?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Call an ambulance."

The closest phone was in the little shack beside Pop Allen's Shootin' Gallery-his doghouse, in the Talk. It was locked, but Lane had the Keys to the Kingdom: three masters that opened 174





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everything in the park. He ran. I went on doing CPR, rocking back and forth, my thighs aching now, my knees barking about their long contact with the rough pavement of J oyland Avenue.

After each five compressions I'd slow-count to three, listening for Eddie to inhale, but there was nothing. No joy in Joyland, not for Eddie. Not after the first five, not after the second five, not after half a dozen fives. He just lay there with his gloved hands at his sides and his mouth open. Eddie f*cking Parks. I stared down at him as Lane came sprinting back, shouting that the ambulance was on its way.

I'm not doing it, I thought. I'll be damned if I'll do it.

Then I leaned fmward, doing another compression on the way, and pressed my mouth to his. It wasn't as bad as I feared; it was worse. His lips were bitter with the taste of cigarettes, and there was the stink of something else in his mouth-God help me, I think it was jalapeno peppers, maybe from a breakfast omelet. I got a good seal, though, pinched his nostrils shut, and breathed down his throat.

I did that five or six times before he started breathing on his own again. I stopped the compressions to see what would happen, and he kept going. Hell must have been full that day, that's all I can figure. I rolled him onto his side in case he vomited. Lane stood beside me with a hand on my shoulder. Shortly after that, we heard the wail of an approaching siren.

Lane hurried to meet them at the gate and direct them. Once he was gone, I found myself looking at the snarling green monster-faces decorating the fa?ade of Horror House. COME

I N I F YOU DARE was written above the faces in drippy green letters. I found myself thinking again of Linda Gray, who had gone in alive and had been carried out hours later, cold and



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dead. I think my mind went that way because Erin was coming with information. Information that troubled her. I also thought of the girl's killer.

Could have been you, Mrs. Shoplaw had said. Except you're dark-haired instead of blond and don't have a bird's head tattooed on one of your hands. This guy did. An eagle or maybe a hawk.

Eddie's hair was the premature gray of the lifelong heavy smoker, but it could have been blond four years ago. And he always wore gloves. Surely he was too old to have been the man who had accompanied Linda Gray on her last dark ride, surely, but . . .

The ambulance was very close but not quite here, although I could see Lane at the gate, waving his hands over his head, making hurry-up gestures. Thinking what the hell, I stripped off Eddie's gloves. His fingers were lacy with dead skin, the backs of his hands red beneath a thick layer of some sort of white cream. There were no tattoos.

Just psoriasis.

?

As soon as he was loaded up and the ambulance was heading back to the tiny Heaven's Bay hospital, I went into the nearest donniker and rinsed my mouth again and again. It was a long time before I got rid of the taste of those damn jalapeno peppers, and I have never touched one since.

When I came out, Lane Hardy was standing by the door.

"That was something," he said. "You brought him back."

"He won't be out of the woods for a while, and there might be brain damage."





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"Maybe yes, maybe no, but if you hadn't been there, he'd have been in the woods permanently. First the little girl, now the dirty old man. I may start calling you Jesus instead of J onesy, because you sure are the savior."

"You do that, and I'm DS." That was Talk for down south, which in turn meant turning in your time-card for good.

"Okay, but you did all right, Jonesy. In fact, I gotta say you rocked the house."

"The taste of him," I said. "God!"

"Yeah, I bet, but look on the bright side. With him gone, you're free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, you're free at last.

I think you'll like it better that way, don't you?"

I certainly did.

From his back pocket, Lane drew out a pair of rawhide gloves.

Eddie's gloves. "Found these laying on the ground. Why'd you take em off him?"