Winter Loon(40)
FROM MY MOTHER’S BED, I stared at the ceiling, too low first by inches, then by feet, until I fell into a furtive sleep. I dreamed I was on a carnival ride, some great wheel that at first spun me around on the inside, a steely marble or ball bearing held in place by inertia. In that way of dreams, I was switched to the outside, became a cog to hook a chain on a bicycle. As it ground slowly to a near halt, it turned creaky and wooden like a waterwheel on a gristmill. Splinters barbed into my back and arms, and I was suddenly naked and strapped down in the well between the teeth with leather around my waist and wrists. In the ether of the dream, I chatted brightly with someone else on a factory floor. The voice drew nearer and nearer, and I knew it to be my mother, though the closer it got the more smoldery it sounded, until it became Jolene’s and it was frantic as we realized that she, too, was on a great wheel but on the spike of it. She came into view, but the words we said to each other were lost in the crunching of skulls and bones.
I woke at dawn, dressed quickly. I slipped down the hall, past the bathroom door, the shower running, Gip getting ready for his shift. Ruby, bathrobed and slippered, was in the kitchen, already socked in by a cloud of cigarette smoke. Any sound I might have made leaving the house was masked by percolating coffee.
I sat at the counter of the café by the highway near the fairgrounds, coffee cup snugged in the palm of my hands. Shift workers, mostly men, came through the door. I watched the bell on the metal strap clang against the glass, watched the cashier poke the register keys with her long orange fingernail, watched the short-order cook spin the ticket wheel, which reminded me of the bone-crushed dream I’d had, watched for my father to make his first-morning-in-town breakfast appearance. The waitress topped off my cup, and I added cream and sugar until it was tolerable to me. Two cups later, stomach in knots, hands shaking, I gave up. If he was in town, he’d have come through those doors by now.
THE CARNIVAL OPENED AT DUSK the night before the fair itself. To go with Jolene, I had to go with Mona and Troy and Mariah, too, all five of us in Mona’s dented station wagon. We parked in a tamped-down grass field and walked toward the flashing lights and heavy metal music, the wafts of cooked sugar and popcorn and engine oil, the screams of the first kids on the first rides drowning out the rattling whir of generators keeping everything inflated and lit. My purposes were crossed and conflicted. On one hand, I wanted to focus on Jolene and what was feeling like a first date. My mind wandered to her hand in mine, my arm over her shoulder on the Ferris wheel, her leaning into me or gripping my leg on the roller coaster, to pulling her into the shadows and kissing her again. Then I would feel guilty, shake those thoughts out, and try to concentrate only on the Barbosas, on finding a familiar face, someone who would remember my father, maybe even me.
The Hightowers were the other in the parade of mostly white families heading through the gates. I imagined scornful eyes on us, imagined the whispers. “Stick with your own.” Was I drawing dangerous attention to myself? Or worse, to Jolene and her family? Was this even allowed and by whose authority? Mariah said out loud what I feared Mona and Troy thought, what I began to wonder myself. “I don’t get why he’s even here.” Me the stranger, the castoff, me instead of Lester Two Kills. Mona shushed her and I smiled tight-lipped, gratefully, apologetically.
I protested when Troy paid my way with the rest of his family but made up for it with an offer to buy ride tickets. The seller was a fat man, bald, but with razor stubble down to his chest hair. He wasn’t familiar to me and hardly looked up when he measured out a yard of tickets like a bolt of fabric. We made the exchange, money for tickets, wordlessly. I divided the line, giving half to Troy and pocketing the others. We made arrangements to meet them back at the gate at closing. I couldn’t quite gauge what the look was I saw in Mona’s eyes, but I could guess as they walked off.
“They don’t like me,” I said to Jolene.
“They like you fine.”
“Then they don’t trust me.”
She didn’t respond to that. Instead we walked quietly along the midway, already packed with wiggling toddlers and harried parents, with wild teenagers itching to make trouble. Boys were decked out in stiff dark jeans, new for school, desperate to be broken in. Girls the same, but with sweaters that seemed tighter since spring and blouse buttons undone one farther than when they left the house. Lust was in the air, along with fryer grease and the composted clover smell of manure coming out of the barns. Jolene grabbed my hand and I let her. “It’s not that.”
“It’s not what?”
“Trust. I know what it is. What you saw. My mom. She dated white guys.” Jolene paused then, and her hand drifted up to the scar on her face. Practically under her breath, she added, “She had a knack for finding the worst ones, too.”
Happy tinkling music coming from flying elephants and swirling teacups was blotted out by acid rock as we entered the black triangle of rides meant to make you shit your pants. At the halfway point of the oval midway was the Dragon Boat, my father’s ride.
“Let’s go on,” I said. “Before the line gets too long.”
The hairy ride operator was as wide as he was tall. He wore a tight black T-shirt with a white skull on it that was made up entirely of contorted naked women. When we got to the front of the line, I asked if he knew a Moss Ballot. His thick red beard bobbed on his shirt collar when he spoke. “Don’t know him. What’s he done?”