It was a prayer.
* * *
Lucy took Randy on the Ferris wheel—not so much because either of them wanted to ride the damned thing—both of them were scared of heights—but because, from Up Here, Lucy could look about for some sign of Mr. Hands approaching from the distance.
He might be able to slip between the cracks in the walls of the finite and the infinite, but he could not hide from her gaze.
She neither saw nor sensed any sign of him.
Back on the ground, she reluctantly agreed to let Randy ride on the kiddies’ train. She remained outside the partitions and watched as the train went ‘round and ‘round its circular track, all the time following it on foot, her eyes wide and unblinking, her gaze never once, not once, not even for a second, leaving Randy Patterson’s face.
The other parents standing around the train ride were more than a little wary of her intensity.
After he disembarked the ride and she’d taken hold of his hand—a little too tightly, but of that she was unaware—Randy asked her if they could get a couple of hot dogs and root beers. They did, and sat down at one of the many picnic tables set up under a canopy just off the midway. Randy devoured his hot dog, then—seeing that she was not eating hers—asked: “Can I have your hot dog?”
“Of course,” she said, pushing it toward him.
He took a bite out of it, then stared at her while he chewed.
“What is it?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
“How come you followed the train like you did?”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“But you could see me okay just standing there. You didn’t have to follow me like that.”
She smiled, trying to lighten his suddenly-serious mood. “Did I embarrass you?”
“Huh-uh. But I was…you know what? I was wondering why you ain’t having no fun.”
She was surprised by his statement. “I’m having fun. I am. I like to watch you have a good time.”
“But you didn’t play any of the games.”
“I’m not much of a game person.”
He took another bite from the hot dog, chewed slowly, and swallowed.
Not once did he look away from her face.
“Lucy?”
“Yes, hon?”
“How come you don’t like carnivals?”
If anything he’d said up to this point had surprised her, this left her stunned. “H-How do you know I don’t like carnivals?”
He shrugged. “Just seem like you don’t, that’s all. How come?”
She looked into his child’s eyes and decided to tell him the truth—trying not to laugh at how pathetic she’d become: of all the relationships she’d ever had in her life, this one, with this child, was the only one in which she’d spoken nothing but the truth.
She reached across the table and took one of his hands in hers. “I lost Sarah at a carnival just like this one. Just a little carnival, in a parking lot. There weren’t a lot of people there, either, but I lost her, anyway. I let go of her hand and looked away for a few seconds, and wh-when I turned back, sh-she w-was gone.” She lowered her head and tried to pull the tears back in.
Randy—careful to not let go of her hand—came around to her side of the picnic table and gave her a hug.
“It’s okay,” he said, squeezing her tight. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’m sorry about Sarah.”
“Me too.” She slipped a hand around his waist. “I’m sorry, Randy. I didn’t mean to spoil this for you.”
“You didn’t spoil anything. This’s been fun!”
She looked into his bright face and smiled. “You mean that, don’t you?”
“Uh-huh!”
She kissed his cheek and rose from the table, still holding his hand (only now it was Randy who held on tighter than was necessary), and headed for one of the food carts.
“Where we goin’?”
Lucy grinned. “To get some funnel cake for the road. You ever had funnel cake?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Oh, you’ll love it. It’s warm and crispy and has all this sugar on top of it. It’s yummy.”
Randy laughed. “Yummy. Thas’ a funny word.”
She found the funnel cake stand, placed her order, and was waiting for the vendor to create his culinary magic when Randy tugged on her hand and said, “Lookit that man over there.”
“What man, hon?”
“That one,” he replied, pointing.
Lucy followed the direction of his pointing finger and saw—
—sweetjeezusno!—
—saw him bobbing along, walking on his white-gloved, too-large hands while the stumps of his legs, hidden by pinned-up pants legs, dangled above the ground.
“Souvenirs!” barked Thalidomide Man, his quiver full of hand-carved treasures bouncing on his back. “Get your official and guar-on-teed authentic souvenirs right here. Hand-crafted! One-of-a-kind!”
Some children waved at him, he made a few sales to some parents, and then seated himself on one of the crates outside one of the game booths.
Lucy stared at him.
Thalidomide Man looked around to make sure no one was paying any attention to him, then carefully but forcefully rubbed the stumps of his legs as if they pained him.
He stopped when he saw Lucy staring at him.
And Lucy was staring because she had just realized something.
She paid for the funnel cake, handed it to Randy, then took hold of the child’s hand and walked over to where Thalidomide Man was sitting.
“Ah a new customer! Ma’am, young sir. May I interest you in—”
“You weren’t born this way, were you?” asked Lucy.
Thalidomide Man’s face suddenly became granite, his manner cautious. “You with the police or the sheriff’s department? ‘Cause if you are, we already took care of—”
“I’m not with the authorities,” she said, removing a one-hundred dollar bill from her pocket and offering it to him. “This is yours if you’ll answer my question.”
Thalidomide Man looked at the money, then at her face. “How do I know you’re not a reporter, then, come here to do one of those ‘exposés’ on carny life—y’know, where you ‘reveal’ all the cons and corruption and all that?”
“I am not a reporter.”
Thalidomide Man looked at Randy. “This woman your mother, son?”
“No, sir. She’s a friend of me an’ my parents.”
“That a fact, is it?”
“Uh-huh. And she ain’t no reporter.”
Thalidomide Man nodded. “Well, then, handsome sir, I’ll take your word for it.” He looked at the bill in Lucy’s hand. “You produce a twin for that Benji in your hand and I’ll answer your question.”
Lucy found another hundred and gave them to him.
“Son,” he said to Randy. “Do me a favor, will you?” He removed the quiver from his back and offered it to Randy. “Take this here and go sit on that other crate right over there and count how many little rocking horses I got left, would you?”
“I don’t want him out of my sight,” whispered Lucy.
“He won’t be. He’ll just be right over there.” Then Thalidomide Man produced a small device that looked like a fountain pen and gave it to Randy. “Keep hold of this, son. Anyone bothers you or tries anything, you click on the top of this pen like you were gonna write something, okay?”
“How come?”
“You click on that, and it lets fly with a noise so loud it’d scare the hair off a dog’s ass. Ain’t no one gonna bother you after that.” He looked at Lucy. “That help relieve your anxiety any?”
She exhaled, then looked at Randy. “Go on. Go count the rocking horses for him.”
“Okay.” This said with a smile.
Randy seated himself on the other crate—less than six feet away from them—and set about his duties, stopping occasionally to take a bite of yummy funnel cake.
Thalidomide Man g
rinned at Randy, then faced Lucy once again. “To answer your question, ma’am, no, I wasn’t born like this, not exactly. I had problems with my legs as a kid—don’t really remember what the disease was called, but my legs didn’t grow at the same rate as the rest of me. I had to use leg braces and crutches. My daddy hated me ‘cause I was damaged goods, a cripple. Said something about his manliness, I guess, that he sired a crippled son. My daddy was a rotten-mean drunk. One night he went on a real toot and killed my mother with a hammer right in front of me because she was always defending me to him, and then he started in on me—my legs, to be specific. Hammered my kneecaps into pulp and then mashed holy hell out of the rest of the bones below the knees. He was getting ready to work on my skull when the police broke in and shot him dead on top of me. I was seven. Doctors couldn’t save my legs, so they amputated them from just above the knees down.”
Lucy stared at him.
“I leave something out?” asked Thalidomide Man. “My story, I think I hit all the high points.”
“How long have you been with this carnival?”
“This one?” A shrug. “Couple of years, I guess.” Then: “How did you know I wasn’t born like this?”
“I honestly don’t know. The way you rubbed your stumps, I guess. I don’t remember much about it from school, but Thalidomide babies whose limbs are…malformed…there’s not supposed to be any feeling in those limbs, I think.”
Thalidomide Man considered this, then nodded his head. “Huh. I gotta remember that. Don’t think I’d much like gettin’ arrested for fraud. The lines of work I’m qualified for are a bit…limited, as you might guess. Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Have we met before?”
Lucy nodded. “You sold my daughter a couple of your carved figures.”
“I did, huh?” He stared at her face a few moments longer, then shook his head. “Wish I could say that I remember you and your daughter, but the fact is, I see so many people in the course of any given year, all I remember’s the money in their hands and the way the kids giggle.”
“There are programs you can get into, training programs. You could—”
He held up one of his gloved hands and shook his head. “You wanna know why I do this?”
“I guess so, yes.”
He watched the families wander by.
The mothers. The fathers. The teens.
The children, most of all.
Finally, he looked at Lucy and said, “Look at them, will you?” He gestured toward a group of children who were being led along by two harried-looking mothers. “Everything’s still new to them. Even if something bad’s happened to them recently, they still laugh and giggle and, I don’t know, hope, I guess. Remember when we were that young? How nothing bad ever followed us to the next morning? Maybe something bad happened before, but now’s fun, you’ve got a ball to bounce or a model plane to fly or a doll to pretend with, and the day’s full of mystery and wonder and things to look forward to and—” He stopped himself with a shake of his head. “—and there’s that funny-looking man over there selling his little carved figures, let’s go see him.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lucy, casting a quick glance at Randy, who sat busy with his task, not bothered by anyone.
“I like to think I give ‘em something to remember, right? They might forget everything else about the carnival where they saw me, but I don’t think many of ‘em will ever forget me. I look like a human wind-up toy, right? Sure, some of ‘em might laugh at me, but believe it or not, most of them don’t. Most of them are little ladies and gentlemen. I also give their parents a little something, as well. They can remind the kids how damn lucky there are to be whole and healthy and not ‘like that man at the carnival.’” Another shrug. “Don’t mind it a damn bit.”
Randy came back over, handing the “pen” and quiver back to Thalidomide Man.
“You got fifteen rocking horses,” said Randy proudly.
“That a fact? Well, this’s a good day for me—I thought I only had eleven left. Thank you, son. I think your work ought to be rewarded, don’t you?”
Randy looked shyly from him to Lucy, who nodded her head.
“I guess so,” Randy said.
Thalidomide Man reached into his quiver and came out with a carved figure very much like the one Sarah had named “Misserhands,” but something in Lucy’s face told him this was not a good choice, so he dug around until he came up with a figure of an astronaut. “How’s this?”
“Aw, that’s so cool! A spaceman!” Randy gave a radiant smile and accepted it, but Thalidomide Man insisted that Randy take one of each figure—including that of Misserhands.
Lucy took Randy’s hand and thanked Thalidomide Man and began to leave.
“Hey, ma’am?” called Thalidomide Man.
Lucy turned. “Yes?”
“I assume that our discussion will remain private?”
“Yes.”
They started away again, and again Thalidomide Man called after her.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?”
A pause, then: “How’s your little girl?”
Lucy couldn’t say anything, so Randy said it for her: “She died.”
A few minutes later they were back in the car and moving again.
Chapter Ten
The cabin was located in the Waretown woods of New Jersey. Lucy was never really sure if this area was considered part of the Pine Barrens or not, but judging from the overwhelming stands of Atlantic white cedar, sour gum, and red maple that began to swallow the car as she drove along, she supposed the point was moot.
It was a little after six-thirty in the morning. The first official snow of the season had begun falling last night, and the area surrounding the cabin looked like something torn from one of those “Winter Wonderland” calendars and given full life.
She and Eric used to come up to this cabin at least twice a year while they were married; those visits increased after Sarah turned two: she’d loved the short canoe trips they’d take in the river nearby, or those quick, one-day excursions to Wells Mills County Park to the south. In the winter when they came here, Sarah loved to build as many snowmen as possible; the bigger, the better.
Eric had given her the cabin in the divorce settlement, though he still insisted on paying the property taxes and for all maintenance, his codicil being that if he ever needed to get away for a little while, he could use this place—providing he gave her notice of intent.
They’d had a lot of good times here—especially those nights when Eric would tell them stories of the so-called “Jersey Devil” said to roam the area. Sarah was always a little frightened by the stories, but loved them, just the same. “Spoooookeeeeee,” she’d intone, then collapse into a fit of giggling.
Staring at the cabin now, Lucy shook her head, thinking that even a legendary beast like the Jersey Devil would probably shit his britches at the sight of Mr. Hands.
She remembered the way Sarah had started creating “legends” of her own (Thank you, kairos), her favorite being the “secret-secret mountain” only she could see. It was made of gold, this mountain, and it had places in it where treasures were hidden, and dinosaur fossils, and caves full of magic. Lucy tried to pretend that she could see the secret-secret mountain, but Sarah always called her on it.
“Only kids like me can see it,” she’d said, looking out the cabin window. “Grown-ups aren’t allowed, unless I say so.”
Lucy decided to let Randy sleep while she unloaded the car, carrying the supplies only as far as the porch so as not to let him out of her sight.
She woke him later, and he helped her carry everything inside.
“This place is so cool!” he said, grinning, looking a little bit more like a child should.
Once inside, Lucy activated the security system (a paranoid carryover from city dwelling) and for the first time was glad that Eric had gone slightly overboard with it; aside from the usual alarms for
windows and doors, this system came equipped with floodlights on the roof outside that were tied into a quartet of motion sensors installed on the grounds surrounding the cabin: when activated, the sensors created an invisible fence. Nothing bigger than a deer could get within fifty yards of the cabin from any direction without setting off all the fireworks.
That done, she and Randy set about putting away the groceries, removing the covers from all the furniture, getting a fire started in the fireplace (Randy only flinched once at the crackling flames, and Lucy hugged him; to her surprise and delight, he returned the hug, then kissed her cheek as if she were his own mother), then she let him open the new DVD player she’d bought and they hooked it up to the television set. She gave him a box full of DVD movies and told him they were all his and they could watch whatever he wanted.
He was so excited he actually shook. “Oh, cool! Lookit all these! Mighty Joe Young and Godzilla and...” He looked up at her, puzzled. “Barney and Rugrats?”
“I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I bought pretty much everything I could find.”
He shrugged. “These’re okay, I guess.” Then: “Kylie liked Barney and the Rugrats. Tommy was her favorite.”
“We don’t have to watch those.”
He shook his head. “I wanna make popcorn and watch these first, okay? Kylie can watch ‘em with us from up in Heaven. It’s her birthday today. This’ll be a good present for her.”
Something caught in Lucy’s throat and she swallowed it down. “Sounds like fun.”
She eyed the duffel bag. Later, she thought, after he’s asleep.
She took off her coat and Randy saw the .45 in its shoulder holster.
“Is that real?”
“Yes. And it’s loaded.”
He looked at her with something like awe. “You really ain’t gonna let him get me, are you?”
“Absolutely not. While I’m thinking of it, c’mere.”
She opened another bag from the electronics store and gave him his own cellular phone, fully-charged, along with a portable two-way radio, and explained how to use both.
“A walkie-talkie!” he shouted.
“Okay, sure, but this one’s already set, see here? It’s tuned in to the emergency assistance channel they have around these parts, so don’t mess with it, please.” She pointed to the cell phone. “You know about 911, right?”
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