by Chris Lynch
“Thing is, this guy is a carny, working that very carnival sometimes, so we attract a big crowd. Every geek who could slip away from his booth is there watching the fight. But the fight doesn’t last long. The guy picks me up, right up in the air—he’s a strong wiry sonofabitch after all—and starts to squeezin’ holy hell out of my gutwork. So I do the only thing I can. I take these”—Pete held two thumbs up—“and I give the guy two thumbdogs, jammin’ the suckers so hard into his eyeballs that the thumbs sink in, right on up to the knuckles.”
Joanne dropped her cotton candy and covered her mouth with both hands. But she leaned even harder into Sneaky Pete, and her dancing eyes showed more excitement than horror. Davey stopped looking everywhere else and turned his attention strictly on Pete.
Sneaky Pete shivered his shoulders. “You know what it felt like, there at the ends of my thumbs? It felt like . . . I dunno, eyeballs, I guess. Wet and warm and hard but not hard. Felt like I was thumbing hard-boiled eggs. Twenty-minute eggs. Only they were alive things, and felt it.”
“What about Ma, what did Ma do?” Joanne said, brushing the dirt off her cotton candy.
Sneaky Pete tipped his head back, looking up to the sky. “Lois,” he said softly. “She was a fine thing, your mother. Red leather skirt, legs up to here, cut-off T-shirt, suede vest. Kids, I want you to know, your mother was like some kinda queen back then. And you know what she did? She did the right thing. She left with me, of course. But first she walked right on over to that Harley boy, who had fallen like a tree on his back, and lay still like one, she crouched down to him and she kissed him. Stuff oozing outta his eyes and everything, and Lois kisses the sucker. Gallant is what ol’ Lo was back then. Is that what they call it, for girls? Gallant? Anyway, she left with me then. It was a very Romeo and Juliet kind of thing, y’know?”
“And the other guy, Dad? He was really blind, was he?” You did it to him?” Joanne said, almost breathless.
“Well I don’t know for sure, but I don’t expect he did much more seein’ outta them balls. Hey, I lost a nail in one of ’em. Somebody even told me later the dude croaked, a thumbs in the brain deal or somethin’, but I don’t believe that. Not that it mattered. He was just a carny loser nobody, a Gypsy. Even when he was lyin’ there, nobody did nothin’ for him ’cause they all had to get back to their booths. The only thing anybody cared about him at that point was, like, now who’s gonna run the water-gun races with him gone? Poor stupid Gypsy nobody.”
That was where Davey got off.
“Let’s go,” Davey suddenly said, jumping to his feet, pulling Pete by the hand. “I don’t want to do stories. I want to play games.” He started tugging hard.
Joanne stood, brushing herself off. “That’s a super story, Dad. A real love story, huh?”
They talked as Davey raced to the baseball pitching game. “It was exactly that, sweetheart. It was a true love story ’cause I knew from the second I laid eyes on her that I was gonna love Lois for the rest of my life. We took off right from that carnival and shot down in my Charger all the way to Atlantic City. Stayed with the Governor. Not the governor in charge of New Jersey, but the governor in charge of pinball machines in New Jersey. Stayed, living like pigs, pigs in love, for two whole weeks.”
“Wow, Daddy,” Joanne said, jumping on his back. “That’s so beautiful.”
“It was,” he said sadly, turning his head so that, with Joanne piggybacking, their cheeks touched. “It was a beautiful time and Lois was a beautiful chick. I ain’t never matched her again.”
They stepped up behind Davey just as Pete was saying the last words about how wonderful Lois was. Davey spun angrily to face them. He stared at Pete, but Pete didn’t get it.
“Kid, you got a friggin’ quarter or not? You’re in the way.”
“Shut up,” Pete said, riffing a quarter off the man’s chest. “Go ahead, Davey, throw the baseballs.”
Davey turned, picked up the baseballs, and threw so wildly that he hit nothing but the stuffed Fred Flintstone dolls on the top shelf. Then he stepped hard on Pete’s foot and stalked off. Pete leaned over the counter, with Joanne on his back. He slapped down a five-dollar bill and growled, “Give me Fred friggin’ Flintstone.”
Pete, carrying Joanne on his back, followed Davey from one rigged game to the next, buying the prizes his son couldn’t win. Shooting the paper star target with the air rifle—a stuffed frog. Shooting basketballs—a Miller Lite mug. Throwing the rings around the Coke bottle—a three-foot rubber boa constrictor.
“I love this crap,” Sneaky Pete said, breathing deep the smell of old-growth popcorn, sausage, hay, axle grease, perfume, plastic, and sweat. He had the haul of prizes under each arm, his daughter on his back, and Davey slowing down and loosening up to the point where they were all actually traveling together through the show. “Darlin’, reach into that pocket there.” He pointed with his nose at the breast pocket of his dungaree jacket. Joanne reached in and pulled out a handful of black pills. “Whoa there, you wanna off the old man? Just give me two.”
“What are they?” Joanne asked as she placed the pills on her father’s lips.
“Blood pressure stuff. Thanks, hon.”
“Let’s go on the round-up,” Joanne said.
“Sure,” Pete said. “Come on, Davey.”
Davey shook his hand and backed up. Joanne slid down her father’s back and pulled Davey along. “Don’t be a baby,” she said.
“Ya, it’ll be fun. It’s good to be afraid.” Pete laughed.
Davey kept shaking his head, but got on anyway. A minute into the ride, when it reached maximum speed and stood completely vertical spinning like a giant bicycle wheel, Davey vomited. With the motion of the ride, all the throw-up landed on Pete, not Davey, and on the armloads of toys he carried.
Wobbling down the steps of the ride, Davey just wanted to sit. Pete dumped all the stuffed animals in the trash barrel and wiped himself off with five pounds of wet napkins from the hamburger stand. Joanne laughed like a maniac.
All that was left for their efforts were the boa and the beer mug, until Sneaky Pete spotted the cheese jewelry lady. “Hot damn, come on,” he whooped. “We’re gonna be decked out in cheese,” he said, running toward the cluster of little stands on the outer edge of the carnival.
Cheese jewelry was what Pete called the junk—two-dollar watches, wide leather wristbands with metal studs and your name tapped into them, plastic rings with gold paint that cracked off before you reached the car and topped with meatball-sized, diamond-shaped baubles of pink or green—that somehow felt light and fun and trashy carny geek chic on the carnival grounds where the stuff dripped off almost everybody. It was the piece of the evening you wore home to wave in the noses of the tough-luck suckers who couldn’t be there. Cheese jewelry was nothing like the stuffed animals, that didn’t mean jack after all, because you wore it, you were it, for a while anyway, the citizen of the carnival, low as it goes.
And though he’d grown into the more pricey kind, cheese jewelry was Sneaky Pete. “Davey, what time is it? No, that’s right, you can’t tell me because you ain’t got a watch.” Pete was working up a rev, talking quickly, squeezing the kids’ shoulders every few seconds, pointing at one piece of cheese after another. “Sweet Cheeks,” he said to the woman with the sunken eyes and the high rouge cheeks. “Lemme have that watch there, will ya?” She pulled down from the wall behind her a watch with a big face and bullets for numerals. “Like it, Davey? Great.” He strapped it on Davey’s wrist then spun to scope out some more. “But what if it breaks? Can’t have my boy not knowin’ what time it is. Gimme that one, and that one and that one.” He strapped three more on Davey’s arm, covering it halfway to the elbow. Davey stared down at them, then back up at Pete with a small, brief smile. “Thanks, Dad,” he said, then started setting the time on all of them. “Whadya, want the kid to tip over?” Pete said to the woman. “Gimme four for the other arm.” Davey looked like a gladiator.
“Um, excuse me?�
�� Joanne said. Pete scooped her up like a child half her age, and from her position on his hip she went about picking the gaudiest, silliest pieces she could find.
Something else had already caught Davey’s eye, and he drifted off. While Sneaky Pete covered his daughter’s ears, wrists and fingers with spangles, Davey pulled up a seat at a kiosk called The Temporary Tattooist. Stencil on, color in, not quite as temporary as the Cracker Jack kind of tattoo, but still only something to wear for a couple of weeks instead of forever like the ones on Sneaky Pete. Long sleeves and collars were Pete’s choice mostly these days, so that the tapestry underneath was only hinted at. The long leg of a dark woman running out from under the sleeve, over the back of his hand. The vine growing up out of his chest, seeming to wind its way around a jugular vein. The dragon’s tail that tickled his right earlobe.
By the time Pete and Joanne caught up with him, Joanne sounding like a castanet band as she swayed with her trinkets, Davey was staring intently at his own forearm while the tattooist colored a falcon there. When the coloring was done, Davey scanned the rows and rows of stencils lining the six-foot pegboards all around. The tattooist, with a face that dared anyone to smile, looked blankly at Davey.
“Another one,” Davey said. The man put out his hand, to be paid.
“Give him another one,” Pete snapped.
“You payin’?”
“I’m payin’.”
“What do you want, kid?” the man asked as Pete paid him the first five dollars.
Davey looked over the ships, women, birds, big cats, Warner Brothers cartoons—Yosemite Sam with guns blazing, Roadrunner, Tasmanian Devil—but couldn’t land on one. “What are those?” he said when he saw a pile of stencils on the floor.
“That’s just shit, kid. Trash. Ruined by carnival idiots spilling Coke, puttin’ their shitty cotton candy hands all over it, stompin ’em in the mud.”
Davey gave the man the big-eye stare.
“Go look for yourself, then. It’s just a waste.”
Davey walked around behind the tattooist and picked the pile off the ground. He leafed through fifteen or so stencils, mostly the same stuff, plus a soggy dragon and a Christ head with the waffle of a hiking boot stomped into it. Then he stopped leafing, considered the image in his hand. It was a small one, a cowboy on a horse at full gallop, an old Remington image, but the top of the picture, from the chin up to almost the top of the ten-gallon hat, was burned away by a cigarette or cigar ash.
“I want this.” Davey said, shoving the cowboy in the man’s hand and sitting himself back in the chair.
“But this is garbage, kid.”
Davey stuck out his hand, pointed to the back of it. “I want it right there. Then I want you to do the same thing on the other hand.”
The tattooist looked up to Pete, who said, “You heard him. Do it.”
So Davey got the faceless cowboy on both hands, and did not stop looking at them. “Pretty stupid, Davey,” Joanne said. Davey just kept on walking, head down, as they headed out of the carnival. As they neared the gate an old veteran belly dancer, with a lot of extra belly hanging over her gauzy harem pants, shimmied to direct people into the fun-house freak museum. She reached out and lifted Davey’s chin off his chest with two long purple nails. Davey stopped, startled for a second, and leaned back away. Until she smiled, swiveled, and stroked his cheek with the back of her hand.
Davey then reached his hand out, with Joanne behind him snapping, “Cut that out,” and laid his hand flat on the dancer’s soft middle. Looking at it. Looking at his hand on it.
“You’re disgusting,” Joanne said, walking on. Sneaky Pete clapped his boy on the shoulder and ushered him out.
On the way back, the three of them pressed together on the bench seat of Pete’s El Camino, Pete said. “You guys gotta get right home?”
“Ya, right.” Joanne sniffed. Davey shrugged.
“Wanna see my place?”
“Sure,” said Joanne, who was increasingly happy to go to anybody’s place rather than her own.
“Okay,” Davey said, holding his hands in prayer position, then quickly flipping them over and back to make a sort of moving picture out of his cowboys.
Pete brought them to his motel, which was next door to a sub shop that looked like the tower of Pisa. A one-story, L-shaped building, the motel was white with white shutters and a white cement walk leading to each door. Inside Pete’s room was almost nothing. A double bed, a night table, an oil painting of a waterfall in the middle of a forest, with a lot of mist and pine trees edged with snow of titanium white.
“No phone, no food, no pets, lots and lots of cigarettes,” Pete said. “King of the road.” He plunked himself down on the bed, pulled a tall green warm bottle of Haffenreffer malt liquor out of the nightstand drawer, and got right to the point.
“You kids want to come to Florida? You can, y’know. Say the word and the three of us’ll hop in El Cam right this minute and be in Fort Lauderdale by the weekend. I sure would love to have you kids. We could even visit Gary. Jesus, Gary would be thrilled.”
Joanne and Davey stood just inside the doorway. Davey stopped looking at his tattoos, looked briefly at Sneaky Pete, then at Joanne.
“Wow,” Joanne said, a big grin peeling across her face. She sat on the edge of the bed. “Let’s go.”
Pete took a long drink, slammed the bottle down, then clapped one loud clap. “Alll riiight,” he said, turning to Davey.
Davey took a step back, groped behind him for the doorknob without looking, opened the door. “Ah, um, thanks, Dad. For, y’know, everything. I gotta go now. Mum’ll be missing me by now, so . . . I gotta go.”
He disappeared out the door and started walking the quarter mile toward home. Pete sat speechless. Joanne stared at the door, then slowly turned back to Sneaky Pete.
“You know, right. That I can’t leave him. I can’t,” Joanne said sadly.
She stood up. Pete stood up next to her and nodded. They went out together, caught up to Davey, and all walked home in the chill beginning of the night.
MUTHUH
“Where have you two been?” Lois said in that fuzzy low growl that held more violence than any scream.
“Where the action is,” Joanne mocked.
Lois was rushing toward Joanne, open hand raised, when Pete stepped through the door. “And what the hell do you think you’re doin’?” Pete yelled.
Lois jumped back, her hand covering her thrumming heart. She had no idea Sneaky Pete, or anyone else, was there.
“Oh,” she said, recovering in a shot. “I would have known it was you. Who the hell do you think—”
“Lois, if I catch you hitting these kids, you can just kiss ’em good-bye, ’cause I’ll take ’em to Florida. I’ll take ’em legally, and I’ll take ’em so far deep into the ’Glades the ’gators’ll eat ya before you can find ’em. And if they don’t eat ya, I’ll kick your ass.”
“You want to talk about legal, Pete? You don’t want to talk about legal do you?”
“What is your problem, anyway, Lois? Afraid the kids are enjoying themselves?”
“Ya, great entertainment, Pete. Look at them.” She gestured toward the living room, where Davey had slunk to the couch and was tapping the crystal on one of his two-dollar watches to get it working. Then she pointed at Joanne, who still stood next to her father and who, on cue, shook her wrists limply to make them clank and tinkle with cheese jewelry.
“They look like you for god’s sake, you sleazy bastard!” Lois hollered.
“Speakin’ of sleazy, where were you anyway when I came and took ’em, huh, Lois?”
“Get out of here, Peter. Just get your deadbeat ass out of my house. And the next time you break in here, I’m calling the police.”
“Next time I break in, you probably won’t be here then either.”
“Out,” Lois said, pointing at the door.
Sneaky Pete walked right up to Lois, who continued to point, then walked past her. He went to
Davey on the couch. Davey had the TV on now, and loud, but he wasn’t looking at it. He was looking at his tattoos.
“Thanks for a sweet time, Davey,” Pete said. “You guys really make it for me, y’know.” Davey looked up into Pete’s face, and Pete stooped to kiss him on his great expanse of forehead. “Whenever you need me, you call, okay?”
“Okay, Dad,” Davey said, then looked away from Pete, at the tattoos again, then at the TV.
Pete passed again by Lois, who remained like a pointing mannequin. When he reached Joanne, she hugged him around the waist and rubbed her face back and forth over his chest.
“You sure?” he said.
“No, I’m not,” she answered. “But I can’t.”
“Okay, sweetheart,” Pete said. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Oh no you won’t,” Lois snapped.
“Oh yes he will,” Joanne spat.
Sneaky Pete smiled at Lois as he backed out the door. “Lo, I gotta tell ya, you’re one sucky muthuh.”
He just managed to pull the door closed as Lois ricocheted a shoe off it, screaming without words.
“Take better care of ’em, Lois,” Pete called on his way down the stairs, “or I’ll know . . .”
Standing there with one shoe on, Lois stared at the door, fought back tears before speaking to Joanne. “What did he mean, Joanne, ‘Are you sure’?”
“None of your business.” Joanne fully expected a smack when she said it, but she didn’t care.
Lois didn’t move. She asked again, more quietly, “What was he talking about?”
“What are you, jealous? Because he likes me and he doesn’t like you?” Like a shark Joanne could taste this kind of thing when it was happening, and she bit. She felt herself getting stronger, more pugnacious, while Lois faded. “Because you’re just an old rag and I’m not? Huh, Ma?” With the words, Joanne marched right up to her mother and stood there, arms at her sides, practically demanding to be hit. Even Davey looked in from the other room, briefly, before turning away again.