Rides of the Midway

by Lee Durkee

  “I dunno. He used to beat up my mom.”

  “Your mom . . .”

  Tim lashed the gloves onto Noel’s wrist so quickly that Noel had no time to get rid of the Skoal. After Tim had laced on his own gloves, using his teeth, the two boys squared off, Noel feeling alternately nauseous . . . dreamlike . . . aroused. He parried with his left, roundhoused with his right, but soon his arms grew heavy. The garage began to gyroscope around him. He was just about to call time-out when Tim came in hunched low, then straightened up and flurried into him. The back of Noel’s head hit cement first. His eyes had not shut. He had absorbed the whole backward sweep of his fall. Brown spit seeping between his lips, he lay there, his face in the afternoon sun, his body in the shade of the garage, while Tim stood over him with tears on his jaw and neck.

  “She’s an artist! That’s what artists do, that’s how they paint. They all do stuff like that!”

  Then Tim turned and slammed the door, leaving Noel spread-eagled on the driveway. After a few deep breaths, he flopped over onto his boxing gloves and knees. Holding that position, he spat out the tobacco, then shed the gloves and tested his legs. “I called time-out,” he lied, before staggering the mile home under a headache like a jet taking off.

  •••

  Noel’s house was in a much poorer suburb than Tim’s, but it was the only two-story house on the block. The house was brick, and the windows of the two upstairs bedrooms stared out upon Mandalay Drive like eyes. His mother, barefoot and wearing a short lime-green dress that showed off her legs, met him at the door and told him there was someone here to meet him. She ushered Noel by the shoulders into the den, where a tall man sat all arms and legs inside the green La-Z-Boy recliner. He had the footrest up, and the chair had just twirled all the way around and was coming to a halt.

  “Noel,” Alise began. “I’d like you to meet Tommy Weatherspoon, your dad’s baby brother and heir apparent. You’ve met him before, but you don’t remember it.”

  “How you get outa this thing, Alise?” Tommy asked, locking his eyes on Noel in a quick, confidential manner. Alise replied that she would rescue him in exchange for one of those cancer sticks, and instantly Tommy righted the chair and offered up his pack. That’s when Noel saw the ponytail. Ribbed with red elastics, it ran along his spine almost to his belt. Noel had never before seen a man with a ponytail, nor had he seen his mother smoke, something she did with a familiar flair, tapping a cigarette out of the pack then leaning into the lighter Tommy Weatherspoon held forth. After she had it lit, she went around the den opening doors and windows until the air filled with sun streams and dust. She kept using her free hand to smooth her hair, which had grown back to brown.

  She warned Noel, “Don’t you dare tell, or I swear I’ll hide the coffee where you’ll never find it.” Then she came over and pushed her palm across his forehead. “What happened to your shirt? Is that blood?”

  Noel backed away and explained he had been in a fight, that’s all.

  “Yeah, you tag ’em one?” Tommy Weatherspoon wanted to know. He had an amused, sleepy way of asking.

  “Naw, but I know where he lives at. And payback is hell.”

  Tommy grinned from Noel to Alise, then to her bare feet, then to the open window.

  “Not far from the tree, huh?” he said.

  “Not far enough.” Alise moved in front of the window, as if to intercept his gaze; then, pretending to be studying something outside, she said, “I don’t know where Matthew’s off at—you, Noel?”

  “Matthew?” Noel said, because nobody ever called him that but Roger. Matt had ball practice, he reminded her. “Like always.”

  The wind tailed inside and slammed shut first the front door, then the door to the kitchen. Alise put her hand to her heart and said ghosts. She seemed to be enjoying herself. Smiling approvingly, she walked around the couch and began to tell Noel all about Mr. Weatherspoon here. The first time they’d met, he was just a boy fond of spying on people. She said it was hard to believe little Tommy was a grown-up businessman now.

  Tommy wavered his hand in the air and replied, “Hell, we own a coupla frydog stands is all.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah, but we want to sell them off, use the money to open a restaurant down in the Keys. At least that’s the plan. But you know what they say about plans.” He shrugged and asked, “Hey, you play ball good as your old man did?”

  “What’s this we? You hitched up, Tom?”

  “Hell no, Alise.”

  Still studying him, as if she doubted the truth of that answer, she added, “Tommy’s company owns almost a hundred concession stands, Noel. They rent them out. Cotton candy ones, fried dough, candy apples, onion rings . . . stuff like that. Spread out over what—a dozen fairs? What is it with your family and fairs?”

  He laughed and said it wasn’t just fairs, it was rodeos and bluegrass festivals too. “And I don’t think anybody’s ever called us a company before.” Whenever he quit talking, the rubbery grin took over his face.

  “My dad used to play double-A,” Noel said.

  “I know he did. I watched him pitch a no-hitter once.”

  “He pitched a no-hitter?”

  “Hell yes. Your mom never told you that?”

  “She never tells us nothing about him. She says the less we know, the better.”

  There was a long silence in which Tommy studied a shard of sunlight on the green carpet, and Alise raised her eyebrows, as if daring anybody to object. Finally Tommy said, “Yeah, he pitched a no-hitter. Walked a good dozen of them boys. And he must’ve set some sort of record for bean balls that day too. He never was big on control. Hell, the other team scored three runs.”

  Suddenly Noel understood why his uncle was here.

  “They found him, didn’t they, his bones?”

  “His bones?” Shaking his head slowly at first, then faster, Tommy said, “No. Hell no. Not yet, they ain’t.”

  “His bones always were hard to find,” Alise offered out.

  “She always says that. She thinks he’s dead. You think he’s dead?”

  Leaning forward and appearing less awkward, Tommy nodded sagely and predicted, “If he is, you can bet ol’ Goose took down some gooks with him.”

  “Goose?”

  “That was his nickname.” Again he glanced at Alise. “Because our family was from Goose Creek. And because he looked like a damn goose too. It’s what we all mostly called him. His family did—including your mom here.”

  “What I mostly called him will have to remain a secret, for now, but I can promise you it was not Goose.”

  Noel remarked that he never much liked the name Noel.

  “Neither did your old man, at least not when he was a kid. Guys used to call him No-el. Like that song. They’d call him the first No-el. They do that to you?”

  “Yes sir. But they only do it once,” Noel said, then he asked what was a gook.

  “Gook’s a Viet Cong. Used to be the enemy.”

  “It’s not a word we use in this house.”

  “No reason to.” He spread his palms upright and winked at Noel as a longer breeze entered the room.

  “Tommy served in Vietnam too.”

  “You did?”

  “Yep, eighteen and just barely stupid enough to qualify. Weapons specialist, they called me, though to this day I don’t know why. Mostly what I did was practice my picking. I was the best damn banjo player in Vietnam.”

  “My stepfather,” Noel reported, “had flat feet.”

  “Your daddy had webbed toes. That’s another reason they called him Goose.”

  “Had what?”

  “Webbed toes. Webbed like a duck’s. The army don’t mind that, though. Now, flat feet, that’s different. Can’t hump on flat feet.”

  “Can’t wh
at?”

  “Hump. March.”

  Tommy looked down at his wrist. There was no watch there, only a pale band of skin topped by a pale medallion. He slapped his knees but did not stand. Averting his eyes, he said, “Your daddy, he was a hero, your mom told you all that, right?”

  Noel had to wait for his mother to quit laughing before he could answer.

  “Yes sir. I mean, I guess she did.”

  “Your mom, she doesn’t want me to tell you this.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “What I’m about to tell you.”

  Alise stood and said she thought she’d go check on supper. “Roger’ll be home in half an hour,” she noted, as if to herself.

  Tommy watched as she left the room. Then he said, “She hasn’t been telling you the truth, Noel, not exactly.” He held his breath and released it with a phaaa sound. “Alright. Ready or not here goes. See, about five years ago this badass Marine escaped from a POW camp in Vietnam, one of those mobile units out in the Happy Valley. Nothing happy about it, though. That’s jungle jungle, nowhere you ever want to be. And this fella ends up giving a pretty good account of maybe your dad being kept a few hootches over. A private. Who answered to Goose. Was from down south but spoke fluent Vietnamese. Said he looked like a bunch of sticks all tied together.”

  “Goose,” Noel whispered.

  “Yeah. Goose. Now, see, the army, it’s got something it likes to call Title Thirty-seven. Title Thirty-seven says they had to switch your dad from MIA to POW and to notify his family. Which they did. But your mom, she didn’t notify you. Didn’t want you getting your hopes up, I guess.” He fit one work boot inside the shard of light he had been studying. “Okay. Now fast-forward. In ’73, we traded all our prisoners for all theirs. Supposedly. Operation Homecoming, they called it. But your dad wasn’t one of the ones came home. Am I going too fast? I don’t talk to kids much.”

  Noel asked what a hootch was.

  “Hootch is a hut. Made outa bamboo.”

  “My dad spoke flu-what?”

  “He spoke Vietnamese. He didn’t before, but prisoners tend to pick it up real quick. They have to.” Tommy allotted five seconds for another question, then continued. “Alright. No American POWs were left alive in Vietnam, that’s the official word from DC. But it’s a crock of shit—lies, I mean—as far as I’m concerned it is. Something not right is going on over there, Noel, and it has to do with what they call pearls.”

  Before Noel could ask, Tommy began to explain that a pearl was a POW held for ransom, and that during peace negotiations that asshole Nixon had promised the Vietnamese billions of U.S. dollars to help them rebuild their country. But then Watergate had hit, and Congress had vetoed giving away all that money. “Meaning the Vietnamese lost face. And so, during Operation Homecoming, the VC kept back a few hundred pearls because Nixon had lied to them just like he’d lied to everybody else he’d ever opened his mouth in front of. Our boys got sold down the river—treason, pure and simple—by Nixon and that other bastard Kissinger. So maybe, just maybe, your dad’s still alive over there, rotting in some prison cell. It’s possible. Point is, if he shows up now, he’ll make those Pentagon boys look awful bad, and they just ain’t gonna let that happen. So what I’m telling you, Noel—what I’m trying to tell you—is this. Even if your dad is still alive—and he probably ain’t—he’s better off dead.”

  Noel’s headache had swarmed to his brow during this explanation, which was anything but clear to him. Having finished, Tommy pushed down on the armrest to stand. It was at that moment that Noel realized who it was that his uncle reminded him of: the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Except Tommy was much taller, coming in at about six-foot-four. When he stretched himself out, the rattle of a snake tattoo slid out from underneath his shirt cuff.

  “I gotta go sell a man a busted Frialator,” he said.

  “Matt’ll be home soon. You could stay for supper.”

  That made him smile. “You trying to get me shot?”

  “No sir.”

  “I’ll meet Matt next time I pull through town. Besides, your mom says he’s too young to hear this. Maybe she’s right. Maybe she’s right about you being too young too.”

  “No sir, she ain’t right.”

  “Good. Because I’m gonna try and send you letters, keep you posted.” He put his hand out. After they had shaken, he said, “Noel, always look a man in the eye when you shake his hand.”

  Noel looked his uncle square in the eye and said, “I play shortstop. I once put a kid in a coma who tried to block the plate on me. He’s been there years now. He’s brain-dead.”

  •••

  It was like a field of electricity, his insomnia was, hovering and crackling above his bed. He turned on the light and took out pencil and paper and began to draw Miss Weiss from memory. He could see her clearly, if fleetingly, a distinct image that faded to white like a Polaroid developing in reverse. He outlined her limbs first, the cocked elbows, the monkey-prayer feet. Then the dark hair, short and tucked behind tiny ears. He touched in the slight hook of her nose, the pressed smile, the catlike eyes, then he paused to use his inhaler before penciling in her breasts, practicing the curves over and over before hardening the line. Next his pencil followed the hip bone, coasting along her thighs, then upward, but slower, slower, as he entered a vortex, that dark tunnel where he forgot to breathe and his bed jarred forward as if pulled through the night by chains.

  The next morning he announced he wanted a camera for his birthday. His mother finished pouring her orange juice, then replied, “That’s still months away. You’ll change your mind a dozen times before then.”

  •••

  Hattiesburg’s small Jewish community lived in an affluent neighborhood, the one exception being the Weisses’ small A-frame with its overgrown lawn and peeling gray paint. Tim and Noel were in the TV room on the L-shaped couch that half enclosed a coffee table covered with the desiccated remains of a Burger King meal. The blue curtain had been draped across the sliding-glass door in order to cut the glare off the TV. They watched a game show in silence. Neither of them had mentioned the events of the previous day. After a while Tim stood and said he wanted to go down the street to the minimart and see if the new Daredevil was in.

  Not taking his eyes off the set, Noel handed over a crumpled bill and said, “Bring me back a Coke, alright?”

  Tim hesitated but then took the dollar and left. As soon as he was gone, Noel tore into the back bedroom. He found the Fats Waller album, then separated the Polaroid of Miss Weiss and clamped the photograph atop the peach crate. With his scalp resting against the warming cradle hood of the lamp, he dove into the photograph and sharked around, threshing deeper and closer to Miss Weiss’s nakedness until suddenly, from the above world, he heard a door slam shut. Following a series of false starts, he crammed the Polaroid into his back pocket, slid the album into the crate, then darted for the bathroom. Five minutes later he flushed the toilet and returned into the TV room.

  It wasn’t Tim who had slammed the door, it was Tim’s mother. Miss Weiss stood there aiming the remote control at arm’s length toward the TV and clicking the device to no effect. She had on the same short white dress, and she was so petite that she looked more like a precocious sixteen-year-old than anybody’s mother. Frowning, she turned to Noel and asked where his sidekick was.

  “My God, it’s a beautiful day out, what in the world are you two doing with this thing on? Jesus, how do you turn it off, Noel? Help me out here, will you?”

  He covered the distance between them. Then, while taking the remote from her hand, he received a fishhook of static.

  “Oh,” she said. “You feel that?”

  He squeezed hard around the battery compartment and clicked once. The picture shrank into a blue cube.

  “How did you do that?” she demanded, but befo
re he could demonstrate she had turned to open the curtain. “Like a couple of vampires.” She lit a long cigarette and blew smoke against the glass door.

  “Well, where is the little shit?”

  She turned again and had just seemed to notice something wrong with Noel’s face when Tim bounded into the room holding two cans of Coke. Wielding her attention upon Tim, she asked, “Do you want to explain to me, young man, what this television is doing on?”

  Tim attempted a charming smile and asked what she was doing home.

  “Never mind what I’m doing home, what I want to know is what this TV is doing on. Didn’t we have this discussion already? I’ll sell it, Tim, I swear I will.”

  “I turned it on,” Noel said, though at first no one seemed to have heard him. He cleared his throat and explained that at home his stepdad would not let him watch any TV. “He says TV is run by devil worshipers in New York City.”

  “Excuse me?” said Miss Weiss.

  “Sometimes he says devil worshipers in New York.” Noel shrugged apologetically. “And sometimes he says it’s the Jews in Hollywood.”

  He paused to let the washboard thrill of the lie pass through him. He had heard these theories not from Roger but from his cousins. Noel looked down at the remote in his hand and explained that he had made Tim turn on the TV.

  “See, you squeeze it around the batteries—like this.”

  And he held out the remote to her.

  “Oh my God.” She winced then reached out and touched Noel’s jaw, flicking the smooth bone with her lacquered nails. “You poor thing.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  LATE THAT NIGHT Noel shucked off his clothes and began pacing around his room holding the Polaroid in front of him like a psychic entering a trance. This trance led him downstairs into the dark kitchen, where he opened the refrigerator and let its light yellow his nakedness. He opened and closed the refrigerator twice more before following the Polaroid into the backyard to stand among the watery shadows beneath the pecan tree. There he began to pee in an arc that crested above his head. When he heard the footsteps, he could not stop peeing, and the warm urine lashed his legs as he grafted himself to the pecan tree. He scoured the yard, but found nothing there, at least nothing he could see. “Ross, that you?” he called out. No answer, just the footsteps, louder, closer. Finally he lowered his gaze just enough to spot the tortoise.