Rides of the Midway

by Lee Durkee

“He still thinks I did it, doesn’t he? Because of that Miss Myrick bullshit. Hell, everybody in our church thinks I did it.”

  “No, he doesn’t, not anymore. But sometimes, Noel, it’s almost like you want people to think you did it. You’re always bringing it up, always talking about it.”

  He rolled his eyes, a dismissive gesture he’d stolen from Layle, and said, “Coach told me I had to get a haircut too. Before the season starts. Otherwise he won’t let me play on the team.”

  “Are you going to?”

  He shrugged, sucked in more beer, then stared down at the bracelet on her perfect wrist.

  “If you want me to I will, for you.” Then he added, “My dad, he’s either dead or better off dead. That’s what my uncle said in the letter.”

  Layle started shaking her head vehemently.

  “He’s alive,” she said. “I know he is. I felt him the second I put it on.”

  •••

  They left to go parking at either the Circles or the Curve, Noel had not decided which yet. He was thinking about how every decision, no matter how small—even something like the Circles or the Curve—will change your life forever. Driving along Richmond Road, a road famous for head-ons and hairpins, he started flicking the headlight on and off to scare Layle, and it was during one of those moments with the lights off and the stars honed that the DJ broke into the middle of a love song to report that the band Lynyrd Skynyrd had just crashed its private jet into a heavily wooded area west of Hattiesburg and that Rescue-7, the new medical helicopter at Forest General Hospital, had been dispatched to the crash site.

  Noel swerved into a used-car lot and killed the engine. Although his lips were moving, he did not say anything until Layle asked him, “What if Lynyrd Skynyrd was killed?”

  “Skynyrd ain’t a person, it’s the whole damn band,” he snapped without even looking at her. He placed both hands on the wheel and started whispering, “Not Skynyrd.” Finally he nodded once, started the engine again, then churned the car out of the lot, heading away from the Curve or the Circles and whatever fate may have been in store for him there. He stopped at a convenience mart and bought a twelve-pack of tallboys.

  “I thought we were going . . . I mean—”

  “The landing pad,” he told her. “We’re going to the landing pad.”

  •••

  The landing pad turned out to be a fluorescent yellow circle with crosshair dashes painted onto a circular patch of blacktop behind the hospital. Around this blacktop circle, teenagers and bikers waited for the helicopter and held up lighters, as if a concert were beginning, while a dozen competing sound systems blasted Skynyrd tunes. Rumors of death and dismemberment wafted van to bike to car with the sweet-smelling joints. A joint came Noel’s way and he hit it and passed it along to Layle, who leapt back, then blushed. To redeem herself, she opened a tallboy and inserted her free hand into Noel’s back pocket.

  Then a biker listed his hog toward Layle and wrapped his arm around her waist. He was still straddling his bike. A red bandanna was pirated across his hairline. The back of his leather jacket read:

  DIAMONDBACKS

  WHITE BY BIRTH

  SOURTHERN BY THE GRACE OF GOD

  Leaning farther into Layle, he asked, “You see their new album, sugar, see it, the cover I mean? It’s got the whole of them on fire, like they knew—the whole damn band’s on fire!”

  Plunging her hand deeper into Noel’s pocket, Layle tried to console the Diamondback, saying that maybe nobody got killed, but he only shook his head resolutely and stared far away. Then, with a distant nod, he asked, “What do you know about it, cunt?” He laughed, then he roared, accompanying himself as if his own laughter were something irresistible, contagious. Flashing jack-o-lantern teeth, he began to study the joint as if it had asked him an interesting riddle. With an inward smile, he replied, “Life-support systems for pussies,” and passed the joint to Noel and quipped, “Ain’t that how it is, chief?”

  Noel tried to hit the joint in such a way as to give sufficient reply. Layle, beckoning to him with her green eyes, said she was going to wait inside the car. Noel nodded but did not offer to go with her. He watched Layle get inside the car, then he turned and stared up at the stars and at the October moon shaped like a boomerang.

  The biker was talking about the plane wreck. He made it sound like he had been inside the plane when it crashed.

  Noel passed the joint back and said, “This tastes kinda funny.”

  “Funny?”

  “Good funny, though.”

  Smiling, then spit-whispering into Noel’s ear, the Diamondback said, “Dusted.”

  “Dusted?”

  “The dust of angels.”

  When Noel asked what that meant, the biker had to consult the heavens before answering, “Means I hope you ain’t got no big plans for tonight.” He had stated this very slowly, as if translating from the language of stars.

  “Dust of angels?”

  The biker put his arm around Noel’s neck, squeezed it hard, and asked, “What they call you, man? On the street?”

  “Spider,” Noel said, because that’s what his summer-league coach had nicknamed him because of how he crouched down at short. “Did I just smoke damn angel dust?”

  “Spider! Hey, Hanford! We got us Spider over here!” Then he added, “Hanford’s a niggername, ain’t it?”

  Hanford bellied over, eyeing Noel’s beer. He was huge, all black leather and beard and mean-slanted red eyes.

  “Ain’t it a niggername?”

  “Hold on,” Noel said. He ducked inside the car and grabbed three tallboys. “You doin’ alright in here?” he asked. “You gonna miss it bringing them down.”

  “I like it better in here,” Layle replied, as if contently.

  “They’re saying Ronnie’s head got cut off, and they can’t find it nowhere.”

  She asked which one was Ronnie.

  “One that writes the songs, the lead singer.”

  “You look Chinese.”

  “I feel about half Chinese.” Before closing the door, he promised he’d be back in a minute. “First I gotta run these old boys some beers before they decide to rip my arms off.”

  He got his camera out of the trunk, then handed out the tallboys to the bikers and opened one for himself.

  “It a niggername or it a niggername?”

  “Not one I ever heard of,” Noel replied.

  Hanford opened his beer, slapped Noel on the back, and asked, “Why come they call you spider, Spider?”

  •••

  A star had begun to distinguish itself above the hospital. Noel was not yet sure if it was Venus, a helicopter, or the onset of his angel-dust hallucinations. “Look there,” he said softly to Hanford. “You see that?” The helicopter’s spotlight was a straight white beam that dished at the end, a nail head of light. Soon this beam located the landing pad and then seemed to draw the helicopter down onto the pad. Wind began to flatten itself through the crowd as the helicopter, yellow on blue, landed by dancing from one pontoon to the next. Beer cans were skittering everywhere. Noel had just started taking pictures when two men in orange suits jumped out of the cockpit. They inspected the crowd, then one man ran back to the pilot and made a motion like keying a mike. Cops had arrived and were scything the crowd with orange-coned flashlights. The pilot tested the bullhorn. After a burst of feedback, he announced that Rescue-7 had already taken the survivors to Jackson. “Please disperse. Repeat. Rescue-7 has already taken all survivors to Jackson. . . .”

  •••

  The Diamondbacks scrummed then set off for the vicinity of the crash site, a V formation of rumbling geese, vowing to find the lead singer’s decapitated head. Noel’s Mustang followed in their wake, but he was driving without compass, his world once again centrifugal, compose
d of brightly colored banners of light, one of which was the yellow center line on the road. He held Layle’s hand as the radio listed off the names of band members confirmed to be DOA. The lead singer’s was the first name on the list. They kept driving. Ten miles outside of town, Layle raised their knotted hands and pointed to the Beverly Drive-in, her copper bracelet absorbing the glow of the single streetlight. There, spelled out in crooked black letters along the wind-listed marquee, the T dangling: the exorcist.

  “Oh my Gosh!” she said. “We have to!”

  •••

  Idling in line toward the yellow outhouse ticket booth, Noel was as yet unable to see the movie screen, only the bug-filled river of images above the parked cars. A group of protesters, twelve Christians strong, was moving down the ticket line laying posterboard signs over windshields and belting out, “Mine eyes have seen the glory!” They reached the Mustang. evil is evil! the windshield suddenly proclaimed in red Magic Marker. Noel tried to max the volume on “Crossroads” but turned the defroster on by mistake. Layle visored her eyes and sank into the seat.

  “Do you think they recognized us?” she asked afterward.

  “Who?”

  “Them! They were from our church. Some of them were—Mrs. Gillespie was. God, she looked right at me too. I think she did.”

  “Our church?”

  “Noel, are you okay? Your eyes look like they’re bleeding almost.”

  He thrust a wad of bills through a crescent-moon window to a woman eighty years old wearing sunglasses, then he found an empty slot alongside the swaying corrugated fence painted swimming-pool blue that surrounded the drive-in with the loose bay-and-inlet shape of a lake. On screen a man in a black suit was walking down a black alley. Noel fitted the iron speaker onto his window. The music was already giving him the creeps. A headlight passed close enough for him to glimpse Layle, her green eyes were blurred.

  “How many beers you had, girl?” he asked.

  “Four. Counting this one.”

  “You had four tallboys already?”

  “Plus the two at the restaurant.”

  He took her beer away and said, “Your dad’s gonna be waiting up on you.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “Yeah, he’ll get over it by not letting you see me for the next year.”

  This information seemed to annoy Layle, at least momentarily. She propped her blue-jeaned legs out the window and rested her head on Noel’s lap and clamped the back of her palm to her forehead.

  “I am so drunk I bet I won’t even remember this. The last thing I’ll probably remember is waiting for that helicopter. You’ll have to tell me everything after that, I won’t even know unless you tell me.”

  Noel made the mistake of glancing at the movie screen, and instantly he was aboard the small bed twirling in midair.

  Layle sat up suddenly and said, “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

  “You gonna be sick?”

  “No, I just gotta pee.”

  As soon as she’d left, Noel fed on his inhaler then slid low into his seat and covered an eye with each hand. He was peering between his fingers at the screen when Layle opened her car door and almost gave him a heart attack. She was out of breath. She was saying, “Noel, you will not believe what just happened to me!” She was saying, “Look—I’m bleeding!” She opened the door so that the weak dome light bathed the front seat. They both stared at her bleeding ankle while she explained, “They had the movie speakers going inside the bathroom, going full blast, and I was just sitting there with all these humongous spiders about to drop down on me then you’ll never guess what happened I swear this owl I thought it was an owl trapped in there making all these spooked-out noises just like a ghost ooooooohhhhh . . .” Layle turned her hands into spiders. “I never peed so fast in my life. Then, right as I stepped outside, that poor girl’s head—did you see that part?—it was spinning around her neck, I had to run back inside I thought I was gonna be sick.” She paused for breath and then lowered one spider onto Noel’s wrist. “But it wasn’t an owl at all, Noel. It was a couple, in the last stall, doing it, standing up doing it, I think—is that even possible?”

  He shook his head and told her, “Nah, baby, it don’t work that way.”

  She wedged her bleeding foot atop the opposite thigh and started dabbing a tissue from tongue to cut.

  “You’ve done it before, haven’t you, Noel? Don’t lie, I know you have. I’ve got ears.”

  “Ears?”

  She asked was it with anybody she knew. She assured him, “I’ll die if it is.”

  Not even on angel dust would Noel confess to being a virgin.

  He said, “Just some ol’ girl out in Petal. After that first time your dad made you break up with me.”

  “I knew it!” She demanded to know what it was like. “I can’t believe I’m asking you this . . . did she, you know?”

  “Did she what?”

  “Oh I don’t know! You tell me. Did she . . . make those kinda spooked-out noises, you know . . . out loud?”

  “Naw, baby, it wasn’t like that.”

  “Was it that slut Amber Smith, she’s from Petal?”

  Noel hesitated long enough to implicate Amber Smith, whoever she was.

  “It was her, I knew it! You’re just protecting her.” She bit her bottom lip. “She’s the biggest road whore in all Petal. And that’s saying something. I can’t believe she’s a cheerleader, she can’t even do a split, not a real one.”

  “She did that night,” Noel said.

  “Oh-my-God, she did?”

  The little girl on screen stabbed at her vagina with a bloody crucifix and yelled “Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!” while Layle listed for Noel everything Amber Smith had ever done wrong as a cheerleader. A welt on the girl’s tummy spelled out HELP ME. Noel’s stomach began to writhe too. He recalled reading a newspaper article that had reported strange fires on the set of The Exorcist. And he recalled another rumor, one his cousins had told him, that the girl actress really did get possessed halfway through the filming and that they’d used a lot of this real footage in the movie.

  Layle was demonstrating the right way to do a particular cheer by throwing her arms around the car, clanging her new bracelet against the rearview, and chanting:

  WOMP! UP! SIDE-DA-HEAD! Say Womp-Upside-Dahead

  HEY-HEY-HEY-WOMP!

  She choreographed two more cheers, explaining the footwork, the hard parts, what certain girls did all wrong. Then she explained that she had learned to do the cheers the right way from sitting in the visitors’ bleachers and watching the black girls cheer for the other team. She launched into a husky gospel version of “Hey-hey Number Nine Got My Eye On You,” but then she stopped abruptly and told Noel that the black girls at Mary Bethune High even turned songs off the radio into cheers:

  DAH ROOF DAH ROOF DAH ROOF IS ON FIRE!

  SAY WE-DON’T-NEED-NO-WATER-LET-THE-FIRE-STATION-BURN!

  She touched her throat, paused, then she said, almost begging, “Noel, this is so gross I can’t watch. Can’t we go in the back and smooch?”

  •••

  The soundtrack followed them into the back seat, where Layle was lowering her kisses between the buttons of Noel’s shirt. She untucked his shirt and slid her cold hands up onto his ribs and wet his belly with her tongue. Noel’s lungs tightened like fists as she undid first his belt, then his zipper. She pulled his jeans to his knees then tugged down the elastic band of his white briefs, exposing his erection to moonlight and movie light. Timing her breath like a diver, she slipped the wet ring of her mouth onto him.

  It was like his asthma was boiling up inside of him. He had been trying to weather the attack discreetly, but now he was starting to panic. Finally he sat up and tried to scissor his torso over Layle’s, stretching his right arm
toward the inhaler inside his jeans pocket. He almost had it . . . but then, just as his hand closed on it, he felt himself jettisoning into Layle, whose head was trapped beneath him. She could not pull away, though she tried. Her body performed an unsuccessful push-up, after which she made a strangled gag, then vomited a long hot gush of pizza, spaghetti, and beer onto Noel’s groin. . . .

  When he finally opened his eyes again, Layle was crouched over his lap and connected to him by long sinews of mucus. She looked like a wild animal. A terrible stench had flooded the back seat. Noel closed his eyes again but not in time. He too struggled to escape, then he choked and began to empty his belly onto Layle’s long shiny strawberry blond hair. . . .

  The world we know is a machine, a design, darkly spinning: therefore God exists.

  •••

  The speaker above the sink was sporadically broadcasting the movie while Noel scrubbed himself with brown paper towels in front of the mirror. A man had followed him into the men’s room and now stood behind Noel holding a quart of beer and watching solemnly Noel’s attempts to clean himself. He was almost as tall as Noel and he wore a tan soldier’s uniform and he was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. He was handsome even though his nose was kind of large and his eyes kind of too big and his neck kind of too long. Their eyes met in the mirror and Noel was just about to tell the soldier to fuck off when he noticed the hole bored through the chest of the soldier’s uniform. The hole was about the size of a baseball and it was surrounded by pink blistery scar tissue, as if the uniform and his skin had been melted together. Every time the soldier inhaled his cigarette, the hole filled with smoke. When the smoke dissipated, Noel could see the turquoise wall behind the soldier through the hole.

  “I ain’t afraid of you,” Noel said. He turned to face the soldier, but nobody was there. Noel was alone in the bathroom.

  He returned to the car with more paper towels and did his best to mop out the back, then he slumped into the driver’s seat to wait for Layle. Soon, he knew, he would drop her off in front of her house and as her porch light shot on she would gently set the copper bracelet onto the console between them, then she would trudge wet and dreadlocked toward the ghost and scarecrow guarding her father’s door. Noel would never see her again. He knew this as clearly as an old man remembering it, remembering it bitterly. And the longer he sat there staring at the movie, the more he was beset with this grim clairvoyance. He remembered that Layle would not show up for school on Monday, the day of cheerleader tryouts, and that over the next week word would spread that she had transferred across town to Beason, the private all-white academy. Other rumors would follow, the most persistent one being that Noel had taken Layle to New Orleans for an abortion.