by David Black
“In London,” Caroline said, “at the church—I think St. James’s Church—where Blake was baptized, the base of the baptismal font is made up of a carved Adam and Eve and serpent, like a Blake print. I think when Blake was a baby and they sprinkled water on him, it must have been so cold, he opened his eyes and saw, saw the carved base, and Adam and Eve and the serpent were imprinted on his imagination.”
“The head of the Fugs,” Jack said, “Ed Sanders—he had a bookstore, the Peace Eye Bookstore, I hung out at. I used to wander through Tompkins Square Park, high on acid. Knowing most of the people I passed were high on acid, too. A lot of trust. No one worried about getting ripped off. Getting strung out. Getting old.…”
Jack kissed the top of Caroline’s head.
“Why worry?” Jack said. “It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. We all thought the world was coming to an end.… Which meant, I guess, no consequences. Or our little consequences were swallowed up in Big Consequences! The Bomb. The Age of Aquarius. The end of reality. If you took enough acid, the whole world, everything, was going to change the day after tomorrow.”
“When Dixie’s gone,” Caroline said, “you’ll protect us. You’ll protect me.”
“From what?” Jack asked.
“The day after tomorrow,” Caroline said.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
1
Fat drops plopped around Jack and Caroline as they hurried toward the county fair.
“I feel like I’ve been let out of school,” Caroline said.
“I figured you needed a break,” Jack said, “and Bix is right. The fair is the last place the Cowboy—or whoever—is likely to be. Too many people. Too little privacy.”
“Bix really wants you to be in the demolition derby,” Caroline said.
“I haven’t missed one since my first, when I was nineteen,” Jack said. “Anyway, no one’ll be crazy enough to try a hit here.”
Caroline was silent.
“What?” Jack asked.
“A crowd like this,” Caroline said, “is where I’d make my move.”
“You’re not a killer, Five Spot,” Jack said, adding when he saw her expression, “I’ll keep my eyes open.”
Dixie and Nicole lagged behind them.
Wind rattled the chain-link fence enclosing the field filled with the clunkers painted and numbered for the demolition derby.
From a radio in the Boy Scout encampment, Jack heard a report of the approaching storm: Sixty thousand homes without power … dumping torrential rains … heading northeast at twelve miles per hour …
Before lunch, Bix had made two trips to bring his car and Jack’s to the fair.
“You be back here by four, Jackie,” Bix said.
A red cloth sign tied to a wooden fence said: Budweiser Welcomes You. Next to it was another sign: Seventh-Day Adventist Church at Kinderhook—Sabbath Services—Saturday—Salvation Is Free—No Strings Attached. More signs: 4-H Archery; Olde Chatman Kettle Corn; Verizon Wireless Zone; Fresh Cold Cider Here; Face Painting; Chair Massage—10 Min = $10.… Yellow diamond-shaped gag traffic signs warned: Cattle Xing, Donkey Xing, Tractor Xing, Llama Xing, Pussycat Xing, Marines Xing, Snow Mobile Xing.…
The midway was crowded. People wore Cowboy hats, baseball caps, held newspapers over their heads, used plastic garbage bags as makeshift ponchos, ignored the rain.…
But no Cowboy, Jack thought.
A burly man with red hair on his arms wore a blue shirt with cut-off sleeves. His daughter? Girlfriend? Wife?—it was hard to tell which—wore a T-shirt that said Jeter 2. An older man wearing a bright-orange slicker and a large Canon camera bellied up to the Free engraving while-u-wait tent: Baby bracelets—anklets—Dog tags. A woman with fat arms wearing a lime green top and white pants examined the ABATE of New York motorcyclists display: Dedicated to the Freedom of the Road. An elderly biker with a graying ponytail wore a shirt with a cartoon of a Hells Angel on a Harley and the motto Ya Hated Us—Now Ya Wannabe Us.
Down the way was another biker stand: The National Coalition of Motorcyclists. NCOM. Region VIII. A sign proclaimed: A UNITED VOICE FOR ALL BIKERS with a map of the United States overlaid with two shaking hands. A biker with a beer belly was handing out business cards.
Next to that was a tent with American flag bunting and a black POW-MIA flag, which whipped in the wind so hard it sounded like gun shots.
Jack scanned faces: No Cowboy.
State troopers strolled by in twos—as did county sheriffs, local police, and fair security. Guys and gals wore matching camo pants. Towering above the crowd were kids on fathers’ shoulders, faces smeared with ice cream and red dye from the candied apples.
At the Columbia County Sportsmen’s Federation booth, a stuffed fox with an old man’s narrow, withered face gazed across the path at a four-foot-tall, fanged, cross-eyed, and goofily grinning stuffed bear. A chimney sweep—Dr. Soot-n-Cinders—advertised a free exorcism for sick houses with every job. Everyone passing was reflected in the lenses of a hundred sunglasses arrayed on a long table.
The air smelled of frying sausage and onions, deep-fried dough, spun sugar candy, mud, and manure. Under a glass window, ruby heat lamps glowed over pizzas. A tall woman with perfect features shot out her lower jaw to catch the sauerkraut dripping from her hot dog roll. A seven-year-old boy gnawed on a turkey drumstick almost as large as his fist and forearm. A jarhead in a muscle shirt wore spaghetti sauce like war paint.
Two men in kilts, sporrans, with mud-spattered knee socks played bagpipes and paraded through the crowd, followed by three more men in kilts, one carrying crossed swords, one carrying a bottle of scotch on a silver platter, and the third carrying a large tray with what looked like two damp, overstuffed maroon socks: Haggis.
“Have you ever tried it?” Caroline asked Jack. “You know how you sometimes bite your tongue and taste the blood? That’s what haggis tastes like.”
A blue kids’ plastic wading pool empty of water was weighted down by a cinder block. The wind snapped banners decorating the US Army recruiting stand. Behind one food stand were a dozen fifty-pound bags of potatoes. Two sheared sheep lay in their pen dressed in white robes and white hoods with nose holes, eye holes, and ear holes. They looked like bovid Ku Klux Klan members. The insides of their ears were pink.
Rustic chairs and gliders, whirlpool hot tubs, leather vests, vacuum cleaners, satellite dishes, strings of colored beads, teddy bears, and signed baseballs were ranged along the path for sale. So was the farm machinery, forklifts, big Cats, and small John Deeres.
“You’re jumpy,” Jack told Caroline.
“I keep seeing cowboy hats,” Caroline said.
“You get that at a county fair,” Jack said.
People tried to pop balloons with darts, shoot water into bull’s-eyes, and toss rings around knives. They threw pennies into goldfish bowls, shot BBs at targets, and played Whack-A-Mole. There were rocket-ship rides, Tilt-A-Whirls, a haunted house, a carousel, bumper cars. A zoo designed like Noah’s Ark with real animals that looked like worn-out stuffed toys.
Looking at all the rides, all the colored girders, Dixie murmured, “It’s a Jules Verne world.”
All around the fair were scarecrows—farmer scarecrows, marrying scarecrows, sleeping scarecrows, even an alien scarecrow with almond eyes and a red bandana. A busty angel with a pouty porn-star’s face hovered over the entrance to one of the exhibit buildings.
In one pen display chickens strutted, their crests like elaborate hats. Ducks quacked around a mud puddle dimpled by rain. Flop-eared rabbits glared red-eyed at the passersby. A nine-year-old boy led a cow through the throng toward the Salute to Agriculture Tent and Dairy Birthing Center.
A Culligan water purification salesman competed for attention with the woman behind the apiary booth. A man in a gold-colored jacket from the Pro-Life Booth—which displayed gallon jars with what looked like real fetuses—argued with a woman from the Pro-Choice Booth across the way.
“You’re against slavery
, aren’t you,” the pro-life man said. “It’s a moral issue.”
“But not a legislative one,” the pro-choice woman said.
“I’ve known you since I was a kid,” the man said. “You baby-sat me.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” the woman said. “And I think your display—those fetuses—is obscene.”
“You’re like those people who eat meat,” the man said, “but don’t want to know where meat comes from!”
“You’re comparing fetuses to meat!” the woman said. “I’ll tell you what, that’s all I need to know, to know you’re so wrong.”
“When I was nine years old,” the man said, “I had such a crush on you.”
“Get over it,” the woman said.
“I did,” the man said. “Long ago.”
As they argued, step-by-step they approached each other, leaving their displays behind.
“So,” the man said, “on your break, we’ll go to Perozzi’s stand and get some dinner.…”
“Let’s go to the Legion tent,” the woman said. “They got platters.”
Next to them was a stand that sold bumper stickers—Rehab is for Quitters—and T-shirts—This is your brain with a Yankees logo; This is your brain on drugs with a Red Sox logo. Get famous get $. I may not be Mr. Right, but I’ll fuck you ’til he comes along.
At a display of different kinds of apples from upstate New York, Nicole polished a Cortland against her shirt and handed it to Caroline, who took a bite and offered it to Jack.
“No, thanks, Eve,” Jack said to Caroline.
“Superstitious?” Nicole asked, grabbing another apple and polishing it before taking a bite. “If she’s Eve, that makes me the serpent.”
“Nicole,” Jack said, “sometimes you can be a real pain in the ass.”
“So,” Nicole said, a fleck of apple sticking to her lower lip, “if Caroline is tossed out of Eden, you’ll stay happy and comfortable inside? What a gentleman.”
Jack grabbed the apple from Caroline, took a bite, and made a face.
“Too tart?” Nicole asked with a smirk.
2
To get away from Nicole, Caroline pulled Jack over to the haunted house. A car emerged from the exit, snapped around the turn, and stopped in front of them. They climbed in, pulled the safety bar down. With a jerk, the car started along the track and entered the urine-smelling tunnel. Caroline leaned her head on Jack’s shoulder—and jerked up when a skeleton fell toward them.
Laughing, she snuggled back against Jack, squeezing shut her eyes.
“You’re missing the ghosts,” Jack said.
“Are there any vampires?” Caroline asked.
“Just one,” Jack said. “And a Frankenstein monster. And a werewolf.”
“I can hear it howling,” Caroline said.
A moon on a wire rattled toward them in a collision course. Their car made a ninety-degree turn just before the crash.
“Tell me when it’s over,” Caroline said.
The car stopped at the entrance to the mirror maze.
“You can open your eyes,” Jack said.
Caroline did.
“Why did you want to go on the ride if it scared you so much?” Jack asked.
“I like being scared,” Caroline said. “Like a horror movie. When it’s over, I feel safer.”
They got out of the car, which continued on its way toward the exit, and entered the mirror maze. They were alone, the only people in the maze. Within a few minutes they were separated by glass panels, confused by the multiplying images, unsure which Jack or Caroline they should turn to, talk to, which were the real bodies and which were the reflections.
“Why did you say you were hollowed out?” Jack asked. “Dixie said—”
“Have you ever made a jack-o’-lantern?” Caroline said. “Cut off the top of the pumpkin, reach in, and rake out all the seeds and membranes and damp strings? That’s what they did to me.”
Jack turned from one Caroline to another.
“So Dixie’s wrong?” Jack asked.
Caroline tried to decide which of three Jacks was the real one.
“No,” she said.
Jack walked toward what he thought was the real Caroline and slammed into a wall of glass.
“But they took so much,” she said.
Jack backed up. His nose hurt. His eyes watered.
“It’ll be a miracle if I ever have kids,” Caroline said, turning in a circle, surrounded by Jacks.
Jack felt his way along a wall of glass until he found a space.
“Why did you say you were empty?” Jack asked.
He went through the space—into a cul-de-sac.
“It’s easier to accept that,” Caroline said.
She put her palms on a glass wall.
“No hopes,” she said. “Fewer complications.”
On the other side of the glass wall, Jack put his palms up to hers—and realized that he was facing a reflection of a reflection.
3
Dixie was orating on the progress of civilization to a young man handing out Distributionist literature—The Mississippi Delta and the Nile Delta, all those fertile triangles giving birth to commerce and civilization—those seductive, luxurious, lush, damp crotches where water meets land—when he looked up and noticed something was wrong.
Jack, Caroline, and Nicole sat three abreast in the Whip. Their car was rotating on the end of a mechanical arm that was revolving around the center engine.
Like an old model of the solar system, Dixie thought.
Loudspeakers blared the bop-de-bop-de-bop-bop-bop of a Bo Diddley song, covered by Sha Na Na, older but still energetic, which was finishing up its show on the grandstand.
Loud enough for Dixie to feel it inside his body.
On the Whip, braced against the speed of the ride, Jack’s mouth was turned down, a mask of tragedy. Caroline’s mouth was turned up, a mask of comedy. Nicole’s face looked as if it were breaking up into pieces.
Nicole opened her mouth. Wide.
Like Munch’s The Scream, Dixie absently thought at the same time he knew Nicole was in trouble.
And she vomited. A great, multicolored plume of puke that arced out right in the path of the couple sitting in the next car.
An inexorable collision.
The faces of the young man and woman who were about to splash into the plume of puke shuttled rapidly through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Just as the collision happened.
Pressed back against the car by the speed of the ride, the couple couldn’t wipe their faces.
Again, Nicole vomited.
Again, the plume of puke arced into the path of the couple in the oncoming car.
When Nicole vomited a third time, Dixie—up until them horrified and helpless—began to laugh.
Uncontrollably.
He doubled over, grabbed his chest, which hurt, he was laughing so hard, and for a moment thought he was going to lose his balance.
The vomit-covered couple, teenagers on a date, got off the ride. Eyes wide. Stunned.
“I’m so sorry,” Dixie stammered though his laughter. “My niece. So very sorry…”
Jack and Caroline supported Nicole between them. Her chin was covered with drying vomit.
“I’ll take her home,” Dixie said. “Jack, I’ll have to miss the demolition derby.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
1
“Gentlemen,” the voice over the loud speaker said, “start your engines.”
Jack had been sitting on the roof of his junker—Number 45—smoking a cigar, his legs, crossed at the ankles, dangling in the hole where the car’s windshield had been. They had done a good job of stripping off all the glass and chrome, anything that might be jarred loose and under impact become a projectile.
“This year, Jackie,” Bix—Car Number 46—said, “I’m gonna cream you.”
“You do that, Pops,” said a nineteen-year-ol
d girl in bleached jeans and a sequined Bugs Bunny top—Car Number 52—who was slipping through her windshield hole into her driver’s seat.
Jack tamped out the tip of his cigar, tucked it into the left flap pocket of his brown leather jacket, and slipped behind his wheel.
Jack heard a metal clamp clang against a flag pole. Then, chaos.
All around him engines were revving. Clouds of exhaust billowed into the air and hung over the junkers like cartoon dialogue balloons.
Jack and Bix were in the first heat. Four cylinders.
Usually, there were three or four four-cylinder heats, but this year the price of scrap metal was so high there were fewer clunkers available.
One by one, as the announcer called their numbers, cars nudged forward from the field where they had been parked, through the gate and into the football field–size arena, where, following the flagmen’s instructions, they lined up, fifty cars to the left, fifty cars to the right, rear bumpers facing rear bumpers, across the no-man’s land that would become the center of combat.
The trick was to accelerate in reverse, crashing your rear end into everyone else’s front, in order to disable their engines.
Out of one hundred cars, the last car running would win.
Some drivers circled on the outside, waiting for the rest of the cars in the tight knot in the center to eliminate each other.
Jack’s strategy had always been to stay in the center, where cars had less room to maneuver. It was so crowded, no one could get up any speed. Which benefited drivers who were skillful at targeting other cars’ weaknesses.
This car was vulnerable in the front right. If you tapped that car just so, you could cripple its cooling system.…
Flagmen on the field stopped all action if a car’s engine blew up or if a car caught fire and they prevented—or tried to prevent—any car from plowing into a car’s side. Especially the driver’s side. The cars were not reinforced.
If you hit someone broadside, you could kill him.
Jack, his right arm over the back of his seat, turned to get a good look through the empty back window frame and started to back up fast, aiming at a red Chevy coming up, four o’clock, on his right when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Cowboy in a blue-and-rust Pontiac heading straight toward his driver’s-side door—clearly intending to crush him.