Joyland Read online

  "I...ma'am, I honestly don't know what I want."

  At that she smiled. It was a good one--as if I had passed some sort of test. "You're a sweet boy, Jonesy, but like so many sweet boys, you're a punk liar."

  I started to reply; she hushed me with a wave of her ring-heavy right hand. She reached beneath her table and brought out her cashbox. Madame Fortuna's readings were free--all part of your admission fee, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls--but tips were encouraged. And legal under North Carolina law. When she opened the box, I saw a sheaf of crumpled bills, mostly ones, something that looked suspiciously like a punchboard (not legal under North Carolina law), and a single small envelope. Printed on the front was my name. She held it out. I hesitated, then took it.

  "You didn't come to Joyland today just to ask me that," she said.

  "Well..."

  She waved me off again. "You know exactly what you want. In the short term, at least. And since the short term is all any of us have, who is Fortuna--or Rozzie Gold, for that matter--to argue with you? Go now. Do what you came here to do. When it's done, open that and read what I've written." She smiled. "No charge to employees. Especially not good kids like you."

  "I don't--"

  She rose in a swirl of skirts and a rattle of jewelry. "Go, Jonesy. We're finished here."

  I left her tight little booth in a daze. Music from two dozen shys and rides seemed to hit me like conflicting winds, and the sun was a hammer. I went directly to the administration building (actually a doublewide trailer), gave a courtesy knock, went in, and said hello to Brenda Rafferty, who was going back and forth between an open account book and her faithful adding machine.

  "Hello, Devin," she said. "Are you taking care of your Hollywood Girl?"

  "Yes, ma'am, we all watch out for her."

  "Dana Elkhart, isn't it?"

  "Erin Cook, ma'am."

  "Erin, of course. Team Beagle. The redhead. What can I do for you?"

  "I wonder if I could speak to Mr. Easterbrook."

  "He's resting, and I hate to disturb him. He had an awful lot of phone calls to make earlier, and we still have to go over some numbers, much as I hate to bother him with them. He tires very easily these days."

  "I wouldn't be long."

  She sighed. "I suppose I could see if he's awake. Can you tell me what it's about?"

  "A favor," I said. "He'll understand."

  He did, and only asked me two questions. The first was if I was sure. I said I was. The second...

  "Have you told your parents yet, Jonesy?"

  "It's just me and my dad, Mr. Easterbrook, and I'll do that tonight."

  "Very well, then. Put Brenda in the picture before you leave. She'll have all the necessary paperwork, and you can fill it out..." Before he could finish, his mouth opened and he displayed his horsey teeth in a vast, gaping yawn. "Excuse me, son. It's been a tiring day. A tiring summer."

  "Thank you, Mr. Easterbrook."

  He waved his hand. "Very welcome. I'm sure you'll be a great addition, but if you do this without your father's consent, I shall be disappointed in you. Close the door on your way out, please."

  I tried not to see Brenda's frown as she searched her file cabinets and hunted out the various forms Joyland, Inc. required for full-time employment. It didn't matter, because I felt her disapproval anyway. I folded the paperwork, stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans, and left.

  Beyond the line of donnikers at the far end of the backyard was a little grove of blackgum trees. I went in there, sat down with my back against one, and opened the envelope Madame Fortuna had given me. The note was brief and to the point.

  You're going to Mr. Easterbrook to ask if you can stay on at the park after Labor Day. You know he will not refuse your request.

  She was right, I wanted to know if she was a fraud. Here was her answer. And yes, I had made up my mind about what came next in the life of Devin Jones. She had been right about that, too.

  But there was one more line.

  You saved the little girl, but dear boy! You can't save everyone.

  After I told my dad I wasn't going back to UNH--that I needed a year off from college and planned to spend it at Joyland--there was a long silence at the southern Maine end of the line. I thought he might yell at me, but he didn't. He only sounded tired. "It's that girl, isn't it?"

  I'd told him almost two months earlier that Wendy and I were "taking some time off," but Dad saw right through that. Since then, he hadn't spoken her name a single time in our weekly phone conversations. Now she was just that girl. After the first couple of times he said it I tried a joke, asking if he thought I'd been going out with Marlo Thomas. He wasn't amused. I didn't try again.

  "Wendy's part of it," I admitted, "but not all of it. I just need some time off. A breather. And I've gotten to like it here."

  He sighed. "Maybe you do need a break. At least you'll be working instead of hitchhiking around Europe, like Dewey Michaud's girl. Fourteen months in youth hostels! Fourteen and counting! Ye gods! She's apt to come back with ringworm and a bun in the oven."

  "Well," I said, "I think I can avoid both of those. If I'm careful."

  "Just make sure you avoid the hurricanes. It's supposed to be a bad season for them."

  "Are you really all right with this, Dad?"

  "Why? Did you want me to argue? Try to talk you out of it? If that's what you want, I'm willing to give it a shot, but I know what your mother would say--if he's old enough to buy a legal drink, he's old enough to start making decisions about his life."

  I smiled. "Yeah. That sounds like her."

  "As for me, I guess I don't want you going back to college if you're going to spend all your time mooning over that girl and letting your grades go to hell. If painting rides and fixing up concessions will help get her out of your system, probably that's a good thing. But what about your scholarship and loan package, if you want to go back in the fall of '74?"

  "It won't be a problem. I've got a 3.2 cume, which is pretty persuasive."

  "That girl," he said in tones of infinite disgust, and then we moved on to other topics.

  I was still sad and depressed about how things had ended with Wendy, he was right about that, but I had begun the difficult trip (the journey, as they say in the self-help groups these days) from denial to acceptance. Anything like true serenity was still over the horizon, but I no longer believed--as I had in the long, painful days and nights of June--that serenity was out of the question.

  Staying had to do with other things that I couldn't even begin to sort out, because they were piled helter-skelter in an untidy stack and bound with the rough twine of intuition. Hallie Stansfield was there. So was Bradley Easterbrook, way back at the beginning of the summer, saying we sell fun. The sound of the ocean at night was there, and the way a strong onshore breeze would make a little song when it blew through the struts of the Carolina Spin. The cool tunnels under the park were there. So was the Talk, that secret language the other greenies would have forgotten by the time Christmas break rolled around. I didn't want to forget it; it was too rich. I felt that Joyland had something more to give me. I didn't know what, just... s'more.

  But mostly--this is weird, I have examined and reexamined my memories of those days to make sure it's a true memory, and it seems to be--it was because it had been our Doubting Thomas to see the ghost of Linda Gray. It had changed him in small but fundamental ways. I don't think Tom wanted to change--I think he was happy just as he was--but I did.

  I wanted to see her, too.

  During the second half of August, several of the old-timers--Pop Allen for one, Dottie Lassen for another--told me to pray for rain on Labor Day weekend. There was no rain, and by Saturday afternoon I understood what they meant. The conies came back in force for one final grand hurrah, and Joyland was tipsed to the gills. What made it worse was that half of the summer help was gone by then, headed back to their various schools. The ones who were left worked like dogs.

  Some of
us didn't just work like dogs, but as dogs--one dog in particular. I saw most of that holiday weekend through the mesh eyes of Howie the Happy Hound. On Sunday I climbed into that damned fur suit a dozen times. After my second-to-last turn of the day, I was three-quarters of the way down the Boulevard beneath Joyland Avenue when the world started to swim away from me in shades of gray. Shades of Linda Gray, I remember thinking.

  I was driving one of the little electric service-carts with the fur pushed down to my waist so I could feel the air conditioning on my sweaty chest, and when I realized I was losing it, I had the good sense to pull over to the wall and take my foot off the rubber button that served as the accelerator. Fat Wally Schmidt, who ran the guess-your-weight shy, happened to be taking a break in the boneyard at the time. He saw me parked askew and slumped over the cart's steering bar. He got a pitcher of icewater out of the fridge, waddled down to me, and lifted my chin with one chubby hand.

  "Hey greenie. You got another suit, or is that the only one that fits ya?"

  "Theresh another one," I said. I sounded drunk. "Cos-sume shop. Ex'ra large."

  "Oh hey, that's good," he said, and dumped the pitcher over my head. My scream of surprise echoed up and down the Boulevard and brought several people running.

  "What the fuck, Fat Wally?"

  He grinned. "Wakes ya up, don't it? Damn right it does. Labor Day weekend, greenie. That means ya labor. No sleepin on the job. Thank yer lucky stars n bars it ain't a hunnert and ten out there."

  If it had been a hunnert and ten, I wouldn't be telling this story; I would have died of a baked brain halfway through a Happy Howie Dance on the Wiggle-Waggle Story Stage. But Labor Day itself was actually cloudy, and featured a nice sea-breeze. I got through it somehow.

  Around four o'clock that Monday, as I was climbing into the spare fur for my final show of the summer, Tom Kennedy strolled into the costume shop. His dogtop and filthy sneakers were gone. He was wearing crisply pressed chinos (wherever were you keeping them, I wondered), a neatly tucked-in Ivy League shirt, and Bass Weejuns. Rosy-cheeked son of a bitch had even gotten a haircut. He looked every inch the up-and-coming college boy with his eye on the business world. You never would have guessed that he'd been dressed in filthy Levis only two days before, displaying at least an inch of ass-cleavage as he crawled under the Zipper with an oil-bucket and cursing Pop Allen, our fearless Team Beagle leader, every time he bumped his head on a strut.

  "You on your way?" I asked.

  "That's a big ten-four, good buddy. I'm taking the train to Philly at eight tomorrow morning. I've got a week at home, then it's back to the grind."

  "Good for you."

  "Erin's got some stuff to finish up, but then she's meeting me in Wilmington tonight. I booked us a room at a nice little bed and breakfast."

  I felt a dull throb of jealousy at that. "Good deal."

  "She's the real thing," he said.

  "I know."

  "So are you, Dev. We'll stay in touch. People say that and don't mean it, but I do. We will stay in touch." He held out his hand.

  I took it and shook it. "That's right, we will. You're okay, Tom, and Erin's the total package. You take care of her."

  "No problem there." He grinned. "Come spring semester, she's transferring to Rutgers. I already taught her the Scarlet Knights fight song. You know, 'Upstream, Redteam, Redteam, Upstream--' "

  "Sounds complex," I said.

  He shook his finger at me. "Sarcasm will get you nowhere in this world, boy. Unless you're angling for a writing job at Mad magazine, that is."

  Dottie Lassen called, "Maybe you could shorten up the farewells and keep the tears to a minimum? You've got a show to do, Jonesy."

  Tom turned to her and held out his arms. "Dottie, how I love you! How I'll miss you!"

  She slapped her bottom to show just how much this moved her and turned away to a costume in need of repair.

  Tom handed me a scrap of paper. "My home address, school address, phone numbers for both. I expect you to use them."

  "I will."

  "You're really going to give up a year you could spend drinking beer and getting laid to scrape paint here at Joyland?"

  "Yep."

  "Are you crazy?"

  I considered this. "Probably. A little. But getting better."

  I was sweaty and his clothes were clean, but he gave me a brief hug just the same. Then he headed for the door, pausing to give Dottie a kiss on one wrinkled cheek. She couldn't cuss at him--her mouth was full of pins at the time--but she shooed him away with a flap of her hand.

  At the door, he turned back to me. "You want some advice, Dev? Stay away from..." He finished with a head-jerk, and I knew well enough what he meant: Horror House. Then he was gone, probably thinking about his visit home, and Erin, the car he hoped to buy, and Erin, the upcoming school year, and Erin. Upstream, Redteam, Redteam, Upstream. Come spring semester, they could chant it together. Hell, they could chant it that very night, if they wanted to. In Wilmington. In bed. Together.

  There was no punch-clock at the park; our comings and goings were supervised by our team leaders. After my final turn as Howie on that first Monday in September, Pop Allen told me to bring him my time-card.

  "I've got another hour," I said.

  "Nah, someone's waiting at the gate to walk you back." I knew who the someone had to be. It was hard to believe there was a soft spot in Pop's shriveled-up raisin of a heart for anyone, but there was, and that summer Miss Erin Cook owned it.

  "You know the deal tomorrow?"

  "Seven-thirty to six," I said. And no fur. What a blessing.

  "I'll be running you for the first couple of weeks, then I'm off to sunny Florida. After that, you're Lane Hardy's responsibility. And Freddy Dean, I guess, if he happens to notice you're still around."

  "Got it."

  "Good. I'll sign your card and then you're ten-forty-two." Which meant the same thing in the Talk as it did on the CBs that were so popular then: End of tour. "And Jonesy? Tell that girl to send me a postcard once in a while. I'll miss her."

  He wasn't the only one.

  Erin had also begun making the transition back from Joyland Life to Real Life. Gone were the faded jeans and tee-shirt with the sassy rolled-to-the-shoulder sleeves; ditto the green Hollywood Girl dress and Sherwood Forest hat. The girl standing in the scarlet shower of neon just outside the gate was wearing a silky blue sleeveless blouse tucked into a belted A-line skirt. Her hair was pinned back and she looked gorgeous.

  "Walk me up the beach," she said. "I'll just have time to catch the bus to Wilmington. I'm meeting Tom."

  "He told me. But never mind the bus. I'll drive you."

  "Would you do that?"

  "Sure."

  We walked along the fine white sand. A half-moon had risen in the sky, and it beat a track across the water. Halfway to Heaven's Beach--it was, in fact, not far from the big green Victorian that played such a part in my life that fall--she took my hand, and we walked that way. We didn't say much until we reached the steps leading up to the beach parking lot. There she turned to me.

  "You'll get over her." Her eyes were on mine. She wasn't wearing makeup that night, and didn't need any. The moonlight was her makeup.

  "Yes," I said. I knew it was true, and part of me was sorry. It's hard to let go. Even when what you're holding onto is full of thorns, it's hard to let go. Maybe especially then.

  "And for now this is the right place for you. I feel that."

  "Does Tom feel it?"

  "No, but he never felt about Joyland the way you do...and the way I did this summer. And after what happened that day in the funhouse...what he saw..."

  "Do the two of you ever talk about that?"

  "I tried. Now I leave it alone. It doesn't fit into his philosophy of how the world works, so he's trying to make it gone. But I think he worries about you."

  "Do you worry about me?"

  "About you and the ghost of Linda Gray, no. About you and the ghost of that Wend
y, a little."

  I grinned. "My father no longer speaks her name. Just calls her 'that girl.' Erin, would you do me a favor when you get back to school? If you have time, that is?"

  "Sure. What is it?"

  I told her.

  She asked if I would drop her at the Wilmington bus station instead of taking her directly to the B&B Tom had booked. She said she'd rather take a taxi there. I started to protest that it was a waste of money, then didn't. She looked flustered, a trifle embarrassed, and I guessed it had something to do with not wanting to climb out of my car just so she could drop her clothes and climb into the sack with Tom Kennedy two minutes later.

  When I pulled up opposite the taxi stand, she put her hands on the sides of my face and kissed my mouth. It was a long and thoroughly thorough kiss.

  "If Tom hadn't been there, I would have made you forget that stupid girl," she said.

  "But he was," I said.

  "Yes. He was. Stay in touch, Dev."

  "Remember what I asked you to do. If you get a chance, that is."

  "I'll remember. You're a sweet man."

  I don't know why, but that made me feel like crying. I smiled instead. "Also, admit it, I made one hell of a Howie."

  "That you did. Devin Jones, savior of little girls."

  For a moment I thought she was going to kiss me again, but she didn't. She slid out of my car and ran across the street to the taxis, skirt flying. I sat there until I saw her climb into the back of a Yellow and drive away. Then I drove away myself, back to Heaven's Beach, and Mrs. Shoplaw's, and my autumn at Joyland--both the best and worst autumn of my life.

  Were Annie and Mike Ross sitting at the end of the green Victorian's boardwalk when I headed down the beach to the park on that Tuesday after Labor Day? I remember the warm croissants I ate as I walked, and the circling gulls, but of them I can't be completely sure. They became such an important part of the scenery--such a landmark--that it's impossible to pinpoint the first time I actually noticed their presence. Nothing screws with memory like repetition.

  Ten years after the events I'm telling you about, I was (for my sins, maybe) a staff writer on Cleveland magazine. I used to do most of my first-draft writing on yellow legal pads in a coffee shop on West Third Street, near Lakefront Stadium, which was the Indians' stomping grounds back then. Every day at ten, this young woman would come in and get four or five coffees, then take them back to the real estate office next door. I couldn't tell you the first time I saw her, either. All I know is that one day I saw her, and realized that she sometimes glanced at me as she went out. The day came when I returned that glance, and when she smiled, I did, too. Eight months later we were married.