Joyland Read online

  "Too corporate?" I ventured.

  "Exactly. Too corporate. Too buffed and shiny. So I came back to Joyland a few years ago. Haven't regretted it. We fly a bit more by the seat of our pants here--the place has a little of the old-time carny flavor. Go on, look around. See what you think. More important, see how you feel."

  "Can I ask one question first?"

  "Of course."

  I fingered my day pass. "Who's the dog?"

  His smile became a grin. "That's Howie the Happy Hound, Joyland's mascot. Bradley Easterbrook built Joyland, and the original Howie was his dog. Long dead now, but you'll still see a lot of him, if you work here this summer."

  I did...and I didn't. An easy riddle, but the explanation will have to wait awhile.

  Joyland was an indie, not as big as a Six Flags park, and nowhere near as big as Disney World, but it was large enough to be impressive, especially with Joyland Avenue, the main drag, and Hound Dog Way, the secondary drag, almost empty and looking eight lanes wide. I heard the whine of power-saws and saw plenty of workmen--the largest crew swarming over the Thunderball, one of Joyland's two coasters--but there were no customers, because the park didn't open until June fifteenth. A few of the food concessions were doing business to take care of the workers' lunch needs, though, and an old lady in front of a star-studded tell-your-fortune kiosk was staring at me suspiciously. With one exception, everything else was shut up tight.

  The exception of the Carolina Spin. It was a hundred and seventy feet tall (this I found out later), and turning very slowly. Out in front stood a tightly muscled guy in faded jeans, balding suede boots splotched with grease, and a strap-style tee-shirt. He wore a derby hat tilted on his coal-black hair. A filterless cigarette was parked behind one ear. He looked like a cartoon carnival barker from an old-time newspaper strip. There was an open toolbox and a big portable radio on an orange crate beside him. The Faces were singing "Stay with Me." The guy was bopping to the beat, hands in his back pockets, hips moving side to side. I had a thought, absurd but perfectly clear: When I grow up, I want to look just like this guy.

  He pointed to the pass. "Freddy Dean sent you, right? Told you everything else was closed, but you could take a ride on the big wheel."

  "Yes, sir."

  "A ride on the Spin means you're in. He likes the chosen few to get the aerial view. You gonna take the job?"

  "I think so."

  He stuck out his hand. "I'm Lane Hardy. Welcome aboard, kid."

  I shook with him. "Devin Jones."

  "Pleased to meet you."

  He started up the inclined walk leading to the gently turning ride, grabbed a long lever that looked like a stick shift, and edged it back. The wheel came to a slow stop with one of the gaily painted cabins (the image of Howie the Happy Hound on each) swaying at the passenger loading dock.

  "Climb aboard, Jonesy. I'm going to send you up where the air is rare and the view is much more than fair."

  I climbed into the cabin and closed the door. Lane gave it a shake to make sure it was latched, dropped the safety bar, then returned to his rudimentary controls. "Ready for takeoff, cap'n?"

  "I guess so."

  "Amazement awaits." He gave me a wink and advanced the control stick. The wheel began to turn again and all at once he was looking up at me. So was the old lady by the fortune-telling booth. Her neck was craned and she was shading her eyes. I waved to her. She didn't wave back.

  Then I was above everything but the convoluted dips and twists of the Thunderball, rising into the chilly early spring air, and feeling--stupid but true--that I was leaving all my cares and worries down below.

  Joyland wasn't a theme park, which allowed it to have a little bit of everything. There was a secondary roller coaster called the Delirium Shaker and a water slide (Captain Nemo's Splash & Crash). On the far western side of the park was a special annex for the little ones called the Wiggle-Waggle Village. There was also a concert hall where most of the acts--this I also learned later--were either B-list C&W or the kind of rockers who peaked in the fifties or sixties. I remember that Johnny Otis and Big Joe Turner did a show there together. I had to ask Brenda Rafferty, the head accountant who was also a kind of den mother to the Hollywood Girls, who they were. Bren thought I was dense; I thought she was old; we were both probably right.

  Lane Hardy took me all the way to the top and then stopped the wheel. I sat in the swaying car, gripping the safety bar, and looking out at a brand-new world. To the west was the North Carolina flatland, looking incredibly green to a New England kid who was used to thinking of March as nothing but true spring's cold and muddy precursor. To the east was the ocean, a deep metallic blue until it broke in creamy-white pulses on the beach where I would tote my abused heart up and down a few months hence. Directly below me was the good-natured jumble of Joyland--the big rides and small ones, the concert hall and concessions, the souvenir shops and the Happy Hound Shuttle, which took customers to the adjacent motels and, of course, the beach. To the north was Heaven's Bay. From high above the park (upstairs, where the air is rare), the town looked like a nestle of children's blocks from which four church steeples rose at the major points of the compass.

  The wheel began to move again. I came down feeling like a kid in a Rudyard Kipling story, riding on the nose of an elephant. Lane Hardy brought me to a stop, but didn't bother to unlatch the car's door for me; I was, after all, almost an employee.

  "How'd you like it?"

  "Great," I said.

  "Yeah, it ain't bad for a grandma ride." He reset his derby so it slanted the other way and cast an appraising eye over me. "How tall are you? Six-three?"

  "Six-four."

  "Uh-huh. Let's see how you like ridin all six-four of you on the Spin in the middle of July, wearin the fur and singin 'Happy Birthday' to some spoiled-rotten little snot-hole with cotton candy in one hand and a meltin Kollie Kone in the other."

  "Wearing what fur?"

  But he was headed back to his machinery and didn't answer. Maybe he couldn't hear me over his radio, which was now blasting "Crocodile Rock." Or maybe he just wanted my future occupation as one of Joyland's cadre of Happy Hounds to come as a surprise.

  I had over an hour to kill before meeting with Fred Dean again, so I strolled up Hound Dog Way toward a lunch-wagon that looked like it was doing a pretty good business. Not everything at Joyland was canine-themed, but plenty of stuff was, including this particular eatery, which was called Pup-A-Licious. I was on a ridiculously tight budget for this little job-hunting expedition, but I thought I could afford a couple of bucks for a chili-dog and a paper cup of French fries.

  When I reached the palm-reading concession, Madame Fortuna planted herself in my path. Except that's not quite right, because she was only Fortuna between June fifteenth and Labor Day. During those twelve weeks, she dressed in long skirts, gauzy, layered blouses, and shawls decorated with various cabalistic symbols. Gold hoops hung from her ears, so heavy they dragged the lobes down, and she talked in a thick Romany accent that made her sound like a character from a 1930s fright-flick, the kind featuring mist-shrouded castles and howling wolves.

  During the rest of the year she was a widow from Brooklyn who collected Hummel figures and liked movies (especially the weepy-ass kind where some chick gets cancer and dies beautifully). Today she was smartly put together in a black pantsuit and low heels. A rose-pink scarf around her throat added a touch of color. As Fortuna, she sported masses of wild gray locks, but that was a wig, and still stored under its own glass dome in her little Heaven's Bay house. Her actual hair was a cropped cap of dyed black. The Love Story fan from Brooklyn and Fortuna the Seer only came together in one respect: both fancied themselves psychic.

  "There is a shadow over you, young man," she announced.

  I looked down and saw she was absolutely right. I was standing in the shadow of the Carolina Spin. We both were.

  "Not that, stupidnik. Over your future. You will have a hunger."

  I had a ba
d one already, but a Pup-A-Licious footlong would soon take care of it. "That's very interesting, Mrs... um..."

  "Rosalind Gold," she said, holding out her hand. "But you can call me Rozzie. Everyone does. But during the season..." She fell into character, which meant she sounded like Bela Lugosi with breasts. "Doorink the season, I am... Fortuna!"

  I shook with her. If she'd been in costume as well as in character, half a dozen gold bangles would have clattered on her wrist. "Very nice to meet you." And, trying on the same accent: "I am...Devin!"

  She wasn't amused. "An Irish name?"

  "Right."

  "The Irish are full of sorrow, and many have the sight. I don't know if you do, but you will meet someone who does."

  Actually, I was full of happiness...along with that surpassing desire to put a Pup-A-Licious pup, preferably loaded with chili, down my throat. This was feeling like an adventure. I told myself I'd probably feel less that way when I was swabbing out toilets at the end of a busy day, or cleaning puke from the seats of the Whirly Cups, but just then everything seemed perfect.

  "Are you practicing your act?"

  She drew herself up to her full height, which might have been five-two. "Is no act, my lad." She said ect for act. "Jews are the most psychically sensitive race on earth. This is a thing everyone knows." She dropped the accent. "Also, Joyland beats hanging out a palmistry shingle on Second Avenue. Sorrowful or not, I like you. You give off good vibrations."

  "One of my very favorite Beach Boys songs."

  "But you are on the edge of great sorrow." She paused, doing the old emphasis thing. "And, perhaps, danger."

  "Do you see a beautiful woman with dark hair in my future?" Wendy was a beautiful woman with dark hair.

  "No," Rozzie said, and what came next stopped me dead. "She is in your past."

  Ohh-kay.

  I walked around her in the direction of Pup-A-Licious, being careful not to touch her. She was a charlatan, I didn't have a single doubt about that, but touching her just then still seemed like a lousy idea.

  No good. She walked with me. "In your future is a little girl and a little boy. The boy has a dog."

  "A Happy Hound, I bet. Probably named Howie."

  She ignored this latest attempt at levity. "The girl wears a red hat and carries a doll. One of these children has the sight. I don't know which. It is hidden from me."

  I hardly heard that part of her spiel. I was thinking of the previous pronouncement, made in a flat Brooklyn accent: She is in your past.

  Madame Fortuna got a lot of stuff wrong, I found out, but she did seem to have a genuine psychic touch, and on the day I interviewed for a summer at Joyland, she was hitting on all cylinders.

  I got the job. Mr. Dean was especially pleased by my Red Cross life-saving certificate, obtained at the YMCA the summer I turned sixteen. That was what I called my Boredom Summer. In the years since, I've discovered there's a lot to be said for boredom.

  I told Mr. Dean when my finals ended, and promised him that I'd be at Joyland two days later, ready for team assignment and training. We shook hands and he welcomed me aboard. I had a moment when I wondered if he was going to encourage me to do the Happy Hound Bark with him, or something equivalent, but he just wished me a good day and walked out of the office with me, a little man with sharp eyes and a lithe stride. Standing on the little cement-block porch of the employment office, listening to the pound of the surf and smelling the damp salt air, I felt excited all over again, and hungry for summer to begin.

  "You're in the amusement business now, young Mr. Jones," my new boss said. "Not the carny business--not exactly, not the way we run things today--but not so far removed from it, either. Do you know what that means, to be in the amusement business?"

  "No, sir, not exactly."

  His eyes were solemn, but there was a ghost of a grin on his mouth. "It means the rubes have to leave with smiles on their faces--and by the way, if I ever hear you call the customers rubes, you're going to be out the door so fast you won't know what hit you. I can say it, because I've been in the amusement business since I was old enough to shave. They're rubes--no different from the redneck Okies and Arkies that rubbernecked their way through every carny I worked for after World War II. The people who come to Joyland may wear better clothes and drive Fords and Volkswagen microbuses instead of Farmall pickups, but the place turns em into rubes with their mouths hung open. If it doesn't, it's not doing its job. But to you, they're the conies. When they hear it, they think Coney Island. We know better. They're rabbits, Mr. Jones, nice plump fun-loving rabbits, hopping from ride to ride and shy to shy instead of from hole to hole."

  He dropped me a wink and gave my shoulder a squeeze.

  "The conies have to leave happy, or this place dries up and blows away. I've seen it happen, and when it does, it happens fast. It's an amusement park, young Mr. Jones, so pet the conies and give their ears only the gentlest of tugs. In a word, amuse them."

  "Okay," I said...although I didn't know how much customer amusement I'd be providing by polishing the Devil Wagons (Joyland's version of Dodgem cars) or running a street-sweeper down Hound Dog Way after the gates closed.

  "And don't you dare leave me in the lurch. Be here on the agreed-upon date, and five minutes before the agreed-upon time."

  "Okay."

  "There are two important showbiz rules, kiddo: always know where your wallet is...and show up."

  When I walked out beneath the big arch with WELCOME TO JOYLAND written on it in neon letters (now off) and into the mostly empty parking lot, Lane Hardy was leaning against one of the shuttered ticket booths, smoking the cigarette previously parked behind his ear.

  "Can't smoke on the grounds anymore," he said. "New rule. Mr. Easterbrook says we're the first park in America to have it, but we won't be the last. Get the job?"

  "I did."

  "Congratulations. Did Freddy give you the carny spiel?"

  "Sort of, yeah."

  "Tell you about petting the conies?"

  "Yeah."

  "He can be a pain in the banana, but he's old-time showbiz, seen it all, most of it twice, and he's not wrong. I think you'll do okay. You've got a carny look about you, kid." He waved a hand at the park with its landmarks rising against the blameless blue sky: the Thunderball, the Delirium Shaker, the convoluted twists and turns of Captain Nemo's water slide, and--of course--the Carolina Spin. "Who knows, this place might be your future."

  "Maybe," I said, although I already knew what my future was going to be: writing novels and the kind of short stories they publish in The New Yorker. I had it all planned out. Of course, I also had marriage to Wendy Keegan all planned out, and how we'd wait until we were in our thirties to have a couple of kids. When you're twenty-one, life is a roadmap. It's only when you get to be twenty-five or so that you begin to suspect you've been looking at the map upside down, and not until you're forty are you entirely sure. By the time you're sixty, take it from me, you're fucking lost.

  "Did Rozzie Gold give you her usual bundle of Fortuna horseshit?"

  "Um..."

  Lane chuckled. "Why do I even ask? Just remember, kid, that ninety percent of everything she says really is horseshit. The other ten...let's just say she's told folks some stuff that rocked them back on their heels."

  "What about you?" I asked. "Any revelations that rocked you back on your heels?"

  He grinned. "The day I let Rozzie read my palm is the day I go back on the road, ride-jocking the tornado-and-chittlins circuit. Mrs. Hardy's boy doesn't mess with Ouija boards and crystal balls."

  Do you see a beautiful woman with dark hair in my future? I'd asked.

  No. She is in your past.

  He was looking at me closely. "What's up? You swallow a fly?"

  "It's nothing," I said.

  "Come on, son. Did she feed you truth or horseshit? Live or Memorex? Tell your daddy."

  "Definitely horseshit." I looked at my watch. "I've got a bus to catch at five, if I'm going to mak
e the train to Boston at seven. I better get moving."

  "Ah, you got plenty of time. Where you staying this summer?"

  "I hadn't even thought about it."

  "You might want to stop at Mrs. Shoplaw's on your way to the bus station. Plenty of people in Heaven's Bay rent to summer help, but she's the best. She's housed a lot of Happy Helpers over the years. Her place is easy to find; it's where Main Street ends at the beach. Great big rambler painted gray. You'll see the sign hanging from the porch. Can't miss it, because it's made out of shells and some're always falling off. MRS. SHOPLAW'S BEACHSIDE ACCOMMODATIONS. Tell her I sent you."

  "Okay, I will. Thanks."

  "If you rent there, you can walk down here on the beach if you want to save your gas money for something more important, like stepping out on your day off. That beach walk makes a pretty way to start the morning. Good luck, kid. Look forward to working with you." He held out his hand. I shook it and thanked him again.

  Since he'd put the idea in my head, I decided to take the beach walk back to town. It would save me twenty minutes waiting for a taxi I couldn't really afford. I had almost reached the wooden stairs going down to the sand when he called after me.

  "Hey, Jonesy! Want to know something Rozzie won't tell you?"

  "Sure," I said.

  "We've got a spook palace called Horror House. The old Rozola won't go within fifty yards of it. She hates the pop-ups and the torture chamber and the recorded voices, but the real reason is that she's afraid it really might be haunted."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. And she ain't the only one. Half a dozen folks who work here claim to have seen her."

  "Are you serious?" But this was just one of the questions you ask when you're flabbergasted. I could see he was.

  "I'd tell you the story, but break-time's over for me. I've got some power-poles to replace on the Devil Wagons, and the safety inspection guys are coming to look at the Thunderball around three. What a pain in the ass those guys are. Ask Shoplaw. When it comes to Joyland, Emmalina Shoplaw knows more than I do. You could say she's a student of the place. Compared to her, I'm a newbie."

  "This isn't a joke? A little rubber chicken you toss at all the new hires?"