Joyland Read online

  I gave my father a quick, fierce hug. "I love you, Dad."

  "I know," he said. "I know."

  When I looked back, the deer was gone. A day later, so was I.

  When I got back to the big gray house at the end of Main Street in Heaven's Bay, the sign made of shells had been taken down and put in storage, because Mrs. Shoplaw had a full house for the summer. I blessed Lane Hardy for telling me to nail down a place to live. Joyland's summer troops had arrived, and every rooming house in town was full.

  I shared the second floor with Tina Ackerley, the librarian. Mrs. Shoplaw had rented the accommodations on the third floor to a willowy redheaded art major named Erin Cook and a stocky undergrad from Rutgers named Tom Kennedy. Erin, who had taken photography courses both in high school and at Bard, had been hired as a Hollywood Girl. As for Tom and me...

  "Happy Helpers," he said. "General employment, in other words. That's what that guy Fred Dean checked on my application. You?"

  "The same," I said. "I think it means we're janitors."

  "I doubt it."

  "Really? Why?"

  "Because we're white," he said, and although we did our share of cleanup chores, he turned out to be largely correct. The custodial crew--twenty men and over thirty women who dressed in coveralls with Howie the Happy Hound patches sewn on the breast pockets--were all Haitians and Dominicans, and almost surely undocumented. They lived in their own little village ten miles inland and were shuttled back and forth in a pair of retired school buses. Tom and I were making four dollars an hour; Erin a little more. God knows what the cleaners were making. They were exploited, of course, and saying that there were undocumented workers all over the south who had it far worse doesn't excuse it, nor does pointing out that it was forty years ago. Although there was this: they never had to put on the fur. Neither did Erin.

  Tom and I did.

  On the night before our first day at work, the three of us were sitting in the parlor of Maison Shoplaw, getting to know each other and speculating on the summer ahead. As we talked, the moon rose over the Atlantic, as calmly beautiful as the doe my father and I had seen standing on the old railroad tracks.

  "It's an amusement park, for God's sake," Erin said. "How tough can it be?"

  "Easy for you to say," Tom told her. "No one's going to expect you to hose down the Whirly Cups after every brat in Cub Scout Pack 18 loses his lunch halfway through the ride."

  "I'll pitch in where I have to," she said. "If it includes mopping up vomit as well as snapping pictures, so be it. I need this job. I've got grad school staring me in the face next year, and I'm exactly two steps from broke."

  "We all ought to try and get on the same team," Tom said--and, as it turned out, we did. All the work teams at Joyland had doggy names, and ours was Team Beagle.

  Just then Emmalina Shoplaw entered the parlor, carrying a tray with five champagne flutes on it. Miss Ackerley, a beanpole with huge bespectacled eyes that gave her a Joyce Carol Oatesian look, walked beside her, bottle in hand. Tom Kennedy brightened. "Do I spy French ginger ale? That looks just a leetle too elegant to be supermarket plonk."

  "Champagne it is," Mrs. Shoplaw said, "although if you're expecting Moet et Chandon, young Mr. Kennedy, you're in for a disappointment. This isn't Cold Duck, but it's not the high-priced spread, either."

  "I can't speak for my new co-workers," Tom said, "but as someone who educated his palate on Apple Zapple, I don't think I'll be disappointed."

  Mrs. Shoplaw smiled. "I always mark the beginning of summer this way, for good luck. It seems to work. I haven't lost a seasonal hire yet. Each of you take a glass, please." We did as we were told. "Tina, will you pour?"

  When the flutes were full, Mrs. Shoplaw raised hers and we raised ours.

  "Here is to Erin, Tom, and Devin," she said. "May they have a wonderful summer, and wear the fur only when the temperature is below eighty degrees."

  We clinked glasses and drank. Maybe not the high-priced spread, but pretty damned good, and with enough left for us all to have another swallow. This time it was Tom who offered the toast. "Here's to Mrs. Shoplaw, who gives us shelter from the storm!"

  "Why, thank you, Tom, that's lovely. It won't get you a discount on the rent, though."

  We drank. I set my glass down feeling just the tiniest bit buzzy. "What is this about wearing the fur?" I asked.

  Mrs. Shoplaw and Miss Ackerley looked at each other and smiled. It was the librarian who answered, although it wasn't really an answer at all. "You'll find out," she said.

  "Don't stay up late, children," Mrs. Shoplaw advised. "You've got an early call. Your career in show business awaits."

  The call was early: seven AM, two hours before the park opened its doors on another summer. The three of us walked down the beach together. Tom talked most of the way. He always talked. It would have been wearisome if he hadn't been so amusing and relentlessly cheerful. I could see from the way Erin (walking in the surf with her sneakers dangling from the fingers of her left hand) looked at him that she was charmed and fascinated. I envied Tom his ability to do that. He was heavyset and at least three doors down from handsome, but he was energetic and possessed of the gift of gab I sadly lacked. Remember the old joke about the starlet who was so clueless she fucked the writer?

  "Man, how much do you think the people who own those places are worth?" he asked, waving an arm at the houses on Beach Row. We were just passing the big green one that looked like a castle, but there was no sign of the woman and the boy in the wheelchair that day. Annie and Mike Ross came later.

  "Millions, probably," Erin said. "It ain't the Hamptons, but as my dad would say, it ain't cheeseburgers."

  "The amusement park probably brings the property values down a little," I said. I was looking at Joyland's three most distinctive landmarks, silhouetted against the blue morning sky: Thunderball, Delirium Shaker, Carolina Spin.

  "Nah, you don't understand the rich-guy mindset," Tom said. "It's like when they pass bums looking for handouts on the street. They just erase em from their field of vision. Bums? What bums? And that park, same deal--what park? People who own these houses live, like, on another plane of existence." He stopped, shading his eyes and looking at the green Victorian that was going to play such a large part in my life that fall, after Erin Cook and Tom Kennedy, by then a couple, had gone back to school. "That one's gonna be mine. I'll be expecting to take possession on...mmm... June first, 1987."

  "I'll bring the champagne," Erin said, and we all laughed.

  I saw Joyland's entire crew of summer hires in one place for the first and last time that morning. We gathered in Surf Auditorium, the concert hall where all those B-list country acts and aging rockers performed. There were almost two hundred of us. Most, like Tom, Erin, and me, were college students willing to work for peanuts. Some of the full-timers were there, as well. I saw Rozzie Gold, today dressed for work in her gypsy duds and dangly earrings. Lane Hardy was up on stage, placing a mike at the podium and then checking it with a series of thudding finger-taps. His derby was present and accounted for, cocked at its usual just-so angle. I don't know how he picked me out in all those milling kids, but he did, and sketched a little salute off the tilted brim of his lid. I sent him one right back.

  He finished his work, nodded, jumped off the stage, and took the seat Rozzie had been saving for him. Fred Dean walked briskly out from the wings. "Be seated, please, all of you be seated. Before you get your team assignments, the owner of Joyland--and your employer--would like to say a few words. Please give a hand to Mr. Bradley Easterbrook."

  We did as we were told, and an old man emerged from the wings, walking with the careful, high-stepping strides of someone with bad hips, a bad back, or both. He was tall and amazingly thin, dressed in a black suit that made him look more like an undertaker than a man who owned an amusement park. His face was long, pale, covered with bumps and moles. Shaving must have been torture for him, but he had a clean one. Ebony hair that had surely come out of a b
ottle was swept back from his deeply lined brow. He stood beside the podium, his enormous hands--they seemed to be nothing but knuckles--clasped before him. His eyes were set deep in pouched sockets.

  Age looked at youth, and youth's applause first weakened, then died.

  I'm not sure what we expected; possibly a mournful foghorn voice telling us that the Red Death would soon hold sway over all. Then he smiled, and it lit him up like a jukebox. You could almost hear a sigh of relief rustle through the summer hires. I found out later that was the summer Bradley Easterbrook turned ninety-three.

  "You guys," he said, "welcome to Joyland." And then, before stepping behind the podium, he actually bowed to us. He took several seconds adjusting the mike, which produced a series of amplified screeks and scronks. He never took his sunken eyes from us as he did it.

  "I see many returning faces, a thing that always makes me happy. For you greenies, I hope this will be the best summer of your lives, the yardstick by which you judge all your future employment. That is no doubt an extravagant wish, but anyone who runs a place like this year in and year out must have a wide streak of extravagance. For certain you'll never have another job like it."

  He surveyed us, giving the poor mike's articulated neck another twist as he did so.

  "In a few moments, Mr. Dean and Mrs. Brenda Rafferty, who is queen of the front office, will give you your team assignments. There will be seven of you to a team, and you will be expected to act as a team and work as a team. Your team's tasks will be assigned by your team leader and will vary from week to week, sometimes from day to day. If variety is the spice of life, you will find the next three months very spicy, indeed. I hope you will keep one thought foremost in your mind, young ladies and gentlemen. Will you do that?"

  He paused as if expecting us to answer, but nobody made a sound. We only looked at him, a very old man in a black suit and a white shirt open at the collar. When he spoke again, it might have been himself he was talking to, at least to begin with.

  "This is a badly broken world, full of wars and cruelty and senseless tragedy. Every human being who inhabits it is served his or her portion of unhappiness and wakeful nights. Those of you who don't already know that will come to know it. Given such sad but undeniable facts of the human condition, you have been given a priceless gift this summer: you are here to sell fun. In exchange for the hard-earned dollars of your customers, you will parcel out happiness. Children will go home and dream of what they saw here and what they did here. I hope you will remember that when the work is hard, as it sometimes will be, or when people are rude, as they often will be, or when you feel your best efforts have gone unappreciated. This is a different world, one that has its own customs and its own language, which we simply call the Talk. You'll begin learning it today. As you learn to talk the Talk, you'll learn to walk the walk. I'm not going to explain that, because it can't be explained; it can only be learned."

  Tom leaned close to me and whispered, "Talk the talk? Walk the walk? Did we just wander into an AA meeting?"

  I hushed him. I had come in expecting to get a list of commandments, mostly thou shalt nots; instead I had gotten a kind of rough poetry, and I was delighted. Bradley Easterbrook surveyed us, then suddenly displayed those horsey teeth in another grin. This one looked big enough to eat the world. Erin Cook was staring at him raptly. So were most of the new summer hires. It was the way students stare at a teacher who offers a new and possibly wonderful way of looking at reality.

  "I hope you'll enjoy your work here, but when you don't--when, for instance, it's your turn to wear the fur--try to remember how privileged you are. In a sad and dark world, we are a little island of happiness. Many of you already have plans for your lives--you hope to become doctors, lawyers, I don't know, politicians--"

  "OH-GOD-NO!" someone shouted, to general laughter.

  I would have said Easterbrook's grin could not possibly have widened, but it did. Tom was shaking his head, but he had also given in. "Okay, now I get it," he whispered in my ear. "This guy is the Jesus of Fun."

  "You'll have interesting, fruitful lives, my young friends. You'll do many good things and have many remarkable experiences. But I hope you'll always look back on your time in Joyland as something special. We don't sell furniture. We don't sell cars. We don't sell land or houses or retirement funds. We have no political agenda. We sell fun. Never forget that. Thank you for your attention. Now go forth."

  He stepped away from the podium, gave another bow, and left the stage in that same painful, high-stepping stride. He was gone almost before the applause began. It was one of the best speeches I ever heard, because it was truth rather than horseshit. I mean, listen: how many rubes can put sold fun for three months in 1973 on their resumes?

  All the team leaders were long-time Joyland employees who worked the carny circuit as showies in the off-season. Most were also on the Park Services Committee, which meant they had to deal with state and federal regulations (both very loose in 1973), and field customer complaints. That summer most of the complaints were about the new no-smoking policy.

  Our team leader was a peppy little guy named Gary Allen, a seventy-something who ran the Annie Oakley Shootin' Gallery. Only none of us called it that after the first day. In the Talk, a shooting gallery was a bang-shy and Gary was the bang-shy agent. The seven of us on Team Beagle met him at his joint, where he was setting out rifles on chains. My first official Joyland job--along with Erin, Tom, and the other four guys on the team--was putting the prizes on the shelves. The ones that got pride of place were the big fuzzy stuffed animals that hardly anyone ever won...although, Gary said, he was careful to give out at least one every evening when the tip was hot.

  "I like the marks," he said. "Yes I do. And the marks I like the best are the points, by which I mean the purty girls, and the points I like the best are the ones who wear the low-cut tops and bend forrad to shoot like this." He snatched up a .22 modified to shoot BBs (it had also been modified to make a loud and satisfying bang with each trigger-pull) and leaned forward to demonstrate.

  "When a guy does that, I notify em that they're foulin the line. The points? Never."

  Ronnie Houston, a bespectacled, anxious-looking young man wearing a Florida State University cap, said: "I don't see any foul line, Mr. Allen."

  Gary looked at him, hands fisted on nonexistent hips. His jeans seemed to be staying up in defiance of gravity. "Listen up, son, I got three things for you. Ready?"

  Ronnie nodded. He looked like he wanted to take notes. He also looked like he wanted to hide behind the rest of us.

  "First thing. You can call me Gary or Pop or come here you old sonofabitch, but I ain't no schoolteacher, so can the mister. Second thing. I never want to see that fucking schoolboy hat on your head again. Third thing. The foul line is wherever I say the foul line is on any given night. I can do that because it's in my myyyyynd." He tapped one sunken, vein-gnarled temple to make this point perfectly clear, then waved at the prizes, the targets, and the counter where the conies--the rubes--laid down their mooch. "This is all in my myyyyynd. The shy is mental. Geddit?"

  Ronnie didn't, but he nodded vigorously.

  "Now whip off that turdish-looking schoolboy hat. Get you a Joyland visor or a Howie the Happy Hound dogtop. Make it Job One."

  Ronnie whipped off his FSU lid with alacrity, and stuck it in his back pocket. Later that day--I believe within the hour--he replaced it with a Howie cap, known in the Talk as a dogtop. After three days of ribbing and being called greenie, he took his new dogtop out to the parking lot, found a nice greasy spot, and trompled it for a while. When he put it back on, it had the right look. Or almost. Ronnie Houston never got the complete right look; some people were just destined to be greenies forever. I remember Tom sidling up to him one day and suggesting that he needed to piss on it a little to give it that final touch that means so much. When he saw Ronnie was on the verge of taking him seriously, Tom backpedaled and said just soaking it in the Atlantic would achieve
the same effect.

  Meanwhile, Pop was surveying us.

  "Speaking of good-looking ladies, I perceive we have one among us."

  Erin smiled modestly.

  "Hollywood Girl, darlin?"

  "That's what Mr. Dean said I'd be doing, yes."

  "Then you want to go see Brenda Rafferty. She's second-in-command around here, and she's also the park Girl Mom. She'll get you fitted up with one of those cute green dresses. Tell her you want yours extra-short."

  "The hell I will, you old lecher," Erin said, and promptly joined him when he threw back his head and bellowed laughter.

  "Pert! Sassy! Do I like it? I do! When you're not snappin pix of the conies, you come on back to your Pop and I'll find you something to do...but change out of the dress first. You don't get grease or sawdust on it. Kapish?"

  "Yes," Erin said. She was all business again.

  Pop Allen looked at his watch. "Park opens in one hour, kiddies, then you'll learn while you earn. Start with the rides." He pointed to us one by one, naming rides. I got the Carolina Spin, which pleased me. "Got time for a question or two, but no more'n that. Anybody got one or are you good to go?"

  I raised my hand. He nodded at me and asked my name.

  "Devin Jones, sir."

  "Call me sir again and you're fired, lad."

  "Devin Jones, Pop." I certainly wasn't going to call him come here you old sonofoabitch, at least not yet. Maybe when we knew each other better.

  "There you go," he said, nodding. "What's on your mind, Jonesy? Besides that foine head of red hair?"

  "What's carny-from-carny mean?"

  "Means you're like old man Easterbrook. His father worked the carny circuit back in the Dust Bowl days, and his grandfather worked it back when they had a fake Indian show featuring Big Chief Yowlatcha."

  "You got to be kidding!" Tom exclaimed, almost exultantly.

  Pop gave him a cool stare that settled Tom down--a thing not always easy to do. "Son, do you know what history is?"