Joyland Read online

  "Uh...stuff that happened in the past?"

  "Nope," he said, tying on his canvas change-belt. "History is the collective and ancestral shit of the human race, a great big and ever-growin pile of crap. Right now we're standin at the top of it, but pretty soon we'll be buried under the doodoo of generations yet to come. That's why your folks' clothes look so funny in old photographs, to name but a single example. And, as someone who's destined to be buried beneath the shit of your children and grandchildren, I think you should be just a leetle more forgiving."

  Tom opened his mouth, probably to make a smart comeback, then wisely closed it again.

  George Preston, another member of Team Beagle, spoke up. "Are you carny-from-carny?"

  "Nope. My daddy was a cattle rancher in Oregon; now my brothers run the spread. I'm the black sheep of the family, and damn proud of it. Okay, if there's nothing else, it's time to quit the foolishness and get down to business."

  "Can I ask one thing more?" Erin asked.

  "Only because you're purty."

  "What does 'wearing the fur' mean?"

  Pop Allen smiled. He placed his hands on the mooch-counter of his shy. "Tell me, little lady, do you have an idea what it might mean?"

  "Well...yes."

  The smile widened into a grin that showed every yellowing fang in our new team leader's mouth. "Then you're probably right."

  What did I do at Joyland that summer? Everything. Sold tickets. Pushed a popcorn wagon. Sold funnel cakes, cotton candy, and a zillion hot dogs (which we called Hound Dogs--you probably knew that). It was a Hound Dog that got my picture in the paper, as a matter of fact, although I wasn't the guy who sold that unlucky pup; George Preston did. I worked as a lifeguard, both on the beach and at Happy Lake, the indoor pool where the Splash & Crash water slide ended. I line-danced in the Wiggle-Waggle Village with the other members of Team Beagle to "Bird Dance Beat," "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight," "Rippy-Rappy, Zippy-Zappy," and a dozen other nonsense songs. I also did time--most of it happy--as an unlicensed child-minder. In the Wiggle-Waggle, the approved rallying cry when faced with a bawling kiddie was "Let's turn that frown upside down!" and I not only liked it, I got good at it. It was in the Wiggle-Waggle that I decided having kids at some point in the future was an actual Good Idea rather than a Wendy-flavored daydream.

  I--and all the other Happy Helpers--learned to race from one side of Joyland to the other in nothing flat, using either the alleys behind the shys, joints, rides, and concessions or one of three service-tunnels known as Joyland Under, Hound Dog Under, and the Boulevard. I hauled trash by the ton, usually driving it in an electric cart down the Boulevard, a shadowy and sinister thoroughfare lit by ancient fluorescent bar-lights that stuttered and buzzed. I even worked a few times as a roadie, hauling amps and monitors when one of the acts showed up late and unsupported.

  I learned to talk the Talk. Some of it--like bally for a free show, or gone larry for a ride that had broken down--was pure carny, and as old as the hills. Other terms--like points for purty girls and fumps for the chronic complainers--were strictly Joyland lingo. I suppose other parks have their own version of the Talk, but underneath it's always carny-from-carny. A hammer-squash is a cony (usually a fump) who bitches about having to wait in line. The last hour of the day (at Joyland, that was ten PM to eleven) was the blow-off. A cony who loses at some shy and wants his mooch back is a mooch-hammer. The donniker is the bathroom, as in "Hey, Jonesy, hustle down to the donniker by the Moon Rocket--some dumb fump just puked in one of the sinks."

  Running the concessions (known as joints) came easy to most of us, and really, anyone who can make change is qualified to push the popcorn wagon or work the counter of a souvenir shop. Learning to ride-jock wasn't much more difficult, but it was scary at first, because there were lives in your hands, many those of little children.

  "Here for your lesson?" Lane Hardy asked me when I joined him at the Carolina Spin. "Good. Just in time. Park opens in twenty minutes. We do it the way they do in the navy--see one, do one, teach one. Right now that heavyset kid you were standing next to--"

  "Tom Kennedy."

  "Okay. Right now Tom's over learning the Devil Wagons. At some point--probably this very day--he's gonna teach you how to run the ride, and you'll teach him how to run the Spin. Which, by the way, is an Aussie Wheel, meaning it runs counterclockwise."

  "Is that important?"

  "Nope," he said, "but I think it's interesting. There are only a few in the States. It has two speeds: slow and really slow."

  "Because it's a grandma ride."

  "Correctamundo." He demonstrated with the long stick shift I'd seen him operating on the day I got my job, then made me take over the stick with the bicycle hand-grip at the top. "Feel it click when it's in gear?"

  "Yes."

  "Here's stop." He put his hand over mine and pulled the lever all the way up. This time the click was harder, and the enormous wheel stopped at once, the cars rocking gently. "With me so far?"

  "I guess so. Listen, don't I need a permit or a license or something to run this thing?"

  "You got a license, don't you?"

  "Sure, a Maine driver's license, but--"

  "In North Carolina, a valid DL's all you need. They'll get around to additional regulations in time--they always do--but for this year, at least, you're good to go. Now pay attention, because this is the most important part. Do you see that yellow stripe on the side of the housing?"

  I did. It was just to the right of the ramp leading up to the ride.

  "Each car has a Happy Hound decal on the door. When you see the Hound lining up with the yellow stripe, you pull stop, and there'll be a car right where the folks get on." He yanked the lever forward again. "See?"

  I said I did.

  "Until the wheel's tipsed--"

  "What?"

  "Loaded. Tipsed means loaded. Don't ask me why. Until the wheel's tipsed, you just alternate between super-slow and stop. Once you've got a full load--which you'll have most of the time, if we have a good season--you go to the normal slow speed. They get four minutes." He pointed to his suitcase radio. "It's my boomie, but the rule is when you run the ride, you control the tunes. Just no real blasting rock and roll--Who, Zep, Stones, stuff like that--until after the sun goes down. Got it?"

  "Yeah. What about letting them off?"

  "Exactly the same. Super-slow, stop. Super-slow, stop. Always line up the yellow stripe with the Happy Hound, and you'll always have a car right at the ramp. You should be able to get ten spins an hour. If the wheel's loaded each time, that's over seven hundred customers, which comes to almost a d-note."

  "Which is what, in English?"

  "Five hundred."

  I looked at him uncertainly. "I won't really have to do this, will I? I mean, it's your ride."

  "It's Brad Easterbrook's ride, kiddo. They all are. I'm just another employee, although I've been here a few years. I'll run the hoister most of the time, but not all of the time. And hey, stop sweating. There are carnies where half-drunk bikers covered with tattoos do this, and if they can, you can."

  "If you say so."

  Lane pointed. "Gates're open and here come the conies, rolling down Joyland Avenue. You're going to stick with me for the first three rides. Later on you teach the rest of your team, and that includes your Hollywood Girl. Okay?"

  It wasn't even close to okay--I was supposed to send people a hundred and seventy feet in the air after a five-minute tutorial? It was insane.

  He gripped my shoulder. "You can do this, Jonesy. So never mind 'if you say so.' Tell me it's okay."

  "It's okay," I said.

  "Good boy." He turned on his radio, now hooked to a speaker high on the Spin's frame. The Hollies began to sing "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" as Lane took a pair of rawhide gloves from the back pocket of his jeans. "And get you a pair of these--you're going to need them. Also, you better start learning how to pitch." He bent down, grabbed a hand-held m
ike from the ever-present orange crate, put one foot up, and began to work the crowd.

  "Hey folks welcome in, time to take a little spin, hurry hurry, summer won't last forever, take a ride upstairs where the air is rare, this is where the fun begins, step over here and ride the Spin."

  He lowered the mike and gave me a wink. "That's my pitch, more or less; give me a drink or three and it gets a lot better. You work out your own."

  The first time I ran the Spin by myself, my hands were shaking with terror, but by the end of that first week I was running it like a pro (although Lane said my pitch needed a lot of work). I was also capable of running the Whirly Cups and the Devil Wagons...although ride-jocking the latter came down to little more than pushing the green START button, the red STOP button, and getting the cars untangled when the rubes got them stuck together against the rubber bumpers, which was at least four times during each four-minute ride. Only when you were running the Devil Wagons, you didn't call them rides; each run was a spree.

  I learned the Talk; I learned the geography, both above and below ground; I learned how to run a joint, take over a shy, and award plushies to good-looking points. It took a week or so to get most of it down, and it was two weeks before I started getting comfortable. Wearing the fur, however, I understood by twelve-thirty on my first day, and it was just my luck--good or bad--that Bradley Easterbrook happened to be in Wiggle-Waggle Village at the time, sitting on a bench and eating his usual lunch of bean sprouts and tofu--hardly amusement park chow, but let's keep in mind that the man's food-processing system hadn't been new since the days of bathtub gin and flappers.

  After my first impromptu performance as Howie the Happy Hound, I wore the fur a lot. Because I was good at it, you see. And Mr. Easterbrook knew I was good at it. I was wearing it a month or so later, when I met the little girl in the red hat on Joyland Avenue.

  That first day was a madhouse, all right. I ran the Carolina Spin with Lane until ten o'clock, then alone for the next ninety minutes while he rushed around the park putting out opening day fires. By then I no longer believed the wheel was going to malfunction and start running out of control, like the merry-go-round in that old Alfred Hitchcock movie. The most terrifying thing was how trusting people were. Not a single dad with kids in tow detoured to my pitch to ask if I knew what I was doing. I didn't get as many spins as I should have--I was concentrating so hard on that damn yellow stripe that I gave myself a headache--but every spin I did get was tipsed.

  Erin came by once, pretty as a picture in her green Hollywood Girl dress, and took pictures of some of the family groups waiting to get on. She took one of me, too--I still have it somewhere. When the wheel was turning again, she gripped me by the arm, little beads of sweat standing out on her forehead, her lips parted in a smile, her eyes shining.

  "Is this great, or what?" she asked.

  "As long as I don't kill anybody, yeah," I said.

  "If some little kid falls out of a car, just make sure you catch him." Then, having given me something new to obsess about, she jogged off in search of new photo subjects. There was no shortage of people willing to pose for a gorgeous redhead on a summer morning. And she was right, actually. It was pretty great.

  Around eleven-thirty, Lane came back. By that point, I was comfortable enough ride-jocking the Spin to turn the rudimentary controls over to him with some reluctance.

  "Who's your team leader, Jonesy? Gary Allen?"

  "That's right."

  "Well, go on over to his bang-shy and see what he's got for you. If you're lucky, he'll send you down to the boneyard for lunch."

  "What's the boneyard?"

  "Where the help goes when they've got time off. Most carnies, it's the parking lot or out behind the trucks, but Joyland's lux. There's a nice break-room where the Boulevard and Hound Dog Under connect. Take the stairs between the balloon-pitch and the knife-show. You'll like it, but you only eat if Pop says it's okay. I ain't getting in dutch with that old bastard. His team is his team; I got my own. You got a dinner bucket?"

  "Didn't know I was supposed to bring one."

  He grinned. "You'll learn. For today, stop at Ernie's joint--the fried chicken place with the big plastic rooster on top. Show him your Joyland ID card and he'll give you the company discount."

  I did end up eating fried chicken at Ernie's, but not until two that afternoon. Pop had other plans for me. "Go by the costume shop--it's the trailer between Park Services and the carpentry shop. Tell Dottie Lassen I sent you. Damn woman's busting her girdle."

  "Want me to help you reload first?" The Shootin' Gallery was also tipsed, the counter crowded with high school kids anxious to win those elusive plushies. More rubes (so I was already thinking of them) were lined up three deep behind the current shooters. Pop Allen's hands never stopped moving as he talked to me.

  "What I want is for you to get on your pony and ride. I was doin this shit long before you were born. Which one are you, anyway, Jonesy or Kennedy? I know you're not the dingbat in the college-boy hat, but beyond that I can't remember."

  "I'm Jonesy."

  "Well, Jonesy, you're going to spend an edifying hour in the Wiggle-Waggle. It'll be edifying for the kiddies, anyhow. For you, maybe not so much." He bared his yellow fangs in a trademark Pop Allen grin, the one that made him look like an elderly shark. "Enjoy that fur suit."

  The costume shop was also a madhouse, filled with women running every whichway. Dottie Lassen, a skinny lady who needed a girdle like I needed elevator shoes, fell on me the second I walked through the door. She hooked her long-nailed fingers into my armpit and dragged me past clown costumes, cowboy costumes, a huge Uncle Sam suit (with stilts leaning beside it against the wall), a couple of princess outfits, a rack of Hollywood Girl dresses, and a rack of old-fashioned Gay Nineties bathing suits...which, I found out, we were condemned to wear when on lifeguard duty. At the very back of her crowded little empire were a dozen deflated dogs. Howies, in fact, complete with the Happy Hound's delighted stupid-and-loving-it grin, his big blue eyes, and his fuzzy cocked ears. Zippers ran down the backs of the suits from the neck to the base of the tail.

  "Christ, you're a big one," Dottie said. "Thank God I got the extra-large mended last week. The last kid who wore it ripped it out under both arms. There was a hole under the tail, too. He must have been eating Mexican food." She snatched the XL Howie off the rack and slammed it into my arms. The tail curled around my leg like a python. "You're going to the Wiggle-Waggle, and I mean chop-fucking-chop. Butch Hadley was supposed to take care of that from Team Corgi--or so I thought--but he says his whole team's out with a key to the midway." I had no idea what that meant, and Dottie gave me no time to ask. She rolled her eyes in a way that indicated either good humor or the onset of madness, and continued. "You say 'What's the big deal?' I'll tell you what's the big deal, greenie: Mr. Easterbrook usually eats his lunch there, he always eats it there on the first day we're running full-out, and if there's no Howie, he'll be very disappointed."

  "Like as in someone will get fired?"

  "No, as in very disappointed. Stick around awhile and you'll know that's plenty bad enough. No one wants to disappoint him, because he's a great man. Which is nice, I suppose, but what's more important is he's a good guy. In this business, good guys are scarcer than hen's teeth." She looked at me and made a sound like a small animal with its paw caught in a trap. "Dear Christ, you're a big one. And green as grass. But it can't be helped."

  I had a billion questions, but my tongue was frozen. All I could do was stare at the deflated Howie. Who stared back at me. Do you know what I felt like just then? James Bond, in the movie where he's tied to some kind of crazy exercise gadget. Do you expect me to talk? he asks Goldfinger, and Goldfinger replies, with chilling good humor, No, Mr. Bond! I expect you to die! I was tied to a happiness machine instead of an exercise machine, but hey, same idea. No matter how hard I worked to keep up on that first day, the damn thing just kept going faster.

  "Take it down to the
boneyard, kid. Please tell me you know where that is."

  "I do." Thank God Lane had told me.

  "Well, that's one for the home team, anyway. When you get there, strip down to your undies. If you wear more than that while you're wearing the fur, you'll roast. And...anybody ever tell you the First Rule of Carny, kid?"

  I thought so, but it seemed safer to keep my mouth shut.

  "Always know where your wallet is. This park isn't anywhere near as sleazy as some of the places I worked in the flower of my youth--thank God--but that's still the First Rule. Give it to me, I'll keep it for you."

  I handed over my wallet without protest.

  "Now go. But even before you strip down, drink a lot of water. I mean until your belly feels swollen. And don't eat anything, I don't care how hungry you are. I've had kids get heatstroke and barf in Howie suits, and the results ain't pretty. Suit almost always has to be thrown out. Drink, strip, put on the fur, get someone to zip you up, then hustle down the Boulevard to the Wiggle-Waggle. There's a sign, you can't miss it."

  I looked doubtfully at Howie's big blue eyes.

  "They're screen mesh," she said. "Don't worry, you'll see fine."

  "But what do I do?"

  She looked at me, at first unsmiling. Then her face--not just her mouth and eyes but her whole face--broke into a grin. The laugh that accompanied it was this weird honk that seemed to come through her nose. "You'll be fine," she said. People kept telling me that. "It's method acting, kiddo. Just find your inner dog."

  There were over a dozen new hires and a handful of old-timers having lunch in the boneyard when I arrived. Two of the greenies were Hollywood Girls, but I had no time to be modest. After gulping a bellyful from the drinking fountain, I shucked down to my Jockeys and sneakers. I shook out the Howie costume and stepped in, making sure to get my feet all the way down in the back paws.

  "Fur!" one of the old-timers yelled, and slammed a fist down on the table. "Fur! Fur! Fur!"

  The others took it up, and the boneyard rang with the chant as I stood there in my underwear with a deflated Howie puddled around my shins. It was like being in the middle of a prison messhall riot. Rarely have I felt so exquisitely stupid...or so oddly heroic. It was showbiz, after all, and I was stepping into the breach. For a moment it didn't matter that I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.