~ 3 ~

        A fat woman sprawled across a beat-up over-stuffed loveseat set in the grass on the sunny side of a two-ton truck asked, “You lookin’ for someone, darlin’?”  She wore dark glasses and a Hawaiian mumu, her blonde head lolling back in the sun—a gentleness showing in her bloated, but still pretty, face.
        “Do you know Walt?”
        “No, I don’t.  Who’s Walt?”
        “He works a bushel-basket joint for Nickel Nick,” I said hesitantly in this strange new lingo.
        “No, I don’t know him.” She heaved her bulk toward me, and then I recognized that she was TheFat Lady in the sideshow Friday night.  She asked, “What’s the deal with Walt?”
        “Well... he brought me here, from Clandel, and now I can’t find him.”
        “Oh darlin’.  Do you think he’s left you?”
        “I don’t know.  I can’t figure why he’d light a shuck just like that.”
        “Then I’d wager he’s not gone,” she said kindly.  “Here, set with me a spell, and tell me about yourself.”
        She scootched over against one end of the sofa, and though it was a two-seater, there was hardly room for me.  Not wanting to be unmannerable, but shying off from squishing my tail up against hers, I sat half a cheek on the edge and leaned back against the armrest.  Still, her soft thigh pressed against mine, and her moist arm quaggled a mite too near.  She smelled of perfume, sweat, and beer.
        She asked my name, and told me hers was Lula.  Her voice warbled very high in pitch, somehow appearing to do so on purpose.  But when she’d chuckle, which she did after most everything she said, her cheery laugh rang out much lower.
        “My name ain’t really Lula.  That’s just my stage name.  I’m the fat lady in the seven-in-one.”
        “I know.  I saw your show the other night.”
        “Ain’t much to it.  Is there?  The tall drink of water swallowing swords, that’s my husband, Sonny.  Only son of Old Eli McCain—the show’s owner.  He’s got a daughter that lives in Tulsa, but she wants nothing to do with carnivals.  Quite a pair—huh?—Sonny and me?  Fat and skinny had a race, up and down the pillowcase.  Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean.”
        I added, “But betwixt them both they licked the platter clean.”
        She chuckled hard at that, until she choked with a coughing fit.  Tilting her bulk sideways, she reached over the arm of the sofa and down into the shade, and raised a can of Stroh’s beer to her flubby lips, drowning the cough with a long pull.
        “I’d offer you a beer, darlin’.  But they’re way over in the trailer.”
        “That’s mighty kind of you, but no thanks right now.”
        “So tell me.  What you got goin’ with this Walt feller?”
        “Well, he came on to me strong, Friday night, and now here I am.”
        “There’s gotta be more of a tale to it than that.  A fine-lookin’ gal like you just don’t up and run off with a show the day after she meets a carny.  What’s this Walt look like, anyhow?”
        “He’s in his mid-twenties, near six-foot tall, wide shoulders, wears a brown leather jacket and black jeans.  His hair’s sandy brown and slicked back like Elvis.  He’s got a long nose, and a big jaw with a huge grin half the time.”
        “A big goofy grin cocked over to one side?” she asked.
        “Kindly.  Sometimes.”
        “Yeah, yeah.  Now I know who you’re talkin’ about.  I see him in the G-top all the time.  He seems better than the regular run-of-the-mill ‘round here.  But whatever made you want to up and go off with him?  I’d guess that all the studs were pawin’ at the ground for you back in that coal town.”
        “Well, I reckon it’s not so much because of him and me, as it’s more about Clandel and me.  I grew up a mite bookish, a loner in school, and my make didn’t bloom until late.  So by the time boys took notice of me, I became more partial to reading stories in novels than listening to their sorry tales.  My pap lit out a few years back, and left my maw and sister and me to fend for ourselves.  My sister married up, Maw took to drink, and I hankered just to get away from it all.”
        “But darlin’, what are you gettin’ away from?”
        “I’m getting away from there.  Where there’s nothing for me.”
        “And there’s somethin’ for you out here?”
        “Well, I don’t rightly know yet.  Do I?”
        “What I’m tryin’ to get at, is what is it about your hometown that’s set you to leave it so?”
        I thought on this for a piece, then answered, “When I look around at folks there, I don’t feel like, nor want to be like, one of them.  Yet they want me to be like one of them.... I say thanks, but no thanks.  So then they’re not so partial to me—nor me neither to them.  I just have no feel of belonging.”
        “And you’re gonna fit in here?”
        “Ma’am, I reckon I don’t rightly know that yet,” I told her again, a tad testily this time.
        “Now don’t get yourself in a pucker.  It’s just fat old Lula tryin’ to help you figure out what’s what.”
        “I appreciate that.”
        “Anytime, darlin’.  Do you have a hole yet?”
        “A hole?”
        “A job in the show.”
        “Yeah, I guess—with Nick, Walt’s boss.”
        She looked me up and down, studied my eyes, and then said, “Well, if you need a plan-B, I’ll bet we could make the seven-in-one into a genuine ten-in-one with a looker such as you.  Sonny could work up some of his old tricks—saw you in half, or make you disappear.  It’s been a long time since I fit into any of his magic boxes.  If it don’t work out with Walt or Nick, you come see what we have to say then.  Okay?”
        “Sure enough.”
        “I’ll tell you one thing, darlin’.  Out here, we all gotta stick together.  To the rest of the world carny folk may be a tribe of tricksters and thieves.  But among our own, you don’t find better folk—once you get to know ‘em.  We’re no different than anyone else, makin’ a livin’ doin’ what we do, helpin’ out our own—each of us our own peculiar selves, in our own particular manner—some good, some not so good.  
        “My hunch is that your Walt ain’t the worst devil out here, and wouldn’t be leavin’ an angel like you for no good reason.  So he’ll be findin’ you shortly.  And we’ll be seein’ you around the show.... Good luck to you, Annabelle”
        I thanked her, got up, and offered my hand to shake—her thick soft paw, warm and moist.  In how she held mine, I felt of her goodness.  She leaned back into the sun and I scuffed away.  

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        Three-quarters of an hour later, nothing had happened yet—just a wisecrack now and then from Walt, told to try to lighten up Nick’s fretful mood, who twisted a lopsided little smile at a few of them, but mostly just grumbled and paced.  I sniggered skittishly at Walt’s jokes, and didn’t have much else to say.  I gathered we were waiting to get our locations—where to set up Nick’s joints.  
        The bestower of locations was a small but buxom older woman driving a golf cart around the lot.  She wore her puffy and silvery hair piled atop her head and proudly carried a graceful angular face, though sagging and sun-dried,.  When she’d stop to read from her clipboard, she’d lift tiny gold-rimmed glasses up from a chain around her neck and perch them on the tip of her up-turned nose.  Her ample cleavage, bursting up from a lacy blue low-cut top, and her meaty hind end, sleek in black slacks, jounced on the seat of the cart as it whirred back and forth.  I asked Walt who she was.
        “Julia’s Eli McCain’s second wife, I hear.  The old man’s got a couple of kids from his first wife.  One of ‘em, his boy Sonny, swallows swords and eats fire at the show’s back end.  And eats shit from Julia in the front office.  She pretty much runs the show for Old Eli now.  He just sits out in front of the office trailer, diddling with his cane most of the time.  But Belle, I gotta hand it to her, the lady Julia sure runs one tight ship.  Yessiree, Bob.”
        Another quarter-hour later, Julia curled a finger at us, and Nick strode off, following her cart.  Shortly, he returned and fired up the Oldsmobile, and pulled the joint trailer around to the other side of the oval of rides taking shape in the middle of the field.  Walt and I followed on foot behind the trailer, which swayed across the field, leaving a trail of crushed mayflowers.
        Nick jockeyed the trailer back and forth and back and forth, longways into a space between two stakes—jumping in and out of the car to eyeball how it lined up.  When he got it where he wanted, he cranked the hitch up off the ball and unlocked the awnings.  Then he wheeled the Oldsmobile over near his house trailer, and returned with the two-ton truck, parking it along the backside of the joint trailer.
        Meanwhile, Walt cranked the trailer down close to level, chocked its tires with short chunks of two-by-fours, and steadied it under each corner with some screw jacks that were stowed inside the trailer.  Fred wandered over, and digging in an ear with a fingernail, stood staring at me until Nick told him to open up the back of the truck.
        Before long the three of them had the trailer awnings propped open, and they took in unloading the frame of the center joint out of the back of the truck.  I helped carry some lumber around to the front, where we set it down in its location, staked out in the grass midway between the joint trailer and the half-assembled Tilt-A-Whirl.
        Brenda and Jenny, hand in hand, strolled up to Nick.  Brenda appeared to caucus with him about me—voices low, glances sneaking my way.  Jenny clung to her mother’s arm and squirmed, shyly looking me over, twisting her head away, then turning to scowl another peek at me from beneath her downy eyebrows.
        She let loose of her mother and clambered atop a huge and dusty canvas bag stuffed with the tent, as Brenda came over and told me, “We’re gonna try you in the pitch-till-u-win.  Jump into the joint.”
        The pitch-till-u-win sat next to Walt’s bushel-basket game in the other half of the joint trailer.  I backed my hind end up to the counter, hopped onto it, swung my legs over, and stood on the trailer floor between the counter and several rails of wooden blocks—large and small, with a prize attached to each.  Under the blocks hung a red cloth, swagging end to end with dozens of four-inch-wide wooden hoops.  Brenda leaned over the counter and pointed to three panels cut into the floor and fixed with sliding bolts, and she told me to slip the bolts open, lift the trapdoors out of the floor, and stow them on the grass beneath the trailer.  I struggled with the first one some, but soon had all three stashed under the trailer.
        Brenda pointed at a yellow-and-white-striped tarp rolled-up on the floor of the basket side of the trailer, and said, “Set that bally cloth on the counter and jump out with me.”
        I did so with all the haste of eager to please.  And as she unrolled the bally cloth—three-foot wide and the length of the twenty-four-foot trailer, with snaps along its topside—she told me to hold it up out of the dirt while she snapped it on beneath the counter from one end to the other, as a skirt to hide the wheels.  With the awnings up and the bally cloth on, the aluminum trailer became a pair of carnival games, easy as that.  
        Brenda hoisted herself into the peach-basket side, and on her hands and knees hunted under the counter, and brought out a rag and a bottle of spray cleaner.  She told me to clean off the bally cloth, dust all the blocks, and straighten out the prizes.  Then, leaving me to my tasks, she joined Jenny beside the tent bag, and they watched Walt, Nick, and Fred assemble the frame of the glass pitch.  
        I went at the bally cloth with all the elbow grease I could muster—spraying and scrubbing to beat the band.  Most of the grime was long set into the canvas, and nigh on impossible to get out.  But I busied myself with trying, and at the least, wiped off slathers of coal dust from Clandel.
        Then I hopped back into the pitch-till-u-win and took in dusting the blocks and the prizes—transistor radios, plastic whistles, hunting knives, Chinese finger-traps, wrist watches, tin sheriff’s badges, costume jewelry, rubber spiders, and more, all latched with rubber bands to the blocks—big prizes on the big blocks, little prizes on the little blocks.  Under the counter sat several boxes filled with hundreds of the little prizes.  I straightened them out some, and then gathered up all the wooden hoops in the cloth slung beneath the blocks, and neatly arranged them in two long rows.  Working hard to look busy I wiped everything down again.  When there was nothing else to red-up, save do it all again a third time, I swung my legs out over the counter and sat there dangling my heels against the bally cloth.
        More and more of the carnival was coming together.  Encircling the rides, other tents and trailers took shape in the line-up.  The Ferris Wheel seats swung into the sky one after another.  Sledgehammers rang down on inch-thick steel tent stakes.  Motors groaned and rumbled to life.  The arms of rides unfolded into their poses—getting readied for their dizzying rounds by grimy men clambering over the pig iron and muscling huge wrenches.  Walt, Nick, and Fred unrolled the center joint’s heavy canvas over the hitched-up frame, and shortly hoisted each end into the air—swinging the legs out from under the corners, and levering up the top.Walt came over, patted me on the knee, and said, “I’ll slough the glass to get on down the road.  But I don’t flash no glass.  The center joint’s in the air, so I’ll be done soon.  Then we can go back to the room.”
        I hopped off the counter and told him I was going to take a stroll.  After a few dozen steps down the midway, Julia McCain whirred by me on her golf cart.  She eyed me as she passed—then stopped, backed up, and asked me, “Who are you with?”
        Trying to sound with it, I said, “I’ve got a hole with Nickel Nick.”
        “What’s your name?” she asked, and I told her.
        “Get in,” she told me, and I did.  She looked me up and down, stepped on the gas pedal, and the cart jerked forward.
        “Where you from, Annabelle?”
        It crossed my mind to make up a story—tell her I was from Arkansas or someplace—but I thought it best to just say, “Clandel... the town we just left out of.”
        “And what are you doing on my midway?”  she asked gently as we lurched along, her blue eyes probing the carnival’s half-done jigsaw puzzle.
        “I’m going to run a game.”
        “And why?”
        “To make some money, and get out of state.  To get someplace else.”
        “You decided to just up and do this by yourself?”
        “Well, Walt—he runs the bushel-basket game for Nick—he’s kindly helping me out.”
        “How old are you, Annabelle?”
        “I’m nineteen.”
        “I suppose that’s old enough in this state to run off with a man.  What’s your people think about that?”
        “I reckon Maw is kicking the cat this morning.  But soon as she gets into her stump liquor, she’ll settle down.  My pap is long gone.  My sister’s got a husband and her own problems....  That’s about all there is to it.”
        “You in any trouble with Johnny Law?”
        “Oh no, ma’am.  Never been.  And never aim to be.”
        “So, you want to be a good girl, eh?”
        “That’s for certain, ma’am.”
        “Well then, young lady, let me tell you what.  This is my show, and the fewer jackpots I have to deal with, the nicer I am.  I can see that you’re one fine buttery biscuit—which means that more than a few of my boys are likely to get their rut riled up, lookin’ to spread their marmalade on you.  However, I hate a soap opera.  I’ve seen too much good help go down the road after one another fiesty episode.  Good help is hard to find.  And harder to keep.  You keep your nose clean, and you keep these hound dogs around here from sniffin’ your tail, and gettin’ wrangy over you with each other.  Then you’ve got yourself a carnival.  You catch my drift?”
        “Yes, ma’am.  I surely do.  And I ain’t no hussy.”
        “Miss Cory, you don’t have to be a hussy.  All it takes is bein’ young and good lookin’.  You just watch out for yourself.”
        “Yes, ma’am.”
        She stopped the cart, and said, “All right.  Go on.  I’ll be keepin’ an eye on you.  And if ever you be needin’ help with somethin’, you come and see me, Annabelle.  You hear?”
        “Yes, ma’am.  Thank you.”  Hopping out, I stumbled a step or two, puzzzled why she would offer me help after reading me my rights and putting the fear of damnation in me.
        She mashed down the gas pedal, and as the cart whirred away she spun her head back to me, and said, “And no drugs neither.”
        “No, ma’am.”  
        I scuffed around the lot a few times—the midway taking shape in the warm and bright Sunday afternoon, the frenzy of moving the carnival fading.  Resting now in yet another spot sat the same oval of rides, surrounded by its ring of tents and trailers, surrounded by a jumble of vehicles, surrounded by yet another cluster of West Virginia hills. 

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copyright © 2012 by S.M.Fernand