Writers Forum - Northern California

"Aquarteronyourbirthdayanyfavoriteluckymonthevery bodydownsetreadytogoaquartertoplay-aquartertowin." I pitch on. I hear the drone of my voice. I see the words drift across my brain. I say this a thousand times a day, and at night, as I sleep under the steel truck belly, the words drift across the landscape of my dreams, and I speak them, maybe more than five million times. Do they hear me? I wince at the faces in front of me. They dress sadly, look beaten down, spending their last dollar to win, what, a dream?...a stuffed animal that they can neither eat nor sell. What do they see when they look at me? I doubt I will ever know. I decide to look less closely at them.

Little Bobby struts across the lot and waves to me in the joint. He’s close enough to see my sneer out of the corner of his eye. He’s always trying to catch me doing something, like stealing cash from the box. He never has. I’ve been here 3 weeks, but no one has found me out yet. Though by now I’ve developed a taste for it . He needs the day off so I tell him I’ll run the joint for him. Rumor has it he has to go down to the local sheriff’s office for questioning. There is some ruckus about a mad spouse who came after him with a sledge hammer two spots ago and trouble started, so they want to talk to him. Seems like a likely candidate for trouble, in my opinion. To actually get caught and have to deal with it is really stupid. It’s like getting a speeding ticket in New York City; hard to get. Everyone here is wanted for something, lots of people on the run. It’s usually criminal and often across state lines. Sometimes it’s obvious.

During the second week I hauled out the Nikon from the VW trunk. I took photo classes last semester and I thought maybe I could get some cool pictures. I even built a darkroom in the spare bedroom of my apartment with some borrowed equipment. So I headed towards the cookhouse and I saw this ride guy dozing on the underside of the Ferris Wheel. Didn’t seem to be anyone around so I uncapped the lens and brought the camera up to my eyes and saw a great shot, one without any adjustment. The day was perfectly still and a fly landed on my left wrist but the shot was too perfect for me to take my eyes off the viewfinder when out of nowhere some back-end guy I’ve never seen before rushed headlong towards me and yelled, “You bitch!”

The camera fell away from my eyes and I turned towards him and saw that he had a bat in his right hand and was swinging it along the length of his Levi’s. He started to run and I shivered with fear as I see the bat poised over his head and he’s within 10 feet of cracking open my skull, when someone grabbed him from behind and the bat dropped from his hands. I fell down in the dirt, salty tears streamed rivulets down my face, still not knowing what I did. It was not the time to ask. I sent the camera home to Buffalo that same day. You have to learn fast to survive here.

Ever since high school I’ve scared easily and always worry that someone will try and hurt me.

Bobby’s such a creep, dressed in his wild blue and yellow print polyester shirt with peacocks on it and a wide collar that nearly runs off his shoulders. He heads in the direction of Jerry the Pimp, a man older and wiser. Bobby stops and talks to him and I see Jerry’s eyes roll back in his head, start to laugh and hands over the car keys.

Gotta feel sorry for Bobby, really. He’s a pathetic two-bit hustler, a 42 year-old loser with peroxided hair, short and cocky. Looks like he’s trying out for the Bee Gees in those threads. He even puts some kind of lifts on the heels of his shoes. Did he think I would not notice? No, of course not, I am not his type. At 20, I am much too old.

He walks behind the cookhouse, looking for Jerry’s car where he finds it way in the back of the lot, closest to the road. Maybe in case someone needs to make a quick getaway. He opens the door to the old brown Caddy with its pointy fins and dirt encrusted side panels and cranks the ignition. At the last minute, I see Hank hop in with him. What a twitchy pair...Bobby in his polyester getup and the tall, lanky show mailman Hank, dressed in a neon orange jumpsuit. “It’s all about the girls, man, it’s all about what you can get,” I overheard Hank say a few days earlier to Bobby. Still seemed like an unlikely twosome. The lot’s a funny place. Bad things seem to go down all the time, yet carnies like to help you out, like it’s a real friendly place to be, like they’re family or something.