The Joyland sign was lit up--that was the first thing I noticed. The second was that the summertime get-happy music was playing through the loudspeakers: a sonic parade of late sixties and early seventies hits. I had intended to park in one of the Lot A handicapped spaces--they were only fifty feet or so from the park entrance--but before I could do so, Fred Dean stepped through the open gate and beckoned us forward. Today he wasn't wearing just any suit but the three-piecer he saved for the occasional celebrity who rated a VIP tour. The suit I had seen, but never the black silk top hat, which looked like the kind you saw diplomats wearing in old newsreel footage.
"Is this usual?" Annie asked.
"Sure," I said, a trifle giddily. None of it was usual.
I drove through the gate and onto Joyland Avenue, pulling up next to the park bench outside the Wiggle-Waggle Village where Mr. Easterbrook had once sat during my first turn as Howie.
Mike wanted to get out of the van the way he'd gotten in: by himself. I stood by, ready to catch him if he lost his balance, while Annie hoisted the wheelchair out of the back. Milo sat at my feet, tail thumping, ears cocked, eyes bright.
As Annie rolled the wheelchair up, Fred approached in a cloud of aftershave. He was...resplendent. There's really no other word for it. He took off his hat, bowed to Annie, then held out a hand. "You must be Mike's mother." You have to remember that Ms. wasn't common usage back then, and, nervous as I was, I took a moment to appreciate how deftly he had avoided the Miss/Mrs. dichotomy.
"I am," she said. I don't know if she was flustered by his courtliness or by the difference in the way they were dressed--she amusement-park casual, he state-visit formal--but flustered she was. She shook his hand, though. "And this young man--"
"--is Michael." He offered his hand to the wide-eyed boy standing there in his steel supports. "Thank you for coming today."
"You're welcome...I mean, thank you. Thank you for having us." He shook Fred's hand. "This place is huge."
It wasn't, of course; Disney World is huge. But to a ten-year-old who had never been to an amusement park, it had to look that way. For a moment I could see it through his eyes, see it new, and my doubts about bringing him began to melt away.
Fred bent down to examine the third member of the Ross family, hands on his knees. "And you're Milo!"
Milo barked.
"Yes," Fred said, "and I am equally pleased to meet you." He held out his hand, waiting for Milo to raise his paw. When he did, Fred shook it.
"How do you know our dog's name?" Annie asked. "Did Dev tell you?"
He straightened, smiling. "He did not. I know because this is a magic place, my dear. For instance." He showed her his empty hands, then put them behind his back. "Which hand?"
"Left," Annie said, playing along.
Fred brought out his left hand, empty.
She rolled her eyes, smiling. "Okay, right."
This time he brought out a dozen roses. Real ones. Annie and Mike gasped. Me too. All these years later, I have no idea how he did it.
"Joyland is for children, my dear, and since today Mike is the only child here, the park belongs to him. These, however, are for you."
She took them like a woman in a dream, burying her face in the blooms, smelling their sweet red dust.
"I'll put them in the van for you," I said.
She held them a moment longer, then passed them to me.
"Mike," Fred said, "do you know what we sell here?"
He looked uncertain. "Rides? Rides and games?"
"We sell fun. So what do you say we have some?"
I remember Mike's day at the park--Annie's day, too--as if it happened last week, but it would take a correspondent much more talented than I am to tell you how it felt, or to explain how it could have ended the last hold Wendy Keegan still held over my heart and my emotions. All I can say is what you already know: some days are treasure. Not many, but I think in almost every life there are a few. That was one of mine, and when I'm blue--when life comes down on me and everything looks tawdry and cheap, the way Joyland Avenue did on a rainy day--I go back to it, if only to remind myself that life isn't always a butcher's game. Sometimes the prizes are real. Sometimes they're precious.
Of course not all the rides were running, and that was okay, because there were a lot of them Mike couldn't handle. But more than half of the park was operational that morning--the lights, the music, even some of the shys, where half a dozen gazoonies were on duty selling popcorn, fries, sodas, cotton candy, and Pup-A-Licious dogs. I have no idea how Fred and Lane pulled it off in a single afternoon, but they did.
We started in the Village, where Lane was waiting beside the engine of the Choo-Choo Wiggle. He was wearing a pillowtick engineer's cap instead of his derby, but it was cocked at the same insouciant angle. Of course it was. "All aboard! This is the ride that makes kids happy, so get on board and make it snappy. Dogs ride free, moms ride free, kids ride up in the engine with me."
He pointed at Mike, then to the passenger seat in the engine. Mike got out of his chair, set his crutches, then tottered on them. Annie started for him.
"No, Mom. I'm okay. I can do it."
He got his balance and clanked to where Lane was standing--a real boy with robot legs--and allowed Lane to boost him into the passenger seat. "Is that the cord that blows the whistle? Can I pull it?"
"That's what it's there for," Lane said, "but watch out for pigs on the tracks. There's a wolf in the area, and they're scared to death of him."
Annie and I sat in one of the cars. Her eyes were bright. Roses all her own burned in her cheeks. Her lips, though tightly pressed together, were trembling.
"You okay?" I asked her.
"Yes." She took my hand, laced her fingers through mine, and squeezed almost tight enough to hurt. "Yes. Yes. Yes."
"Controls green across the board!" Lane cried. "Check me on that, Michael!"
"Check!"
"Watch out for what on the tracks?"
"Pigs!"
"Kid, you got style that makes me smile. Give that yell-rope a yank and we're off!"
Mike yanked the cord. The whistle howled. Milo barked. The airbrakes chuffed, and the train began to move.
Choo-Choo Wiggle was strictly a zamp ride, okay? All the rides in the Village were zamps, meant mostly for boys and girls between the ages of three and seven. But you have to remember how seldom Mike Ross had gotten out, especially since his pneumonia the year before, and how many days he had sat with his mother at the end of that boardwalk, listening to the rumble of the rides and the happy screams coming from down the beach, knowing that stuff wasn't for him. What was for him was more gasping for air as his lungs failed, more coughing, a gradual inability to walk even with the aid of crutches and braces, and finally the bed where he would die, wearing diapers under his PJs and an oxygen mask over his face.
Wiggle-Waggle Village was sort of depopulated with no greenies to play the fairy-tale parts, but Fred and Lane had reactivated all the mechanicals: the magic beanstalk that shot out of the ground in a burst of steam; the witch cackling in front of the Candy House; the Mad Hatter's tea party; the nightcap-wearing wolf who lurked beneath one of the underpasses and sprang at the train as it passed. As we rounded the final turn, we passed three houses all kids know well--one of straw, one of sticks, and one of bricks.
"Watch out for pigs!" Lane cried, and just then they came waddling onto the tracks, uttering amplified oinks. Mike shrieked with laughter and yanked the whistle. As always, the pigs escaped...barely.
When we pulled back into the station, Annie let go of my hand and hurried up to the engine. "Are you okay, hon? Want your inhaler?"
"No, I'm fine." Mike turned to Lane. "Thanks, Mr. Engineer!"
"My pleasure, Mike." He held out a hand, palm up. "Slap me five if you're still alive."
Mike did, and with gusto. I doubt if he'd ever felt more alive.
"Now I've got to move on," Lane said. "Today I am a man of many hats." He dropped me a wink.
Annie vetoed the Whirly Cups but allowed Mike--not without apprehension--to ride the Chair-O-Planes. She gripped my arm even harder than she had my hand when his chair rose thirty feet above the ground and began to tilt, then loosened up again when she heard him laughing.
"God," she said, "look at his hair! How it flies out behind him!" She was smiling. She was also crying, but didn't seem aware of it. Nor of my arm, which had found its way around her waist.
Fred was running the controls, and knew enough to keep the ride at half-speed, rather than bringing it all the way up to full, which would have had Mike parallel to the ground, held in only by centrifugal force. When he finally came back to earth, the kid was too dizzy to walk. Annie and I each took an arm and guided him to the wheelchair. Fred toted Mike's crutches.
"Oh, man." It seemed to be all he could say. "Oh man, oh man."
The Dizzy Speedboats--a land ride in spite of the name--was next. Mike rode over the painted water in one with Milo, both of them clearly loving it. Annie and I took another one. Although I had been working at Joyland for over four months by then, I'd never been on this ride, and I yelled the first time I saw us rushing prow-first at Mike and Milo's boat, only to shear off at the last second.
"Wimp!" Annie shouted in my ear.
When we got off, Mike was breathing hard but still not coughing. We rolled him up Hound Dog Way and grabbed sodas. The gazoonie refused to take the fivespot Annie held out. "Everything's on the house today, ma'am."
"Can I have a Pup, Mom? And some cotton candy?"
She frowned, then sighed and shrugged. "Okay. Just as long as you understand that stuff is still off-limits, buster. Today's an exception. And no more fast rides."
He wheeled ahead to the Pup-A-Licious shy, his own pup trotting beside him. She turned to me. "It's not about nutrition, if that's what you're thinking. If he gets sick to his stomach, he might vomit. And vomiting is dangerous for kids in Mike's condition. They--"
I kissed her, just a gentle brush of my lips across hers. It was like swallowing a tiny drop of something incredibly sweet. "Hush," I said. "Does he look sick?"
Her eyes got very large. For a moment I felt positive that she was going to slap me and walk away. The day would be ruined and it would be my own stupid goddam fault. Then she smiled, looking at me in a speculative way that made my stomach feel light. "I bet you could do better than that, if you had half a chance."
Before I could think of a reply, she was hurrying after her son. It really would have made no difference if she'd hung around, because I was totally flummoxed.
Annie, Mike, and Milo crowded into one car of the Gondola Glide, which crossed above the whole park on a diagonal. Fred Dean and I rode beneath them in one of the electric carts, with Mike's wheelchair tucked in back.
"Seems like a terrific kid," Fred commented.
"He is, but I never expected you to go all-out like this."
"That's for you as much as for him. You've done the park more good than you seem to know, Dev. When I told Mr. Easterbrook I wanted to go big, he gave me the green light."
"You called him?"
"I did indeed."
"That thing with the roses...how'd you pull it off?"
Fred shot his cuffs and looked modest. "A magician never tells his secrets. Don't you know that?"
"Did you have a card-and-bunny-gig when you were with Blitz Brothers?"
"No, sir, I did not. All I did with the Blitzies was ride-jock and drag the midway. And, although I did not have a valid driver's license, I also drove a truck on a few occasions when we had to DS from some rube-ranch or other in the dead of night."
"So where did you learn the magic?"
Fred reached behind my ear, pulled out a silver dollar, dropped it into my lap. "Here and there, all around the square. Better goose it a little, Jonesy. They're getting ahead of us."
From Skytop Station, where the gondola ride ended, we went to the merry-go-round. Lane Hardy was waiting. He had lost the engineer's cap and was once more sporting his derby. The park's loudspeakers were still pumping out rock and roll, but under the wide, flaring canopy of what's known in the Talk as the spinning jenny, the rock was drowned out by the calliope playing "A Bicycle Built for Two." It was recorded, but still sweet and old-fashioned.
Before Mike could mount the dish, Fred dropped to one knee and regarded him gravely. "You can't ride the jenny without a Joyland hat," he said. "We call em dogtops. Got one?"
"No," Mike said. He still wasn't coughing, but dark patches had begun to creep out beneath his eyes. Where his cheeks weren't flushed with excitement, he looked pale. "I didn't know I was supposed to..."
Fred took off his own hat, peered inside, showed it to us. It was empty, as all magicians' top hats must be when they are displayed to the audience. He looked into it again, and brightened. "Ah!" He brought out a brand new Joyland dogtop and put it on Mike's head. "Perfect! Now which beast do you want to ride? A horse? The unicorn? Marva the Mermaid? Leo the Lion?"
"Yes, the lion, please!" Mike cried. "Mom, you ride the tiger right next to me!"
"You bet," she said. "I've always wanted to ride a tiger."
"Hey, champ," Lane said, "lemme help you up the ramp."
While he did that, Annie lowered her voice and spoke to Fred. "Not a lot more, okay? It's all great, a day he'll never forget, but--"
"He's fading," Fred said. "I understand."
Annie mounted the snarling, green-eyed tiger next to Mike's lion. Milo sat between them, grinning a doggy grin. As the merry-go-round started to move, "A Bicycle Built for Two" gave way to "Twelfth Street Rag." Fred put his hand on my shoulder. "You'll want to meet us at the Spin--we'll make that his last ride--but you need to visit the costume shop first. And put some hustle into it."
I started to ask why, then realized I didn't need to. I headed for the back lot. And yes, I put some hustle into it.
That Tuesday morning in October of 1973 was the last time I wore the fur. I put it on in the costume shop and used Joyland Under to get back to the middle of the park, pushing one of the electric carts as fast as it would go, my Howie-head bouncing up and down on one shoulder. I surfaced behind Madame Fortuna's shy, just in time. Lane, Annie, and Mike were coming up the midway. Lane was pushing Mike's chair. None of them saw me peering around the corner of the shy; they were looking at the Carolina Spin, their necks craned. Fred saw me, though. I raised a paw. He nodded, then turned and raised his own paw to whoever was currently watching from the little sound booth above Customer Services. Seconds later, Howie-music rolled from all the speakers. First up was Elvis, singing "Hound Dog."
I leaped from cover, going into my Howie-dance, which was kind of a fucked-up soft-shoe. Mike gaped. Annie clapped her hands to her temples, as if she'd suddenly been afflicted with a monster headache, then started laughing. I believe what followed was one of my better performances. I hopped and skipped around Mike's chair, hardly aware that Milo was doing the same thing, only in the other direction. "Hound Dog" gave way to the Rolling Stones version of "Walking the Dog." That's a pretty short song, which was good--I hadn't realized how out of shape I was.
I finished by throwing my arms wide and yelling: "Mike! Mike! Mike!" That was the only time Howie ever talked, and all I can say in my defense is that it really sounded more like a bark.
Mike rose from his chair, opened his arms, and fell forward. He knew I'd catch him, and I did. Kids half his age had given me the Howie-Hug all summer long, but no hug had ever felt so good. I only wished I could turn him around and squeeze him the way I had Hallie Stansfield, expelling what was wrong with him like an aspirated chunk of hotdog.
Face buried in the fur, he said: "You make a really good Howie, Dev."
I rubbed his head with one paw, knocking off his dog-top. I couldn't reply as Howie--barking his name was as close as I could come to that--but I was thinking, A good kid deserves a good dog. Just ask Milo.
Mike looked up into Howie's blue mesh eyes. "Will you come o
n the hoister with us?"
I gave him an exaggerated nod and patted his head again. Lane picked up Mike's new dogtop and stuck it back on his head.
Annie approached. Her hands were clasped demurely at her waist, but her eyes were full of merriment. "Can I unzip you, Mr. Howie?"
I wouldn't have minded, but of course I couldn't let her. Every show has its rules, and one of Joyland's--hard and fast--was that Howie the Happy Hound was always Howie the Happy Hound. You never took off the fur where the conies could see.
I ducked back into Joyland Under, left the fur in the cart, and rejoined Annie and Mike at the ramp leading up to the Carolina Spin. Annie looked up nervously and said, "Are you sure you want to do this, Mike?"
"Yes! It's the one I want to do most!"
"All right, then. I guess." To me she added: "I'm not terrified of heights, but they don't exactly thrill me."
Lane was holding a car door open. "Climb aboard, folks. I'm going to send you up where the air is rare." He bent down and scruffed Milo's ears. "You're sittin this one out, fella."
I sat on the inside, nearest the wheel. Annie sat in the middle, and Mike on the outside, where the view was best. Lane dropped the safety bar, went back to the controls, and reset his derby on a fresh slant. "Amazement awaits!" he called, and up we went, rising with the stately calm of a coronation procession.
Slowly, the world opened itself beneath us: first the park, then the bright cobalt of the ocean on our right and all of the North Carolina lowlands on our left. When the Spin reached the top of its great circle, Mike let go of the safety bar, raised his hands over his head, and shouted, "We're flying!"
A hand on my leg. Annie's. I looked at her and she mouthed two words: Thank you. I don't know how many times Lane sent us around--more spins than the usual ride, I think, but I'm not sure. What I remember best was Mike's face, pale and full of wonder, and Annie's hand on my thigh, where it seemed to burn. She didn't take it away until we slowed to a stop.
Mike turned to me. "Now I know what my kite feels like," he said.
So did I.
When Annie told Mike he'd had enough, the kid didn't object. He was exhausted. As Lane helped him into his wheelchair, Mike held out a hand, palm up. "Slap me five if you're still alive."