Grinning, Lane slapped him five. "Come back anytime, Mike."
"Thanks. It was so great."
Lane and I pushed him up the midway. The booths on both sides were shut up again, but one of the shys was open: Annie Oakley's Shootin' Gallery. Standing at the chump board, where Pop Allen had stood all summer long, was Fred Dean in his three-piece suit. Behind him, chain-driven rabbits and ducks traveled in opposite directions. Above them were bright yellow ceramic chicks. These were stationary, but very small.
"Like to try your shooting skill before you exit the park?" Fred asked. "There are no losers today. Today ev-rybody wins a prize."
Mike looked around at Annie. "Can I, Mom?"
"Sure, honey. But not long, okay?"
He tried to get out of the chair, but couldn't. He was too tired. Lane and I propped him up, one on each side. Mike picked up a rifle and took a couple of shots, but he could no longer steady his arms, even though the gun was light. The beebees struck the canvas backdrop and clicked into the gutter at the bottom.
"Guess I suck," he said, putting the rifle down.
"Well, you didn't exactly burn it up," Fred allowed, "but as I said, today everyone wins a prize." With that, he handed over the biggest Howie on the shelf, a top stuffy that even sharpshooters couldn't earn without spending eight or nine bucks on reloads.
Mike thanked him and sat back down, looking overwhelmed. That damn stuffed dog was almost as big as he was. "You try, Mom."
"No, that's okay," she said, but I thought she wanted to. It was something in her eyes as she measured the distance between the chump board and the targets.
"Please?" He looked first at me, then at Lane. "She's really good. She won the prone shooting tournament at Camp Perry before I was born and came in second twice. Camp Perry's in Ohio."
"I don't--"
Lane was already holding out one of the modified .22s. "Step right up. Let's see your best Annie Oakley, Annie."
She took the rifle and examined it in a way few of the conies ever did. "How many shots?"
"Ten a clip," Fred said.
"If I'm going to do this, can I shoot two clips?"
"As many as you want, ma'am. Today's your day."
"Mom used to also shoot skeet with my grampa," Mike told them.
Annie raised the .22 and squeezed off ten shots with a pause of perhaps two seconds between each. She knocked over two moving ducks and three of the moving bunnies. The teensy ceramic chicks she ignored completely.
"A crack shot!" Fred crowed. "Any prize on the middle shelf, your pick!"
She smiled. "Fifty percent isn't anywhere near crack. My dad would have covered his face for shame. I'll just take the reload, if that's okay."
Fred took a paper cone from under the counter--a wee shoot, in the Talk--and put the small end into a hole on top of the gag rifle. There was a rattle as another ten beebees rolled in.
"Are the sights on these trigged?" she asked Fred.
"No, ma'am. All the games at Joyland are straight. But if I told you Pop Allen--the man who usually runs this shy--spent long hours sighting them in, I'd be a liar."
Having worked on Pop's team, I knew that was disingenuous, to say the least. Sighting in the rifles was the last thing Pop would do. The better the rubes shot, the more prizes Pop had to give away...and he had to buy his own prizes. All the shy-bosses did. They were cheap goods, but not free goods.
"Shoots left and high," she said, more to herself than to us. Then she raised the rifle, socked it into the hollow of her right shoulder, and triggered off ten rounds. This time there was no discernable pause between shots, and she didn't bother with the ducks and bunnies. She aimed for the ceramic chicks and exploded eight of them.
As she put the gun back on the counter, Lane used his bandanna to wipe a smutch of sweat and grime from the back of his neck. He spoke very softly as he did this chore. "Jesus Horatio Christ. Nobody gets eight peeps."
"I only nicked the last one, and at this range I should have had them all." She wasn't boasting, just stating a fact.
Mike said, almost apologetically: "Told you she was good." He curled a fist over his mouth and coughed into it. "She was thinking about the Olympics, only then she dropped out of college."
"You really are Annie Oakley," Lane said, stuffing his bandanna back into a rear pocket. "Any prize, pretty lady. You pick."
"I already have my prize," she said. "This has been a wonderful, wonderful day. I can never thank you guys enough." She turned in my direction. "And this guy. Who actually had to talk me into it. Because I'm a fool." She kissed the top of Mike's head. "But now I better get my boy home. Where's Milo?"
We looked around and saw him halfway down Joyland Avenue, sitting in front of Horror House with his tail curled around his paws.
"Milo, come!" Annie called.
His ears pricked up but he didn't come. He didn't even turn in her direction, just stared at the facade of Joyland's only dark ride. I could almost believe he was reading the drippy, cobweb-festooned invitation: COME IN IF YOU DARE.
While Annie was looking at Milo, I stole a glance at Mike. Although he was all but done in from the excitements of the day, his expression was hard to mistake. It was satisfaction. I know it's crazy to think he and his Jack Russell had worked this out in advance, but I did think it.
I still do.
"Roll me down there, Mom," Mike said. "He'll come with me."
"No need for that," Lane said. "If you've got a leash, I'm happy to go get him."
"It's in the pocket on the back of Mike's wheelchair," Annie said.
"Um, probably not," Mike said. "You can check but I'm pretty sure I forgot it."
Annie checked while I thought, In a pig's ass you forgot.
"Oh, Mike," Annie said reproachfully. "Your dog, your responsibility. How many times have I told you?"
"Sorry, Mom." To Fred and Lane he said, "Only we hardly ever use it because Milo always comes."
"Except when we need him to." Annie cupped her hands around her mouth. "Milo, come on! Time to go home!" Then, in a much sweeter voice: "Biscuit, Milo! Come get a biscuit!"
Her coaxing tone would have brought me on the run--probably with my tongue hanging out--but Milo didn't budge.
"Come on Dev," Mike said. As if I were also in on the plan but had missed my cue, somehow. I grabbed the wheelchair's handles and rolled Mike down Joyland Avenue toward the funhouse. Annie followed. Fred and Lane stayed where they were, Lane leaning on the chump board among the laid-out popguns on their chains. He had removed his derby and was spinning it on one finger.
When we got to the dog, Annie regarded him crossly. "What's wrong with you, Milo?"
Milo thumped his tail at the sound of Annie's voice, but didn't look at her. Nor did he move. He was on guard and intended to stay that way unless he was hauled away.
"Michael, please make your dog heel so we can go home. You need to get some r--"
Two things happened before she could finish. I'm not exactly sure of the sequence. I've gone over it often in the years since then--most often on nights when I can't sleep--and I'm still not sure. I think the rumble came first: the sound of a ride-car starting to roll along its track. But it might have been the padlock dropping. It's even possible that both things happened at the same time.
The big American Master fell off the double doors below the Horror House facade and lay on the boards, gleaming in the October sunshine. Fred Dean said later that the shackle must not have been pushed firmly into the locking mechanism, and the vibration of the moving car caused it to open all the way. This made perfect sense, because the shackle was indeed open when I checked it.
Still bullshit, though.
I put that padlock on myself, and remember the click as the shackle clicked into place. I even remember tugging on it to make sure it caught, the way you do with a padlock. And all that begs a question Fred didn't even try to answer: with the Horror House breakers switched off, how could that car have gotten rolling in the first
place? As for what happened next...
Here's how a trip through Horror House ended. On the far side of the Torture Chamber, just when you thought the ride was over and your guard was down, a screaming skeleton (nicknamed Hagar the Horrible by the greenies) came flying at you, seemingly on a collision course with your car. When it pulled away, you saw a stone wall dead ahead. Painted there in fluorescent green was a rotting zombie and a gravestone with END OF THE LINE printed on it. Of course the stone wall split open just in time, but that final double-punch was extremely effective. When the car emerged into the daylight, making a semicircle before going back in through another set of double doors and stopping, even grown men were often screaming their heads off. Those final shrieks (always accompanied by gales of oh-shit-you-got-me laughter) were Horror House's best advertisement.
There were no screams that day. Of course not, because when the double doors banged open, the car that emerged was empty. It rolled through the semicircle, bumped lightly against the next set of double doors, and stopped.
"O-kay," Mike said. It was a whisper so low that I barely heard it, and I'm sure Annie didn't--all her attention had been drawn to the car. The kid was smiling.
"What made it do that?" Annie asked.
"I don't know," I said. "Short-circuit, maybe. Or some kind of power surge." Both of those explanations sounded good, as long as you didn't know about the breakers being off.
I stood on my tiptoes and peered into the stalled car. The first thing I noticed was that the safety bar was up. If Eddie Parks or one of his greenie minions forgot to lower it, the bar was supposed to snap down automatically once the ride was in motion. It was a state-mandated safety feature. The bar being up on this one made a goofy kind of sense, though, since the only rides in the park that had power that morning were the ones Lane and Fred had turned on for Mike.
I spotted something beneath the semicircular seat, something as real as the roses Fred had given Annie, only not red.
It was a blue Alice band.
We headed back to the van. Milo, once more on best behavior, padded along beside Mike's wheelchair.
"I'll be back as soon as I get them home," I told Fred. "Put in some extra hours."
He shook his head. "You're eighty-six for today. Get to bed early, and be here tomorrow at six. Pack a couple of extra sandwiches, because we'll all be working late. Turns out that storm's moving a little faster than the weather forecasters expected."
Annie looked alarmed. "Should I pack some stuff and take Mike to town, do you think? I'd hate to when he's so tired, but--"
"Check the radio this evening," Fred advised. "If NOAA issues a coastal evacuation order, you'll hear it in plenty of time, but I don't think that'll happen. This is just going to be your basic cap of wind. I'm a little worried about the high rides, that's all--the Thunderball, the Shaker, and the Spin."
"They'll be okay," Lane said. "They stood up to Agnes last year, and that was a bona fide hurricane."
"Does this storm have a name?" Mike asked.
"They're calling it Gilda," Lane said. "But it's no hurricane, just a little old subtropical depression."
Fred said, "Winds are supposed to start picking up around midnight, and the heavy rain'll start an hour or two later. Lane's probably right about the big rides, but it's still going to be a busy day. Have you got a slicker, Dev?"
"Sure."
"You'll want to wear it."
The weather forecast we heard on WKLM as we left the park eased Annie's mind. The winds generated by Gilda weren't expected to top thirty miles an hour, with occasionally higher gusts. There might be some beach erosion and minor flooding inland, but that was about it. The dj called it "great kite-flying weather," which made us all laugh. We had a history now, and that was nice.
Mike was almost asleep by the time we arrived back at the big Victorian on Beach Row. I lifted him into his wheelchair. It wasn't much of a chore; I'd put on muscle in the last four months, and with those horrible braces off, he couldn't have weighed seventy pounds. Milo once more paced the chair as I rolled it up the ramp and into the house.
Mike needed the toilet, but when his mother tried to take over the wheelchair handles, Mike asked if I'd do it, instead. I rolled him into the bathroom, helped him to stand, and eased down his elastic-waisted pants while he held onto the grab bars.
"I hate it when she has to help me. I feel like a baby."
Maybe, but he pissed with a healthy kid's vigor. Then, as he leaned forward to push the flush handle, he staggered and almost took a header into the toilet bowl. I had to catch him.
"Thanks, Dev. I already washed my hair once today." That made me laugh, and Mike grinned. "I wish we were going to have a hurricane. That'd be boss."
"You might not think so if it happened." I was remembering Hurricane Doria, two years before. It hit New Hampshire and Maine packing ninety-mile-an-hour winds, knocking down trees all over Portsmouth, Kittery, Sanford, and the Berwicks. One big old pine just missed our house, our basement flooded, and the power had been out for four days.
"I wouldn't want stuff to fall down at the park, I guess. That's just about the best place in the world. That I've ever been, anyway."
"Good. Hold on, kid, let me get your pants back up. Can't have you mooning your mother."
That made him laugh again, only the laughter turned to coughing. Annie took over when we came out, rolling him down the hall to the bedroom. "Don't you sneak out on me, Devin," she called back over her shoulder.
Since I had the afternoon off, I had no intention of sneaking out on her if she wanted me to stay awhile. I strolled around the parlor, looking at things that were probably expensive but not terribly interesting--not to a young man of twenty-one, anyway. A huge picture window, almost wall-to-wall, saved what would otherwise have been a gloomy room, flooding it with light. The window looked out on the back patio, the boardwalk, and the ocean. I could see the first clouds feathering in from the southeast, but the sky overhead was still bright blue. I remember thinking that I'd made it to the big house after all, although I'd probably never have a chance to count all the bathrooms. I remember thinking about the Alice band, and wondering if Lane would see it when he put the wayward car back under cover. What else was I thinking? That I had seen a ghost after all. Just not of a person.
Annie came back. "He wants to see you, but don't stay long."
"Okay."
"Third door on the right."
I went down the hall, knocked lightly, and let myself in. Once you got past the grab bars, the oxygen tanks in the corner, and the leg braces standing at steely attention beside the bed, it could have been any boy's room. There was no baseball glove and no skateboard propped against the wall, but there were posters of Mark Spitz and Miami Dolphins running back Larry Csonka. In the place of honor above the bed, the Beatles were crossing Abbey Road.
There was a faint smell of liniment. Mike looked very small in the bed, all but lost under a green coverlet. Milo was curled up, nose to tail, beside him, and Mike was stroking his fur absently. It was hard to believe this was the same kid who had raised his hands triumphantly over his head at the apogee of the Carolina Spin. He didn't look sad, though. He looked almost radiant.
"Did you see her, Dev? Did you see her when she left?"
I shook my head, smiling. I had been jealous of Tom, but not of Mike. Never of Mike.
"I wish my grampa had been there. He would have seen her, and heard what she said when she left."
"What did she say?"
"Thanks. She meant both of us. And she told you to be careful. Are you sure you didn't hear her? Even a little?"
I shook my head again. No, not even a little.
"But you know." His face was too pale and tired, the face of a boy who was very sick, but his eyes were alive and healthy. "You know, don't you?"
"Yes." Thinking of the Alice band. "Mike, do you know what happened to her?"
"Someone killed her." Very low.
"I don't suppose she t
old you..."
But there was no need to finish. He was shaking his head.
"You need to sleep," I said.
"Yeah, I'll feel better after a nap. I always do." His eyes closed, then slowly opened again. "The Spin was the best. The hoister. It's like flying."
"Yes," I said. "It is like that."
This time when his eyes closed, they didn't re-open. I walked to the door as quietly as I could. As I put my hand on the knob, he said, "Be careful, Dev. It's not white."
I looked back. He was sleeping. I'm sure he was. Only Milo was watching me. I left, closing the door softly.
Annie was in the kitchen. "I'm making coffee, but maybe you'd rather have a beer? I've got Blue Ribbon."
"Coffee would be fine."
"What do you think of the place?"
I decided to tell the truth. "The furnishings are a little elderly for my taste, but I never went to interior decorating school."
"Nor did I," she said. "Never even finished college."
"Join the club."
"Ah, but you will. You'll get over the girl who dumped you, and you'll go back to school, and you'll finish, and you'll march off into a brilliant future."
"How do you know about--"
"The girl? One, you might as well be wearing a sandwich board. Two, Mike knows. He told me. He's been my brilliant future. Once upon a time I was going to major in anthropology. I was going to win a gold medal at the Olympics. I was going to see strange and fabulous places and be the Margaret Mead of my generation. I was going to write books and do my best to earn back my father's love. Do you know who he is?"
"My landlady says he's a preacher."
"Indeed he is. Buddy Ross, the man in the white suit. He also has a great head of white hair. He looks like an older version of the Man from Glad in the TV ads. Mega church; big radio presence; now TV. Offstage, he's an asshole with a few good points." She poured two cups of coffee. "But that's pretty much true of all of us, isn't it? I think so."
"You sound like someone with regrets." It wasn't the politest thing to say, but we were beyond that. I hoped so, at least.
She brought the coffee and sat down opposite me. "Like the song says, I've had a few. But Mike's a great kid, and give my father this--he's taken care of us financially so I could be with Mike full-time. The way I look at it, checkbook love is better than no love at all. I made a decision today. I think it happened when you were wearing that silly costume and doing that silly dance. While I was watching Mike laugh."