Joyland (14 page)

Fred Dean himself came down to give me the schedule, and to hand me a note from old Mr. Easterbrook.
If it becomes too much, stop at once and tell your team leader to find a sub.

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

“Maybe, but make sure Pop sees this memo.”

“Okay.”

“Brad likes you, Jonesy. That’s rare. He hardly ever notices the greenies unless he sees one of them screw up.”

I liked him, too, but didn’t say so to Fred. I thought it would have sounded suck-assy.

All my July Fourth shifts were tenners, not bad even though most ten-minute shifts actually turned out to be fifteenies, but the heat was crushing.
Ninety-five in the shade
, Rozzie had said, but by noon that day it was a hundred and two by the thermometer that hung outside the Park Ops trailer. Luckily for me, Dottie Lassen had repaired the other XL Howie suit and I could swap between the two. While I was wearing one, Dottie would have the other turned as inside-out as it would go and hung in front of three fans, drying the sweat-soaked interior.

At least I could remove the fur by myself; by then I’d discovered the secret. Howie’s right paw was actually a glove, and when you knew the trick, pulling down the zipper to the neck of the costume was a cinch. Once you had the head off, the rest was cake. This was good, because I could change by myself behind a pull-curtain. No more displaying my sweaty, semi-transparent undershorts to the costume ladies.

As the bunting-draped afternoon of July Fourth wore on, I was excused from all other duties. I’d do my capering, then retreat to Joyland Under and collapse on the ratty old couch in the boneyard for a while, soaking up the air conditioning. When I felt revived, I’d use the alleys to get to the costume shop and swap one fur for the other. Between shifts I guzzled pints of water and quarts of unsweetened iced tea. You won’t believe I was having fun, but I was. Even the brats were loving me that day.

So: quarter to four in the afternoon. I’m jiving down Joyland Avenue—our midway—while the overhead speakers blast out Daddy Dewdrop’s “Chick-A-Boom, Chick-A-Boom, Don’tcha Just Love It.” I’m giving out hugs to the kiddies and Awesome August coupons to the adults, because Joyland’s business always dropped off as the summer wound down. I’m posing for pictures (some taken by Hollywood Girls, most by hordes of sweat-soaked, sunburned Parent Paparazzi), and trailing adoring kids after me in cometary splendor. I’m also looking for the nearest door to Joyland Under, because I’m pretty well done up. I have just one more turn as Howie scheduled today, because Howie the Happy Hound never shows his blue eyes and cocked ears after sundown. I don’t know why; it was just a show tradition.

Did I notice the little girl in the red hat before she fell down on the baking pavement of Joyland Avenue, writhing and jerking? I think so but can’t say for sure, because passing time adds false memories and modifies real ones. I surely wouldn’t have noticed the Pup-A-Licious she was waving around, or her bright red Howie dogtop; a kid at an amusement park with a hotdog is hardly a unique sighting, and we must have sold a thousand red Howie hats that day. If I did notice her, it was because of the doll she held curled to her chest in the hand not holding her mustard-smeared Pup. It was a big old Raggedy Ann. Madame Fortuna had suggested I be on the lookout for a little girl with a doll only two days before, so maybe I did notice her. Or maybe I was only thinking of getting off the midway before I fell down in a faint. Anyway, her doll wasn’t the problem. The Pup-A-Licious she was eating—
that
was the problem.

I only
think
I remember her running toward me (hey, they all did), but I know what happened next, and why it happened. She had a bite of her Pup in her mouth, and when she drew in breath to scream
HOWWWIE,
she pulled it down her throat. Hot dogs: the perfect choking food. Luckily for her, just enough of Rozzie Gold’s Fortuna bullshit had stuck in my head for me to act quickly.

When the little girl’s knees buckled, her expression of happy ecstasy turning first to surprise and then terror, I was already reaching behind me and grabbing the zipper with my paw-glove. The Howie-head tumbled off and lolled to the side, revealing the red face and sweat-soaked, clumpy hair of Mr. Devin Jones. The little girl dropped her Raggedy Ann. Her hat fell off. She began clawing at her neck.

“Hallie?” a woman cried. “Hallie, what’s
wrong?”

Here’s more Luck in Action: I not only knew what was wrong, I knew what to do. I’m not sure you’ll understand how fortunate that was. This is 1973 we’re talking about, remember, and Henry Heimlich would not publish the essay that would give the Heimlich Maneuver its name for another full year. Still, it’s always been the most commonsense way to deal with choking, and we had learned it during our first and only orientation session before beginning work in the UNH Commons. The teacher was a tough old veteran of the restaurant wars who had lost his Nashua coffee shop a year after a new McDonald’s went up nearby.

“Just remember, it won’t work if you don’t do it hard,” he told us. “Don’t worry about breaking a rib if you see someone dying in front of you.”

I saw the little girl’s face turning purple and didn’t even think about her ribs. I seized her in a vast, furry embrace, with my tail-pulling left paw jammed against the bony arch in her midsection where her ribs came together. I gave a single hard squeeze, and a yellow-smeared chunk of hotdog almost two inches long came popping out of her mouth like a cork from a champagne bottle. It flew nearly four feet. And no, I didn’t break any of her ribs. Kids are flexible, God bless ’em.

I wasn’t aware that I and Hallie Stansfield—that was her name—were hemmed in by a growing circle of adults. I certainly wasn’t aware that we were being photographed dozens of times, including the shot by Erin Cook that wound up in the Heaven’s Bay
Weekly
and several bigger papers, including the Wilmington
Star-News.
I’ve still got a framed copy of that photo in an attic box somewhere. It shows the little girl dangling in the arms of this weird man/dog hybrid with one of its two heads lolling on its shoulder. The girl is holding out her arms to her mother, perfectly caught by Erin’s Speed Graphic just as Mom collapses to her knees in front of us.

All of that is a blur to me, but I remember the mother sweeping the little girl up into her own arms and the father saying
Kid, I think you saved her life.
And I remember—this is as clear as crystal—the girl looking at me with her big blue eyes and saying, “Oh poor Howie, your head fell off.”

The all-time classic newspaper headline, as everyone knows, is MAN BITES DOG. The
Star-News
couldn’t equal that, but the one over Erin’s picture gave it a run for its money: DOG SAVES GIRL AT AMUSEMENT PARK.

Want to know my first snarky urge? To clip the article and send it to Wendy Keegan. I might even have done it, had I not looked so much like a drowned muskrat in Erin’s photo. I did send it to my father, who called to say how proud of me he was. I could tell by the tremble in his voice that he was close to tears.

“God put you in the right place at the right time, Dev,” he said.

Maybe God. Maybe Rozzie Gold, aka Madame Fortuna. Maybe a little of both.

The next day I was summoned to Mr. Easterbrook’s office, a pine-paneled room raucous with old carny posters and photographs. I was particularly taken by a photo that showed a straw-hatted agent with a dapper mustache standing next to a test-your-strength shy. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up, and he was leaning on a sledgehammer like it was a cane: a total dude. At the top of the ding-post, next to the bell, was a sign reading KISS HIM, LADY, HE’S A HE-MAN!

“Is that guy you?” I asked.

“It is indeed, although I only ran the ding-show for a season. It wasn’t to my taste. Gaff jobs never have been. I like my games straight. Sit down, Jonesy. You want a Coke or anything?”

“No, sir. I’m fine.” I was, in fact, sloshing with that mornings milkshake.

“I’ll be perfectly blunt. You gave this show twenty thousand dollars’ worth of good publicity yesterday afternoon, and I still can’t afford to give you a bonus. If you knew . . . but never mind.” He leaned forward. “What I
can
do is owe you a favor. If you need one, ask. I’ll grant it if it’s in my power. Will that do?”

“Sure.”

“Good. And would you be willing to make one more appearance—as Howie—with the little girl? Her parents want to thank you in private, but a public appearance would be an excellent thing for Joyland. Entirely your call, of course.”

“When?”

“Saturday, after the noon parade. We’d put up a platform at the intersection of Joyland and Hound Dog Way. Invite the press.”

“Happy to,” I said. I liked the idea of being in the newspapers again, I will admit. It had been a tough summer on my ego and self-image, and I’d take all the turnaround I could get.

He rose to his feet in his glassy, unsure way, and offered me his hand. “Thank you again. On behalf of that little girl, but also on behalf of Joyland. The accountants who run my damn life will be very happy about this.”

When I stepped out of the office building, which was located with the other administrative buildings in what we called the backyard, my entire team was there. Even Pop Allen had come. Erin, dressed for success in Hollywood Girl green, stepped forward with a shiny metal crown of laurels made from Campbell’s Soup cans. She dropped to one knee. “For you, my hero.”

I would have guessed I was too sunburned to flush, but that turned out not to be true. “Oh Jesus, get up.”

“Savior of little girls,” Tom Kennedy said. “Not to mention savior of our place of employment getting its ass sued off and possibly having to shut its doors.”

Erin bounced to her feet, stuck the ludicrous soup-can crown on my head, then gave me a big old smackaroonie. Everyone on Team Beagle cheered.

“Okay,” Pop said when it died down. “We can all agree that you’re a knight in shining ah-mah, Jonesy. You are also not the first guy to save a rube from popping off on the midway. Could we maybe all get back to work?”

I was good with that. Being famous was fun, but the don’t-get-a-swelled-head message of the tin laurels wasn’t lost on me.