Joyland (18 page)

Staying had to do with other things that I couldn’t even begin to sort out, because they were piled helter-skelter in an untidy stack and bound with the rough twine of intuition. Hallie Stansfield was there. So was Bradley Easterbrook, way back at the beginning of the summer, saying
we sell fun.
The sound of the ocean at night was there, and the way a strong onshore breeze would make a little song when it blew through the struts of the Carolina Spin. The cool tunnels under the park were there. So was the Talk, that secret language the other greenies would have forgotten by the time Christmas break rolled around. I didn’t want to forget it; it was too rich. I felt that Joyland had something more to give me. I didn’t know what, just . . . s’more.

But mostly—this is weird, I have examined and re-examined my memories of those days to make sure it’s a true memory, and it seems to be—it was because it had been our Doubting Thomas to see the ghost of Linda Gray. It had changed him in small but fundamental ways. I don’t think Tom
wanted
to change—I think he was happy just as he was—but
I
did.

I wanted to see her, too.

During the second half of August, several of the old-timers—Pop Allen for one, Dottie Lassen for another—told me to pray for rain on Labor Day weekend. There was no rain, and by Saturday afternoon I understood what they meant. The conies came back in force for one final grand hurrah, and Joyland was tipsed to the gills. What made it worse was that half of the summer help was gone by then, headed back to their various schools. The ones who were left worked like dogs.

Some of us didn’t just work
like
dogs, but
as
dogs—one dog in particular. I saw most of that holiday weekend through the mesh eyes of Howie the Happy Hound. On Sunday I climbed into that damned fur suit a dozen times. After my second-to-last turn of the day, I was three-quarters of the way down the Boulevard beneath Joyland Avenue when the world started to swim away from me in shades of gray.
Shades of
Linda
Gray,
I remember thinking.

I was driving one of the little electric service-carts with the fur pushed down to my waist so I could feel the air conditioning on my sweaty chest, and when I realized I was losing it, I had the good sense to pull over to the wall and take my foot off the rubber button that served as the accelerator. Fat Wally Schmidt, who ran the guess-your-weight shy, happened to be taking a break in the boneyard at the time. He saw me parked askew and slumped over the cart’s steering bar. He got a pitcher of icewater out of the fridge, waddled down to me, and lifted my chin with one chubby hand.

“Hey greenie. You got another suit, or is that the only one that fits ya?”

“Theresh another one,” I said. I sounded drunk. “Cossume shop. Ex’ra large.”

“Oh hey, that’s good,” he said, and dumped the pitcher over my head. My scream of surprise echoed up and down the Boulevard and brought several people running.

“What the
fuck,
Fat Wally?”

He grinned. “Wakes ya up, don’t it? Damn right it does. Labor Day weekend, greenie. That means ya labor. No sleepin on the job. Thank yer lucky stars ’n bars it ain’t a hunnert and ten out there.”

If it
had
been a hunnert and ten, I wouldn’t be telling this story; I would have died of a baked brain halfway through a Happy Howie Dance on the Wiggle-Waggle Story Stage. But Labor Day itself was actually cloudy, and featured a nice sea-breeze. I got through it somehow.

Around four o’clock that Monday, as I was climbing into the spare fur for my final show of the summer, Tom Kennedy strolled into the costume shop. His dogtop and filthy sneakers were gone. He was wearing crisply pressed chinos (
wherever were you keeping them,
I wondered), a neatly tucked-in Ivy League shirt, and Bass Weejuns. Rosy-cheeked son of a bitch had even gotten a haircut. He looked every inch the up-and-coming college boy with his eye on the business world. You never would have guessed that he’d been dressed in filthy Levis only two days before, displaying at least an inch of ass-cleavage as he crawled under the Zipper with an oil-bucket and cursing Pop Allen, our fearless Team Beagle leader, every time he bumped his head on a strut.

“You on your way?” I asked.

“That’s a big ten-four, good buddy. I’m taking the train to Philly at eight tomorrow morning. I’ve got a week at home, then it’s back to the grind.”

“Good for you.”

“Erin’s got some stuff to finish up, but then she’s meeting me in Wilmington tonight. I booked us a room at a nice little bed and breakfast.”

I felt a dull throb of jealousy at that. “Good deal.”

“She’s the real thing,” he said.

“I know.”

“So are you, Dev. We’ll stay in touch. People say that and don’t mean it, but I do. We
will
stay in touch.” He held out his hand.

I took it and shook it. “That’s right, we will. You’re okay, Tom, and Erin’s the total package. You take care of her.”

“No problem there.” He grinned. “Come spring semester, she’s transferring to Rutgers. I already taught her the Scarlet Knights fight song. You know, ‘Upstream, Redteam, Redteam, Upstream—’ ”

“Sounds complex,” I said.

He shook his finger at me. “Sarcasm will get you nowhere in this world, boy. Unless you’re angling for a writing job at
Mad
magazine, that is.”

Dottie Lassen called, “Maybe you could shorten up the farewells and keep the tears to a minimum? You’ve got a show to do, Jonesy.”

Tom turned to her and held out his arms. “Dottie, how I love you! How I’ll
miss
you!”

She slapped her bottom to show just how much this moved her and turned away to a costume in need of repair.

Tom handed me a scrap of paper. “My home address, school address, phone numbers for both. I expect you to use them.”

“I will.”

“You’re really going to give up a year you could spend drinking beer and getting laid to scrape paint here at Joyland?”

“Yep.”

“Are you crazy?”

I considered this. “Probably. A little. But getting better.”

I was sweaty and his clothes were clean, but he gave me a brief hug just the same. Then he headed for the door, pausing to give Dottie a kiss on one wrinkled cheek. She couldn’t cuss at him—her mouth was full of pins at the time—but she shooed him away with a flap of her hand.

At the door, he turned back to me. “You want some advice, Dev? Stay away from . . .” He finished with a head-jerk, and I knew well enough what he meant: Horror House. Then he was gone, probably thinking about his visit home, and Erin, the car he hoped to buy, and Erin, the upcoming school year, and Erin. Upstream, Redteam, Redteam, Upstream. Come spring semester, they could chant it together. Hell, they could chant it that very night, if they wanted to. In Wilmington. In bed. Together.

There was no punch-clock at the park; our comings and goings were supervised by our team leaders. After my final turn as Howie on that first Monday in September, Pop Allen told me to bring him my time-card.

“I’ve got another hour,” I said.

“Nah, someone’s waiting at the gate to walk you back.” I knew who the someone had to be. It was hard to believe there was a soft spot in Pop’s shriveled-up raisin of a heart for anyone, but there was, and that summer Miss Erin Cook owned it.

“You know the deal tomorrow?”

“Seven-thirty to six,” I said. And no fur. What a blessing.

“I’ll be running you for the first couple of weeks, then I’m off to sunny Florida. After that, you’re Lane Hardy’s responsibility. And Freddy Dean, I guess, if he happens to notice you’re still around.”

“Got it.”

“Good. I’ll sign your card and then you’re ten-forty-two.” Which meant the same thing in the Talk as it did on the CBs that were so popular then:
End of tour.
“And Jonesy? Tell that girl to send me a postcard once in a while. I’ll miss her.”

He wasn’t the only one.

Erin had also begun making the transition back from Joyland Life to Real Life. Gone were the faded jeans and tee-shirt with the sassy rolled-to-the-shoulder sleeves; ditto the green Hollywood Girl dress and Sherwood Forest hat. The girl standing in the scarlet shower of neon just outside the gate was wearing a silky blue sleeveless blouse tucked into a belted A-line skirt. Her hair was pinned back and she looked gorgeous.

“Walk me up the beach,” she said. “I’ll just have time to catch the bus to Wilmington. I’m meeting Tom.”

“He told me. But never mind the bus. I’ll drive you.”

“Would you do that?”

“Sure.”

We walked along the fine white sand. A half-moon had risen in the sky, and it beat a track across the water. Halfway to Heaven’s Beach—it was, in fact, not far from the big green Victorian that played such a part in my life that fall—she took my hand, and we walked that way. We didn’t say much until we reached the steps leading up to the beach parking lot. There she turned to me.

“You’ll get over her.” Her eyes were on mine. She wasn’t wearing makeup that night, and didn’t need any. The moonlight was her makeup.

“Yes,” I said. I knew it was true, and part of me was sorry. It’s hard to let go. Even when what you’re holding onto is full of thorns, it’s hard to let go. Maybe especially then.

“And for now this is the right place for you. I feel that.”

“Does Tom feel it?”

“No, but he never felt about Joyland the way you do . . . and the way I did this summer. And after what happened that day in the funhouse . . . what he saw.

“Do the two of you ever talk about that?”

“I tried. Now I leave it alone. It doesn’t fit into his philosophy of how the world works, so he’s trying to make it gone. But I think he worries about you.”

“Do
you
worry about me?”

“About you and the ghost of Linda Gray, no. About you and the ghost of that Wendy, a little.”

I grinned. “My father no longer speaks her name. Just calls her ‘that girl.’ Erin, would you do me a favor when you get back to school? If you have time, that is?”

“Sure. What is it?”

I told her.

She asked if I would drop her at the Wilmington bus station instead of taking her directly to the B&B Tom had booked. She said she’d rather take a taxi there. I started to protest that it was a waste of money, then didn’t. She looked flustered, a trifle embarrassed, and I guessed it had something to do with not wanting to climb out of my car just so she could drop her clothes and climb into the sack with Tom Kennedy two minutes later.