Joyland (2 page)

I had a car, but on most days in that fall of 1973 I walked to Joyland from Mrs. Shoplaw’s Beachside Accommodations in the town of Heaven’s Bay. It seemed like the right thing to do. The only thing, actually. By early September, Heaven Beach was almost completely deserted, which suited my mood. That fall was the most beautiful of my life. Even forty years later I can say that. And I was never so unhappy, I can say that, too. People think first love is sweet, and never sweeter than when that first bond snaps. You’ve heard a thousand pop and country songs that prove the point; some fool got his heart broke. Yet that first broken heart is always the most painful, the slowest to mend, and leaves the most visible scar. What’s so sweet about that?

Through September and right into October, the North Carolina skies were clear and the air was warm even at seven in the morning, when I left my second-floor apartment by the outside stairs. If I started with a light jacket on, I was wearing it tied around my waist before I’d finished half of the three miles between the town and the amusement park.

I’d make Betty’s Bakery my first stop, grabbing a couple of still-warm croissants. My shadow would walk with me on the sand, at least twenty feet long. Hopeful gulls, smelling the croissants in their waxed paper, would circle overhead. And when I walked back, usually around five (although sometimes I stayed later—there was nothing waiting for me in Heaven’s Bay, a town that mostly went sleepybye when summer was over), my shadow walked with me on the water. If the tide was in, it would waver on the surface, seeming to do a slow hula.

Although I can’t be completely sure, I think the boy and the woman and their dog were there from the first time I took that walk. The shore between the town and the cheerful, blinking gimcrackery of Joyland was lined with summer homes, many of them expensive, most of them clapped shut after Labor Day. But not the biggest of them, the one that looked like a green wooden castle. A boardwalk led from its wide back patio down to where the seagrass gave way to fine white sand. At the end of the boardwalk was a picnic table shaded by a bright green beach umbrella. In its shade, the boy sat in his wheelchair, wearing a baseball cap and covered from the waist down by a blanket even in the late afternoons, when the temperature lingered in the seventies. I thought he was five or so, surely no older than seven. The dog, a Jack Russell terrier, either lay beside him or sat at his feet. The woman sat on one of the picnic table benches, sometimes reading a book, mostly just staring out at the water. She was very beautiful.

Going or coming, I always waved to them, and the boy waved back. She didn’t, not at first. 1973 was the year of the OPEC oil embargo, the year Richard Nixon announced he was not a crook, the year Edward G. Robinson and Noel Coward died. It was Devin Jones’s lost year. I was a twenty-one year-old virgin with literary aspirations. I possessed three pairs of bluejeans, four pairs of Jockey shorts, a clunker Ford (with a good radio), occasional suicidal ideations, and a broken heart.

Sweet, huh?

The heartbreaker was Wendy Keegan, and she didn’t deserve me. It’s taken me most of my life to come to that conclusion, but you know the old saw; better late than never. She was from Portsmouth, New Hampshire; I was from South Berwick, Maine. That made her practically the girl next door. We had begun “going together” (as we used to say) during our freshman year at UNH—we actually met at the Freshman Mixer, and how sweet is that? Just like one of those pop songs.

We were inseparable for two years, went everywhere together and did everything together. Everything, that is, but “it.” We were both work-study kids with University jobs. Hers was in the library; mine was in the Commons cafeteria. We were offered the chance to hold onto those jobs during the summer of 1972, and of course we did. The money wasn’t great, but the togetherness was priceless. I assumed that would also be the deal during the summer of 1973, until Wendy announced that her friend Renee had gotten them jobs working at Filene’s, in Boston.

“Where does that leave me?” I asked.

“You can always come down,” she said. “I’ll miss you like mad, but really, Dev, we could probably use some time apart.”

A phrase that is very often a death-knell. She may have seen that idea on my face, because she stood on tiptoe and kissed me. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” she said. “Besides, with my own place, maybe you can stay over.” But she didn’t quite look at me when she said that, and I never did stay over. Too many roommates, she said. Too little time. Of course such problems can be overcome, but somehow we never did, which should have told me something; in retrospect, it tells me a lot. Several times we had been very close to “it,” but “it” just never quite happened. She always drew back, and I never pressed her. God help me, I was being gallant. I have wondered often since what would have changed (for good or for ill) had I not been. What I know now is that gallant young men rarely get pussy. Put it on a sampler and hang it in your kitchen.

The prospect of another summer mopping cafeteria floors and loading elderly Commons dishwashers with dirty plates didn’t hold much charm for me, not with Wendy seventy miles south, enjoying the bright lights of Boston, but it was steady work, which I needed, and I didn’t have any other prospects. Then, in late February, one literally came down the dish-line to me on the conveyor belt.

Someone had been reading
Carolina Living
while he or she snarfed up that day’s blue plate luncheon special, which happened to be Mexicali Burgers and Caramba Fries. He or she had left the magazine on the tray, and I picked it up along with the dishes. I almost tossed it in the trash, then didn’t. Free reading material was, after all, free reading material. (I was a work-study kid, remember.) I stuck it in my back pocket and forgot about it until I got back to my dorm room. There it flopped onto the floor, open to the classified section at the back, while I was changing my pants.

Whoever had been reading the magazine had circled several job possibilities . . . although in the end, he or she must have decided none of them was quite right; otherwise
Carolina Living
wouldn’t have come riding down the conveyor belt. Near the bottom of the page was an ad that caught my eye even though it hadn’t been circled. In boldface type, the first line read: WORK CLOSE TO HEAVEN! What English major could read that and not hang in for the pitch? And what glum twenty-one-year-old, beset with the growing fear that he might be losing his girlfriend, would not be attracted by the idea of working in a place called Joyland?

There was a telephone number, and on a whim, I called it. A week later, a job application landed in my dormitory mailbox. The attached letter stated that if I wanted full-time summer employment (which I did), I’d be doing many different jobs, most but not all custodial. I would have to possess a valid driver’s license, and I would need to interview. I could do that on the upcoming spring break instead of going home to Maine for the week. Only I’d been planning to spend at least some of that week with Wendy. We might even get around to “it.”

“Go for the interview,” Wendy said when I told her. She didn’t even hesitate. “It’ll be an adventure.”

“Being with you would be an adventure,” I said.

“There’ll be plenty of time for that next year.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed me (she always stood on tiptoe). Was she seeing the other guy, even then? Probably not, but I’ll bet she’d noticed him, because he was in her Advanced Sociology course. Renee St. Claire would have known, and probably would have told me if I’d asked—telling stuff was Renee’s specialty, I bet she wore the priest out when she did the old confession bit—but some things you don’t want to know. Like why the girl you loved with all your heart kept saying no to you, but tumbled into bed with the new guy at almost the first opportunity. I’m not sure anybody ever gets completely over their first love, and that still rankles. Part of me still wants to know what was
wrong
with me. What I was lacking. I’m in my sixties now, my hair is gray and I’m a prostate cancer survivor, but I still want to know why I wasn’t good enough for Wendy Keegan.

I took a train called the Southerner from Boston to North Carolina (not much of an adventure, but cheap), and a bus from Wilmington to Heaven’s Bay. My interview was with Fred Dean, who was—among many other functions—Joyland’s employment officer. After fifteen minutes of Q-and-A, plus a look at my driver’s license and my Red Cross life-saving certificate, he handed me a plastic badge on a lanyard. It bore the word VISITOR, that day’s date, and a cartoon picture of a grinning, blue-eyed German Shepherd who bore a passing resemblance to the famous cartoon sleuth, Scooby-Doo.

“Take a walk around,” Dean said. “Ride the Carolina Spin, if you like. Most of the rides aren’t up and running yet, but that one is. Tell Lane I said okay. What I gave you is a day-pass, but I want you back here by . . .” He looked at his watch. “Let’s say one o’clock. Tell me then if you want the job. I’ve got five spots left, but they’re all basically the same—as Happy Helpers.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He nodded, smiling. “Don’t know how you’ll feel about this place, but it suits me fine. It’s a little old and a little rickety, but I find that charming. I tried Disney for a while; didn’t like it. It’s too . . . I don’t know . . .”

“Too corporate?” I ventured.

“Exactly. Too corporate. Too buffed and shiny. So I came back to Joyland a few years ago. Haven’t regretted it. We fly a bit more by the seat of our pants here—the place has a little of the old-time carny flavor. Go on, look around. See what you think. More important, see how you
feel.”

“Can I ask one question first?”

“Of course.”

I fingered my day pass. “Who’s the dog?”

His smile became a grin. “That’s Howie the Happy Hound, Joyland’s mascot. Bradley Easterbrook built Joyland, and the original Howie was his dog. Long dead now, but you’ll still see a lot of him, if you work here this summer.”

I did . . . and I didn’t. An easy riddle, but the explanation will have to wait awhile.