Joyland (31 page)

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 livespot 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-danee, 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 dogtop. 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 on 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.