C
otton candy and caramel-apple fingers. Benny dropped his SnoCone on the pavement, and I offered him mine. I would have given him anything that night. It was warm, the sky teasing us, insinuating summer with bright sun all day and now, tonight, with the leftover glow of the first really hot day. School was out for the summer. Ma and Lily were gone for another whole week. And Daddy had paid five dollars for me to enter the pool tournament at Rusty’s.
Summer in Mountainview officially began with the carnival in the park. With the rickety Ferris wheel and trailers steaming and stinking of sausages and french fries and Indian fry bread. With another five dollars for Benny and me to share on anything we wanted. I told him I would hold on to the change. His pockets were always full of holes that led nowhere; the money was safer with me.
They blocked off all of Depot Street and set up tents where the Navajo women brought their jewelry and laid it out on colored sheets. Where local potters displayed their plates and mugs. Dishes as deep as pie plates. Oil lamps and bowls. Where you could get your picture taken and within minutes it would appear on a T-shirt or a wall hanging or a coffee mug. I was so happy, so filled with the prospect of summer, I agreed to spend one of our dollars on a photo of Benny and me. Nothing fancy, just one of those black-and-white strips you could get at the drugstore booth. Three photos, a ribbon of our faces.
When the strip shot out of the slot, Benny grabbed for it with his strawberry-stained hands. “Let me see, let me see,” he said.
“I told you to hold still,” I said. “Oh look, this one’s good, though.”
The first photo on the strip was full of Benny’s smile. Our heads leaning together. Both of us grinning. But in the middle one, Benny’s face was a blur, and in the bottom one only my face appeared. If you looked close, you could see Benny’s ear and a lock of his hair.
“Can I keep it?” Benny asked. “I could put it in my wallet with my library card.”
“Okay,” I said. “But don’t lose it. Why don’t you give me your wallet?”
Benny handed me his wallet and I carefully tore the good picture from the strip. I shoved the other two photos in my pocket and slid the good one into the sticky plastic picture holder. You could barely see through the plastic; it was too thick and linty. Benny’s library card was perched in one of the slots. A bicentennial quarter was loose inside the zippered pocket.
“We have a dollar left,” I said. “And we need to be at Rusty’s by nine for the tournament.”
“A ride?” he asked. “Can we ride the wheel?”
“Is that what you want?”
“Oh, oh, maybe I would like a taco,” he said, his eyebrows furrowed with the weight of this decision.
“We can get a taco from Rosey,” I said.
“Maybe I would like one of the tacos here,” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “But then
you
don’t get anything.”
“Whatever you want, Benny. But make up your mind, because we’ve only got a half hour.”
“Let’s ride.” Benny smiled.
We bought the tickets and approached the metal ramp to the Ferris wheel. We stood there waiting for it to stop, watching each of the swinging carts as they descended. Then Starry and Heather Potter were in the cart in front of us.
Heather Potter was in the eighth grade. She normally didn’t talk to anyone but eighth graders. She was into gymnastics and at recess did penny drops from the high monkey bars until her hands were red or the teachers stopped her. She had a turned-up nose and what she called a “pixie” haircut. I thought she looked like a little pig.
“Hi Indie,” Starry waved.
Benny was jumping up and down on the ramp. “Hi Starry!” He was waving at the cart.
“Shhh,” I said.
“Who’s
that?”
Heather asked. And then they were rising upward again, looking down at us.
They kept rising up slowly, and Benny kept jumping on the metal ramp until my head ached with the pounding and I was dizzy with the colored lights. Then the man operating the Ferris wheel stopped the spinning and pointed to an open cart.
Above us, Starry and Heather leaned their heads together. Starry whispered something to Heather, and Heather’s laughter rained down from the swinging cart above. Benny waved and Heather pointed. Through the lights and the pounding of my head I could taste her words,
vinegar, vinegar, vinegar.
“Get in the seat, Benny,” I said, squeezing his arm and pushing him gently toward the cart.
“That’s Starry up there!” Benny said.
“Get in,” I said, my face hot and my head pounding.
Finally, Benny stopped waving and sat down in the seat. I sat down next to him and the man closed the rusty metal bar across our laps. And then we were moving backwards, then rising, and then at the top of the world, looking down over the entire street. I watched Starry and Heather get off and go running toward the place that would put your picture on a T-shirt for five dollars. And I knew that they’d probably get matching shirts with their faces, leaned in together, printed across their chests.
“If I wanted a taco without any of the hot sauce, do you think Rosey would make it for me? I don’t like lettuce either. But sometimes I do,” Benny said.
“Sure, Benny.”
“Let’s look at the picture again,” he said, tugging at me to pull his wallet out of my back pocket.
I watched Starry and Heather disappear into the photo booth.
“The other ones came out blurry, but this one is a good one,” Benny said, pulling the little picture of us out of the plastic. “See?” He was holding the picture in front of my face, but my eyes were blurry with tears. “See it, Indie? That’s me and you in the picture. The other ones came out blurry, but this is a good one.”
“I see,” I said, forcing the tears back inside my eyes. Blinking so hard the lights all melted into one mess of color.
But Benny kept holding the picture in front of my face, close to my face, and his stupid grin and my stupid grin were right there. Clear and sharp as this early summer night.
“Enough,” I said and grabbed his arm, moving it away.
When the photo slipped out of his fingers, the Ferris wheel stopped. It fluttered down, down, down and landed in one of the empty seats.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” Benny said, shaking his head like he sometimes did when he didn’t know what else to do. “Oh no, no, no.”
“Stop it,” I said, covering my ears with my hands. “Please just stop it.”
“We have to get the picture out of there. That’s the only one that came out. The rest of them was blurry.” Benny was leaning over the metal bar, staring at the cart below. The bar was pressing into his stomach.
Finally we were down on the ground again and the man lifted the bar, letting us out. I took Benny’s hand and pulled it as hard as I could. But he was bigger than me, his hands and arms stronger.
“Indie, we gotta get that picture.”
“Benny,” I said, digging my nails into the soft palm of his hand, “I said stop it. If you don’t stop it this second I am going to Rusty’s without you. I’ll leave you here.”
Benny kept looking at the Ferris wheel. “Don’t leave me here,” he said. “Please don’t leave me here.”
“Then come
on,”
I said and tugged one more time.
And we walked away from the park, turned down a side street so I wouldn’t have to see Heather and Starry in their matching T-shirts, and into the heavy doors at Rusty’s where the pool tournament was ready to the start.
Cigarette smoke swirled around my head like ancient halos. The chaos and cacophony of jukebox and flirtation and tortillas crackling in vats of hot fat. Benny tugged at my sleeve even after we closed the door and stepped into the loud room. My chest pressed into the bar, my heart beating against the dark polished wood. The vinyl seat of the stool swiveled under me. I could not keep still.
Indie, we got to get that picture back. The other ones is blurry.
Little Ike smelled like Old Spice and black licorice. Sheila was balancing a round tray in the palm of her small hand. Her stomach was pink. Sunburned. She had probably spent the day sprawled across the flat, smooth rocks by the creek. I almost wanted to touch her to see if her skin felt like the sun.
Hey, Indie. Good luck tonight. Your Daddy is so proud.
Daddy had opened up a whole new box of blue chalks. They were lined up on the edges of each pool table like blue candy. The felt had been brushed clean and smooth. The light bulbs in the lamps hanging over the tables had been dusted. The cues were lined up like wooden soldiers in the rack along the wall.
Benny tugged at my sleeve again. I
need a quarter. You got a quarter for the jukebox?
I pulled away from him and walked to the rack, remembering the Spalding personalized two-piece pool cue, feeling vaguely sad. Ike said that a good pool player could play with a bamboo pole if he had to. I’d never seen bamboo, but I was pretty sure it looked a lot like the warped sticks on this rack. I carried the stick back to the bar and sat down, waiting for it all to begin. A Shirley Temple, glass sweating grenadine, a gift from Daddy. Rosey had come out from the kitchen to watch. She’d left someone else in charge of the enchiladas. Someone coughed, someone put a quarter in the slot and released the balls from their pockets, a thunderous cascade, the opening game in the men’s tournament. Then at the other table, the same for the women’s. When the cue balls cracked against the perfect triangles and the balls shot across the table like miniature colored cannonballs, Benny reached into the pocket of my sweatshirt and grabbed at the loose change.
Indie, gimme a quarter for the jukebox.
I turned to him and slapped his hand as hard as I could. The slap was louder than the crack of ball against ball.
Stop it. Leave me alone,
I said. And Benny’s wounded hand flew upward, into the cave of his open mouth. He sucked on his fingers and his eyes grew red.
Just stop,
I whispered, afraid Daddy might have seen what I’d done. But when I turned around, Daddy was busy watching the women’s game, his elbow resting on the bar, his chin in his hand.
I wasn’t used to playing against girls. There seemed to be a different set of rules. Not about the game so much as about the etiquette. All of the policies of respect that Ike had insisted upon did not seem to apply here. When I won the first game against the woman with the tight ponytail and tight jeans, I could hear her hiss under her breath. She didn’t shake my hand, but turned on the heel of her cowboy boot and walked over to her friend in one of the booths and started whispering and laughing. I imitated her military clip and went straight to the bar, where Daddy reached over and gave me a high-five. Benny was eating a hamburger, dipping his french fries in a white glob of mayonnaise.
“You won?” he asked, holding up a french fry to his mouth. Mayonnaise hung dangerously over his lap.
“Eat it, Benny,” I said. “Quick!”
His mouth hung open as the white blob landed on his pant leg.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no, Ma’s gonna be so mad,” he said, shaking his head.
“Ma’s not even coming home for another week,” I said, annoyed, and sat down at the stool. Sheila plopped down another Shirley Temple in front of me and smiled, “I saw that bank shot you made with the thirteen.”
There were a lot more men than women who signed up. To speed things along and have both tables open for the men, they decided to use single elimination with the women. There were only eight of us, so by winning the first game I was already a semifinalist. If I could win two more games I would be the winner. I watched the next three women’s games, paying close attention to the players. Not so much at their shooting, but at their personalities. Ike said that knowing how an opponent’s mind worked was as important as knowing whether they shot left- or righthanded. That way you could secondguess not only their shots, but what made them nervous or angry or cocky.
Ike sat down next to me while I was waiting for the next game. He was wearing his lucky shirt, a blue cowboy one with white pearly snaps. There was blue embroidery in the shape of a lasso across the front. I’d already heard one of the women make a rodeo midget joke, but he either didn’t hear or didn’t care.
“How do they look?” he asked, shaking the ice in his glass.
“Mean,” I whispered.
He nodded his head.
“What’s your poison tonight, Ike?” Sheila asked. Her face was sunburned, too; the whites of her eyes were bright in contrast.
“Water,” Ike said, handing her his empty glass. He never drank beer or liquor when he was playing in a tournament.
“Another Shirley?” she asked me.
I shook my head. I was starting to feel a little sick from all the grenadine.
“How you doin’, Benny?” Ike asked.
“Fine,” Benny smiled. His french fries and hamburger were gone. He was wiping his finger through the remaining ketchup and mayonnaise. Benny was almost twice Ike’s size. When Benny got up to use the bathroom and Ike went back to the men’s table, they looked like the pictures in the
Guinness Book
of the World’s Tallest and Shortest, side by side.