Palisades Park

by Alan Brennert

  She turned around and asked, “Did you say … Toby? Gilcrist?”

  “You bet I did,” the man said. “SOB borrowed a double sawbuck from me yesterday and this morning his car’s gone—he’s skipped.”

  Noting the pallor in Toni’s cheeks, Cliff said, “You didn’t…?”

  She nodded. “Fifty bucks.” There were almost tears in her eyes. That fifty could’ve paid half of Arlan’s salary, or food for her for a week, or …

  “Never loan money to a carny, hon,” Cliff said. “I’m sorry. Bastard.”

  No one at Palisades would ever have done something like this, Toni thought, suddenly and exquisitely homesick. She shook her head sadly.

  “He’s not a bastard,” she said. “Just a rat. Deserting a sinking ship.”

  * * *

  Long after spring arrived and the need for a winter oasis melted away, Eddie’s Polynesia continued to thrive—so much so that his waitress, Sharon, had her hands full waiting on the bar’s twelve tables. Eddie placed classified ads in the Bergen Record and Newark Star-Ledger for a “Hostess/waitress for Hawaiian/South Seas restaurant-bar. Apply Eddie’s Polynesia on the Palisades, 1120 Palisade Avenue, Fort Lee, N.J. Phone: Fort Lee 8-0070.”

  Within the week he received six letters and three phone calls from women inquiring about the position. All of them had previous work experience and good references, and he determined to interview each one before making a decision; but one applicant, even on her résumé, stood out.

  Her name was Lehua Concepción and her first place of employment was listed as “Dole Pineapple Cannery, Honolulu, T.H.” She had a number of waitressing positions to her credit, a few in Manhattan and the most recent being “Hawaiian Room, Teterboro Country Club, Teterboro, N.J.”

  What Eddie saw when she walked through the door was an attractive woman in her late thirties, wearing a cream-colored dress that accented her café au lait skin and jet-black hair. She had a wide, warm, open face, as had so many of the Hawaiians he had met in Honolulu.

  Eddie stood, extending a hand. “Aloha. I’m Eddie Stopka.”

  “Lehua Concepción. Pleased to meet you.” She had that distinctive “local” accent Eddie had heard in Hawai‘i—a distillation of linguistic influences from Hawaiian to English, Portuguese, Chinese, and Japanese.

  As she took a seat, Eddie asked curiously, “‘Concepción’ is hardly a Hawaiian name, is it?”

  She shook her head. “My late husband was Puerto Rican—came to Hawai‘i in 1915. We met, married, but he thought we could do better on the mainland. So we moved here, twenty years ago—first New York City, then New Jersey—where we raised two keiki, children.”

  “How old are your … keiki?” He hoped he’d pronounced that right.

  “Mary is eighteen, Virginia is sixteen.”

  “Virginia Concepción,” Eddie said. “That’s a lot to live up to.”

  Lehua laughed. “It was her father’s idea, not mine. Maybe that’s why she prefers to be called Ginny, ’ey?”

  He smiled. “So it says here you worked as a … ‘waitress/musician’ at the Hawaiian Room? What’s a waitress/musician?”

  “I played ukulele and sang with a Hawaiian band there. When they decided to move back to the islands, I stayed on as a waitress.”

  “Why?”

  “My children have visited Hawai‘i, but they’ve never known a home other than New Jersey. They’re so settled here, I can’t bring myself to uproot them just because I miss my ‘ohana—my family.”

  Eddie was impressed by her openness and her obvious strength—a widow raising two girls on her own.

  “Mrs. Concepción, how would you like a job here, as a … ‘hostess/musician’? You’d greet customers, take up the slack for my waitress when the place is full, and a few days a week you could sing some island melodies. What do you say?”

  She liked that just fine, and she started as soon as Eddie could obtain a sarong for her in a size ten.

  Around this time, in July, Jack Stopka, done with basic training in Fort Dix, was sent cross country by rail to California, where he boarded the U.S. Military Ship Transport USS General M. C. Meigs, bound for Yokohama, Japan, and then on to Pusan, Korea. Once he was stationed in Korea he sent Eddie a mordantly funny letter about the eighteen-day Pacific crossing:

  Remembering your letters about your passage aboard the Lurline, I sat back and waited expectantly for a moonlit Pacific voyage through idyllic blue seas. There were eight hundred Army troops aboard the Meigs, crammed in tiered bunks four feet high. The air belowdecks smelled like the inside of somebody’s underwear, the seas bucked like a bronco, and almost everybody got seasick. They either threw up or they crapped themselves. It was a relief to be chosen for guard duty on one of the upper decks—it was windy, rainy, and cold, but at least there was no smell, probably since officers were quartered on the upper decks and we all know their shit don’t stink …

  At least Jack seemed to be coping with things with his usual humor. And the war news was somewhat encouraging: in late June the Soviet delegate to the United Nations had proposed a truce in Korea, and on July 10, peace talks with North Korea began in Kaesong. Perhaps, Eddie thought, this whole thing would be over before Jack ever saw any action.

  * * *

  “I think I’ve got the solution to both our problems,” Cliff announced excitedly one night as he and Toni lay in bed. In a few days the show was making the jump to Omaha, Nebraska—the biggest city they’d played so far. “It’s sure-fire, and it’ll make a name for both of us.”

  “Do tell,” Toni said, just drifting off to sleep.

  “Scobey won’t let me fly over Ferris wheels or other rides ’cause he’s afraid of liability, accidentally hitting a passenger, right? So what if I fly over an attraction that doesn’t have any passengers?”

  “Like what?” Toni asked. “Even the sideshow has people inside.”

  Cliff grinned and said, “Like you.”

  She sat bolt upright in bed. “What?”

  “Picture this: When we get to Omaha, I set up my cannon in front of some bleachers, like always. But then, about a hundred feet in front of that, you set up your tower and tank. On the far side of that, I set up my safety net. Showtime comes, you climb up your tower, wave to the crowd, then the talker says, ‘For the first time anywhere, two daredevils cross paths in the sky!’—and BOOM!, I shoot out of the cannon, over your head, and into the net. You do your dive, I climb out of the net, we take our bows together. The world’s first high diver–human cannonball team! It’s a natural.”

  She gaped. “Are you nuts? What if you hit me? So ends the world’s first high diver–human cannonball team!”

  “Nah. You see how high I shoot out of that cannon—I’ll miss you by a mile,” he said calmly. “But the crowd won’t know that, and they’ll be on the edge of their seats! It’ll be a sensation. Here, I’ll show you.”

  He jumped out of bed, ran to the trailer’s little dining table, and handed her some papers. They were filled with diagrams, parabolas, and equations like x(t) = vx(0)t and y(t) = y(0) + vy(0)t − _gt2.

  “This is calculus,” she said, surprised.

  “Sure. I worked it all out mathematically. If I set the firing angle of the cannon at forty-eight degrees, with two hundred pounds of air per square foot, I’ll reach a zenith of one hundred feet high—ten feet higher than your diving tower—and two hundred feet in distance.”

  Toni, though still skeptical, was impressed by the forethought he had put into this. “What happens if you go off course and hit one of the guy wires? How could we even rehearse this without risking our necks?”

  “We rehearse it with a weighted dummy we shoot over the tower. We can do a few practice tries here tomorrow morning—easy enough to move my cannon over to your setup. In Omaha we’ll set up the net and I’ll take a few solo passes over the tower. If I clear that okay, you go up, stand there, and I’ll fly over you. If, after that, for any reason you don’t feel comfortable with it, we’ll f
orget the whole thing. But I think it can work, and work big!

  “This could put us on the map, Toni.” The excitement in his face was apparent even in the dim light of the sleeping carnival. “We’ll be turning away customers. We’ll never have to worry about being forty-milers again!”

  Toni had to admit, if it was a success, it could draw the kind of tip she needed to stay afloat. “Have you told Mr. Moser about this?”

  “No, I wanted to run it past you first. If Moser nixes it, well, that’s it.”

  Toni thought long and hard a moment. “If Moser gives it his okay,” she said, “we’ll try the stunt with the dummy. But if the dummy doesn’t clear the top of the tower, or hits a guy wire, that’s as far as it goes—okay?”

  His face broke into a smile. “Baby, you’re the greatest! I love you.”

  And as she was reeling from those words, he kissed her, and more.

  * * *

  The next morning, Toni listened as Cliff sold his idea to Scobey Moser, showing him the diagrams and calculations. Moser mulled it over, then allowed, “Well, it might work…” He echoed Toni’s concerns, but gave the okay to try the dummy test. “But if it does any damage to this lady’s equipment, Bowles,” he warned, “it’s coming out of your pocket, not hers.”

  Cliff agreed, drove his truck-mounted cannon over to Toni’s setup, and positioned it a hundred feet from the diving tower. He introduced her to his dummy, Mort—after Edgar Bergen’s Mortimer Snerd—which he then stuffed into the barrel of the cannon. He set the cannon at a forty-eight-degree angle, the muzzle aimed well above the diving tower. Then he spun the controls that drew the piston down into the barrel of the cannon, releasing a blast of compressed air that sent Mort rocketing out.

  The dummy flew up, up … and over the top of the diving tower, clearing it by at least ten feet. Mort then arced earthward like a pop fly, landing with a dusty thud in a sandlot behind the carnival.

  Toni and Arlan had been standing beside the tower and one of the guy wires as Mort was shot out. Neither the tower nor the guy wire was jostled significantly by the wind of Mort’s passing on his way over the top. Toni and Arlan looked at each other in relief. “So far,” she said, “so good.”

  The next morning the roustabouts began tearing down the show and soon the caravan of trucks was on the road, making the jump to Omaha—or more accurately, a mile or two outside Omaha.

  By late afternoon Cliff and Toni had carefully supervised the placing of Cliff’s cannon and safety net, each one hundred feet on either side of Toni’s tank and tower. As soon as everything was set up, Cliff again fired Mort out of the cannon, over the tower, and into the safety net.

  “My turn,” Cliff said. “Go get Scobey. It either works or it doesn’t.”

  Cliff kissed her, put on his crash helmet and flight suit, and dusted himself with talcum powder to reduce friction inside the cannon.

  Toni came back with Scobey just as the waning sun was causing the sky over the plains to blush. Moser looked at it and said, “God, they do have beautiful sunsets out here.” He turned to Cliff. “Okay, Jetboy, show me.”

  “Jetman,” Cliff muttered, climbing into the cannon’s muzzle. His assistant, Phil, spun the controls and drew down the piston, along with Cliff.

  From inside the cannon Cliff called, “Fire!”

  Cliff went up like a shooting star in reverse. Toni held her breath as he rocketed up and then over the tower, clearing it by ten feet, then began a half-somersault that landed him on his back in the safety net.

  He bounced around the net a few times, then jumped jauntily out and onto the ground. Toni ran to him and threw her arms around his neck.

  “Thank God! I thought for sure you were going to smash your stupid, silly, beautiful face into my diving platform.” She kissed him, hard. “And I did not want to have to clean that up.” He laughed.

  Arlan came over and told her, “Tower was solid. Maybe it jiggles a little up top, but hard to say from down here.”

  Scobey said to Toni, “What about it, honey? You’re the one who’s gonna be standing up there. You feel safe doing it?”

  “I’ll go up first thing tomorrow,” she said, “and get a feel for how much the tower sways as he goes over. Too much sway and I won’t do it.”

  The next morning was cloudy and breezy—two knots, not enough to affect her dive, but Toni told Cliff, “If I look down at you and anything feels wrong—your angle, your altitude—I’ll jump first and ask questions later. Got that?”

  He nodded. As she started climbing the tower she felt as if there were a swarm of butterflies in her stomach, all beating a mamba with their wings. At the top she looked up at the six inches of ladder above her head, which, she reminded herself, Cliff had cleared twice yesterday. She looked down and saw Moser, Cliff and Phil at the cannon, Arlan standing by just in case anything went wrong—though Toni wasn’t sure what he could do if it did.

  She gave Cliff a thumbs-up.

  Moments later, he came shooting up like a bullet out of a gun barrel, and in a half-breath’s time he was arcing above her head.

  She felt a light breeze on her face as he passed, but the tower stood steady and the platform below her feet didn’t sway.

  Cliff landed safely in the net and in moments was jumping out of it onto the ground. He called up to Toni, “How’d it feel?”

  She gave him a thumbs-up and called back, “Let’s try it again!”

  They repeated it half a dozen times, each time Cliff clearing the tower by between eight and ten feet. After the last one, Toni climbed down, Cliff ran up, gave her a long kiss and said, “We’re going to be famous! And famously in love!”

  By afternoon, Toni was relieved that the weather had improved—bright and clear, not a cloud in the sky, with no wind. Perfect diving conditions. Meanwhile, Cliff’s talker was building a tip with his bally:

  “For the first time anywhere, two daredevil acts for the price of one! Watch as Jetman, the Human Missile, is shot out of a cannon and over the head of that high-diving sensation, the Terrific Toni! Will he survive? Will she? Don’t miss this death-defying duo, today at one o’clock!”

  To Toni’s delight, by one o’clock there was a capacity crowd gathering in the bleachers, bigger than either she or Cliff had ever drawn on their own. She gave him a kiss for good luck as he slipped on his crash helmet and goggles.

  Toni climbed the ladder to her customary accompaniment of “Sabre Dance,” the music stopping when she reached the top. Down below, Cliff’s drum roll began its wind-up as he climbed into the muzzle of the cannon.

  This time when it went off, there was also a small gunpowder explosion to give the illusion that this was a real cannon and not just a souped-up peashooter. Cliff came rocketing out and up toward Toni.

  His angle seemed fine at first—it wasn’t until he was already shooting up past her that she realized he was coming in lower than he had this morning. He arced over the tower, cutting it closer than he should have.

  So close that his foot clipped the top of the tower as he passed over.

  It didn’t affect his trajectory, but his weight and velocity was like a fishing line that snagged and pulled the tower backward. Toni grabbed onto the ladder for support, trying not to panic.

  Then she felt a pop beneath her feet and looked down.

  To her horror, she saw that one of the axle staves securing the guy wires to the ground had come loose.

  The tower shuddered and began to topple backward.

  People in the audience gasped and screamed.

  In the few seconds she had left, Toni considered her options: There was no possibility of diving into the tank. She could hold on and hope that the tower fell into the net and didn’t crush her in the process, or …

  She turned around on the platform, keeping hold on the tower even as it lurched backward at a terrifying new angle.

  Cliff had landed safely in the net. There was only one thing she could think to do, one way to keep from getting killed. />
  She squatted down, trying to gather as much spring in her legs as she could, then launched herself off the platform—toward the safety net.

  She didn’t have anywhere near the velocity as Cliff, but the falling motion of the tower gave her some momentum and her legs added to it.

  She straightened her body into a swan dive across hard, unforgiving ground. The edge of the safety net loomed ahead—the center of it exactly a hundred feet from her tower—and on a wing and a prayer she began a half-somersault, tumbling over so her back was level with the ground …

  And she fell into the net. Nowhere near the center, dangerously close to the edge—but she was in it. She bounced three feet up on impact, and for a moment she was afraid she would fall against the steel frame and split open her skull … but she managed to twist her body and fall sideways instead.

  One more light bounce, and she was safe. For the moment.

  Cliff clambered across the net to her side. “Jesus! Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said, breathless, “but—the tower—it’s gonna—”

  “Don’t worry about the tower,” Cliff said.

  Toni looked back and saw to her astonishment that the tower was, impossibly, frozen in mid-fall—tilted at something like an eighty-five degree angle, looking like the leaning tower of Pisa. How the hell?

  When she looked past it, into the distance, she saw Arlan—holding on to the guy wire that had popped out of the ground, the former strongman literally holding up the ninety-foot aluminum tower with his bare hands.

  “Holy shit!” Toni shouted. “Arlan!”

  As she and Cliff jumped out of the net, a dozen more carny hands and roustabouts joined Arlan in his tug-of-war with the tower, grabbing hold of the cable and, with their combined strength, slowly pulling the tower erect.

  Toni and Cliff arrived just as Arlan had grabbed a hammer and began pounding the stave back into fresh ground.