by Chris Lynch
“Yo, Lo, how ’bout a go?” asked a tall skinny man with a black ski hat resting way up on the crown of his head. He had a stubble and a salt-and-pepper mustache that grew down over his lip like a walrus’s. As he spoke he dangled two wiggling fingers, like tiny legs dancing.
“Oh, I don’t know, Jerome. I’m gonna have to ask my escort here if it’s all right.”
“Oh, whoo whoo,” Jerome laughed. “I didn’t even see the little feller.”
“Davey, can I? Do you mind?” Lois said. She thought all this was cute, as she held his hand between her two, pleading. But her mind was already on the dance floor, where Willie Nelson’s voice was filling the place with “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” “Oh, thank you, sweetie,” she said as she kissed his cheek, even though his only response had been to make his eyes even bigger and wider than usual.
As Lois led the way out to the dance floor, Jerome leaned into Davey, getting right up close to his face with a red-eyed grin. “We just might have to take this outside, pardner,” Jerome said, making two bony fists and shaking them theatrically beside his cheeks. Lois had turned to watch, and was laughing, thinking it was great fun all around, not noticing how Davey was pulling farther and farther back from Jerome, into the Löwenbräu sign, turning rigid with fear. She just never saw it. She’d lost the thread again.
Victor leaned out over the bar, way over this time. He reached out and with his great big hand grabbed Jerome’s entire face. He squeezed that face like he was palming a softball as he talked.
“It’s not funny,” Victor growled before he pushed Jerome’s head straight back, sending him stumbling toward the dance floor. Lois took Jerome’s hand as he started pulling her along. Now she looked a bit concerned. “I’ll be right back, Davey,” she called. “Now, Vic, you take care of my boy while I’m gone. Anything he wants, understand. He’s the king.” And she was gone, bobbing in the small sea of gently rotating bodies.
Victor put his hands flat on the bar and looked at Davey, sizing him up. Davey stared likewise back.
“I like your mother, kid. She’s a good egg. Everybody likes her. But y’know, what’s not to like, right? She don’t make no trouble, she don’t drink too much, she’s sweet as pie to everybody else. She, y’know, she brightens up the place.”
Davey didn’t say anything, didn’t nod, didn’t grunt. Just did the round-eye, exaggerated in the flashing and unflashing neon.
“But I don’t know really about who she’s gonna meet in here, y’know the politicians and doctors and all that. I mean, we got ’em, a course, but they ain’t what you’d call the grade-A kind if you know what I mean. Hacks, Flacks, and Quacks, is what I like to call ’em. Y’know, mostly just a batch of bulbous broke-downs that have been at what they been at for way on too long.” He paused for some kind of reaction from Davey that simply wasn’t forthcoming. “But good people. A course. All good people.”
Victor was called to the other end of the bar by an enormous balding woman in a sweatsuit banging her glass on the bar repeatedly like a baby with a spoon. Davey turned to try to find his mother dancing. He scanned the crowd, mentally sorting through the men, so many of whom looked like Jerome but were not dancing with his mother. Davey shifted from one hip to the other, then back, craning his neck to pick her out, as one slow country ballad melted away in a cry of steel guitar and another rose up. But the bodies kept moving as one, everybody, it seemed, rubbing against each other, and rubbing and rubbing, and he couldn’t exactly pick Lois out of it. He thought he saw her whiter-than-the-rest face peek out, thought he saw the red light catch her burned permed hair. But maybe not.
Victor threw a bag of potato chips on the bar, the crackle catching Davey’s attention. “But you don’t need to be bothered by none of all that, about what’s wrong with everybody who comes in here, now do ya?” He turned and ripped the cellophane off a six-inch pepperoni pizza, threw it like a Frisbee into a toaster oven, and slammed the door. “You’re just a kid, right?”
Davey opened the bag of oily chips and bore down on it, finishing it off in about a minute.
“Wow,” Victor said, stepping back, folding his arms across the barrel chest, and nodding. The bell rang on the toaster oven. He turned and pulled the pizza out, flung it quickly, because it was sizzling hot, onto a plate that already had crumbs on it. He yelled, “Mimi,” then sailed the plate down the bar, where it was intercepted by the waitress who, with her black mop, skeletal face, and mole looked just like Abraham Lincoln.
“What more should I give you now?” he said, half to himself since he wasn’t expecting answers from Davey at this point. He grabbed a bag of honey-roasted peanuts off the Eagle Snacks rack above the beer chest. “I’m sorry,” Victor said, and he meant it. “But I don’t know too much about no kids, kid. But you should like peanuts, huh? And they got honey on ’em. Sugar, sweet stuff, y’know.” Victor ripped down a second bag, to read the ingredients. “Ya, kid, this should be okay. You should like this.”
He watched with pleasure as Davey wolfed down the peanuts. The fourth sad song since Lois left started playing. Jim Reeves singing “Then You Can Tell Me Good-bye.” “But like I say anyways, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout no kids. How old are you anyway, kid? Like, I dunno, ten or somethin’?”
Davey crumpled the foil bag in his left hand, looked up at Victor, and held up his five fingers on his right hand.
“Ouch,” Victor said. “You’re five? Boy was I off, huh? But I told you I don’t know nothin’ about it, kid. But whoa, maybe you shouldn’t be in here?” He started talking to himself again. “Nah, it’s okay. This ain’t that kinda place. We got your pizzas and your booths and your hot dogs, buffalo wings, ’tater skins. This is a restaurant. Ain’t like it’s a bar, it’s a restaurant, right, kid?”
“Davey.”
Now it was Victor’s turn to give the wide-eyed stare. “Excuse me?”
“Davey. You call me kid, but my name is Davey. You heard, back before, my mom call me Davey, but you call me kid. I like Davey better, please.”
“You’re absolutely right, little monk,” said Victor, bowing at the waist. While he still couldn’t get a smile, or any real facial expression out of the boy, Victor got closer, elbows on the bar. Davey didn’t pull away from Victor, but looked right back at him. “I’ll tell you this, Davey: I might not know nothin’ about kids, but I know this much.” Victor could not take his eyes off Davey’s eyes, Davey’s big, sea-glass green, sea-glass murky, unblinking eyes. “You’re an old kid. Ain’t ya, Davey?”
“Vic, Vic,” a customer called.
“Be right witcha, Davey,” Victor said as he went to serve.
Davey slid off the bar stool and walked to the dance floor to catch up with his mother. First he stood at the edge of the floor, looking up at the twenty or so couples dancing slow, tight together, everybody looking so unusually tall, plus the extra four inches added by the raised dancing area. But nobody on that side was Lois. Davey started wading in. Nobody seemed to notice him. He took a light elbow to the head from a plump, happy-faced woman, somebody else’s mother, who looked down and said, “Oohh my oh my, innee cute.” He bounced like a bumper car from one hip to another as people went about their romance as if there was no little person pushing his way through, stopping to stare up at every woman. At the very center of the throng, Davey stood momentarily frozen, being bumped again and again by the same two men, who had him sandwiched between their rear ends. He lost track of which direction was the one he came from and which was the one he wanted. The bodies hitting him were like black trees closing in beside him and over him until the air seemed to be getting hotter in Davey’s lungs, and easier to taste on the way down. “Get along now, darlin’,” a woman said, not too friendly, as she gave Davey a little shove toward the back wall of the room. The far end of the dance floor.
Which was where, coming to a small clearing, Davey found Lois. She had gone to the farthest spot from where she had left Davey, just looking for that little bit of priv
acy, for those few minutes, for herself and for Davey too. She and Jerome were dancing in a private space between two cabaret tables against the wall, with a distance of no more than three feet between them and the other dancers. But with the others so packed together, it was like their own little stage. Davey stood and watched. Because he couldn’t do anything else.
He watched as Jerome kissed his mother on the neck, up and down her neck, working one side and then the other. Lois closed her eyes and threw her head back. They continued to dance, more slowly than the others. Jerome nibbled her neck, nibbled her earlobe, took a nip off her chin. Lois started kissing him back. Jerome’s back was to Davey, and Davey could see the top half of her face as she waggled her head in one direction, Jerome in the other. Trying to swallow each other in their mating dance. Like spiders. Their feet moved almost too slowly for the eye to see by the time they had rotated to where Lois’s back was to her son. Davey watched Jerome’s hands. Stained with something like dirty motor oil, those hands slid up and down and up Lois’s sides. Then down again, his hands slid. Down, Davey watched, over his mother’s backside, up and down again, rubbing it with both hands, feeling it, then squeezing it, kneading it, squeezing his mother’s behind as she swiveled her hips to accommodate.
The song ended. Lois opened her eyes and started talking, nuzzling into Jerome’s face. Davey walked backward, back into the crowd. He banged into a man who grabbed him by the shoulders, spun him around, and sent him on his way. A new song came up, something jumpier this time, with fiddle and accordion, and the dancers started bopping. This time they jostled Davey all around. He found his face momentarily pressed into the soft inviting hip of a woman, and almost nuzzled it, almost embraced it, almost held on and hugged. Next thing, though, the hip stuck out and bumped him off, on his way again. Sharper elbows jabbing his head, pointy cowboy boots cracking his ankles. But none of it felt like crisp, bone-on-bone blows to Davey. They were just bumps, knocking him almost off his feet, the impact somehow muffled. As if he was wearing a lot of sweaters, a lot of thick heavy socks, a leather boxing helmet.
Davey’s eyes were swollen as he climbed back on the stool. He stared at the polished surface of the bar.
“Hey, I missed ya, little monk,” Victor said. “Thought maybe you wasn’t comin’ back.” Davey didn’t look up. Victor stooped to look up into his face. “Glad ya did, though,” he said.
“Well hey there, big man,” Lois said, her hands on Davey’s shoulders. Jerome was not with her. Davey looked up as she sat down next to him and showed her the exact placid face he had on before she left. “Old Vic takin’ care of you?” she said.
Davey looked at Vic, who smiled proudly at the job he’d done. “Ya, he is,” Davey said. Vic flipped him another bag of honey roasts, which Davey devoured like the others.
“I’m gonna go home now, Ma,” Davey said, wiping a grain of salt from the corner of his mouth with one finger.
“Really, Davey?” she said, trying to sound more disappointed than guilty.
“Ya, Ma, I’m ready.”
“Okay, we’ll go then, I guess.”
“No. You don’t have to go, I know the way. It’s only a little ways. I want you to stay, really.”
Lois paused, then took Davey’s hand. She turned and stared at Victor for a few seconds until he walked away, shaking his head. “Are you sure, Davey? ’Cause I’ll go with you, if you want.”
He shook his head as he hopped down. “No, Ma, I want you to stay.”
From the far end of the bar, Victor waved to Davey. Davey stopped in the doorway and waved back.
“I’ll be right along, honey,” Lois called extra loudly. “I’ll be right there. Tell your sister I’ll be right along.”
Davey nodded and pushed the door open, letting the last of the daylight come in and slice the bar down the middle. Then he closed the door quietly behind him.
DECKED OUT IN CHEESE
Sneaky Pete could do this trick where he extended his right arm, straight out from the shoulder, shift, align, maneuver it just so, so that the elbow joint dislocated and the arm fell swinging as if it were the pendulum of a morbid grandfather clock. Like the arm of a dead thing, with no bone in it at all, the limb hung there with all the big gold rings pulling the lifeless hand toward the floor. Sneaky Pete looked at it smiling, admiring it like it was a show he was watching along with everybody else rather than a part of his own body. Cigarette stuck to his bottom lip, riding up and down as he spoke and up and down, but never falling out.
“Don’t try this at home now, younguns.” Pete laughed. “I once did this for a group of sailors and one of them tried it . . . never got the damn thing back into the socket.”
Davey was already trying it, his arm thrust straight out. Joanne slapped the arm down. Pete went to the refrigerator and pulled out a half-bottle of sangria that had a balled-up napkin stuck in it, supposedly to keep it fresh. He walked back into the living room, taking a long pull on the bottle as he moved.
“So where’s Lois?” he asked, wiping his mouth with his palm.
Davey shrugged.
“I don’t know,” Joanne said. “But I’m not worried. She’ll come back. She always does.” She sighed when she said the last part, and said it as if it wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
“Jesus damn,” Pete said. “The woman still hasn’t got a brain in her bleedin’ head.”
Davey pulled back when he heard Pete talking like that. Pete noticed. “I’m sorry, guys. Don’t get me wrong. I love your mother to hell, I really do. It’s just that she can be such an asshole.”
Joanne nodded, knowingly, maturely. The nod that often earned her a slap from her mother. She liked it when Sneaky Pete snuck in, because she loved talking and listening to him, and showing him how mature she was now that she was twelve.
Davey didn’t like it so much. Not that he didn’t like Pete’s appearances, his mysterious, exciting arrivals that came in bunches several times a year when he came up north to go to Saratoga, or the Belmont, the Budweiser Million, or Mass Cap. Four times Lois had changed the lock and four times had screamed at finding Pete strolling through the door like there was no door. What Davey didn’t like was he couldn’t listen to anybody run his mother down. Even Joanne knew that if she wanted to bad-mouth Lois with Davey in earshot, she was probably going to have to duke it out with her brother.
Davey turned away from Pete and inched his way up to point-blank range on the TV. Then he cranked the volume. Pete silently walked to the coffee table and picked up the remote. He clicked off the TV and drained the wine bottle at the same time.
“Road Trip,” Pete sang.
“Yee-hah,” Joanne yelled.
“Where are we going?” Davey asked, but hopped to his feet before he got his answer. Pete held out his hand from across the room. Davey came and held it.
“We’re going where the action is,” Sneaky Pete said, nodding.
“Your mother ever tell you about how we met, about the guy I blinded?” Pete said as the three of them strolled hand in hand down the middle of the midway. Davey was half listening as he looked hard at every vendor, every game hawker they passed. The cotton-candy spinner, the noisy air rifles with the bent barrels. Saucer-eyed Davey, the candy-colored carnival lights glinting off those big impossible eyes, was too much to resist for the carnies. Every oily slickmaster with a dirty apron on looked right at Davey when he passed.
“C’mere, boy, first three for free. See how easy it is?”
“Have a dart, cow eyes. Letcha throw one for nothin’. An’ the rest’s only three a quarter.”
“Evverybody a winner! A winner evvery time,” said the skeletal woman running the floating ducks game, waving Davey toward her with both hands. “Ooohh, sweetie, you’re too cute to lose. Come aaaaaahhn.”
Davey held tight to Pete’s hand, never changed expression though he was repulsed and entranced by every come-on.
“I don’t know that I actually blinded the guy, mind you,” Pete said. “B
ut I think so. Lois never told you guys about this, huh?”
“No, she stinks with stories,” Joanne said, tugging playfully at Pete’s hand. “You tell it, Dad. Go on.”
“All right, all right, but first let’s get some nourishment.” Sneaky Pete stepped up to the concession stand, where the black-haired teenage boy who served them looked like he’d been dipping his long sad face into the fryolator.
“Cotton candy,” Joanne said.
“Excellent choice, Jo. Cotton is the all-natural fabric, good for you. Davey? Whadya say, dude? Fried dough? Sausage?”
Davey continued to stare at the amusements. He turned to his father and shrugged.
“Two fried doughs and one cotton candy,” Pete said to the kid, who turned, slammed a few big utensils, whipped a big stick around in the pink swirl of grainy sugary fiberglass, and pulled a hissing metal basket out of the hot oil.
“Six bucks,” the kid said as he leaned over the counter. As he hung there, he looked down at Davey, who was looking up. The kid fixed him with a cold, lifeless stare, and Davey responded with a warm, lifeless stare. As they walked away Davey continued to look back at the kid, who didn’t move. He just stayed there draped over the counter because he had no other customers and there was no reason not to.
Davey and Joanne sat on either side of Pete, on the patchy brown grass in front of a trailer.
“It was at a carnival just like this one,” Pete began, powdered sugar dusting his mustache. “But then again all carnivals are just like this one, ain’t they? But it was right over here that it happened, behind all the trailers. See, Lois was at the show with this big ol’ Harley cat, tall more than anything. Tell ya the truth, he was more leather than muscle anyway. So I starts to makin’ the old eyes at your ma and she of course starts to makin’ ’em at me and ol’ stupid Harley finally, finally gets wind of it and we gotta go out back.”
Davey’s head was toggling back, and forth, between listening to Pete’s story and watching the carnival patrons walk by with their giant inflatable crayons and their dancing monkeys on a stick and their Lynyrd Skynyrd smoked-glass mirrors. Joanne listened closely to every breath her father took.
