The Big Rock Candy Mountain

by Wallace Stegner

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Bo said. “Not till afternoon, anyway.”

  “I thought you started shooting at ten?” Eva said.

  Bo wagged his jaw at her. “What? Little Eva remembering the time something starts?”

  “How about a stroll through the carnival?” Jud said.

  Eva looked around her at the long grass. “It looks wet,” she said.

  Jud kicked into it, inspected his toe. There were tiny drops of water across the waxed yellow shoe. Under the trees there was still a dewy early-morning smell. “I’ll carry you,” he said. “Over in the grounds it’s dry.”

  Eva giggled. “I don’t trust you. You’re so lackadaisical you’d probably drop me in a puddle.”

  “You’ve got us mixed up,” Bo said gravely. “That’s what I’d do if I was carrying you.”

  Eva stiffened, but his face was bland. “Come on then,” she said, and stuck her hand in Jud’s high elbow.

  Absurdly short and imposingly tall, they stepped through the grass toward the packed carnival street and the tents set in a long semicircle around the fringe of cottonwoods. Elsa, watching them, heard the early shouts of barkers, the sodden thump of a maul on a stake. She saw the gaudy flashes of color from kewpie dolls and pennants and prizes in a concession tent open to the sun. A merry-go-round squawked for a minute into a fast two-step and then stopped, and there were six shots, sharp and steady, from an unseen shooting gallery. Along the road from town people were beginning to come on foot and in buggies.

  “You shouldn’t tease her like that,” Elsa said.

  “Why not?”

  “She might think you meant it.”

  “I do.”

  “That’s all the more reason for not saying things like that.”

  Bo grunted. “She gives me a pain. Just because Jud gives her a little whirl, she thinks she’s got a lifetime lease on him.”

  “Jud doesn’t seem to mind.”

  “He never minds anything. If you went up and kicked him he’d turn around and beg your pardon for having his back turned on you.”

  “Oh well,” Elsa said. “What do you have to do now?”

  “Just have to register and get a number. There’s a half hour yet.”

  “Let’s go get it done,” she said. “Jud says you’re going to win a prize.”

  “I guess not. Too many good shooters here.”

  “You’re a good shooter too.”

  He grinned. “Got confidence in me, hey?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  With the shotgun case under one arm, he steered her toward the screened street of carnival tents. Though she was tall herself, she felt his size beside her, and it pleased her to be walking with him. It wasn’t just his size, either. It was the width of his chest, the smooth nut-brown of his skin, the way he walked as if everything in him moved on ball bearings. She hummed, almost skipping, and laughed when he looked at her.

  At the white tent marked “Shooting Headquarters,” under a limp American flag, she waited while he registered. He came back with a big paper 13 pinned on his back. “Slipped me the unlucky number,” he said. One eyebrow was raised in an expression of querulous protest.

  “Why, are you superstitious?”

  “No, but I’d just as soon have another number.”

  “Friday the thirteenth is my lucky day,” she said. “I’ll loan you my luck.”

  His shoulder bumped hers as he swung to look around at the white and brown and yellow tents, the sheds housing fair exhibits, the banners of linen-paper, the pennants, the flags. The barkers were opening up all down the street, the calliope had started again, the little painted horses of the merry-go-round were rising and falling through the yellowing leaves of the cottonwoods. At the far end of the grounds a great wheel began to turn, curving up against the cloudless sky, and a girl’s squeal cut through the jumble of crowd-sound.

  “What in heaven’s name is that?” Elsa said.

  “Ferris wheel. Haven’t you ever been on one?”

  “I never saw one before.”

  “Take you for a ride when the shooting’s over,” he said. The corners of his eyes crinkled with a smile of pure delight. “God,” he said, “I like the smell of a place like this, even. When I was a kid I was always going to run away and join a circus. Minute I get near one I start snorting and pawing the ground.”

  They were in the midst of a pushing crowd. For a moment their eyes met, and they stood foolishly smiling, oblivious to the push of shoulders and the jabber of voices and the danger of having an eye put out by a parasol rib. Then he grabbed her arm and pulled her along behind him. “Come on. I don’t think I can miss today.”

  “You’d better not,” Elsa said. “I’ll take a sandwich out of your lunch for every one you miss.”

  “Give me a kiss for every one I hit?”

  “Ninny on your tintype,” she said, and pulled her arm away. Ahead of them, dropping toward the low shore of the lake, was a dike of earth, and behind it a little distance a crowd was lining up, sitting on newspapers, robes, bare ground. They were men mostly, but there was a sprinkling of women bright against the yellowing trees and the gray earth. Below them, on the level ground behind the five dugout traps, three men sat at a table. Men with shotguns in their hands and numbers on their backs clustered around the shooting ground. A clay pigeon hissed in an experimental arc over the water and fell.

  “I mean it,” Bo said, and they were stopped again. A faint, teasing smile hung on his mouth. “I won’t even shoot unless you promise.”

  “You might as well not unpack your gun, then,” she said, but his look made her feel dizzy and absurd and hot and as if she were going to fly all to pieces. She had come to the point of meeting his eyes and trying to stare him down, both of them laughing, when the man with the megaphone began to announce the opening of the singles traps, for the championship of North Dakota.

  “Promise!” Bo said. “Don’t be a piker. I can’t shoot for any such stakes as the championship of Dakota.”

  Elsa got hold of the disintegrating feeling and fingered the enamelled brooch at her throat. She was delighted and a little terrified. “We’ll see,” she said.

  They found Jud and Eva sitting among the spectators behind the second trap. Eva had a kewpie doll in her lap. “Won it on a toy horse race,” she said. “That’s what comes of having a beau that knows the ponies. My horse never was behind.” She reached out and pinched Jud’s ankle, and he moved it calmly out of reach.

  One of the men at the table read off the names of the first shooters, who lined up behind the traps. Bo leaned over and began explaining to Elsa. They shot in groups of twenty-five rounds. The first was the easiest, “known traps and known angles,” the shooter knowing the source and direction of each bird. There would be a clump of possibles on this one. Then came twenty-five shots at known traps but unknown angles. The bird might come straight out or to either side. That was tougher. The third and fourth rounds the shooters went out singly. In the third round they shot “reversing,” standing at number one trap and getting a crossing bird from number five, then standing at number two and getting a bird out of number four, and so on. The last twenty-five rounds was “expert.” You didn’t know which trap the bird would come from, or in what direction.

  Her eyes were on him almost in horror, but she was laughing still. “You shoot a hundred times,” she said, “and you’re an extra good shot, and you have the nerve ... !”

  “A hundred isn’t so many.” She noticed for the first time what it was that made his face so changeful and interesting. His eyebrows turned up rather than down at their outside ends. Like a devil. He was a devil. A hundred times! “I might miss as many as six,” he said slyly. “That’d only be ninety-four.”

  “Keep the gun in the case!” she said, and waved him away.

  He laughed and leaned back. A white saucer whizzed out of the first trap, the first shooter caught it with his barrels, fired. The saucer shivered to fragments, its thin s
plashings as the pieces hit the water clearly audible even over the echo of the shot rolling back from the shore. “Good bird,” said an official clearly. The scorer at the table echoed him, “Good bird.” The second shooter stood ready. “Pull!” he said.

  Bo kept score with a stick on the bare ground. If anyone missed more than two he erased the whole score. “Don’t need to worry about them. Guy that wins this has to shoot a possible on the first two rounds.”

  A man with a sheet of paper in his hand went around reading off the next names. “Simmons, number one; Carter, two; Shale, three; Gulbransen, four; Galbraith, five. Ready for the next squad. Simmons, Carter, Shale, Gulbransen, Galbraith.”

  “They run these off pretty smooth,” Bo said. He opened the case and took out the stock and then the barrels, fitted the gun together, broke it and snapped it together again, his automatic hand going down to scratch in the tallies. He wiped off the stock, ran the ramrod through the shining barrels. His hands moved on the blue steel almost tenderly. Then he laid the gun across his feet and watched again.

  “You’ll be up pretty soon,” Elsa said. He nodded, and she saw the tightening that had come over the muscles in his jaw and neck, the intent seriousness around his eyes. He seemed almost to have forgotten who she was, that she was even there.

  Of the first two squads only two men had possibles, Carter and Olson. Bo watched Olson with a steady, almost basilisk look. “There’s the guy to beat,” he said. “He doesn’t let down between shots at all. He’s a shooter, that guy.”

  The squad hustler came around reading names, Bo’s among them. When he stood up with the gun across his arm Elsa felt excited and nervous, weak with the desire to have him win. “Hit every one,” she said, and had to hold her hands back to keep from reaching out to touch him.

  He grinned at her absently. “Can’t miss,” he said. “See you after while.”

  “Five bucks you make a possible,” Jud said.

  Bo shook his head. “You’d jinx me.”

  He walked down to the table and joined the squad filling their pockets with shells. The last roar of number five’s gun rolled along the shore, and number five walked back into the crowd. Then Bo was standing behind number three trap, hatless, his gun over his arm.

  “Pull!” the first man said. The clay bird arced, the gun came up, the roar of the shot mushroomed in the still air. Then number two, then Bo. Each time Bo shot Elsa scratched a tally on the ground. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. It took a long time, but every good bird was a little triumph. Glancing up from her tense concentration she saw Jud watching her. He lifted his eyebrows, and she made a face.

  The thirteenth bird was coming. Thirteen! She stiffened herself, trying to loan him her luck. “Pull!” he said. The saucer shot out, but wobbly, weak, short. Bo raised the gun, hesitated, let the bird fall.

  “No bird,” the referee said. “No bird,” said the scorer. Bo fished up a handkerchief swiftly and wiped his face. The handkerchief trailed whitely out of his side pocket as he half raised the gun again. “Pull!” he said. The bird whirred up, he caught it with the barrels quickly, too quickly, and missed it cleanly.

  Elsa sat back with a noisily released breath. “Tough luck,” Jud said. But Eva turned with an incredulous smile. “What do you know!” she said. “I never knew Bo was superstitious.”

  “He isn’t.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Eva said. “He was nervous on that thirteenth one.”

  “He got a bad bird,” Jud said. “Breaks of the game.”

  Bo was slow coming back. When he sat down beside them there was a clamp on his jaw and a shine of hard anger in his eyes.

  “You did fine,” Elsa said.

  His laugh was hard and choppy, a disgusted sound. “I did fine all right. Let myself get jinxed on that thirteen ball.”

  “But only two hit them all,” she said, “and only three others got all but one. You’re tied for second.”

  “That isn’t good enough,” he said. “This Olson bird doesn’t miss enough so you can afford to fool around.” He sounded almost as if he were scolding her for saying he had done well. His voice was so snappish that she kept quiet.

  It was after noon when he finished his second round. Going down still sore at the way things had broken in the first, he had missed the very first bird, and then in a cold fury that Elsa could see in his very shoulders and the set of his neck, had run out the remaining twenty-four as if each had been a personal enemy. Carter had dropped one, Olson none, and the rest of the field had dropped back so that Bo was third with forty-eight against Carter’s forty-nine and Olson’s possible.

  His string of twenty-four restored his temper, and when Elsa took two sandwiches out of his lunch he groaned. “I’ll be so weak I can’t pull the trigger,” he said.

  “I guess the four you’ve had will keep you from starving. Besides, you lost them fair and square.”

  “I won forty-eight of something else, though.”

  “I never promised.”

  “What?” Eva said. “What did she promise?”

  “I didn’t promise anything.”

  “Now you’re welching,” Bo said.

  “I’m not either welching. I never promised. Besides, you’re not through yet.”

  “When I’m through you’ll welch again.”

  “What I want to know,” Eva said, “is what did she promise?”

  “None of your business,” Bo said bluntly, watching Elsa.

  “You hit the next fifty and I really will promise,” she said. “And when I promise anything I do it.”

  The full upper lids of Bo’s eyes made his face look slitted like a mask, but he was smiling a fixed and concentrated smile. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll remember.”

  Jud hitched himself over until he had his back against a tree. He reached down and unlaced his yellow shoes. “What I hate about being up in the daytime,” he said, “is that you have to wear shoes, and shoes hurt my feet something terrible.” He pulled one off and sighed, reached for the other. Eva squealed affectedly. “Right at the table!” she said. “Put them on again, for Heaven’s sake.”

  Bo’s heavy-lidded eyes changed expression, were veiled with scorn. “I suppose you’ve never seen Jud’s feet.”

  “Where would I have seen his feet?”

  He shrugged. “Since he never wears anything but slippers, hardly, you might have seen them.”

  “Well, I don’t go where Jud works,” she said.

  Jud sat looking down the immense length of his legs at his stock inged toes. He wriggled them experimentally. “You talk as if my feet were an everyday attraction,” he said. “Not everybody has thirteen toes. I could make a good living in a sideshow with my feet.”

  “Thirteen toes!” Elsa said. “Has he?”

  “I never bothered to count ‘em,” Bo said. “They look like a couple of cartridge belts.”

  Elegantly relaxed, his face bland and amused, looking more than ever like an actor, Jud continued to wriggle his feet. Elsa watched him, this remote and fastidious impostor who could quite easily, without showing it in the least, change the subject, get Bo and Eva away from their outspoken dislike, make everything smooth and casual again. “Want to see?” Jud said.

  “You can’t scare me,” Elsa said.

  He took off one sock and showed seven toes. The other foot, he said, had only six, though there was a little nubbin that with applications of hair restorer or something might be made to grow. Eva covered her eyes and squealed at him to cover up his awful old feet, he looked like a centipede.

  From back on the grounds, over the faint musical wheezing of the calliope, came the dull boom of a shotgun. Bo looked at his watch. “I’ve got to be getting back,” he said.

  He helped Elsa stow the scattered remains of the lunch in the buggy. Jud put his shoes back on with unhurried deliberation, rose and stretched. Eva consulted her face in a little pocket mirror.

  A man, small, dark, with a red birthmark smearing one side o
f his face, came through the trees. He passed clusters of picnicking people, looking at them sharply as if in search of someone. Then he saw Jud, and came directly over. Eva put the mirror away and straightened her dress, but the man threw only one brief glance at the others before he led Jud out of earshot. Jud nodded, lifted his head as if musing, nodded again. They laughed together, lighting cigarettes, and stood looking back through the grounds past the colored moving specks of the merry-go-round horses. The little man bent his arm, stuck the hand out at an angle, wriggled it, his bony white hand darting like a snake’s head. Jud nodded, and the little man went away.

  “Who was that?” Eva said.

  “Fellow I used to know in Fargo,” Jud said. “Joe Theodoratus.”

  “What is he, an Indian or something?”

  “Greek, I guess.” He bent over to brush his trousers, and as he bent Elsa saw a look pass between him and Bo.

  “What did he want?”

  “Got a deal on,” Jud said. “Wants to talk to me a little while. You wouldn’t mind going to watch Bo shoot, would you, birdie?”

  Eva’s brows gathered. “You mean you want to run out and leave me?”

  “I have to attend to this,” Jud said. “Bo and Elsa will take care of you.”

  “So I have to stick in the mud while you go off. How long will you be?”

  “We’re the mud,” Bo said, and winked at Elsa.

  “I’ll be an hour or so,” Jud said. His face did not lose its bland and mannerly smile, and his voice did not lift, but Elsa thought she caught something passing between them that she interpreted as a command. Eva turned away petulantly and gave in. “You’ll have more fun watching Bo shoot, anyway,” Jud said. “That’s what we came up here for, to watch Bo shoot.” He straightened his patterned vest and settled the derby on his neat head. “Well, if you’ll excuse me for a little while.”

  “I never knew it to fail!” Eva said, and came along unwillingly with Bo and Elsa.

  Walking on the other side from Eva, Bo took Elsa’s elbow and squeezed it, and glancing up she saw the glow that had been in his narrowed eyes all during lunch. When he was excited or interested, she noticed, the cool blue-gray warmed in his pupils, and his square, almost expressionless face became lively and changeful. She remembered what Jud had said in the elevator the other day, and was trying to see evidences of it in his face when she caught herself. She was just an ignorant Norske girl from the sticks. He wasn’t crazy about her. He couldn’t be.