by Alex George
Not that anyone was remotely grateful. In Haverford the park was spoken of with barely veiled resentment. My father’s battered station wagon—the same car he had been driving since I was born—could not convince people that he wasn’t printing money all summer long. Jealousy will always eclipse reason. My father didn’t seem to mind, though. He worked like a dog to keep the park going every year and didn’t expect a word of thanks from anyone. The satisfaction of quietly beating the odds had become its own reward.
—
THE DAY BEFORE the season began, after the final coats of paint had been applied and before the first guests walked through the front gates, Fun-A-Lot looked as fine as it ever did. Every tattered pennant had been mended, every lightbulb shone brightly. The paths were litter-free, the lawns pristine. In pride of place on the carousel, my father’s newest horse—the beast that Nathan and I had watched come to life over the course of the long winter—stood ready for action, its hooves joyfully aloft.
Now that we were finished with middle school, Nathan and I were old enough to apply for summer jobs. My father warned us that we would receive no preferential treatment, no cushy gigs. This didn’t bother me. I had seen the dead-eyed stares of the park employees as they struggled through the tedium of each day and knew that we would be numb with boredom by the second week, no matter what we did. But even with my low expectations, I was dismayed when my father told me that I was going to spend the summer working with Lewis Jenks, the maintenance man.
Lewis Jenks had worked at Fun-A-Lot longer than anyone, my father included. Grandpa Ronald had hired him when he first opened the place, and he’d been there ever since. Lewis Jenks scared me. He was a cantankerous old man who scowled at visitors and coworkers alike as he marched along the gravel paths with his toolbox tucked under his arm. He always wore the same tattered blue overalls and work boots that were on the brink of falling apart. He had a snowy beard and a dramatic mane of white hair, which always reminded me of God. (That was one reason he terrified me.) He had lost his front two teeth, which lent him a sinister air on the rare occasions that he opened his mouth to speak. In all the years I had known Lewis Jenks, I had never seen him smile.
“Follow him around,” said my father. “Find out how everything works. You’ll learn a lot. Then you’ll be able to help me in the fall. We’ll get things fixed much quicker if there’s two of us.”
“Isn’t he a bit—I mean, he always looks scary,” I said.
“Oh, no. Lewis is a pussycat.”
“Are you sure?” I was thinking about that scowling, toothless maw.
“Oh, and by the way,” said my father. “Within a day he’ll start telling you about all the stuff I’ve messed up over the years. He’ll have you believe that this park wouldn’t even be standing if it wasn’t for him fixing my mistakes.”
“Is it true?”
“Of course it’s not true.” My father looked at me. “Just don’t believe anything he tells you.”
“What about Nathan?” I asked.
“He’s going to be working in the kitchen.”
“I think he was hoping for something else,” I said.
Nathan had set his heart on being the park mascot, a furry green dragon that wandered through the park waving at visitors, hugging small children, and generally adding to the sum of human happiness in any way that a furry green dragon could. My father was very proud of his mascot. No matter that he had stolen the idea after seeing a picture of a full-size cartoon mouse strolling through the crowds at Disneyland. No matter that the inside of the costume was so encrusted with the sweat of a generation of teenagers that it could stand upright without anyone inside it. No matter that the dragon’s tail was lumpy and half detached from its rear end, or that its wings drooped in the August heat. Everyone loved the dragon. The dragon was the big leagues. The dragon was prime time.
“I don’t doubt it,” said my father. “Nobody wants to work in the kitchen. But it’s an important job. In some years, food sales keep us afloat. There’s profit in hot dogs and cotton candy.”
Sure enough, Nathan was unable to hide his dismay when I told him the news.
“It’s an important job,” I told him.
“Oh please,” said Nathan.
“In some years, food sales keep us afloat.”
Nathan wasn’t listening. “I could have done great things with that dragon.” He sighed.
“Maybe next year,” I said.
“In the meantime, there’s a mountain of potato salad in my future.”
“At least you don’t have to wear a stupid costume,” I told him. My own misgivings about my forthcoming apprenticeship with Lewis Jenks had taken an additional knock when I discovered that I would be required to wear an outfit. You could calibrate a person’s seniority at the park by the flamboyance of their clothes. The older boys—the noblemen of Fun-A-Lot—wore brightly colored crushed-velvet pantaloons. I, though, was issued a brown tunic, woolen tights, and a small green hat. I was a lowly serf.
On the morning of the first day of the season—the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend—I donned my uniform and gazed at myself in the mirror. At least Nathan would be hidden away in the kitchen, protected from ridicule. I would be spending my days in full view of the paying public. The potential for humiliation seemed limitless.
There was also the worrying prospect of reentering Hollis Calhoun’s sinister orbit once again. I hadn’t seen Hollis since we had left him in Mr. Pritchard’s office nine months earlier, but I knew he’d be working at the park again that summer, and I wasn’t looking forward to running into him. I sighed and put on my little hat.
On the drive to the park that first morning my father talked all the way, tapping the steering wheel, a bundle of nervous energy. The opening day of the season always pulled him in several different emotional directions. He was excited, hopeful, and worried, all at once. At the start of every summer he told himself that the sun would shine every day and nothing would go wrong. The cash registers would keep chiming all the way to Labor Day. It was a monumental triumph of optimism over experience. I sulked in the passenger seat. My tights had already begun to itch.
At the park I made my way to the maintenance hut, where Lewis Jenks worked. The gates didn’t open for another hour, but there were people everywhere. Many were dressed in outfits sillier than mine, but this failed to cheer me up. I plucked miserably at my tunic and wondered how Nathan was doing. We had agreed to meet up at the end of the day to compare notes.
I knocked on the door of the hut and waited. After a moment there was a gruff response, and I went in. Lewis Jenks was sitting at a desk that was covered in tools, spools of colored wire, and oily rags. He was carefully holding two slices of thick white bread. By his feet there was a small transistor radio, from which emerged the atonal squawk of a saxophone. Lewis looked at me and raised his snowy eyebrows in greeting.
“Robert Carter,” he murmured.
I stepped inside. “Hello, Lewis,” I said.
“D’you like sardines?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“You should try ’em,” said Lewis. “Breakfast of champions.” He took a huge bite of his sandwich. He sat back in his chair and chewed with evident satisfaction. “What are you supposed to be in that outfit?” he said, his mouth half full. “One of Santa’s pixies?”
“I’m supposed to be a peasant.”
“A peasant?” Lewis grinned, and I saw the gap where his front teeth should have been. “Your grandpa would be proud. He was a good man. Gave me my first job after the war. I didn’t know much about fixing things back then, but neither did he. So I worked it out as I went along, and he was none the wiser.” He gave me a look. “You know much about fixing things, Robert?”
“Not much,” I admitted.
“Your daddy doesn’t, either. He works hard, but I spend a lot of time putting right all the mistak
es he’s made.” I said nothing. Lewis chewed thoughtfully. “He told you I was going to say that, didn’t he?”
“No,” I said.
Lewis grinned again and took another bite of his sandwich.
I felt my cheeks redden. “They’re elves,” I said.
“What are?”
“Santa’s helpers. They’re elves, not pixies. Pixies live at the bottom of your yard. Elves live at the North Pole.”
“Is that so,” said Lewis.
“The point is, I’m not an elf or a pixie.”
“That’s right,” said Lewis. “You’re a peasant.”
“A peasant with a stupid green hat.”
Lewis finished his sandwich. “Well, whatever you are, I hope you’re ready to work.” He held out his hand toward me. His massive palm was webbed by dark veins, soiled by years of grease and dirt. His fingers were callused and crooked. As we shook I noticed that the thumb on his right hand looked all wrong. It was twice as thick as any of his fingers but half the length it should have been. There was no joint where it could bend. It simply lay there, fat and grotesque, a useless stump. At first I thought that the tip must have been cut off, but there was a thick, gnarled nail at its end.
“You’re wondering about my thumb,” said Lewis.
I looked up at him, abashed. “What happened to it?”
“I lost it.”
“How?”
“That’s a question for another time.” Lewis held up his other hand and spread it wide. His left thumb looked as it should—long and strong and perfectly in proportion to the rest of his hand. He crooked it ruefully. “I’ll tell you this, though. I could have done with another one like this.”
“But you’ve still got—something.”
“This?” Lewis held up his stub of a digit. “This isn’t my thumb, Robert. It’s my toe.” I looked again. Thick and ugly and hairy, the toe had no business being there, but it looked just familiar enough to create a sense of violence performed on the usual order of the world. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from it. “The miracles of modern medicine,” said Lewis. He pointed down at his large, dust-covered boot. “They cut it off my foot and grafted it onto my hand. Figured I could use it more up here than down there.”
“Do you miss it? Your toe?”
“Not as much as I miss my damn thumb.” Lewis sat back and put his hands behind his head, his toe disappearing into his thick white hair. “Let’s talk about this job,” he said. He nodded toward a gray walkie-talkie the size of a brick that sat on the desk. “Whenever that thing goes off, we grab the tool kit and fix what needs to be fixed.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Now, hear this?” Lewis pointed at the radio. A saxophone was playing a squalling, jagged solo. Behind it I could hear the clatter of drums and dark, spiky piano chords. It sounded terrible. “Do you know what that is?”
“It’s jazz, right?”
“Well, yes, it’s jazz. But it’s a special kind of jazz. It’s called bebop.”
“Bebop?” I’d never heard of it.
Lewis nodded. “Right now you’re listening to the most important American musician of this century,” he told me. “His name is Charles Parker, although everyone called him Yardbird. Bird for short.”
As I listened to the tuneless honk of the saxophone, I thought that even Liam’s records were preferable to this.
Lewis was watching me. “You don’t like it?”
“I hate it,” I told him. To my annoyance, Lewis burst out laughing. The saxophone had been replaced by a vinegary trumpet. “Can we turn it off?” I asked.
“Hell no,” said Lewis cheerfully. “You wait and see. In a couple of weeks you’ll love it.” Then he began to whistle along to the trumpet solo that was playing on the radio. Lewis kept perfect time with the instrument, tracking every flurry of rapid-fire notes and each syncopated twist and turn. It was a pitch-perfect performance, his whistle as sweet to my ears as the trumpet was sour.
“That was amazing,” I said when he’d finished.
He pointed to his mouth. “My cousin Billy knocked my front teeth out when I was eight. Been able to whistle like the devil ever since.”
Just then the walkie-talkie crackled with static and a disembodied voice filled the room. “Lewis. Lewis. Please come to the batting cage.”
Lewis looked at me. “You ready?” he said.
I put on my green hat, suddenly not quite so bothered by it. “Ready,” I said. Lewis handed me the walkie-talkie and picked up his tool kit, and we walked out into the sunshine. As he closed the door behind us, I could hear Charlie Parker playing on into the empty room.
—
OVER THE COURSE OF that first day, we rewired the control console for the Tilt-A-Whirl, replaced the rear axle on the caboose of the kiddie train that drove around the perimeter of the park, fixed two ancient cash registers, reattached the striped awning in front of the popcorn stand, and (twice) unjammed the pitching machine at the batting cage. I say “we,” but it was Lewis alone who did all this. I just trotted along behind him, peering over his shoulder and holding tools for him, furtively glancing at his misplaced toe whenever I had the chance. He kept up a gruff commentary as he worked, explaining what he was doing and why, but none of it made much sense to me.
I thought I knew the park as well as anyone, but Lewis Jenks showed me a whole new world that day. Behind the brightly painted rides and banks of shining lights lay a parallel universe of grease-encrusted motors and ugly breaker circuits. As I gazed at each new mess of machinery and electronics, I began to understand my father’s unending anxiety. Multicolored wires sprung like spaghetti from behind every panel that Lewis pried open. It was extraordinary just how much there was to go wrong.
—
THAT FIRST NIGHT, after closing time, I waited for Nathan by the front gate. I was eager to tell him about Lewis and his transplanted toe. All around me older kids were breezing out of the park in chattering groups, pleased to have finished their first day of work. Nathan finally appeared, looking tired. A pungent aroma wafted off him as he approached. I wrinkled my nose.
“Is that fried onions I smell?” I asked.
Nathan nodded.
“Did you cook them or roll around in them?”
“This year,” announced Nathan, “I am to be the onion king. The onionmeister. Every fried onion eaten in the park this summer will be my work.” He paused. “I am working toward a more perfect onion.”
“You can give the state-of-the-onion address,” I said.
Nathan became very serious. “I learned so much today,” he said. “There’s a lot that goes into frying an onion properly. You have to peel it right, then cut it right, then cook it right. The rings must be the correct width—too narrow and they crisp up too quickly, too wide and they can be too chewy. And then you have to caramelize them. That’s an art all to itself.” He rubbed his fingers together over an imaginary stove. “All it takes is a bit of sugar. But you have to know when to sprinkle and how much to use.”
“I’m impressed,” I said.
“This is an important job. Actually, this is the most important job. The burgers and hot dogs? They’re just one item on the menu. But onions—onions are served with everything. So the kitchen really relies on me. And remember what you said—food sales keep the park afloat! If I mess up the onions, people will stop buying food. Then the park will close, and we’ll all lose our jobs. The tourists won’t stop in Haverford anymore. The money will dry up, businesses will shut down, and people will move away. It will become a ghost town.”
“You seem to be bearing up under all the pressure,” I said.
“Also there’s a girl,” said Nathan. “She works the cash register at the concession stand. With fair hair and blue eyes?”
“Ah,” I said. “That would be Faye.”
“Do you know her?”
Like all the boys in Haverford, I knew Faye. Even though we had never spoken, I had been watching her avidly since I was in fourth grade. Faye was a year older than me, and that alone would have been enough to ensure that we would never come into each other’s orbit. I was a rule follower, an obedient observer of school etiquette, and so I never would have dared to talk to someone in the grade above me unless spoken to first—and that was never going to happen. But there was a more compelling reason I couldn’t approach Faye: she was, without question, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was so heart-stoppingly perfect that all I could do was look at her in furtive awe. I had watched her glide past me down the school corridors, usually pursued by a posse of older boys, and felt both anguish and relief that I would never stand a chance with her. Faye’s divine untouchability inoculated me against being crucified by doomed desire. I was able to appreciate her charms privately, without complications or humiliations.
“Sure,” I said. “I know Faye.”
“What do you know about her?”
“I know that she’s already in high school, and she probably has a hundred boyfriends.”
But Nathan wasn’t listening to me.
“Faye,” he murmured to himself.
Nathan, it occurred to me then, was not a rule follower.
THIRTEEN
I started to enjoy my days in the park with Lewis. We were kept busy moving from one worn-out piece of equipment to the next, patching things up as best we could.
We were often confronted by frustrated customers who wanted to moan about whatever had gone wrong, even if all that achieved was to delay getting the problem solved. People appeared to believe that they were entitled to be as rude as they liked to staff, as if it were one more perk included in the admission price. Lewis always adopted the same posture while guests hurled abuse at him. He tilted his head to one side and gazed intently at the speaker as if he were giving the matter his full attention, but he never reacted to any of it, not once.
