Our Brothers at the Bottom of the Bottom of the Sea

by Jonathan David Kranz

  Mike blocked me with his bottle. He grinned and asked me where I thought I was going. I could see the flames gleaming off his teeth.

  I said it was time to pack it in. There were a few murmurs of agreement.

  “Already?” His voice carried an I-don’t-think-you’re-going-anywhere tone. “It’s early, and besides, it’s your turn.” Mike waved his bottle before the rest of the crowd. “What do you think, everybody? I don’t think it’s right, Jason leaving before he’s had a turn.”

  “Ah, let it go,” Tango said, driving his heel into the sand.

  “Wouldn’t be right. We have democracy, a participatory democracy.” Mike took a swig from his beer. “There are rules of fair play. At least out here.”

  No one missed the reference, Diana least of all. She turned away from their eyes, gazing at a far spot on the wet horizon.

  Amy, relieved by the shift in attention, asked who was left.

  “Jason to do one. And Diana,” Mike said, pointing at her with his bottle, “to be done. No one’s done Diana yet.”

  Eugene encouraged him. “C’mon. Let’s see you do Diana.”

  I said I didn’t think so.

  “Christ, just do it and get it over with,” Tango said.

  “Yeah,” Amy said. “Just do it.”

  “All right,” I said. They were all watching me now, and I could feel a kind of heat coming from their eyes—the wolves leering from the underbrush. My hair had blown over my own eyes, and I reached up to brush it aside.

  “Ha!” Mike said.

  For a moment, I was confused because I hadn’t even started, hadn’t even thought about how I would “do” Diana, when I realized I already had without even thinking about it. That thing with the hair.

  I saw a few faint smiles in the firelight.

  “Umm,” I said softly, “could you see if there’s tee pee in the restroom and, you know, restock it if, you know, there isn’t enough?”

  Amy snickered, rocking backward and forward in the sand. I felt a growing confidence.

  “Guys,” I said, wringing my hands together, “could you look around for lost balls? I think we’re missing some balls.”

  “Oh, man,” Tango said. Eugene shook his head in mock disapproval. Mike carried the largest smile, a triumphal arch turned upside down on his face.

  I was feeling my beers, their approval, and something more obscure I couldn’t name. “We’re getting low on balls. Won’t someone help me find them? Please, someone, help me find my balls.”

  Laughter. Rich but not generous, full of bile and teeth. A crowd of rocking bodies around the fire, hands circling the throats of their bottles.

  “Good one,” Diana said flatly when the laughter trailed away. She said she considered herself done. Attention shifted her way, all at once and all together—from many parts, one mind.

  “It’s just a game,” I said feebly.

  Diana raised her hand: stop. She got to her feet. Maybe it was a trick of the light or the way she was illuminated against the sea, but she looked tall or at least taller than I had estimated. “Good night,” she said toward the fire. “I’ve got to get up early. Look for lost balls.”

  They laughed less hungrily this time, and as Diana disappeared behind the dunes, the party spirit left with her. I stayed and finished my beer.

  chapter seven

  island of misfit toys

  A shadow crossed the book in Rachel’s lap. She looked up from her reading. The barred window seemed filled with a single grin, a mouthful of large yellow teeth rimmed with plump watermelon-pink lips. The eyes, like those of Mrs. K’s cat clock, could not keep still.

  “Yes?” Rachel asked, hoping her voice might startle the face away. She pushed her book onto a shelf and closed her knees.

  “We’re going on the rides,” the man said, his hands fluttering up to his shoulders like startled birds. He looked like an oversize boy who had gotten lost and strayed into his mid-thirties; there were creases around his eyes, black licorice strands of hair fell limp over a balding brow. Behind him, a well-rehearsed voice from another man told him to tell the young lady what he wanted. Sitting up, Rachel saw an elderly couple standing behind the grin at the window, their postures molded in patience.

  “Tickets!” the man said triumphantly. The couple smiled—two thin and similar smiles fully prepared to wait.

  How many times had Rachel been in their shoes? Too many to count. “How many would you like?” Rachel asked, directing the question at the guardians.

  But the woman, instead of appreciating Rachel’s understanding, clasped her hands stoically below her waist. “That’s for him to say.”

  Okay, Rachel thought, sighing. She knew this game: empower the disabled. She’d been there, done that—but from the other side of the glass. Now it was only just that she cooperate.

  “Well,” Rachel said, “we have single tickets for one dollar each, thirty for twenty-five dollars, fifty for forty and”—she was reluctant to say it, anticipating what would come next—“the Big Book.”

  “The Big Book!” The man, as Rachel had expected, liked the sound of that. His head rocked back and forth in delight.

  The old man stepped forward, making a breach in the back line. Alarm rang in his eyes. “What’s the Big Book?”

  “One hundred fifty tickets for one hundred dollars.”

  “Oh,” said the woman. “We certainly don’t need that many. Roger, you don’t need one hundred fifty tickets.”

  It was too late. “The Big Book! The Big Book!” Roger shouted. His spit rained against the glass.

  “Roger—”

  “The Big Book!”

  “So,” Rachel said, crossing her arms. She had tried to avoid this, but they had cast aside her better judgment. “What’ll it be?”

  “That’s up to Roger,” the woman said, a lifetime of resignation in her voice.

  “Big Book!”

  It had been almost a year, but it was like riding a bicycle, Rachel thought—there are some skills you just don’t forget. Tickets? Well, fifty tickets come in a nice little booklet too. She slid one under the window and winked at the parents. “Here you go,” she said. “The Big Book.”

  The old man reached for them first, the back of his hand mapped with blue, earthworm veins. He presented the booklet to his wife, the two of them thumbing the deck of tickets, then they engaged in a silent conference of glances. Rachel expected one or the other to produce cash or a credit card, but instead she got a dark look, ominous as a storm cloud, from the mother. “Is this the Big Book?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Rachel said, still playing the game.

  The woman slapped the packet on the counter. “I don’t believe it is,” she said. “Roger asked for the Big Book. We will take the Big Book.” Her husband mirrored her iron look and nodded his head in agreement.

  All this time, Roger stayed at the window, his hands still fussing at the air around him, but it wasn’t likely he remembered why he was there.

  “I just thought…,” Rachel began, then stopped. It didn’t matter. She swapped ticket packets, pushing the Big Book under the glass. “One hundred dollars,” she said.

  The old man produced a credit card. “A nice round number,” he said, smiling.

  Rachel tried to smile back. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”

  “Say thank you to the nice young lady,” the mother said.

  The words struggled out of Roger’s mouth, shy and short. “Thank you,” he said, spinning away, a parent now at either arm.

  “You’re welcome.” Rachel watched them walk away and waited for it, the slip of his hand into his mother’s. She had forgotten it—that little thing that came after everything, the slip of one hand inside another—but it came back, this memory, a bit haggard after a long trip away, yet determined, insisting on its rightful place beside her.

  What? Rachel asked the memory, the ghost hand seeking warmth in hers. What do you want from me?

  * * *

  It was a li
ttle after six o’clock, the sun still ruled the sky, and Happy World was every bit as unbusy as the Playground. Rachel would not admit it to herself, but she had expected an empty space of air and asphalt where the roller coaster stood as solid and rooted to the earth as an old oak tree. There was no yellow police tape or barricade of hastily assembled plywood panels, not even a stabbed-together cross of wood with flowers leaning against it, the kind of impromptu memorial people compose at traffic accident sites. There was just the Rock-It Roll-It Coaster, a glittering tangle of rails under a hot and unforgiving sun.

  Yet there were changes. Instead of a single ride attendant, there were now two, both in red Happy World vests, both lazing back against the guardrail killing time before the crowds came. And on an enameled panel leading up to the loading ramp, Rachel found a message, rough and jagged, something someone waiting impatiently on line might have scratched into the paint with a house key or a hair pin. In a sloped print stumbling downward from left to right, as if sliding off a shelf, it said, Caution, falling children.

  The attendants talked quietly to each other. One swung a set of keys from a black lanyard. The other was making a case for the Phillies, arguing that this could be a playoff year. The key swinger seemed unimpressed. When Rachel approached, they both straightened up.

  “I’m looking for someone who operates this ride,” she said. “A black guy, but light-skinned. Real thin.”

  “What’s his name?” the key swinger asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How many black guys work here?” the Phillies fan asked. “It’s got to be Leonard. You mean Leonard?” He pillowed an aura of empty space around his head. “Crazy hair?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.” That was pretty much all she remembered. Skinny black guy with a lot of hair. Otherwise, a blur. Rachel didn’t think it was much to go on, but she suspected it would be enough. There just weren’t that many black kids employed on the boardwalk.

  “He doesn’t work here anymore,” Key Swinger said. He drew the blade of his hand across his throat. “Gonzo. Out.”

  “Did he quit?” Rachel asked.

  “Well,” Phillies Fan said, shifting his weight and looking over Rachel’s head, a seasoned ranger reading the horizon, “I believe he was highly encouraged to quit.”

  “Why?”

  Key Swinger gave his colleague a warning look. “He’s gone,” he said sharply, “and that’s all we know.”

  “That’s all we can say,” added Phillies Fan.

  “Know where he went?”

  “No.”

  “Does anybody else who works here know?”

  “No,” said Key Swinger, who turned his attention to his colleague, poking his shoulder. “We got to get back to work.”

  Looking left and right, Rachel confirmed that she was alone. She put her hand over her eyes, surveying a crowd that wasn’t there. “Yeah,” she said. “You can’t keep all these good people waiting.”

  Phillies Fan laughed. But Key Swinger turned his back to face the controls, signaling the end of the conversation. Phillies Fan stopped laughing, then made a low and discreet wave of his fingers, like a catcher behind home plate, that pointed to a line of porta-johns under the flume ride.

  Rachel played along, nodding back. As she walked toward the flume, she heard Phillies Fan ask for coverage. “I have to use the head, man.”

  “Make it quick,” Key Swinger said. “Stone likes to see two people here.”

  Rachel, planting herself at the far end of the line of porta-johns, admired the attendant’s caution; from where she stood, they wouldn’t be seen from the coaster. She didn’t have to wait long.

  “About Leonard,” Phillies Fan said, keeping his voice low. “Lots of us think he got a raw deal.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Phillies Fan stuck his hands into his pants pockets. “Some shit happened, and he caught a lot of the blame. Maybe all of it.”

  “What happened?”

  “I can’t really talk about it,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “Though that’s all people are talking about.” He jerked his head toward the roller coaster. “Last year. Toward the end of the season. A retarded kid fell off the ride. Probably got too excited and tried standing when he shouldn’t have.” He made a diving motion with his hand. “You hear about it?”

  “No,” Rachel said, looking at his feet. He wore plaid canvas high-tops. Stupid shoes, she thought. Just plain stupid.

  “This town is better at keeping secrets than I thought,” he said.

  “You know where Leonard is?”

  “Maybe,” Phillies Fan said.

  “Please.”

  Whether he was in a hurry to get back to his station or he’d just gotten bored being coy, Rachel couldn’t say. But he released the information he had. “There’s a go-cart place. Not the one by Pirate’s Playground. Downtown. At the old train station. You know it?”

  “I’ve passed it,” Rachel said.

  “I’d look there.” Phillies Fan spat on the ground. “It’s one of the few places Stone doesn’t own.”

  * * *

  A desert of asphalt heat, Sea Town’s middle blocks sat stranded in still air, unrefreshed by the ocean breezes from the east or inland winds off the bay on the island’s west side. Here were all the necessary things that made the dreamy things possible. Filling stations. Convenience stores. A fenced-in lot of squat, green transformers that seemed to groan in their beds of crushed rock.

  The old train depot lay thickset and Victorian just past the electricity substation. Before Rachel saw the go-carts, she heard them, a chorus of shrill, lawn-mower whines. Above the Gothic filigree of the old station’s entrance gable, a faded wooden sign said, SEASWIFT GO-CARTS. The office filled a tiny space no bigger than a closet where the ticket window once had been; the remaining space was sealed off, most of the windows covered in plywood hastily painted to match the mud-brown clapboards and trim of the station. A beetle-green bicycle leaned against the wall.

  “Is Leonard here?” Rachel asked at the window. Inside, seated in a desk chair too small for his bulk, a fat teen with wire-frame glasses worked a Game Boy in his hands.

  “On the track,” he said without looking up.

  An otherwise simple oval, the raceway was pinched in the middle to break the monotony, with an island of old tires at its center and a starting line at one side where waiting go-carts idled in the heat. Business was no busier here than at Happy World; there were only two carts on the track. One was raced by a white boy about nine or ten years old, who drove with his shoulders to the wheel and his tongue in the side of his mouth. The other driver had to be Leonard; he drove with one hand on the wheel, his elbow lounging on the side of the cart. He seemed intent on letting the boy stay just ahead of him. But when the boy turned around, Leonard put both hands to the wheel and made a show of determined effort. The boy laughed ruthlessly.

  After a few more laps, the engines died, and the drivers coasted back to the starting line. Leonard stepped out first, withdrawing legs that seemed impossibly long for the tiny cart. He helped the boy get out. It looked like a familiar routine; Leonard extended his hand, and almost without looking, the boy grabbed it and let himself be pulled forward as he stepped over the cart’s side.

  “See you tomorrow?” Leonard asked.

  “Probably,” said the boy.

  “C’mon,” said Leonard. “Definitely.”

  “Probably.”

  “We’ll see,” said Leonard. He watched the boy walk to his bike, then pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket—a Hawaiian short-sleeve dominated by broad, ruby flowers. He replaced them when he saw Rachel. “He comes every day,” he said, walking toward her. “Or at least every day I’m here.” He gave Rachel an appraising look, as if she were an exotic species that had strayed beyond its natural habitat. “You want to ride?” he asked.

  “No,” Rachel said.

  “I didn’t think so,” Leonard said. He pointed to his shirt pocke
t. “Mind?”

  “Go right ahead.” Leonard smelled of exhaust fumes and gasoline, not a promising context for striking a match. As he lit his cigarette, Rachel took a precautionary step back. There was something courtly about him, the air of a nineteenth-century country squire, but he couldn’t have been much older than eighteen or nineteen. The dissonance puzzled her.

  Leonard plopped down on a bench behind them, which, like everything else at the SeaSwift, seemed knocked together with whatever was at hand, in this case, a few painted two-by-fours on aluminum poles set into asphalt, without a back to lean upon.

  “You’re pale,” Leonard said, pulling a drag from his cigarette. “No, wait, that’s not right. The proper word is fair. Pardon me—you’re fair.”

  “You had it right the first time,” Rachel said, sitting down. “I’m pale.”

  “That don’t bother you?”

  “I don’t like the sun.”

  “Cancer,” Leonard said knowingly, staring down his cigarette—a schoolteacher eyeballing a mischievous pupil.

  “No. I just don’t like the feel of it.”

  “I guess you’re fond of the dark?”

  Rachel shrugged. “Not especially.”

  “Well, then,” Leonard said, stretching his legs. “That puts you in a difficult spot. Until someone invents a time that isn’t day or night.”

  A light breeze swept over the track, stirring discarded ticket stubs, and Rachel smelled gas again, even more distinctly. She shifted farther down the bench, away from Leonard and his lit cigarette.

  “What’s the matter?” Leonard asked.

  “I think you spilled gasoline,” Rachel said.

  Leonard lifted a knee to his face and wrinkled his nose. “I can’t even smell it anymore,” he said. Then he leaned over toward Rachel and sniffed. “You smell like buttered popcorn.”

  She leaned away from him, surprised, an involuntary tango partner. People just didn’t go around sniffing other people, breaking the invisible buffers that kept strangers strangers. But against the urge to push him away, she remembered her need to pull for information. And besides, she thought, admiring his tumult of hair, he was kind of interesting. “I was just at Happy World,” she said, shifting herself upright.