Rides of the Midway

by Lee Durkee

  Noel, who owned no memory of the hallway incident, and who furthermore had no memory of who this goatish man in front of him might be, searched the room for a clue as to where he was, but instead he found actual words to speak. And even though the words were nonsensical to him, he felt a tremendous gratitude for them. Looking at the older man, whom he suddenly recognized as Doc Martin, Noel replied, “Pink elephants, sir.”

  Clockwise

  Oh Arjuna! the Lord abides in the hearts

  of all creatures, whirling them

  by his power, as if they were mounted

  on a machine.

  —The Mahabharata

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  POPLARVILLE WAS VERY SMALL, very dry, and very Baptist. Downtown was a Sonic Burger drive-in flanked by a strip of stores, hardware, fabric, and five-and-dime. Most of the windows staggering these shops were covered with plywood or cardboard. The junior college, called Pearl River, was surrounded by the agriculture school, which was surrounded by local farms, mostly soybean and corn, and these farms were surrounded by the De Soto National Forest. Inside this wheel within a wheel within a wheel, girls plotted pregnancy and marriage as they hugged their books to class or attended pep rallies with religious fervor, and guys sat on tailgates and passed quart Budweisers in the woods at the western shore of the pine forest and discussed things they had shot or things they had almost shot or things they damn well intended to shoot.

  Noel lived in Huff Hall, a white-pillared brick dormitory he would in due time cause to be evacuated and cordoned off with yellow police tape. But, for now, he was growing fond of Huff in spite of the persistent drone of Jimmy Buffett in the hallways. Buffett, Pearl River’s one famous alumni, was an acoustic-raunch guitarist who had made the big time with the hit “Margaritaville.” He had lived on the same floor of Huff as Noel, the second floor, and at PRC the dorm floors distinguished themselves much as fraternities did in universities. Small tours took place in which newcomers were guided into Buffett’s old room and shown the drawing on the bottom of the top bunk attributed to Buffett, a jackknife and ink engraving of a disembodied vagina with the words The Pink Pussycat! scratched under it.

  Noel, heavily into the Clash and the Wailers these days, hated Jimmy Buffett with a hate beyond all scope and reason. In a way it was how he distinguished himself in the dorm, he was the one Jimmy Buffett hater. Buffett aside, Noel had few complaints. Here at PRC he was enjoying a renaissance of sort. Here, he simply did not allow himself to think about Ross or Amber or murder or suicide; he closed the door on that part of his life. Often he would fall to sleep shushing his own mind, making the shhhhh noise over and over, not allowing himself to roam over old battlefields. Here, at the River, as everyone called it, he had even found friends; in fact, during the first week of class, his neighbor in the dorm, a lanky big-eared kid named Jay Underwood, who was part Mormon and part Cherokee, and who could not even manage the spidery mustache the rest of the freshmen were growing, lent Noel a rifle and took him out early one fall morning on a squirrel hunt.

  Not a single squirrel showed itself, though. Around ten a.m., after they had met up again and were stationed under an orange-dead pine tree smoking pot from Noel’s brass one-hitter, Jay pointed up into the tree and asked if Noel saw that big hoot owl way up there. Noel could not distinguish any owl inside the dead tree. When he said as much, Jay asked, “You want me to shoot it down?”

  Noel said sure, go ahead. “Nothing up there to shoot.”

  Lying on his back, Jay aimed the .22 and fired. Branch to branch, down fell a brown horned owl about the size and heft of a decapitated head and absolute dead weight by the time it crashed into Noel’s lap. Noel wailed and began crabbing away from the owl, all of which got Jay swamped in laughter. He seemed honestly unable to quit. Meanwhile Noel did another couple of hits then traded the one-hitter for the Nikon. Thrusting the dead and bloody owl at Jay, he said, “Here, hold this and quit laughing. You’re scaring all the squirrels.”

  As they drove back to campus, Jay kept pointing to the roadside and saying, “Look at that redtail,” or “Check out them does.” But Noel never saw anything there. Jay was driving his black pickup very cautiously, because Noel was still smoking and there was a cop behind them three cars back. Jay had a paper-thin crewcut and large spearhead-shaped forearms. They were both dipping, Jay spitting into a pried-open Dr Pepper can, Noel into a crusted Saints mug. Meatloaf was playing, and Noel was scavenging through Jay’s tape collection searching for something better.

  “Hey, you got a brother, don’t you? Plays third?”

  Noel waited too long before he admitted yeah, he did. The way he said yeah sounded so resentful that even Noel noticed it. After a moment he added, “Sometimes I get tired of hearing about Matt all the time. Maybe if he was the older brother it’d be different. Way it is, though, hell, I taught him practically everything he knows, how to switch-hit, to bunt, to slide headfirst, and now he’s about to go pro.”

  Jay laughed and said for Noel get used to it. “Besides, it’s no biggie, he’s just your brother. It’s not like he’s your old man or nothing.”

  Noel asked what that meant.

  “Nobody’s told you about my dad yet?”

  “What about him?”

  He said never mind then changed the subject back to Matt. “Your friggen little brother, we played y’all our first home stand my senior year. I pitched. That punk pulled three doubles on me, three in a row, the last two were ground-rule ones. Weren’t bad pitches neither. Then we brought in our lefty, our ace, and what does your brother do? Switches sides and bounces over another one. Not only that, he runs it out full speed, even though he knows it’s ground-rule and he can trot.”

  Noel listed off some of the scholarships Matt had been offered, then explained, “But he don’t want to go to college, he wants to go straight to the minors. He’s already got letters from the Braves and the Reds both.”

  Jay whistled then asked, “He that good?”

  “Good enough to tag you.”

  “Hey, I just pitched to keep in shape for football. I only had two pitches, the pill and the water balloon. If he’d had any real power, he’d of taken me deep.”

  Noel pressed his fingertips together to explain that Matt was more a contact hitter, a nickel-and-dimer. “A natural-born lead-off man, that’s how I taught him. What’re you laughing at now?”

  “You. For someone who don’t like being his big brother, you sound awfully proud of him.”

  Noel pointed to an empty meadow. “Look at them bucks. Three of ’em. Standing over there. See ’em?”

  “Bucks standing together?” Eyeing the meadow skeptically, Jay recalled, “His last time up that night, we let him have it. Nailed him square in the back. I’m talking bing. But he just dropped the bat and took off full speed to first. Then he stole second. Then he stole third. Stole third with an eight-run lead! Man, we hated his guts by then. We had guys waiting for him in the parking lot after the game.” Jay smiled and added, “I was one of ’em.”

  •••

  Not only was Poplarville dry, but there was no pot to be had either, none, so on weekends when the Huffheads all went home, they tried to score off old high school connections. Noel always bought from Tim, who, after taking over Noel’s shoe box, had applied his 33-ACT intellect to drug dealing. Basically Tim was now fronting kilos with student loans. Around Huff, Tim’s weed had a reputation for being choice, and it was not long before Noel was dealing bags on the side. With this extra income, he bought a giant TV. And since the room already had extra space—his roommate having been the first to get a girl pregnant and drop out—Noel’s room became a gathering point, especially on Mondays when everyone wanted to watch Monday Night Football.

  It was on Monday afternoon getting late in the semester when Jay came into Noel’s room, held out both fists, and said guess which hand. Noel guesse
d left, and Jay opened that hand. Resting on a nest of tinfoil were two small squares of paper with yellow and red eyeballs tattooed onto them. “Twenty-twenty,” Jay whispered, but before he could elaborate, someone else barged into the room, and Jay snapped shut his fist and touched a finger to his lips.

  It was Timmy-Tom, a first-floor gnome who always wore the same flower-embroidered denim shirt and who had taped Buddy Holly glasses and who currently was holding a curled-up magazine like a baton. He marched past them and flipped on the TV and sat on the bottom bunk as Love Boat materialized on screen. They both stared at Timmy-Tom. Jay cleared his throat. Noel made the motion of screwing in a light bulb, a gesture of high sarcasm around Huff. Timmy-Tom, oblivious, uncurled his magazine and asked if they’d seen this one yet. He spread open the coverless issue to a section entitled big pussy women. It was a contest, leading page by page from the numerous runners-up to the winner.

  “Boy, you’d better strap a two-by-four ’cross your ass,” Timmy-Tom warned. Then he added, “Or’d you fall in.”

  Jay and Noel winced through the four-page spread of the winner, which was about three pages more than needed in order to award the trophy. She was indeed Big Pussy Woman. The next page started a different contest, this one featuring guys with freak-show cocks. One guy had his tied in a knot, which caused Timmy-Tom to conjecture, “Wonder what’d happen if somebody came along and pulled on that.”

  “You find yourself thinking about that a lot, Timmy-Tom?” Noel asked. “Pulling on black guys’ dicks?”

  “Somebody oughta introduce these folks,” Jay observed, flipping pages back and forth. He took one last wince, then passed the magazine back to Timmy-Tom. “Where do they find these freaks anyway?” he wondered.

  “California,” Timmy-Tom assured them, then he started in on some lie about a second cousin of his who took pictures of naked women in California. At Pearl River you were always hearing unreliable stories about cousins. Second-cousin stories were the worst. This particular second cousin of Tim’s went around with great success convincing women he was a Playboy photographer.

  “You oughta give it a try,” he urged Noel. “You’re the one always taking everyone’s picture.”

  As soon as Love Boat ended, Timmy-Tom asked Noel to front him a bag. Noel laughed and turned off the TV and asked if Timmy-Tom would please leave us alone now, because, as is our custom, Jay had promised “to give me a big blow job after Love Boat. You understand, of course.”

  “We got some business to take care of,” Jay clarified. “If you don’t mind.”

  Timmy-Tom grinned and started to leave, but then got sidetracked by the photographs of Layle tacked onto the wall behind the small refrigerator. He squinted at the shrine and asked, “She from around here?”

  Jay quickly replied, “That’s our boy’s honey . . . out in Hollywood, if you believe that. Supposed to be some kinda model. Oh yeah, and a cheerleader for the Rams too. Is it the Rams or the Raiders, Spoon?”

  Noel grunted it was the Rams, then he busied himself brushing Skoal off the bedsheet. “Damnit, Timmy-Tom, you done spilled shit everywhere.”

  “She’s real pretty,” Timmy-Tom said.

  “Hey, aren’t they playing on TV tonight? The Rams?” Jay asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Noel replied slowly.

  “I think it’s the Rams. Hey, why you looking so pale all’a sudden, Spoon?”

  “Who’s looking pale?”

  “She ever let you take ones of her naked?” Timmy-Tom wanted to know.

  Noel grabbed him by the collar and winged him at the door and kicked him in the butt.

  “Goddamnit, Timmy-Tom! Leave! Leave now ’fore I throw you out every window in this dorm!”

  And off he shuffled with his magazine.

  “Jeeezus,” Noel complained.

  What Jay had hidden in his fist was a type of LSD he called Oklahoma 20/20. A second cousin of his had mailed it to him from an oil field there.

  “This is real medicine-man acid,” Jay explained. “They use it for ceremonies at the reservation there because they can’t get real peyote anymore. There’s some kind of cactus disease going around.”

  “What kinda ceremonies?”

  “Stuff like vision quests.”

  “Vision quests? What the fuck’s a vision quest?”

  You were supposed to go out into the woods, Jay explained. And surround yourself with this big circle of rocks. To keep out evil spirits. Then you stay inside this circle of rocks for days or weeks until your vision arrives. And that vision, it tells you what you’re supposed to do with your life . . . whether you should be a medicine man, a brave, a farmer, whatever.

  Jay kept on talking about vision quests. And after a while it occurred to Noel that Jay was actually trying to coerce Noel into taking the acid, as if there were still some decision-making process left between Noel and any available recreational drug. Jay had launched into a spiel concerning the Mormons, the Hopi Indians, and some missing tribe of something or other. Noel was not really listening; he was worrying about the Rams game and all the drunken, half-blackout lies he had told about Layle and him.

  Jay must have sensed this lack of attention because he changed tacks and tried scaring Noel, telling him how LSD was a powerful drug, how you had to show it proper respect. Then he told the story about the guy on acid who had climbed a fire tower and tried to fly off it. Noel had heard the fire-tower story before, a number of times, although the story was never exactly the same. Now he tried to imagine himself doing that, jumping into the air with his arms spread out like an eagle, and as he imagined this he loaded his one-hitter and passed it to Jay, who was already shaking his head no.

  “If Cindy smells it on me again tonight, I’ll be in the doghouse forever. I swear that girl’s got a nose on her like a bluetick. Ever since she busted me last week, now she’s always smelling me when we kiss. I can see her doing it too, her nostrils pumping in and out.” He grew solemn a moment then laughed. “Maybe I should take her out hunting.”

  Cindy McGee played cymbals in the school marching band, which was something that Jay caught endless grief about inside Huff, partially because it was cymbals and partially because Cindy had breasts that would seem to impede the cymbals.

  Noel called him pussywhipped and sucked the pipe clean.

  “Hey, I tell you, Cindy’s got that good-looking friend of hers, that Rebecca chick—the one with red hair? We met her at the Sonic, remember? Well, believe it or not, she thinks you’re cute. Even though you’re a damn hippie with an old-lady mustache. You want, we could double, take the ladies out to a drive-in or Cash McCool’s or something.”

  Noel had been holding the smoke inside his lungs and watching himself inside the blank TV. He had not for a moment considered the double date, even though he had thought Rebecca very beautiful. If he failed with Rebecca, then the truth about him would get back to Cindy, then to Jay, then to the rest of the dorm. No, Noel was laying low for now. That was one of the reasons he had resurrected Layle. He turned his head from the TV to aim smoke out the window.

  “Shit. Layle’d kill me. Besides, it ain’t red hair, it’s damn orange, clown-wig orange.” He stared back into the TV. There, inside the black-green convex screen, he saw both their reflections captured, sitting on the bottom bunk, like two inmates in prison. He could see the whole dorm room trapped inside there, even the minuscule reproductions of National Geographic photographs on the walls.

  “Submitted for your approval,” Noel said.

  Which was a saying he’d stolen off Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. Every time something weird happened around Huff, Noel would say, “Submitted for your approval.” Now he had other guys saying it.

  Before Jay left for his date, they made plans to drop acid the following night, in the woods.

  Left alone, Noel tried to remember why i
n the hell he had made up that story about Layle being a Rams cheerleader. He even considered sabotaging his own TV, but instead he retreated to his upper bunk. Braced for the worst, he began rereading The Sun Also Rises and he hardly glanced down from the paperback as his friends crowded into the room. Skipper, Ace, Hutch, Moose, Waterhog, Preacher, Brain . . . most everyone had nicknames, though the freshman ones were less established. Noel himself had three floaters. Mongo, which he hated. Spoon, which he liked okay. And Wasted, which was his favorite.

  After the beers had been opened, the dips and plugs taken in, the kickoff silenced the room. The receiver backed into the end zone, caught the ball, and dropped to one knee. The Rams were not playing. Jay had made that up, yet another of his practical jokes. As soon as Noel realized this, he raised the paperback again and began to consider the LSD. The fire-tower story had spooked him. He kept imagining himself jumping off a tower. It did not seem out of character. Soon, though, his mind went to work conjuring up many a scenario worse than false flight. For example, after taking the acid, he might confess everything to Jay. Everything. From perpetual virginity to relentless impotence to murder one. Or worse, what if the acid roused the homosexuality he feared might be slumbering inside him? Or worse-worse, what if he tried to explain to Jay the jealousy he experienced whenever Cindy was around? Hell, what if he made a pass at Jay? Or murdered him? Come to think of it, flying off fire towers seemed the least of his worries.

  Howard Cosell’s impossible voice wafted up to the top bunk along with the rancid smell of tobacco. It was like being trapped in a curing shed. Noel considered opening the door, but then the RA might spot the beer. He edged closer to the open window and had just stuck his head outside into the night when he heard Cosell say, “Dandy, I’ve got some news here that’s more important than any football game.”