Rides of the Midway

by Lee Durkee

  A silence akin to the opening kickoff ensued, except that the hang time of assassination proved longer. The silence endured nearly fifteen seconds before someone asked, He the one with the big nose? Waterhog replied, Naw, that’s damn Ringo, I think. Then, He that Hairy Hairy Krishna one? Again a pause, then Moose answered, Hairy who-what? Someone turned up the volume, and Noel had to raise his voice to say, He’s the one with the weird Chinese chick they took pictures together of naked. That statement had a brief hang time of its own. Naked? someone asked. Yeah, Noel replied. Naked. Then Moose said, Joko Yoko Noko, somethin’ like that and Preacher stated, I’ll tell you who he is, he’s the one came out said he was Jesus Christ. WAS JESUS? Moose said. Preacher kept on nodding. He even called a press conference to announce that he was Jesus. That appeared to ring a bell because suddenly Hutch recalled, Hey, ain’t he the one that Helter Skelter guy worshiped, you know, the guy who cut them babies out of that actress? Preacher said, I know one thing, I wouldn’t want to be where he is right now. Must be a trifle warm. Then everyone started talking at once. I didn’t even know Beatle season had opened yet. Hell yes, it opened today. Ol’ Mark David got him his Beatle opening day. How many points you reckon it had? I heard they taste pretty gamey, them Beatles do. Yeah, but they’re good in stew. Finally it grew quiet again, then Hutch belched and said, Damn waste a good bullet you ask me.

  After that they all sat there very silent watching the motion of the game. To anybody entering the room, as Timmy-Tom had just done, it would appear as if the game were in the final seconds of overtime. Not that Timmy-Tom took much notice of this. Timmy-Tom had a mission. He was holding a batoned magazine, as usual, and he walked straight to the small refrigerator, his head starting to bob as he consulted first the photographs on the wall and then the magazine in his hand. Finally he turned and bravely inserted himself between the TV and the bottom bunk. Holding up the newest Gallery, as if to protect himself from the insults being hurled at him, he began to jab his finger at one specific photograph.

  “Look. It’s her! Her in the magazine! I knew it, I knew I’d seen her someplace!”

  The magazine was snatched into the world of the bottom bunk. Timmy-Tom returned to the wall to resume his chant. It is her! Soon the bottom bunk emptied and everyone fanned out along the same wall, where Hutch now held the magazine clamped to the wall with his palm, and everyone was slowly agreeing. Fuckin’ A. He’s right. That’s the same chick. Damn, it’s her awright! Noel started climbing down off the top bunk. This seemed to take him about an hour. Finally he reached the wall, where he saw the magazine photo. It was Layle, all right, however blurred and overlit. At least his first impression was that definite. During the next twenty hours, he would stare at the photograph so tenaciously it would lose all coherence, like a word repeated a thousand times over. The caption did not use Layle’s name but stated that the photograph had been taken by L’s friend Lid. In the photograph, Layle was standing on a beach, the surf in the background, and the sun, judging from her dwarfed shadow, directly overhead. She was topless and holding her red bikini top trapped between her hip and left hand. Both elbows were winged out, though at different angles, and her hip was cocked to the left. Her hair was longer and redder than Noel remembered it. And her face was hard, not smiling. Her breasts, which Noel had felt but had never seen before, were neither large nor small but perfect and astronomically freckled, the closer to the nipples, the more freckles. Because of this, the circles around the nipples were not precisely round. The bird finger of the hand trapping the bikini top against her hip was extended across her belly button.

  Noel was in no way prepared for what happened next. It wasn’t just that he escaped ridicule, no, what astonished him was the flood of admiration. He was patted on the back and consoled by tapering whistles. Soon Waterhog began to herd everyone into the hallway, where they lingered outside Noel’s closed door. And although no one recognized it at the time, this moment at Huff, on the Monday night John Lennon was assassinated, marked the beginning of the Noel Weatherspoon legend at PRC, a legend that would end in search warrants and stuttering blue lights.

  •••

  Behind that closed door, Noel paged through the Gallery, but there were no more photos of Layle. In fact, there were no other photographs even similar to Layle’s. Hers was by far the most coy and inept photograph in the entire magazine. Layle’s tall gawky beauty had just barely overcome the idiocy of whoever had operated the camera. Staring into her face, Noel had the impression that, during the moment the photograph was snapped, Layle had been thinking about Noel. For a moment her gaze seemed to invigorate the photograph and to zoom in and find Noel there at Pearl River. Noel, her first photographer.

  “’Bye, Layle,” he whispered.

  The TV channel was broadcasting a special report about Lennon’s death when Noel stood and began removing the glossies from the wall. By the time the special report ended, the olive-green paint behind the refrigerator was speckled with Scotch tape. He took out his one-hitter, loaded it. He knew there would be no sleep tonight. The TV played the national anthem then filled with snow.

  CHAPTER NINE

  HE DID NOT COME OUT of his room until late the following afternoon when Jay pounded the door with a fistful of Oklahoma 20/20 Second-cousin Visionary Acid.

  Silent in the black pickup, they journeyed by backroads into the eye of the De Soto National Forest and parked in the woods called nowhere woods and went to work building a teepee fire. Since it was not yet dark, they left the fire unlit and set out gathering extra fuel. In purply dust and without much ceremony, beneath a sky of scouring nighthawks, they placed the LSD on their tongues and studied each other’s expressions for signs of mortality. To settle their nerves they began tossing a football in the small clearing, Jay spiraling it up unbelievably high over the unlit fire and Noel fielding the throws as if they were punts, and all the while the nighthawks crisscrossing behind the ball. When it became too dark to catch the ball anymore, Jay lit the fire, and they opened new beers and watched the liquid flames shoot out the top of the teepee and trail into the night like messengers.

  The evening turned cold. Jay returned from the truck wearing a high school letter jacket, red with gold sleeves, a big red corduroy L on the right arm. Inside the L were two stitched baseballs and four stitched footballs. The fire reddened as night closed over them. You feeling anything yet? Jay asked. They had been trading the question for the last hour. A gauze of moths and gnats and mosquitoes capped the fire. Not yet, Mother, Noel replied. He watched his breath slip into the dark and then put on the camouflaged hunting coat that Jay had handed him. And nothing happened and nothing happened and nothing happened and then all at once electrical waves were sluicing through Noel’s limbs and his stomach began to shunt and tumble.

  The fire snapped and more sparks shot into the air, the wind dragging the sparks off through the pines. Noel concentrated, trying to decide if Jay seemed worried, but the fire showed Jay’s face stoic and hypnotized. What if Jay leapt into the flames? Noel wondered. Could he move to pull Jay out? Could Noel drive to a hospital? Jay said something, but Noel only noticed the shapes Jay’s mouth made. Then Jay spoke again and asked if Noel was okay. Sure, Noel said, cutting his eyes to the fire.

  The radio was playing inside the truck, both doors left open. It was a Louisiana station, one Noel sometimes liked, but whatever it was they were playing right now bothered him. He kept checking his pocket for his inhaler. What if he forgot how to breathe? He was putting the beers away pretty fast too, but not as fast as Jay, who drank faster than anybody Noel had ever seen. Every five minutes he’d toss another empty can into the fire.

  Noel glanced at the scant light the fire cast into the nearby trees. He felt certain he was being watched from out there, from that periphery of darkness. The wind changed and his eyes began to burn. He felt panic light inside him like someone striking matches in a dark room. Two men were out the
re in the woods, he sensed, standing in the dark pools, watching him. He listened very hard and before long through the music and the wind he began to make out a gentle murmuring of curse words and hoarse laughter. It sounded like someone was telling a long tiresome joke about Pollocks and the Pope, but Noel could only pick up certain words. Soon he got to where he had to talk, just to drown out the joke. “When I was a little kid,” he said, then held his breath a moment. “When I was a kid,” he began again, “I wanted this pair of shoes, these sneakers I’d been begging for a long time called PF Flyers. In the commercial this kid puts on a pair of PF Flyers—it’s a cartoon commercial—he puts on a pair of PF Flyers and suddenly he’s off running, rescuing all these other kids from fires and everything—”

  “Whoa. Slow down, Spoon. You’re talking a mile a minute.”

  “He’s off rescuing all these other kids.” Noel rested here. “Because he can run so fast now.” Again he rested. This was how he continued his story, each sentence followed by a pause. “So my mom bought me a pair. White and green ones. I put them on. I thought I’d be like the Flash, you know? And that’s what it felt like too. Like I was on fire when I ran. I mean, I know I wasn’t running any faster than I was before. But it felt like I was. A million times faster. But the weird part was when I stopped. Stopped running and just listened. I could hear all these kids crying for help. Like now I was supposed to go rescue them because I had the damn PF Flyers! It kept happening. Every time I put them on I’d hear those voices crying out for help. My stepdad was about to kill me because I wouldn’t even wear these expensive sneakers I had begged him for. He made me wear them to school. I’d sit in class all day listening to all these cries for help coming from . . . I don’t know where. Everywhere. That’s part of the reason I failed first grade. The teacher’d call on me and I’d look up at her like I’d never even seen her before.”

  Noel laughed nervously then tried very hard to remember what he had just said.

  “You failed first grade?”

  “Yeah. And nobody oughta be allowed to fail first grade.”

  Jay hung back his head to drain another beer. His jugular fisted and breathed, fisted and breathed. Then he shovel-passed the can into the fire and told Noel wait here, and he walked off into the woods. Noel wanted to yell out, Wait! Don’t go out there! but instead he wiped his eyes with his coat sleeves and tried not to listen to the river of curse words, the endless bad joke murmuring from the dark.

  Twice Jay returned and dropped a shirtfront of rocks onto the ground. Then he arranged them into a circle and told Noel that anybody who stood inside this circle of rocks would be protected from evil spirits.

  “You believe in evil spirits, Spoon?”

  “Hell yes. Will you please build me one too? I’m too scared to go out in the damn woods.”

  “This one is for you. You looked like you could use one.”

  Noel quickly stepped inside the circle and squatted down.

  “Aren’t you gonna build you one?” he asked.

  Jay tapped a finger to his lip and said, “Listen.”

  At first Noel assumed it was the two men drinking whiskey and telling bad jokes that Jay heard, but, no, Jay was listening to something else, something perhaps even more sinister than drunken ghosts.

  “What is it, Jay? Quick, get inside here with me.”

  Aiming his box flashlight toward the truck and its gun rack, which contained a double-barreled twelve-gauge and two rifles, Jay asked, “This that guy got shot?”

  “Got shot?” Noel took this to mean a zombie, some bullet-ridden corpse about to wallow out from trees and shred Jay apart while Noel watched helplessly from inside his rock fortress.

  “That dead Beatle guy,” Jay added, which served only to affix a name and additional unsavory details to Noel’s imaginary creature. The Dead Beetle Guy. Noel was considering a mad dash for the shotgun when Jay whispered, “Dead-man music.”

  But there was no music. Noel listened, but the music had stopped. Then a DJ came on and announced he was going to continue playing John Lennon commercial-free for the next hour. He put on something slow then, a song very feminine and reassuring about imagining this, imagining that. Noel told Jay to turn it up, but Jay said he didn’t want to run down his battery, a statement that made no sense to Noel, who eyed Jay suspiciously. Noel wanted the music cranked up loud enough to exorcise the woods. The music sounded to him like the forces of good prevailing. The song ended and gave way to a new one about watching wheels go around. Noel’s shoulders began to unclench. His spine loosened and turned into a green stalk and then into a beam of light. High above them a new moon pulled free of the pine tops like a black kite.

  Neither of them spoke until the radio tribute had ended.

  “You feeling anything yet?” Noel asked then.

  “I feel like I glow in the dark.”

  “Yeah, me too.” Noel picked up a stone and squeezed it. Then he stepped out from the circle of rocks. “You can have this back, for your whatever thing. I’m alright now, I think.”

  “Don’t need it,” Jay replied. “I’ve always known what I wanna be.” He stood and rolled the log he was sitting on closer to the fire. “I’ve always wanted to be an architect. Ever since I was a kid.”

  “An architect.” Noel bobbed his head. “Like one who builds buildings, huh?”

  “Yeah, Spoon, like one who builds buildings. What about you? What you gonna be when you grow up, Spoon?”

  “Hell, all I ever wanted to be was to take pictures of naked women.” He stepped between Jay and the fire. “Don’t tell nobody else I said that, though.” He crossed his arms. “Damn chilly willy.”

  “Can’t see through muddy water.”

  The statement made no sense to Noel, who ignored it and continued to stand there watching the flames. Then he started throwing on more fuel. While he did this, he asked Jay if he’d heard about what had happened yesterday night.

  “You mean Timmy-Tom and them pictures? Yeah, I heard.”

  “It wasn’t pictures. It was just the one. And it didn’t show nothing hardly.”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what I heard.”

  “Besides, she ain’t my girlfriend, not anymore. She used to be. I guess I’m kinda still in love with her is all.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.” Jay tapped Noel on the hip with another beer. Noel took it and drank it half off then noticed he was sweating and stepped back from the popping wood. The radio was playing commercials now. Jay went over and turned it off. When he came back, he said, “Can I ask you something personal?”

  “I guess.”

  “Promise you won’t get mad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you ever take her picture that way? Without any clothes on?”

  “Layle? No. Hell no. She wasn’t like that. Not when I knew her.”

  “You ever taken any girl’s picture naked?”

  Noel nodded that he had. Once, he said. But they’d both been fucked up on ’ludes and none of it had turned out any good.

  “You wanna be a photographer for one of those magazines, like for Hustler or something?”

  “Naw, not for Hustler.”

  “What? For Playboy, then?”

  “Maybe. I dunno. It’s more like for some magazine that hasn’t even been invented yet. You know what I’d like to do, I’d like to work for National Geographic and just go off into the jungle and take pictures of whole tribes of naked women. Women who don’t even know they’re naked.” Noel had stated this very deliberately but without much hope of being understood. Then he asked if Jay thought there was something wrong with doing that, with taking pictures of naked women.

  “You mean for a Mormon to?”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot, y’all can’t hardly even dance.”

  “We can dance.”


  “Is it true you can have all these wives? A whole harem of them? Can’t Mormons do that?”

  After Jay had dispelled this rumor in his usual neutral manner, Noel asked what exactly Mormons did believe. Jay shrugged and said they believed Jesus had reappeared in America after dying on the cross, and that Jesus had taught here, to the Indians, and also some Mormons believed in stuff like astral traveling and guardian angels, and they all believe that after you die, if you’ve lived your life real well, then you get to become god of your own universe.

  “God of your own universe,” Noel repeated and whistled. That made an impression, but at the same time it made him suspect that right now he and Jay could be trapped inside most any fool’s universe, and that got him to thinking about those state fairs and the drug addicts his mom always claimed assembled the rides of the midway. Noel did not mention any of this to Jay, who seemed fairly sensitive about the whole Mormon subject. Instead Noel asked, “Astral traveling, what the heck’s that all about?”

  It was sending part of your soul out away from your body, Jay explained. So you could explore outer space or China or wherever. Jay did not seem particularly anxious to discuss astral traveling either. “Anyway, only certain kinds of Mormons do weird stuff like that, most of us just get up and haul our butts to church like the rest of the world.”

  Noel fueled more wood onto the fire until the flames were once again over his head. By now the LSD had given him a near-swaggering confidence; suddenly he wanted to be around women, just to watch them. But when he asked Jay what he wanted to do next, Jay took the question more philosophically.