Axis of Aaron

by Johnny B. Truant

  “When I was a kid, I felt my mother’s death in this deep way that scabbed over in time, but it was still in me like a tumor, shaping who I became. But for Dad? Mom was his wife. She was his partner. I had no concept of that at the time, and still have a hard time seeing it — truly seeing it — even now: There was a time when it was just the two of them, before Alan and I were born. When Mom died, I took it hard and assumed it was the same for Dad. But I was narrow-minded and naive; the truth was he was taking it in a way I didn’t — couldn’t — understand. Her death changed him like it changed me. And it changed how we were together. He simultaneously loved me and was terrified for me — and terrified of losing me like he’d lost her. Love caused him to do all the things he did and to be how he was. It took me years to learn to hate some things about my father, while still being able to see the love behind them.”

  “You’re saying I should feel loved by Holly.”

  “I’m not saying you should feel anything. I’m making a suggestion.”

  “Hmm.”

  “And it’s not your fault, Ebon.” Aimee’s eyes were again serious, as if reaching a key point. “You need to get that.”

  “I get that.”

  “I realized I felt responsible for Dad because I left to live across town when I was eighteen. ‘Left him to drink himself to death,’ was how it felt. But that was his stuff, not mine.”

  “His stuff.”

  “So just because you weren’t with Holly when she died, that doesn’t mean … ”

  “I really don’t want to talk about it.” Ebon put his hand on the table, near hers, to soften the words. “Just … not yet, okay?”

  “Sure. But whenever you want to. If you want to.”

  “Thanks.”

  She looked down at her plate, neither meeting his gaze nor avoiding it. She really was just letting it go, moving on, and thinking about renovation. Ebon had never been able to do that. When he and Holly had had problems — the kind that came out into the open, rather than festering under the skin like a wound — Ebon had always wanted to dissect and discuss them for hours. To him, it was about facing issues and trying to puzzle out a workable solution, but Holly had seen it as beating a dead horse. She had no filter; she was a fun party girl; she lived in the now rather than in the past or the imagined future. She’d always wanted to let things go and not discuss them to death, but whenever that happened Ebon grew uneasy and vaguely angry at her — an excuse of wanting to “confront problems instead of turning away from them” that, if he was honest, was more passive-aggressive than proactive. It was probably why she’d kept so many secrets from him. Maybe Holly had been right after all. Just look at where holding onto the past had got him so far.

  Ebon watched Aimee, wondering if he’d taken a wrong turn. The thought felt like pooling acid. He’d loved Holly more than anyone, and thinking about Aimee now felt like betraying the dead. But still, it had a certain merit. What if those summers had never ended? What if Ebon had come back to Aaron all that time ago, and what had almost been between them had been allowed to bloom? How would life have been different?

  Or … could it still be different? He’d closed the loop. All things came back around if you were patient enough.

  “Hey, Aim.”

  She looked up, her messy hair practically in her food.

  “What made you stop me, that day on the beach?”

  She shook her head.

  “The day we met. I wasn’t looking to hang out with you and build sandcastles. I just wanted to go to the carnival. I didn’t ask for your opinion, yet somehow you forced it on me anyway.”

  Aimee shrugged, her mouth full of eggs.

  “You do that,” he said.

  “I do?”

  “Yes. For instance, why do I know your thoughts about my furniture? You’ve never even been to my apartment.”

  “You just seem like you’d buy a lot of mass-produced, overly expensive crap because someone told you it’d make your place look more impressive.”

  “See? And yet you’ve never seen it.”

  “But I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “I don’t know. I have some stuff from IKEA. It’s modestly priced.”

  “Mass-produced.”

  Ebon swallowed a forkful of food, then said, “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve got all sorts of opinions. So on that day, did you just kind of decide I was some dumb kid looking to ride the Danger Wheel and maybe the old carousel, but then you figured that was wrong of me, and so you …”

  “You were way too old for the carousel.”

  “The carousel is a historical landmark!” Ebon blurted. But then, recalling what Captain Jack had told him on the boat ride in, bittersweet nostalgia hit him like a wave and he added, “Or it used to be anyway.”

  “‘Used to be’?”

  “Until they got rid of it.”

  “They never got rid of the carousel.” Aimee stood to pour herself coffee. “Why would they do that? It’s a historical landmark.”

  “I meant when they got rid of Aaron’s Party. As a whole.”

  Aimee gave Ebon an amused smile.

  “What?”

  “Aaron’s Party isn’t gone, Ebon,” she said. “It’s still there on the pier, right where we left it.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Double Exposure

  BUT THAT WAS ABSURD. OF COURSE Aaron’s Party was gone.

  Ebon was walking down the beach, his feet bare in the still-warm September sand, waves crashing at his left side. The air was warming as he’d suspected it would, and though he’d left the house in a long-sleeve shirt, he was already pushing those sleeves up, feeling the ocean’s spray on his salt-kissed skin.

  Aimee was still back at the cottage. Ebon had repeated what Captain Jack had told him, and she’d laughed and said, “Well, then I take it back. If the Gorton’s Fisherman said it, it must be true.”

  “He said that nobody went anymore, so … ”

  “It’s closed,” she said, nodding, “but it’s not gone. You either heard him wrong, or he was drunk. Or both. Probably both.”

  “But I … ”

  “Are you really arguing with me about this?”

  “When I went to the dump, I stopped at Redding Dock. I looked right at the pier and saw that it was empty. I saw it.”

  “It wouldn’t even make sense to dismantle it, Ebon. Seriously. Think about it. We’re on an island. They’re going to take all those big rides apart bolt by bolt, truck them over to the ferry, and pay to get rid of them? Does that sound like something you do when your amusement park is already bleeding you dry?”

  “Maybe the city paid for it.”

  Aimee nodded. “Okay. You’ve convinced me. I’m wrong, and you’re right. You have successfully argued Aaron’s Party into nonexistence. Impressive.”

  Ebon had been irritated when she’d said that, then had told her he was going for a walk. Aimee hadn’t been offended. She’d seemed more amused by his blubbering attempts to argue the existence of a carnival a few miles upshore in the town she’d lived for her entire life.

  “A walk to the north?” she’d asked, her voice singsong and mocking.

  Ebon had grunted, then headed out.

  As his feet paced the sand, the past’s shadow hung low overhead. Oppressive, bearing down on him like a living thing. He felt caught somewhere between then and now, unsure even as his feet began to move what he might see when he reached the pier. Would he encounter the truth that Aimee knew for sure? Or would he encounter his own equally vivid reality, wherein he’d seen the empty pier with his own eyes?

  Beyond the crescent bay where Aimee’s grandparents had built their cottage, the shore bent back into a shallower depression. The town had built the Aaron’s Party pier inside that depression, protecting it at both the north and south ends by large stone breakwaters. Ebon knew it well; he’d walked the beach under that pier hundreds of times during his teen years. The carnival, though, wasn’t usually his destination on
those walks. Because once it stretched beyond the pier, the shore again bent back and the cottage-strewn beach surrendered to a rock shelf. It was there that he’d always been bound, when he wanted to be alone. It was there that he’d found his solace time and time again, on the long expanse of Redding Dock.

  During those endless summers, Ebon had come to think of Redding as “his place.” It was anyone’s place, of course, but few — if any — others claimed it as Ebon had. It was farther north than most walkers walked, and inhospitable to boats and fishermen alike due to a shift in water depths, currents, or something else in the years since it had been built. As a result, the dock was always empty, with no one around. It wound impossibly far into the bay, built mostly atop a sandbar, its length meant to stretch into deeper water to compensate. As a kid, Redding Dock had been Ebon’s place for thinking — for musing on what was and what he hoped would one day be. He’d walk its length, dangle his toes in the water, stare out across the bay, and talk to himself. Out loud, most times, because no one was around to hear him.

  On his way back from the dump a few days ago, he’d stopped Aimee’s truck at the overgrown path between Redding and the road. He’d pushed through the brush, then followed the long, unchanged red dock to its end. He’d sat beside the same graffiti-carved bench he’d always sat beside and dangled his now-longer, now-adult legs in the water. He hadn’t spoken aloud. He hadn’t even really thought. He’d just stared across the bay, toward the mainland, toward the pier where Aaron’s Party no longer was. It had been exactly as Captain Jack had said. The pier was empty. He could see the ticket booth’s skeleton and the extra pillars engineers had added to support the Danger Wheel’s weight. But that was all.

  At least, he thought he’d seen the pier empty. He was almost sure of it.

  He hadn’t stood from the dock until nearly full dark that night, mosquitoes beginning to bite and his imagination beginning to flinch at what monsters might swim in the black water that swallowed his ankles. He’d walked back to Aimee’s car by moonlight, refusing to turn his head south again toward the pier that had been scrubbed of memories. That night they’d played two-handed euchre with the television and radio off, mostly silent. She’d touched his hand once or twice, as if sensing his melancholy.

  Now, walking north from Aimee’s in the growing heat, Ebon felt strangely weak. He’d done his mourning for Aaron’s Party. His favorite pet had died while he was away, but Ebon, on that day at Redding, had seen its corpse and made his peace. The loss of Aaron’s Party was supposed to be behind him, and he was supposed to have moved on. But it seemed the Party wasn’t behind him after all, and now Aimee was toying with him. Her words had felt cruel. She’d told him that his beloved pet wasn’t actually dead. It was in the backyard same as always — old and decrepit and as good as dead, but there to mourn forever nonetheless.

  Ebon suddenly wondered if he wanted to see the carnival after all.

  He’d been fifteen years old the last time he’d seen it. The Danger Wheel had been new then, its shock-red paint as brilliant as blood on a stage. The whole place had been vibrant — the perfect embodiment of summertime. Its planks had radiated a dull heat, Sno-Cones and ice cream being the only antidote. The air above Aaron’s Party had always been filled with joy — the kind that wore swimsuits under clothing and sand between its toes. He’d never seen it in the off season between summers. He didn’t know what it looked like empty. Seeing it not just vacant, but abandoned and decaying, might break his heart more than not seeing it at all.

  He paused and fell a few steps back toward Aimee’s, realizing he didn’t really want to walk right now. If he simply admitted she was right rather than feeling the need to prove her wrong, this errand would be unnecessary. He closed his eyes, his face turned away from what he feared seeing.

  But: No.

  He had to see. He had to touch the entrance gate and hear the echo of absent noise. He had to smell the rotting boards, and sense the psychic squalor of a place that had always been bustling, but now had turned to bones.

  He sighed, then rotated to again face north. And began walking.

  Twenty minutes later, Ebon rounded the crescent’s lip. He didn’t need to look up once he was past the obstructions to sense what was in front of him. The carnival was as large as life, demanding his full attention.

  Even though he’d tried to steel himself, seeing the place in ruins unsettled Ebon’s core. He walked up the inclined fork of the path, away from the beach between the pillars, and made his way toward the entrance. His heart pounded double-time to his footsteps, booming like a tightly stretched drum.

  He’d been wrong.

  He must not have been looking at Aaron’s Party from Redding Dock, that was all. There must be another big pier around here somewhere, something he’d forgotten. It was that empty pier he’d seen, not this one. He’d just been a kid the last time he’d been to the Party, after all. He hadn’t been driving back then, and hadn’t experienced the quantum leap in orientation that came with needing to steer a vehicle from place to place without getting lost. Back then, his landmarks had been his grandparents’ place, Aimee’s house, Aaron’s Party, and Redding Dock. Whether there was anything else on Aaron (or whether his landmarks’ order on the coast was as he remembered, or whether he was wrong about the distances between them, or whether Aaron’s Party was even visible from Redding Dock or vice-versa), he couldn't be sure.

  Someone had erected a trashy-looking chain-link fence at the carnival’s entrance. Front and center was a large gate run through with a rusty chain, a similarly rusty padlock binding its links. A simple sign — faded red on dulled white — hung from one of the gate doors. It read simply, CLOSED.

  Ebon walked along the fence, touching it with a sense of unreality. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t being kept out; the carnival’s invisible occupants were being kept in. If he was still, he could almost hear them from a decade and a half in the past: the nonsensical chatter of children with nowhere better to be, the frustrated denials of parents who’d been dragged along, telling their wards that they didn’t need more cotton candy or to settle down and stop running. If Ebon closed his eyes, the day’s warm sun almost fooled his senses. The Party was still in full swing. He felt like he could walk forward and not encounter a fence. There would be a boardwalk and chatter, the noises of barkers and instrument calliopes, the grinding chatter of ride wheels against their structural members. Hollering riders, cheering their summer of freedom.

  He opened his drooping eyes, focusing again on the fence. It wasn’t high or topped with barbed wire. Was there any chance the abandoned carnival hadn’t become a makeout spot for Aaron’s teens? Anyone could get over the fence easily. Even an old man like him.

  Feeling his age, Ebon slid his toes into the chain links and, without tremendous effort, hopped over and onto the boardwalk. In one nook, he saw a trio of discarded beer bottles and a condom wrapper. Yep, the teenagers had found it just fine.

  He stood tall and looked back through the fence. The day was warm and bright. The shadows on the ground looked sharp enough to have been cut from the sun’s cloth by trees overhead.

  He looked back into the carnival and wondered why he’d hopped the fence. What exactly did he plan to do here?

  He walked down the planks, passing the ticket booth. Inside, he could still see a dust-covered roll of orange rip-tickets — the kind that could be split down the center to leave the venue a receipt after the customer got his half. The roll was against a back counter, protected from the weather. The booth’s front, where the circle in the window hadn’t been shuttered, wasn’t as pristine. The counter had warped and peeled, its edges yellowed and black with mold.

  Ebon, looking at the tickets now, felt a commonplace sense of time travel. Nobody had touched that orange roll for well over a decade. The last time anyone had, there’d been a person manning this booth. A ticket seller (probably a kid of seventeen or eighteen) had ripped Aaron’s Party’s final ticket,
then set the roll on the counter, probably not even realizing that that final rip would be the Party’s last. And there the roll still was, waiting for the next taker to buy his way inside.

  He kept walking.

  The place was in deplorable shape. Most of the metal had survived beneath its paint, but much had flaked and rusted. What passed for the pier’s midway had once been lined with food carts and sham stalls where hucksters had operated games. The game runners at Aaron’s Party had been summer kids, like the rest of the carnival staff. Ebon remembered those kids as having a different (and, truth be told, less oily) feel than carnies at the fair back home. Here, anyone who played a game won. Prizes were worthless (dollar store junk, small plastic tennis sets, squirt guns that broke the first time you used them), but the runners had always given them out. When kids missed balloons with darts or couldn’t toss rings onto bottles, the runners let them try again. Games cost a dollar apiece, and prizes were worth fifty cents at most. Everyone came out on top.

  Ebon headed toward the Danger Wheel, its enormous shape down at the far end of the pier. He lingered at the whirling teacups (paint faded and peeled, the machine’s visible guts rusted rather than greased, hydraulic arms clotted and frozen) and the crappy little Tunnel of Love, which was nothing more than a fifteen-foot oval track that went behind a curtain on the return trip. Nothing had been properly stowed or put away. The games even had a few ratty stuffed animals still in their nooks and crannies, and deflated latex ghosts hung on the balloon-popping game’s pegs. Everything looked as if the staff had simply walked away one day expecting to return the next, but then the gates had closed and they’d never come back.