51. THE LADY PICKS HER PRIZE.
$96,450.00
Armed with my camera, I accepted a yellow ALL-PASS wristband to enter the east gate of the West Virginia Spring Break Fair.
There were so many photo opportunities I forgot my frayed nerves. A junior higher sharing a chocolate ice cream with her brace-face boyfriend. A mom handing money to her triplet sons. A couple paying five dollars a shot to launch basketballs. The rides themselves. An intercom system crackled to life. “Attention, ladies and gentlemen, the demolition derby will begin in the Westerly Arena in ten minutes. Come on over for a smashingly good time.” There was a glorious timelessness amid the sounds and sights.
We marched on “streets” lined with barkers, clowns, and rigged carnival games. Every smell imaginable taunted our empty stomachs. Hot dogs, cotton candy, deep-fried Twinkies and Oreos, chicken on a stick, funnel cakes. Every surface was the brightest of bright colors.
“Can we wait and eat real food?” Rudy asked.
Becky kicked her head back and framed the Rock It Ride between her thumbs and index fingers. “Good idea. This isn’t the sort of food you want to savor twice. Come on. Follow me, my flock of sheep.” And then she took Caroline’s hand and surged forward.
I followed, my senses enamored. I’d never been to a state fair or a large theme park, and Chan hadn’t either. We magnetized, the way we normally would in new situations, our hips so close you couldn’t put tissue paper or anger between them. He leaned toward me. “I’m glad we stopped.”
Fighting or the truck?
“Me too,” I said.
“Will you like riding stuff?”
“No idea.”
Becky sat across Rudy’s legs and pulled Caroline along with her. He tried to spin the girls in circles but they were too heavy and he booted them to the curb, laughing. They yapped over details, comparing the jankety pop-up rides to their experiences at Disney World. A man with an overlarge hammer baited Rudy. “Ah, strong guy. You want to show the ladies your million-dollar arms?” Caroline handed the man five dollars and said, “He absolutely does.” Rudy worked out the best way to swing the hammer and brought the tool crashing down. Lights raced up the machine and rang the bell. The man celebrated with us. “Winner. Winner. The lady picks her prize.” Caroline chose a large Pink Panther. She rode the stuffed animal on her shoulders and made loops hooting and hollering. A whooping delight. I shot dozen of photos. Of Caroline smiling. Of her fingers cupping the sky. Of her skipping. The show was for Becky, and it was the happiest I’d seen Caroline. Through the viewfinder, I recognized the girl who closed the bathroom door at Down Yonder and sauntered away in style. And in my mental picture, her long, red ringlets stood on ends as she spun.
I fell into step with her and showed her one of the photos. “This is you happy.”
She tapped the screen. “That’s me relieved.”
“The fair?”
“The end. This is nearly over.”
I was thinking, This is nearly the beginning, but I kept the thought to myself.
We were heroes of the fair. Rudy won another animal. Becky busted up the ring toss. Caroline forced us to ride nearly every “thrill ride” in the park. And because joy is joy is joy, each time we queued, Chan checked our height requirements on those goofy wooden signs. “You shall pass,” he said, and bridged his arms like a tunnel.
I recorded grins, smiles, giggles, squeals, groans, laughs. Love. Fear. Wonder.
“You look enchanted, Jennings,” Becky said.
I nodded.
I balked on one ride: Mach1. Becky grabbed a fistful of my sweatshirt, swore in a way that made a nearby mom cover her daughter’s ears, and said, “You’re riding that beast before we leave.” I hoped everyone would get hungry and we’d leave before we looped back to that section of the fair. During our second trip through the haunted house, which was laughable horror, Chan tucked me into the dark corner—he kicked two middle school kids out first, which made us hee-haw, because we would have been those kids a few years back. “Go, we are those kids right now,” he said.
“No, because we aren’t here to kiss.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“I don’t know exactly. For the space between us,” he said.
I wasn’t nearly as interested in Chan being sorry as I was in his being honest. Which was hysterically ironic and terrible of me. I’d lingered in that bathroom talking to Rudy and never told Chan. When you altered someone’s life in a forever way, every new admission added weight to an already heavy scale. To admit I’d wanted to spend that day in June with Rudy instead of Chan, and that day, that decision, had done irrevocable damage to his life, squeezed my chest to breathlessness. Telling him now seemed cruel. Yeah, I know we’re not together and you’re severely wounded, but no biggie, I chose him over you a long time ago.
Secrets didn’t change love. They affect it, sure. But I still wanted Chan to tell me about the sketchbook under his bed and his terror of the unknown. That he had nightmares about the explosion. That he’d gotten the bus in the barn for himself. Because he had. I’d seen it in his eyes. What did he see in my eyes?
“I dug up the fourth geocache,” I said.
“Are you going to tell me where it is?” he asked.
“No, I don’t think I will.”
“Good. Now, come on,” he said, squeezing my arm, but making sure not to linger. “We’ve got more fair out there.”
“No one has hurled yet,” Caroline complained when we arrived at the end of the haunted house. “Becky won’t be satisfied until someone throws up. I’m taking volunteers.” She clenched the front of Chan’s shirt. “What I mean by that is I’ve chosen you.”
He raised his T-shirt to show his abs, which were in fine form. “I’ve got a stomach like the Rock of Gibraltar.”
“Challenge accepted, Clayton.”
“Where?” he asked Caroline.
She picked the Gravitron, which advertised g-forces that sucked participants to the walls. She beckoned us too, and we declined. “That’s all, y’all,” Rudy said.
“What are you up for?” Rudy asked Becky, when it was just the three of us.
“Sitting down! My Rock of Gibraltar crumbled. Does your cousin never tire?”
Rudy laughed. “Vadering is good for her.”
“The price we all pay.”
Having a premonition of what Rudy would say next, I piled our treasures and bobbles with Becky on the bench. “Mach One?” he said.
I melted under the pressure.
On our way, Rudy said, “Tell me why this one scared you. Mach One’s no higher than Freak Out.”
“Oh, I was scared of Freak Out too.”
“And you rode anyway?”
“Yeah.”
“So how can you face one fear and not the other?”
“That’s adorable. You want fear to be rational.”
“Get in front of it, Jennings.”
I had no idea what that meant. “Guthrie, they put this thing on a semitruck and move it from city to city. I am in front of it.”
He shrugged gleefully. “At least you know the bolts are probably tight if they assembled it this week.”
There wasn’t a long line at Mach1. Half the fair was watching the demolition derby, and the other half were farm kids making out in the darkened halls of the haunted house. We waited two revolutions for our turn.
“Do they ever hassle you about riding?”
“Every now and then someone will be an asshat, but for the most part, accessibility isn’t a problem. Disney even has a special pass for all sorts of disabilities. To be honest, I try not to think about it.”
“I’m trying not to think about dying.”
“Stellar plan,” he said.
We buckled in. The worker stowed Rudy’s wheelchair by the control booth where it would be safe. In the hubbub, he forgot to check my belt. Rudy jerked the straps and they were tight.
“You okay?�
� he asked.
“Dandy.”
“The scholarship money is almost at a hundred thousand. Think about that,” he said.
“We have to be alive to attend college.”
“We’re more alive than most.”
Oh, how I hoped that was true. The ride functioned like a pinwheel, if you replaced the center spinner with a long ruler that had a basket on one end. Rudy and I were in that basket. When the ride started, our basket would spin as the entire lever spun in a circle. A circle that at its highest point was sixty feet.
“This is hard,” I said to Rudy.
He took my hand. “Yes.”
“You’re scared?”
“Terrified.”
Rudy tightened his grip on my fingers. “Don’t look now, but you’re in front of it.”
It didn’t feel like we were talking about the ride.
I closed my eyes and let Rudy be the anchor.
“You two ready?” the operator called.
And that was when I learned the West Virginia Spring Break Fair’s greatest truth: sometimes, there was no such thing as “ready.”
52. MACH ONE’S A HUMDINGER.
$97,450.00
Up was down was up. My chest imploded. My brain raced at thoroughbred speed, galloping through endorphins and dopamine. My lungs lodged in my ears. The music volume lowered from screech to roar. The dying was nearly done. Our metal cage rocketed skyward, but lost momentum. We slowed to a near stop—the ride giving one final violent jolt—then, blissful stillness.
“You were a banshee in another life, Go.”
I didn’t remember screaming.
I tried to say, “I nearly became a banshee in this life,” but was too hoarse.
The operator presented Rudy his wheelchair. As soon I was unbuckled, I punched Rudy in the arm, hard. The operator laughed. “Dude,” he said. “Nearly every lady punches her man when they’re back on the ground. Mach One’s a humdinger.”
“Oh, we’re not—”
But the kid had already turned to his next victims. I checked to see who might have heard, but no one we knew was in sight.
Rudy tried to brush the comment off. “He says that to everyone.”
“Yeah, I’m sure he does.”
We wobbled our way around temporary fencing, through the ride exit, and down the aisle where we left Becky. The ground was uneven, pockmarked with trash. There was Rudy, handling every small challenge, nothing fazing him, and I couldn’t stop obsessing over the operator’s errant comment. “You want to talk about the kissing?” he asked.
“No.”
“Me either.”
“Good. Maybe I would if things were different, but neither of us is going to make life different during a four-day road trip. For now, let’s say I liked it, you liked it, and Chan would hate it.”
“Agree.”
Despite my frustration at Chan’s behavior and being dumped, Chan was the carry-on bag I’d packed many years ago. You didn’t drop your luggage in Morgantown, West Virginia, because a thrill-ride operator made an assumption. But maybe you dropped it because he dropped you. I’d never been dropped before and didn’t know the rules.
“You clearly loved Mach One,” Rudy said, segueing.
He ducked and evaded my swat with a quick spin that I recognized as a signature Rudy maneuver. “So awful.” Still awful. My body hadn’t stopped pulsing since we landed. The immediate threat of death had diminished, but all systems weren’t back online yet. “Tell me you’re queasy.”
“My stomach has moved”—he gripped his windpipe—“permanently.”
“Good,” I said. “I hope it stays there.”
I nearly tripped over my feet, and he said, “That’s what you get for being mean to me.”
It probably was.
We reached home-base Becky. Chan and Caroline were already there. Caroline’s face was pressed to Becky’s shoulder, and Becky stroked her like a stray she wanted to take home and feed. Chan leaned against an electric pole and had his head on another planet. His Hey! How was Mach One? was frosting sweet, but the real message was loud and clear: Don’t ask me what’s wrong.
Chan came out of the womb reticent. His first words were probably I’m fine. There were generations of Clayton men who’d been taught to nod, frown, or flex in case of rapture or natural disaster. Clayton men saved people with the unwritten caveat that no one was allowed to save them. He’d met his match in me, because I could game that shit step for step when I wanted to.
“I asked about Mach One?” he repeated.
Rudy and I recounted the experience. I didn’t use words to ask if Chan was okay. I opted for a furrowed brow and my own You’ll tell me if you want to look. Our first moment alone, he said, as predicted, “I’m as fine as you are.”
“Yes, I know. Now, what’s wrong?”
“Tit for tat. Have you considered that you have to give to get?”
That silenced me. The first chance I had, I looped my arm through Caroline’s and asked, “What happened on the Gravitron?”
“As advertised; the bottom drops out.”
“Of the ride?”
Her hesitation: an untold story. Her answer: “Yeah. You bet.”
But she was back inside herself, and even Becky and Rudy couldn’t tease her out.
53. THINGS SHRINK WHEN I WASH THEM.
$97,930.00
Something foul permeated the Ford. I squirmed with negative energy. Eager for food or escape, Chan steered the truck to a restaurant lodge called the Fin and Feather.
“There’s a perfectly good Shoney’s right there,” Becky said.
Unfortunately, no one laughed. Everyone was starved. Things would be better after we ate. Chan pocketed the keys. “They have good reviews on Yelp.”
“They aren’t on Yelp,” Caroline said.
Something deeper than irritation zipped along between them. When they noted us watching, each turned a head in the opposite direction. Chan softened. “You gave me permission to choose.”
Caroline dug through her purse, paused, said, “I say a lot of things I don’t mean.” There were more than words to that exchange, but she rushed from her seat and busily retrieved Rudy’s wheelchair. Chan sauntered ahead, hands in his pockets. “This’ll do,” he yelled from the menu board posted at the entrance, and then disappeared inside. The air smelled overwhelmingly of grilled steaks and fry oil.
“What the hell happened on the Gravitron?” Rudy asked no one in particular.
Nonchalant, Caroline slipped a ditty bag under her arm and walked fast to the door. Becky asked, “Do I follow?” and I lifted my hands. I wasn’t even pretending I understood their behavior.
Rudy took out his phone. “Good luck. I’ll be inside in a minute.”
“You calling Stock?”
He nodded wearily. “To tell him Chan and Caroline are out. And that you’ll meet the Westwoods.”
I shifted my gaze toward the restaurant. I didn’t know whether I envied Rudy his phone call or not. Talking to Stock sounded better than being the clueless barrier between Chan and Caroline. Rudy squeezed my forearm. “Don’t stew on those two. It’ll come out in the wash.”
“Things shrink when I wash them.”
I left him to his phone call. The restaurant’s interior matched its exterior. Unadulterated log cabin. I had a feeling this restaurant epitomized Morgantown. Everything was brown, and I had to hand it to management, they didn’t repeat a single shade. Brown walls and floor. Brown miniblinds, closed. Brown ceilings. Brown round tables and chairs. Framed photos of smiling hunters wearing orange vests over camo were the only splashes of color. A mounted fourteen-point buck with hollow black eyes stalked me on the way to our table.
Chan ordered a round of waters and ducked behind his menu. Becky’s eyebrows shot skyward, nonplussed at whatever the hell was going on. Caroline was in the bathroom shaving her damn head again. The way I saw it, we had two choices: force a leveling or ignore the tension. Through a seriies of hand gestur
es and eyebrow raises, Becky and I chose the latter. My current plan included ordering a Coke and the biggest, fattiest, juiciest hamburger I could afford.
Rudy arrived, and not long afterward, Caroline emerged from the bathroom lip-locked and freshly shaven. I smelled the menthol rolling off in waves. Despite her silence, she appeared wildly refreshed. Rudy nodded that the deed was done, and I tried flashing him some happiness but couldn’t muster the strength. Wendy, our waitress, materialized from the kitchen with a tray of waters. She doled out extra menus and napkins, but nothing softened the mood.
Rudy said, “My dear Wendy, the finest screwdriver her credit card can buy.” He tapped Caroline’s menu. “Hold the vodka.”
Wendy laughed generously. She was older than us, but young enough to be flattered by Rudy’s attention. When she smiled, she looked like someone who might get out of this town. Around the table, everyone took a breath. We soon discovered everything was funny to Wendy. Chan’s rimless glasses. The skateboarding stickers on Rudy’s wheelchair. Caroline’s bald head. “Are you like an eagle or Natalie Portman?” she asked with admiration. “I wish I had the head shape for it.”
The food arrived without incident, we ate without incident, and we might have escaped the rest of the night clean as a whistle if Wendy the waitress held the vodka from Rudy’s orange juice. No such luck. Rudy drank three screwdrivers. He killed the first in a gulp, and the bartender at the Fin and Feather had been a bartender for thirty years and knew how to make a decent screwdriver. “I’m from Florida and this is very delicious orange juice,” Rudy said several times. I can only assume Wendy and the bartender miscommunicated. The mistake would have been caught faster if we hadn’t been so committed to silence and the consumption of calories.
“Wendy the Waitress,” Rudy said, as she removed his empty plate. “Did you always want to be a waitress?” Becky jerked my shirtsleeve in a You know he’s drunk, right? motion. People three counties over knew Rudy was drunk, as he sang every song that came on the radio, those he knew and those he didn’t.
Expertly, Wendy stacked our dishes on her little round tray. “I’m taking paramedic classes.”
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