Donnie took it back but Ronnie punched Glen a good hard one on the shoulder. I don’t need you to stand up for me Dutton, she said.
When Ronnie called you by your last name, you knew she was mad. She turned around to the back seat and said I don’t need to be on the rag to worry about fire Wigmore because I got this. She held out her arm and showed the shiny burn scar there. We all seen that before. It went from halfway up her forearm just about all the way to her shoulder. Her parents got burnt up in a housefire, you see. Ronnie, she jump out of a 2nd story window just about in time with her arm burned and part of her leg on that side and her hair on fire. That’s how she wound up in the Speck House of Everlasting Paint when her one relative, an aunt, said I am not taking her. The one time she visited Ronnie in the hospital she said I raised two of my own, both hellions, and that’s enough. Ronnie said she couldn’t blame her for that.
I know what fire can do, she said. If I ever forget I only need to look at this arm to remember. Donnie said he was sorry, and I did too. I didn’t have anything to apologize for, I just felt bad because she got burned but also happy because it wasn’t her face, which was pretty. Anyway we was all friends again after that, although Donnie Wigmore was never a friend to me like Ronnie and Glen were.
4
‘We had some good times in the Demo Derby,’ Billy says.
He’s looking out the window at the courthouse again. August has given way to September, but still the heat shimmers. He can see waves of it coming off the street. It reminds him of the way the air used to shimmer above the big incinerator behind the House of Everlasting Paint’s kitchen.
The Specks were the Stepeneks, Ronnie Givens was Robin Maguire, Glen Dutton was Gadsden Drake. Gadsden after the Gadsden Purchase, Billy figured. He had read a book while still in the Marines, Slavery, Scandal, and Steel Rails, which had covered the purchase of that arid chunk of land from Mexico. He’d read it in Fallujah, between Operation Vigilant Resolve in April of ’04 and Phantom Fury in November. Gad said that before his mother died of lung cancer, she’d told him that his long-gone daddy had been a history teacher, so it made a degree of sense. I might not be the only Gadsden in the world, he said once while they were out in Demo Derby, pretending to go somewhere, but I bet there’s not more than a dozen. With it as a first name, that is.
Billy has changed the names of his friends, but Demo Derby was always Demo Derby, and they really did have some good times there before Gad joined the army and Robin ran off to … what did she tell him?
‘To seek my fortune in seven-league boots,’ he says. That was it. Only her boots hadn’t been of the seven-league variety, just scuffed suede with tired elastic sides.
I loved her among the wrecks, Billy thinks, and goes back to write another paragraph or two before calling it a day.
CHAPTER 8
1
Two bad things happen on Labor Day weekend. One is stupid and alarming, the other casts a light on the rather unpleasant person Billy never meant to become. Taken together, they make him realize that the sooner he gets out of Red Bluff, the better. I never should have taken a job with such a long lead time, he thinks when the weekend is over, but there was no way to know.
To know what? That the Ackermans and the others on Evergreen Street would take such a liking to him, for one thing. That he would take a liking to them, for another.
There’s a parade downtown on the Saturday of the holiday weekend. Billy and the Ackermans go in a van Jamal borrowed from Excellent Tire. Shanice holds her mother’s hand on one side and Billy’s on the other as they work through the crowd and find a place on the corner of Holland and Main. When the parade actually comes, Jamal perches his daughter on his shoulders and Billy hoists Derek onto his. The kid feels good up there.
The parade is okay, even letting a kid who is later going to find out he was sitting on the shoulders of an assassin is okay … sort of. The stupid and alarming thing, the lapse, comes on Sunday. Next to the Midwood suburb of Red Bluff is the semi-rural town of Cody, and there a ratty little carnival set up shop during the last two weeks of summer, wanting a final shot of income before the kids go back to school.
Because Jamal still has the van and Sunday is nice, nothing will do but a trip to the carnival with the kids. Paul and Denise Ragland from down the street come along. The seven of them stroll the midway, eating sweet sausages and drinking sodas. Derek and Shanice ride the carousel, the Tooterville Trolley, and the Wild Cups. Mr and Mrs Ragland go off to play Bingo. Corrie Ackerman throws darts at water balloons and wins a spangly headband that says WORLD’S GREATEST MOM. Shanice tells her she looks cute, like a princess.
Jamal tries his hand at knocking over wooden milk bottles and wins nothing, but he bangs the Test Your Strength weight all the way to the top, ringing the bell. Corrie applauds and says, ‘My hero.’ For this feat of strength he gets a cardboard top hat with a paper flower stuck in the band. When he puts it on, Derek laughs so hard he has to cross his legs and then run for the nearest Porta-John so he won’t wet his pants.
The kids ride a few more of the rides, but Derek won’t go on the Wonky Caterpillar because he says it’s for babies. Billy goes with Shan, and the fit is so tight that Jamal has to yank him out like a cork from a bottle when the ride is over. That makes them all laugh.
They are walking back to find the Raglands when they come to Dead-Eye Dick’s Shooting Gallery. Half a dozen men are having a go with BB guns, shooting at five rows of targets moving in opposite directions, plus tin rabbits that pop up and down. Shanice points to a giant pink flamingo atop the wall of prizes and says, ‘I’d love to have that for my bedroom. Could I buy it out of my allowance?’
Her father explains that it’s not for sale, you have to win it.
‘Then you win it, Dad!’ she says.
The man running the shooting shy is wearing a striped shirt, a rakishly tilted straw boater, and a fake curly mustache. He looks like he belongs in a barber shop quartet. He hears Shanice and waves Jamal over. ‘Make your little girl happy, mister, knock over three rabbits or four of the birds in the top row and she’s going home with Freddy Flamingo.’
Jamal laughs and hands over five bucks for twenty shots. ‘Prepare for disappointment, sweetie,’ he says, ‘but I might win you one of the smaller prizes.’
‘You can do it, Dad,’ Derek says stoutly.
Billy watches Jamal shoulder the rifle and knows he’ll be lucky to wind up with one of the stuffed turtles that are the consolation prizes for two hits.
‘Go for the birds,’ Billy says. ‘I know the rabbits are bigger, but you can only take snap shots when they pop up.’
‘If you say so, Dave.’
Jamal pops off ten shots at the birds in the top row and hits exactly none. He lowers his sights, pops a couple of the lumbering tin moose in the bottom row, and accepts one of the turtles. Shanice eyes it without much enthusiasm but says thank you.
‘What about you, hoss?’ the barber shop quartet guy asks Billy. Most of his other customers have drifted away. ‘Want to give it a try? Five bucks buys you twenty shots and you only need to hit four of the birdies to make your pretty little pal the happy owner of Frankie Flamingo.’
‘I thought it was Freddy,’ Billy says.
The concession guy smiles and tips his straw boater the other way. ‘Frankie, Freddy, or Felicia, make a little girl happy.’
Shanice looks at him hopefully but says nothing. It’s Derek who convinces him to do the stupid thing when he says, ‘Mr Ragland says all these games are a cheat and nobody wins the big prizes.’
‘Well, let’s test that out,’ Billy says, and lays down a five-spot. Mr Barber Shop Quartet loads a paper spill of BBs and hands Billy a rifle. A few other men and two women are currently at the shy’s counter. Billy moves down partly to give them room, but also because he’s noticed that the tin birds – plus the targets on the other four levels – slow down a bit before they turn out of sight. Probably the chain drives need to be oiled. Which is lazy. The shy’s proprietor should pay for that.