Where celluloid goldfish bobbed in a tank he leaned with his dipnet and watched the other fishers. An attendant took the fish from their nets and read the numbers on their undersides and shook his head no or reached down a small kewpie or a plaster cat. While he was so occupied an old man next to Ballard was trying to steer two fish into his dipnet at the same time. They would not fit and the old man grown impatient steered them to the edge of the tank and with a sweep of the net splashed fish and water down the front of a woman standing next to him. The woman looked down. The fish were lying in the grass. You must be crazy, she said. Or drunk one. The old man gripped his net. The attendant leaned to them. What’s the matter here, he said.
I didn’t do nothin, said the old man.
Ballard was dipping up fish and dumping them back, studying the numbers on the prizes. The woman with the wet dress pointed at him. That man yonder is cheatin, she said.
Okay buddy, said the attendant, reaching for his net. You get one for a dime, three for a quarter.
I ain’t got one yet, said Ballard.
You’ve done put back a dozen.
I ain’t got one, said Ballard, holding his net.
Well get one and look at the rest.
Ballard shrugged up his shoulders and eyed the fish. He dipped one up.
The attendant took the fish and looked at it. No winner, he said, and pitched the fish back in the tank and took the net from Ballard.
I might not be done playin, said Ballard.
And then again you might, said the attendant.
Ballard gave the man a cold cat’s look and spat in the water and turned to go. The lady who’d been splashed was watching him with a half fearful look of vindication. As Ballard went past he spoke to her through his teeth. You a busynosed old whore, ain’t ye? he said.
He stirred as he went the weight of dimes in the toe of his pocket. Riflefire guided him, a muted sound that he sorted from among the cries of barkers and pitchmen. A busy booth with longlegged boys crouched at the counter. Across the back of the gallery mechanical ducks tottered and creaked and the rifles cracked and spat.
Step right up, step right up, test your skill and win a prize, sang the shooting gallery man. Yes sir, how about you?
I’m studyin it, said Ballard. What do ye get?
The pitchman pointed with his cane to rows of stuffed animals in ascending size. The bottom row, he said …
Never mind them, said Ballard. What do you have to do to get them big’ns yonder.
The pitchman pointed to small cards on a wire. Shoot out the small red dot, he said in a singsong voice. You have five shots in which to do it and you take your choice of any prize in the house.
Ballard had his dimes out. How much is it? he said.
Twenty-five cents.
He laid three dimes on the counter. The pitchman stood a rifle up and slid a brass tube of shells into the magazine. It was a pump rifle and it was fastened to the counter by a chain.
Ballard put the nickel in his pocket and raised the rifle.
Elbow rests permitted, sang the pitchman.
I don’t need no rest, said Ballard. He fired five times, lowering the rifle between rounds. When he was done he pointed aloft. Let me have that there big bear, he said.
The pitchman trolleyed the little card down a wire and unpinned it and handed it to Ballard. All of the red must be removed from the card to win, he said. He was looking elsewhere and didn’t even seem to be talking to Ballard.
Ballard took the card in his hand and looked at it. You mean this here? he said.
All of the red must be removed.
Ballard’s card had a single hole in the middle of it. Along one edge of the hole was the faintest piece of red lint.
Why hell fire, said Ballard. He slapped three more dimes on the counter. Step right up, said the pitchman, loading the rifle.
When the card came back you could’nt have found any red on it with a microscope. The pitchman handed down a ponderous mohair teddybear and Ballard slapped down three dimes again.
When he had won two bears and a tiger and a small audience the pitchman took the rifle away from him. That’s it for you, buddy, he hissed.
You never said nothin about how many times you could win.
Step right up, sang the barker. Who’s next now. Three big grand prizes per person is the house limit. Who’s our next big winner.
Ballard loaded up his bears and the tiger and started off through the crowd. They lord look at what all he’s won, said a woman. Ballard smiled tightly. Young girls’ faces floated past, bland and smooth as cream. Some eyed his toys. The crowd was moving toward the edge of a field and assembling there, Ballard among them, a sea of country people watching into the dark for some midnight contest to begin.
A light sputtered off in the field and a bluetailed rocket went skittering toward Canis Major. High above their upturned faces it burst, sprays of lit glycerine flaring across the night, trailing down the sky in loosely falling ribbons of hot spectra soon burnt to naught. Another went up, a long whishing sound, fishtailing aloft. In the bloom of its opening you could see like its shadow the image of the rocket gone before, the puff of black smoke and ashen trails arcing out and down like a huge and dark medusa squatting in the sky. In the bloom of light too you could see two men out in the field crouched over their crate of fireworks like assassins or bridgeblowers. And you could see among the faces a young girl with candyapple on her lips and her eyes wide. Her pale hair smelled of soap, womanchild from beyond the years, rapt below the sulphur glow and pitchlight of some medieval fun fair. A lean skylong candle skewered the black pools in her eyes. Her fingers clutched. In the flood of this breaking brimstone galaxy she saw the man with the bears watching her and she edged closer to the girl by her side and brushed her hair with two fingers quickly.
BALLARD HAS COME IN FROM the dark dragging sheaves of snowclogged bracken and he has fallen to crushing up handfuls of this dried or frozen stuff and cramming it into the fireplace. The lamp in the floor gutters in the wind and wind moans in the flue. The cracks in the wall lie printed slantwise over the floorboards in threads of drifted snow and wind is shucking the cardboard windowpanes. And Ballard has come with an armload of beanpoles purloined from the barnloft and he is at breaking them and laying them on.
When he has the fire going he pulls off his brogans and stands them on the hearth and he pulls the wadded socks from his toes and lays them out to dry. He sits and dries the rifle and ejects the shells into his lap and dries them and wipes the action and oils it and oils the receiver and the barrel and the magazine and the lever and reloads the rifle and levers a shell into the chamber and lets the hammer down and lays the rifle on the floor beside him.
The cornbread he has baked in the fire is a crude mush of simple meal and water. A flat tasteless crust that he chews woodenly and washes down with water. The two bears and the tiger watch from the wall, their plastic eyes shining in the firelight and their red flannel tongues out.
THE HOUNDS CROSSED THE snow on the slope of the ridge in a thin dark line. Far below them the boar they trailed was tilting along with his curious stifflegged lope, highbacked and very black against the winter’s landscape. The hounds’ voices in that vast and pale blue void echoed like the cries of demon yodelers.
The boar did not want to cross the river. When he did so it was too late. He came all sleek and steaming out of the willows on the near side and started across the plain. Behind him the dogs were falling down the mountainside hysterically, the snow exploding about them. When they struck the water they smoked like hot stones and when they came out of the brush and onto the plain they came in clouds of pale vapor.