He paused as if expecting us to answer, but nobody made a sound. We only looked at him, a very old man in a black suit and a white shirt open at the collar. When he spoke again, it might have been himself he was talking to, at least to begin with.
“This is a badly broken world, full of wars and cruelty and senseless tragedy. Every human being who inhabits it is served his or her portion of unhappiness and wakeful nights. Those of you who don’t already know that will come to know it. Given such sad but undeniable facts of the human condition, you have been given a priceless gift this summer: you are here to sell fun. In exchange for the hard-earned dollars of your customers, you will parcel out happiness. Children will go home and dream of what they saw here and what they did here. I hope you will remember that when the work is hard, as it sometimes will be, or when people are rude, as they often will be, or when you feel your best efforts have gone unappreciated. This is a different world, one that has its own customs and its own language, which we simply call the Talk. You’ll begin learning it today. As you learn to talk the Talk, you’ll learn to walk the walk. I’m not going to explain that, because it can’t be explained; it can only be learned.”
Tom leaned close to me and whispered, “Talk the talk? Walk the walk? Did we just wander into an AA meeting?”
I hushed him. I had come in expecting to get a list of commandments, mostly thou shalt nots; instead I had gotten a kind of rough poetry, and I was delighted. Bradley Easterbrook surveyed us, then suddenly displayed those horsey teeth in another grin. This one looked big enough to eat the world. Erin Cook was staring at him raptly. So were most of the new summer hires. It was the way students stare at a teacher who offers a new and possibly wonderful way of looking at reality.
“I hope you’ll enjoy your work here, but when you don’t—when, for instance, it’s your turn to wear the fur—try to remember how privileged you are. In a sad and dark world, we are a little island of happiness. Many of you already have plans for your lives—you hope to become doctors, lawyers, I don’t know, politicians—”
“OH-GOD-NO!” someone shouted, to general laughter.
I would have said Easterbrook’s grin could not possibly have widened, but it did. Tom was shaking his head, but he had also given in. “Okay, now I get it,” he whispered in my ear. “This guy is the Jesus of Fun.”
“You’ll have interesting, fruitful lives, my young friends. You’ll do many good things and have many remarkable experiences. But I hope you’ll always look back on your time in Joyland as something special. We don’t sell furniture. We don’t sell cars. We don’t sell land or houses or retirement funds. We have no political agenda. We sell fun. Never forget that. Thank you for your attention. Now go forth.”
He stepped away from the podium, gave another bow, and left the stage in that same painful, high-stepping stride. He was gone almost before the applause began. It was one of the best speeches I ever heard, because it was truth rather than horse-shit. I mean, listen: how many rubes can put sold fun for three months in 1973 on their resumes?
All the team leaders were long-time Joyland employees who worked the carny circuit as showies in the off-season. Most were also on the Park Services Committee, which meant they had to deal with state and federal regulations (both very loose in 1973), and field customer complaints. That summer most of the complaints were about the new no-smoking policy.
Our team leader was a peppy little guy named Gary Allen, a seventy-something who ran the Annie Oakley Shootin’ Gallery. Only none of us called it that after the first day. In the Talk, a shooting gallery was a bang-shy and Gary was the bang-shy agent. The seven of us on Team Beagle met him at his joint, where he was setting out rifles on chains. My first official Joyland job—along with Erin, Tom, and the other four guys on the team—was putting the prizes on the shelves. The ones that got pride of place were the big fuzzy stuffed animals that hardly anyone ever won… although, Gary said, he was careful to give out at least one every evening when the tip was hot.
“I like the marks,” he said. “Yes I do. And the marks I like the best are the points, by which I mean the purty girls, and the points I like the best are the ones who wear the low-cut tops and bend forrad to shoot like this.” He snatched up a .22 modified to shoot BBs (it had also been modified to make a loud and satisfying bang with each trigger-pull) and leaned forward to demonstrate.
“When a guy does that, I notify ’em that they’re foulin the line. The points? Never.”
Ronnie Houston, a bespectacled, anxious-looking young man wearing a Florida State University cap, said: “I don’t see any foul-line, Mr. Allen.”
Gary looked at him, hands fisted on non-existent hips. His jeans seemed to be staying up in defiance of gravity. “Listen up, son, I got three things for you. Ready?”
Ronnie nodded. He looked like he wanted to take notes. He also looked like he wanted to hide behind the rest of us.
“First thing. You can call me Gary or Pops or come here you old sonofabitch, but I ain’t no schoolteacher, so can the mister. Second thing. I never want to see that fucking schoolboy hat on your head again. Third thing. The foul line is wherever I say the foul line is on any given night. I can do that because it’s in my myyyyynd.” He tapped one sunken, vein-gnarled temple to make this point perfectly clear, then waved at the prizes, the targets, and the counter where the conies—the rubes—laid down their mooch. “This is all in my myyyyynd. The shy is mental. Geddit?”
Ronnie didn’t, but he nodded vigorously.
“Now whip off that turdish-looking schoolboy hat. Get you a Joyland visor or a Howie the Happy Hound dogtop. Make it Job One.”
Ronnie whipped off his FSU lid with alacrity, and stuck it in his back pocket. Later that day—I believe within the hour—he replaced it with a Howie cap, known in the Talk as a dogtop. After three days of ribbing and being called greenie, he took his new dogtop out to the parking lot, found a nice greasy spot, and trompled it for a while. When he put it back on, it had the right look. Or almost. Ronnie Houston never got the complete right look; some people were just destined to be greenies forever. I remember Tom sidling up to him one day and suggesting that he needed to piss on it a little to give it that final touch that means so much. When he saw Ronnie was on the verge of taking him seriously, Tom backpedaled and said just soaking it in the Atlantic would achieve the same effect.
Meanwhile, Pops was surveying us.
“Speaking of good-looking ladies, I perceive we have one among us.”
Erin smiled modestly.
“Hollywood Girl, darlin?”
“That’s what Mr. Dean said I’d be doing, yes.”
“Then you want to go see Brenda Rafferty. She’s second-in-command around here, and she’s also the park Girl Mom. She’ll get you fitted up with one of those cute green dresses. Tell her you want yours extra-short.”
“The hell I will, you old lecher,” Erin said, and promptly joined him when he threw back his head and bellowed laughter.
“Pert! Sassy! Do I like it? I do! When you’re not snappin pix of the conies, you come on back to your Pops and I’ll find you something to do… but change out of the dress first. You don’t get grease or sawdust on it. Kapish?”
“Yes,” Erin said. She was all business again.