Joyland (17 page)

“At least . . . I know . . . there’s
something,
” he said. “I saw . . . for myself . . . that summer. In the Hasty Hut.” I didn’t bother to correct him; I knew what he meant. “Do you . . . remember?”

“I remember,” I said.

“But I don’t know . . . the
something
. . . if it’s good . . . or bad.” His dying voice filled with horror. “The way she . . . Dev,
the way she held out her hands . . .”

Yes.

The way she held out her hands.

The next time I had a full day off, it was nearly the middle of August, and the tide of conies was ebbing. I no longer had to jink and juke my way up Joyland Avenue to the Carolina Spin . . . and to Madame Fortuna’s shy, which stood in its revolving shadow.

Lane and Fortuna—she was all Fortuna today, in full gypsy kit—were talking together by the Spin’s control station. Lane saw me and tipped his derby widdershins, which was his way of acknowledging me.

“Look what the cat drug in,” he said. “How ya be, Jonesy?”

“Fine,” I said, although this wasn’t strictly true. The sleepless nights had come back now that I was only wearing the fur four or five times a day. I lay in my bed waiting for the small hours to get bigger, window open so I could hear the incoming surf, thinking about Wendy and her new boyfriend. Also thinking about the girl Tom had seen standing beside the tracks in Horror House, in the fake brick tunnel between the Dungeon and the Chamber of Torture.

I turned to Fortuna. “Can I talk to you?”

She didn’t ask why, just led me to her shy, swept aside the purple curtain that hung in the doorway, and ushered me in. There was a round table covered with a rose-pink cloth. On it was Fortuna’s crystal, now draped. Two simple folding chairs were positioned so that seer and supplicant faced each other over the crystal (which, I happened to know, was underlit by a small bulb Madame Fortuna could operate with her foot). On the back wall was a giant silk-screened hand, fingers spread and palm out. On it, neatly labeled, were the Seven: lifeline, heartline, headline, loveline (also known as the Girdle of Venus), sunline, fateline, healthline.

Madame Fortuna gathered her skirts and seated herself. She motioned for me to do the same. She did not undrape her crystal, nor did she invite me to cross her palm with silver so that I might know the future.

“Ask what you came to ask,” she said.

“I want to know if the little girl was just an informed guess or if you really knew something. Saw something.”

She looked at me, long and steadily. In Madame Fortuna’s place of business, there was a faint smell of incense instead of popcorn and fried dough. The walls were flimsy, but the music, the chatter of the conies, and the rumble of the rides all seemed very far away. I wanted to look down, but managed not to.

“Actually, you want to know if I’m a fraud. Isn’t that so?”

“I . . . ma’am, I honestly don’t know
what
I want.”

At that she smiled. It was a good one—as if I had passed some sort of test. “You’re a sweet boy, Jonesy, but like so many sweet boys, you’re a punk liar.”

I started to reply; she hushed me with a wave of her ring-heavy right hand. She reached beneath her table and brought out her cashbox. Madame Fortuna’s readings were free—all part of your admission fee, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls—but tips were encouraged. And legal under North Carolina law. When she opened the box, I saw a sheaf of crumpled bills, mostly ones, something that looked suspiciously like a punch-board (
not
legal under North Carolina law), and a single small envelope. Printed on the front was my name. She held it out. I hesitated, then took it.

“You didn’t come to Joyland today just to ask me that,” she said.

“Well . . .”

She waved me off again. “You know
exactly
what you want. In the short term, at least. And since the short term is all any of us have, who is Fortuna—or Rozzie Gold, for that matter—to argue with you? Go now. Do what you came here to do. When it’s done, open that and read what I’ve written.” She smiled. “No charge to employees. Especially not good kids like you.”

“I don’t—”

She rose in a swirl of skirts and a rattle of jewelry. “Go, Jonesy. We’re finished here.”

I left her tight little booth in a daze. Music from two dozen shys and rides seemed to hit me like conflicting winds, and the sun was a hammer. I went directly to the administration building (actually a doublewide trailer), gave a courtesy knock, went in, and said hello to Brenda Rafferty, who was going back and forth between an open account book and her faithful adding machine.

“Hello, Devin,” she said. “Are you taking care of your Hollywood Girl?”

“Yes, ma’am, we all watch out for her.”

“Dana Elkhart, isn’t it?”

“Erin Cook, ma’am.”

“Erin, of course. Team Beagle. The redhead. What can I do for you?”

“I wonder if I could speak to Mr. Easterbrook.”

“He’s resting, and I hate to disturb him. He had an awful lot of phone calls to make earlier, and we still have to go over some numbers, much as I hate to bother him with them. He tires very easily these days.”

“I wouldn’t be long.”

She sighed. “I suppose I could see if he’s awake. Can you tell me what it’s about?”

“A favor,” I said. “He’ll understand.”

He did, and only asked me two questions. The first was if I was sure. I said I was. The second . . .

“Have you told your parents yet, Jonesy?”

“It’s just me and my dad, Mr. Easterbrook, and I’ll do that tonight.”

“Very well, then. Put Brenda in the picture before you leave. She’ll have all the necessary paperwork, and you can fill it out . . .” Before he could finish, his mouth opened and he displayed his horsey teeth in a vast, gaping yawn. “Excuse me, son. It’s been a tiring day. A tiring
summer.”

“Thank you, Mr. Easterbrook.”

He waved his hand. “Very welcome. I’m sure you’ll be a great addition, but if you do this without your father’s consent, I shall be disappointed in you. Close the door on your way out, please.”

I tried not to see Brenda’s frown as she searched her file cabinets and hunted out the various forms Joyland, Inc. required for full-time employment. It didn’t matter, because I felt her disapproval anyway. I folded the paperwork, stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans, and left.

Beyond the line of donnikers at the far end of the backyard was a little grove of blackgum trees. I went in there, sat down with my back against one, and opened the envelope Madame Fortuna had given me. The note was brief and to the point.

You’re going to Mr. Easterbrook to ask if you can stay on at the park after Labor Day. You know he will not refuse your request.

She was right, I wanted to know if she was a fraud. Here was her answer. And yes, I had made up my mind about what came next in the life of Devin Jones. She had been right about that, too.

But there was one more line.

You saved the little girl, but dear boy! You can’t save everyone.

After I told my dad I wasn’t going back to UNH—that I needed a year off from college and planned to spend it at Joyland—there was a long silence at the southern Maine end of the line. I thought he might yell at me, but he didn’t. He only sounded tired. “It’s that girl, isn’t it?”

I’d told him almost two months earlier that Wendy and I were “taking some time off,” but Dad saw right through that. Since then, he hadn’t spoken her name a single time in our weekly phone conversations. Now she was just
that girl.
After the first couple of times he said it I tried a joke, asking if he thought I’d been going out with Mario Thomas. He wasn’t amused. I didn’t try again.

“Wendy’s part of it,” I admitted, “but not all of it. I just need some time off. A breather. And I’ve gotten to like it here.”

He sighed. “Maybe you do need a break. At least you’ll be working instead of hitchhiking around Europe, like Dewey Michaud’s girl. Fourteen months in youth hostels! Fourteen and counting! Ye gods! She’s apt to come back with ringworm and a bun in the oven.”

“Well,” I said, “I think I can avoid both of those. If I’m careful.”

“Just make sure you avoid the hurricanes. It’s supposed to be a bad season for them.”

“Are you really all right with this, Dad?”

“Why? Did you want me to argue? Try to talk you out of it? If that’s what you want, I’m willing to give it a shot, but I know what your mother would say—if he’s old enough to buy a legal drink, he’s old enough to start making decisions about his life.”

I smiled. “Yeah. That sounds like her.”

“As for me, I guess I don’t want you going back to college if you’re going to spend all your time mooning over that girl and letting your grades go to hell. If painting rides and fixing up concessions will help get her out of your system, probably that’s a good thing. But what about your scholarship and loan package, if you want to go back in the fall of ’74?”

“It won’t be a problem. I’ve got a 3.2 cume, which is pretty persuasive.”

“That girl,” he said in tones of infinite disgust, and then we moved on to other topics.

I was still sad and depressed about how things had ended with Wendy, he was right about that, but I had begun the difficult trip (
the journey,
as they say in the self-help groups these days) from denial to acceptance. Anything like true serenity was still over the horizon, but I no longer believed—as I had in the long, painful days and nights of June—that serenity was out of the question.