Date Night at the Fair

It’s perfect.  Two towns away, next county even, and we go to the harvest fair.   Just us, to walk around.  We play games and Alan knocks the bottle over with his second softball and gets me the dog. I like dogs, but can’t keep a real one at home. It takes me thirteen darts to pop a balloon for his prize.

We eat candy apples, kicking straw, then walk to the ferris wheel, wandering together, laughing, talking.  No way I’m going on that wheel.  We can’t, two men.  I hate heights.  It spins around, rainbow neon lights the spokes.  Alan pulls the belt loop at the small of my back, yanking me off balance, laughing through his Hollywood sunglasses and smoke.  He buys cheap cigars, he doesn’t care, and I don’t either because whatever kind, his mouth still taste like ashes.

So he sneaks one big jerk and I step right back into some kid’s dropped vanilla cone.  My good shoes too, for church with ma.  He laughs, steadies me and who’s walking right up but Jack Mulvaney and his wife. She’s towing kids, boy and a girl, one to each hand as Jack wobbles up with his paper cup of beer.  He gabs with Alan about a new defense contract at the plant. Frank Mulvaney’s a foreman.  My foreman.  An engineer, Alan knows more about the job.  I work the line.  Then Jack says it, asks what us boys are doing at the fair.  He’s not slurring, yet.  I hope his wife drives.

Boys?  What’s that mean?  Behind dark glasses Alan laughs, puffing, smiling at the kids.  He asks their names, but doesn’t answer Jack’s question.  The kids don’t meet my eye when I aim a frozen smile their way.  I don’t hear the names because then Alan tells Jack about our dates, the “girls”, circling above.  He points up, even. It spins haltingly now, stopping every half minute to empty a carriage and load more fools. Alan invents Elaine and Lottie.  He thinks fast.  Lies like my father did.

Jack’s kids tug at the wife’s hands, each wanting some different shiny, sugary thing.  Or all of them.  She whispers to Jack.  Alan explains, again–we’re waiting for our girls, nodding at the bright wheel.  More talk as Jack and his family muster and start to move in zig-zag pattern with the children’s different desires.  Or maybe it’s Jack’s beer making their path so raggedy.  The wheel stops again.  Riders emerge, others enter.

Jack’s still glancing back, talking too loud.  His wife dithers with the kids. The next-to-last car empties.  The wheel spins counter clock-wise.  Last carriage.  The kids look back too, wide-eyed, maybe at their father’s hoarse jokes.  Jack calls his brother a moron.  The wheel spins like for roulette.  No ball will drop and no girls are coming out.  At least not Lottie and Elaine.  Alan’s a gambler.  Only those distracted kids and their drunken dad decide whether we lose it all, or walk away even tonight.