Shadow in Serenity (22 page)

“And I talk about her,” Ruth said, sniffing. “A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about you two.”

“Maybe she’ll listen to you, Ruth,” Lila said. “I was just trying to talk Carny into letting Jason go around with me for a little while, but she’s convinced I’m going to turn him into a delinquent.”

“We’re going on the double Ferris wheel,” Carny said, stroking Jason’s hair. “Aren’t we, Jase?”

“Now, Mom? Can we go now?”

“Sure can.” She leaned over and hugged Ruth again. “I’ll be back in a little while, and we can catch up, okay?”

“You know where I’ll be,” Ruth told her. “You hold on to his hand, now. The crowd has gotten rougher than it used to be, and it’s easy to get lost around here.”

“Good grief,” Lila said, waving them off. “It’s the same as it’s always been, and Carny grew up just fine. Just look at her now.” She leaned over and kissed Jason’s cheek. “Make her stop by the Ring Toss to see Grandpa Dooley, Jason. He’s filling in for the agent there while he takes lunch. He can’t wait to see you.”

Jason looked ready to erupt. “Now, Mom? Can we go now?”

“All right,” Carny said, laughing. Waving back at Ruth and her mother, she let Jason pull her off toward the midway.

Jason’s eyes danced with excitement as they got off the Ferris wheel, and he looked up at her as he cried, “Can we go again, Mom? Please?”

“Later, Jason. There are a lot of other rides.” “You were so lucky when you were little! Did you really get to ride any time you wanted?”

“Pretty much. But it didn’t seem so lucky at the time.” “Why? How could you ever want anything else?” As they passed a trailer selling corn dogs, she caught the scent of rotting garbage. The noise of battling songs at rides across from each other and the voices of people screaming were beginning to give her a headache.

She took Jason’s hand as they strolled up the midway. “I wanted the things you have, Jase. A real house with a backyard, friends I could play with, school …”

“But those things are boring.”

“Only to those who have them.” She glanced up the row of game booths and saw a little girl with stringy blonde hair and a dirty face sitting on the steps leading to the booth door. She didn’t know the agent — he was probably one of the newer ones — but she recognized the waif-like look on the child’s face and knew without a doubt that she was a carny’s kid. “See that little girl over there, Jase?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s probably traveling with the carnival.”

“How do you know?”

“The way she’s sitting on the steps, like she belongs there. The way her eyes are scanning the crowd. You know what she’s thinking, Jason?”

“What?”

“She’s thinking about the children she sees. The ones who are holding their parents’ hands, like you. The ones who are excited to be here, the ones who see it as a treat. She’s wondering what kind of houses they live in, and if they take ballet, and if they play softball. She’s wondering if their parents take them to church or how many kids they have in their classes at school. She’s wondering if they have birthday parties.”

He looked up at her with saucer eyes. “Didn’t you ever have birthday parties, Mom?”

“Sometimes some of the carnies would get together and get me a cake and sing “Happy Birthday.” But I always had dreams of having lots of little girls over, all dressed in fancy dresses …” She felt that longing that she thought she’d discarded long ago. “Only I never knew many little girls.”

“But you knew the sword-swallower, and the magician, and the fire guy.”

“Yeah, I did,” she said, chuckling softly. “I sure did.”

“Hey, kid, did your mama put a bowl on your head to cut your hair or did you cut it yourself?”

Jason swung around and saw Tojo the Clown sitting in his dunking booth, targeting him. “Is he talking to me, Mom?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said. “His gaff is to insult people until they get so mad they want to pay money to dunk him.”

“Can I?”

“Hey, kid, you can’t dunk me. You’d have to let go of Mommy’s hand first.”

Jason dropped her hand as if it had burned him. “I bet I can.”

Carny recognized the agent taking the money and passing out baseballs to be thrown at the plate that would dunk Tojo. “Jello? Is that you?”

The old man chuckled. “Carny?” Laughing, he stretched his arms wide, and she hugged him. “Your folks said you’d be coming today. How are you, kid?”

“Great. Jello, this is my son, Jason.”

“So are you gonna stand there scratching yourself, kid, or are you gonna make a fool out of yourself with that baseball?” the clown shouted.

Jason eyed the dunking booth. “Mom, I’ve gotta dunk him.”

Carny laughed. “You sure do. Look out, Tojo,” she shouted to the clown. “He’s pretty good.”

“Is that you, Carny?” the clown shouted back. “What swamp did they drag you out of?”

Undaunted by the standard insults she’d heard all her life, she paid Jello for the privilege of drowning the clown, got her three balls, and gave them to Jason. Knowing they were weighted and rarely hit the plate, she said, “Aim high, Jase. These aren’t regular balls.”

Jason threw the ball with all his might and missed.

“You haven’t lost your spark, have you, Carny? Letting your kid take your shots for you?”

“Try again, Jason,” she said. “Aim higher this time.”

“Hey, Carny, we could use you back in the carnival. They need another dancing girl.”

Jason shot and missed again. “You do this one, Mom. Please, we’ve gotta dunk him.”

“Carny, you still haven’t caught a husband you can keep?”

She set her chin. “Better hold your breath, Tojo.” Taking the ball, she mentally eyed the plate and tried to concentrate.

“You’re gonna need a dozen more to get me down, Carny.”

“Just one will be fine, Tojo!” she shouted.

With one rip of her arm, she threw the ball, hit the plate, and sent the clown into the water beneath him. Jason jumped up and down, whooping. “You did it, Mom! You did it!”

“Somebody had to.” Dusting off her hands, she took Jason’s hand again and pulled him away. “See you later, Jello.”

“Later, Carny,” the old man said, chuckling.

“You can’t do it twice,” Tojo sputtered, climbing back onto his swing. “I’ll bet you can’t come back here and do it again.”

“I can be conned,” Carny said under her breath, “but it takes a lot more than some wet clown shouting insults at me.”

Jason looked up at her, confused.

She sighed. It took someone as slick as Logan Brisco, someone who deserved an Oscar for his work, someone who didn’t stop until he’d conned everybody in his way. Someone a world smarter than Tojo the Clown, though he didn’t have any more scruples.

They came closer to the booth where her father was substituting, and she heard his laughter over the crowd. The sound made her chest tighten. It wasn’t his usual laugh — it was his con laugh. The one that drew people in, set them up to be taken.

“There’s your grandfather,” she said.

Jason tugged her hand. “Let’s go talk to him!”

“Not yet,” she said, holding back. “Wait until that customer leaves.”

They watched while the young man laid down more of his money for a few more rings to toss, missed, and then looked longingly at the stuffed animal he’d been trying to win for his date. “I’m out of money,” he said. “You wouldn’t take a check, would you?”

Her father seemed to consider that for a moment. “Well, we don’t normally, but … well, okay. In this case …”

Anxiously, the man wrote his check, tore it out, then handed it to Carny’s father. “Twenty-five dollars’ worth, huh? You’re pretty serious about this, aren’t you?”

He gave the mark enough rings to win every animal hanging from the ceiling — if only the game wasn’t rigged. He tossed all of them, but hit only one on a winning peg.

The young man’s date looked crestfallen, and the athletic boy seemed humiliated as they started to walk away. “Look,” Carny’s father said, holding up a hand to stop them. “Everybody has a bad day now and then.” Taking down a stuffed dog, he tossed it into the man’s hands. “And as for the check — don’t worry about it.” He tore it up and let the pieces fall to the floor at his feet.

“Thanks, sir,” the young man said. “I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, well, you were probably going to stop payment on it tomorrow, anyway, weren’t you?”

With a laugh that said he’d been caught, the man
shrugged, handed the dog to his girlfriend, and strolled awsay.

As Carny and Jason stepped up to the booth, she saw her father pull the real check out of his sleeve and chuckle as he put it in the cash box. The one he’d torn up had been fake.

“Hi, Pop,” she said.

He looked up. “Carny! I
thought
you were probably here by now!” He ran out the door of the booth and embraced her. “Have you grown taller?”

“No, Pop, I don’t think so.”

“Well, you sure haven’t put on any weight. Where’s the boy?”

“Right here,” she said.

“No!” Her father looked down at Jason and shook his head. “That can’t be him. This boy’s at least ten years old. My grandson couldn’t be more than four.”

Jason frowned, unsure whether to be flattered or insulted. “I’m eight. My birthday was yesterday.”

“Eight! That can’t be.”

Carny tried not to laugh. “It is, Pop.”

“Well, I think maybe we’d better take him over to the age booth and let Morris see if he can guess his age. He’s bound to win something. He’s big enough to play linebacker for Notre Dame!”

Slowly, Jason began to smile. “I am?”

“Well, practically. Within another year or two, you’ll be a number-one draft choice.” Taking Jason’s hand, he said, “Come with me. I’ll show you. If Morris guesses your age, I’ll swallow that sword of Scratch’s.”

Smiling reluctantly, Carny followed them and watched Jason win another stuffed animal for fooling Morris about his age.

Carny tried not to leave Jason’s side that day, not because she wanted to ride everything in sight, but because she didn’t want to give her parents the opportunity to be alone with him. By the time night had fallen and they’d ridden the roller coaster, Jason was feeling a little woozy, and his feet dragged as he walked.

“Where are we gonna sleep tonight, Mom?”

“With Grandma and Grandpa. It’ll be a tight fit, but —”

“In the trailer? That’ll be cool.” But his voice didn’t have its usual fervor. No wonder — he was exhausted, and Carny had to admit that she was as well.

Still, the thoughts that had rustled beneath the surface all day kept flitting through her mind. She hadn’t come here to ride the rides and rekindle old memories. She had come home to nurse her wounds. To wrestle with the fact that she, who’d thought she was immune, had been conned.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been warned. Logan had laid his bet at the very beginning. Winner take all. And he had won.

Jason was asleep within five minutes of lying down, and Carny found herself sitting at the table that had served as her dining table, her desk, her dollhouse, her ironing board, and a million other things as she was growing up. Her father sipped a beer he’d gotten before the carnival had closed down, while her mother nursed the customary hot toddy she had every night before bed.

“So tell us how plans for the park are shaping up,” her father said, not bothering to keep his voice low for Jason’s sake.

“I told you, Pop. It’s not going to happen.”

“But you didn’t say why.”

She leaned back in her chair and wished she had never brought up the subject of Logan with her parents. It had never been easy for her to discuss feelings with them. Her
father was a stick-to-the-facts kind of guy. His main interest was the bottom line. And the bottom line usually had to do with how much money it could make him.

“He was a grifter, Pop. It was all a scam.”

“Hmm.” Her father tossed back the last of his beer and set the glass in the same wet ring he’d taken it from. “Too bad. It was a terrific idea. So where’d he go?”

“If I knew that, I’d go get everybody’s money back.”

“Do you think he’s trying it in another town?” her mother asked.

A sick feeling came over her. “I hope not. But I guess he probably is. Unless he’s just lying low for a while, waiting until everything blows over. He’s smart. He probably left the country. He made enough to live on for a while.”

“He must be good. I wish you’d introduced him to us.”

Something about her father’s attitude brought back all her old bitterness about their lifestyle. “Why, Pop? So you could get in on the action? Trust me. He would have conned you too.”

“I doubt it,” Dooley said, chuckling. “You can’t con a man who doesn’t want to be conned.”

Carny leaned forward on the table, facing off with her father. “That’s a lie and you know it.”

“Carny!” Lila admonished. “Don’t call your daddy a liar!”

Carny chuckled, but there was no mirth in the sound. “All these years, you tried to tell me you weren’t doing anything to people that they didn’t want done. But it isn’t true. You both rip people off all day every day, and you have no qualms about it. It’s not true that your victims
want
to be conned. They don’t deserve it, Mama! People shouldn’t be punished for trusting!”

Her parents just stared at her. Finally, her mother said,
“What’s going on with you, child? You didn’t come here just for a visit, did you?”

She sighed, and wished she could unload all her heartache on them. But they’d never cared about them before. “I just needed to retrace my steps.”

Her mother took her hand, a rare, affectionate gesture that took Carny by surprise. “Honey, this isn’t your home anymore. You’ve grown so far away from it, you don’t even recognize it now. And it seems to me you have nothing but contempt for it.”

Carny sniffed and wiped her eyes. “It’s funny. No matter how far you go, you’ve still got one foot tangled up in your roots, like it or not. And that’s the foot that’ll always trip you up.”

“Did you give him money, Carny?” her father asked. “Is that why this Logan character bothers you so?”

She breathed a laugh and wiped her eyes. “No, Pop. I didn’t give him money. I did know better than that.”