Boys Life

that Wade was skimming the gambling den’s money, and Donny suspected that Wade had put some arsenic in his bottle of moonshine and that’s why he thought he’d seen a ghost. As the Blaylock brothers began spilling their guts, Biggun decided to take the high road. He fell on his knees at the arraignment and professed, sobbing to shame Shakespeare, that he was Born Again and had been duped into following the paths of Satan by his own misguided sons. They must take after their mothers, he said. He vowed to devote his life to being a minister, if, by the grace of the Lord above, the judge would offer him the cup of mercy.
    He was told he would have a very long time in which to practice his preaching, and a nice secure place to catch up on his Bible reading.
    When they dragged him out of court, kicking and screaming, he damned everybody in sight, even the stenographer. They said he threw so many curses that if those bad words had been bricks, they’d have made a three-bedroom house with a two-car garage. The brothers went before judges as well, to similar results. I didn’t have any sympathy for them. If I knew the Blaylocks, they’d soon be running the prison store and making a killing off every cigarette and square of toilet paper.
    One thing, though, the Blaylocks refused to divulge: what was in the wooden box they’d sold to Gerald Hargison and Dick Moultry. It couldn’t be proven that any box even existed. But I knew better.
    The Amorys left town. Mr. Marchette gave up being fire chief and stepped into the role of sheriff. I understand Sheriff Marchette told Mr. Owen Cathcoate anytime he wanted to wear a deputy’s badge it would be fine with him. But Mr. Cathcoate informed the sheriff that the Candystick Kid had gone to roam the frontiers of the Wild West, where he belonged, and from here on out he was just plain old Owen.
    Mom was in a zombie state for a while, as visions of what might have been careened through her mind, but she came out of it. I believe that deep in her heart she might have wanted Dad to stay safe at home but she respected him more for making up his own mind about what was right. When my lie became obvious, Dad debated not letting me go to the Brandywine Carnival when it came to town but he wound up making me wash and dry the dinner dishes for a week straight. I didn’t argue. I had to pay the piper somehow.
    Then the posters began appearing around town. BRANDYWINE CARNIVAL IS ON ITS WAY! Johnny was looking forward to seeing the Indian ponies and trick riders. Ben was excited about the midway, and the rides lit up with pulsing multicolored bulbs. I looked forward to the haunted house, which you rode through on rickety railcars while unseen things brushed your face and howled at you in the dark. Davy Ray’s excitement concerned the freak show. I never saw anybody who got so worked up about freaks as he did. They gave me the creeps and I could hardly look at them, but Davy Ray was a true connoisseur of freakdom. If it had three arms, a pinhead, crocodile-scaled skin, or sweated blood, he went into giddy fits of delight.
    So it happened that on Thursday night the park area near the baseball field where we’d had our Fourth of July barbecue was empty when the last Zephyr light went off. On Friday morning, kids on their way to school witnessed the transformation a few hours could bring. The Brandywine Carnival appeared like an island in a sea of sawdust. Trucks were chugging around, men were hoisting up tents, the frameworks of rides were being pieced together like dinosaur bones, and the booths were going up where food would be sold and Kewpie dolls not worth a quarter would be won for two dollars’ worth of horseshoes.
    Before school, my buddies and I took a spin around the park on our bikes. Other kids were doing the same thing, circling like moths in expectation of a light bulb. “There’s the haunted house!” I said, pointing toward the bat wings of a gothic mansion being hinged together. Ben said, “Gonna be a Ferris wheel this year, looks like!” Johnny’s gaze was on a trailer with horses and Indians painted on its side. Davy Ray hollered, “Looka there! Hoo boy!” We saw what he was so excited about: a big, garishly painted canvas with a wrinkled face at its center and in the center of the wrinkled face a single horrible eyeball. FREAKS OF NATURE! the words on the canvas said. IT COULD’VE BEEN YOU!
    In truth, it was not a large carnival. It was short of medium-sized,