Boys Life

too. Its tents were patched, its trailers rust-streaked, its trucks and workers equally tired. It was the end of the carnival season for them, and our area was almost its last stop. But we never thought that we were getting the leftover crop of caramel apples, that the Indian ponies and trick riders went through their routines with an eye on the clock, that the rides clattered in need of oiling and the barkers were surly not to add flavor but because they were damned bushed. We just saw a carnival out there, aglow and beckoning. That’s what we saw.
    “Looks like a good one this year!” Ben said as we started to turn back for school.
    “Yeah, it sure-”
    And then a horn blasted behind me and Rocket zoomed out of the way as a Mack truck passed us. It turned onto the sawdust, its heavy tires crunching down. The truck was a hodgepodge of different-colored parts, and it was hauling a wide trailer with no windows. We could hear the suspension groan. On the trailer’s sides, an amateurish hand had painted crude green jungle fronds and foliage. Across the jungle scene was scrawled, in thick red letters that had been allowed to drip like rivulets of blood: FROM THE LOST WORLD.
    It rumbled away, toward the maze of other trucks and trailers. But in its wake I caught a smell. Not just exhaust, though of that there was plenty. Something else. Something… lizardy.
    “Whew!” Davy Ray wrinkled his nose. “Ben let one!”
    “I did not!”
    “Silent but deadly!” Davy Ray whooped.
    “You did it yourself, then! Not me!”
    “I smell it,” Johnny said calmly. Davy Ray and Ben shut up. We had learned to listen when Johnny spoke. “Came from that trailer,” he said.
    We watched the Mack truck and trailer turn between two tents and go out of sight. I looked at the ground, and saw the tires had smushed right through the sawdust and left brown grooves in the earth. “Wonder what’s in it?” Davy Ray asked on the scent of a freak. I told him I didn’t know, but whatever it was, it was mighty heavy.
    On the ride to school, we formulated our plans. Parents permitting, we would meet at my house at six-thirty and go to the carnival together like the Four Musketeers. Does that suit everybody? I asked.
    “Can’t,” Ben answered, pedaling beside me. He spoke the word like a grim bell tolling.
    “Why not? We always go at six-thirty! That’s when all the rides are goin’!”
    “Can’t,” Ben repeated.
    “Hey, you got a parrot stuck in your throat?” Davy Ray asked. “What’s wrong with you?”
    Ben sighed, blowing a wisp of steam in the morning’s sunny chill. He had on a woolen cap, his round cheeks flushed with crimson. “Just… can’t. Not until seven o’clock.”
    “We always go at six-thirty!” Davy Ray insisted. “It’s… it’s…” He looked at me for help.
    “Tradition,” I said.
    “Yeah! That’s what it is!”
    “I think there’s somethin’ Ben doesn’t want to tell us,” Johnny said, swerving his bike up on the other side of Davy Ray. “Spit it out, Ben.”
    “It’s just… I can’t…” He frowned, and with another plume of steam decided to give up the game. “At six o’clock I’ve got a piana lesson.”
    “What?” Davy Ray had fairly yelled it. Rocket wobbled. Johnny looked as if he’d taken a Cassius Clay roundhouse punch to the noggin.
    “A piana lesson,” Ben repeated. The way he said that word, I could see legions of simpering pansies behind legions of upright pianos while their adoring mothers smiled and patted their beanies. “Miss Blue Glass has started teachin’ piana. Mom’s signed me up, and my first lesson’s at six o’clock.”
    We were horrified. “Why, Ben?” I asked. “Why’d she do it?”
    “She wants me to learn Christmas songs. Can you believe it? Christmas songs!”
    “Man!” Davy Ray shook his head in commiseration. “Too bad Miss Blue Glass can’t teach you guitar!” Git-tar, he pronounced it. “Now, that’d be cool! But piana… yech!”
    “Don’t I know it,” Ben muttered.
    “Well, there’s a way around this,” Johnny said as we neared the school. “Why don’t we just meet Ben at the Glasses’ house? We can ride on to the carnival at seven instead of six-thirty.”
    “Yeah!” Ben perked up. “That way it won’t be so awful!”
    It was settled, then, pending parental okay. But every year we all got together and went to the carnival on Friday night from six-thirty until ten, and our parents had always said yes. It was