Boys Life

in your fuckin’ bed with you.”
    Davy Ray was not suckered by this spiel. “It’s not right,” he said, “to hate somethin’ just for bein’ alive.”
    “What do you know?” Mr. Attitude sneered. “You don’t know shit about nothin’, kid! You live twenty more years and see what I seen of this stinkin’ world and then you come tell me what to do and what not to do!”
    Then Davy Ray did a strange thing. He threw the mashed-up Zero candy bar into the mud right under the triceratops’s beaky snout. It made a little plop as it went into the liquid. The triceratops just sat there, its eyes heavy-lidded.
    “Hey! Don’t you be throwin’ nothin’ in that pen, boy! Both of you just git!”
    I was on my way out.
    I heard a great gobbling sound and looked around to see the triceratops opening its mouth and scooping up the Zero and the surrounding mud like a living bulldozer. The beast chewed a few times and then he tilted his head back to let all the muck slide down his throat.
    “Go on!” Mr. Attitude told us. “I’m shuttin’ down for the-”
    The trailer trembled. The triceratops was standing up, dripping like an ancient swamp oak. I swear his rust-colored tongue, which was as big as a dinner plate, emerged to lick his gray, mud-caked mouth. His head with its three hacked-off horn stumps tilted toward Davy Ray, and he began lumbering forward.
    It was like watching a tank build up to speed. And then he lowered his head to collide with the iron bars, and the thick plate of bone made a noise like the popping together of two giants’ football helmets. The triceratops stepped back three paces and with a snorting grunt he crashed his head against the iron bars again.
    “Hey! Hey!” Mr. Attitude was yelling.
    The triceratops shoved forward, his feet or paws or whatever they were sliding in the mud. His strength was awesome; muscles rippled beneath the elephantine flesh, and flies fled the quake. The iron bars groaned and began to bend outward, bolts making a squealing noise as they came loose.
    “Hey, quit it! Quit!” Mr. Attitude started beating the triceratops again, and droplets of blood flew from the nails. The beast paid no attention, but kept bending the bars in his effort, I realized, to get to Davy Ray. “You sonofabitch! You stupid old fucker!” the man hollered as the baseball bat rose and fell. He looked at us, his eyes wild. “Get out! You’ve drivin’ him crazy!”
    I grabbed Davy Ray’s arm and pulled at him. He came with me, and we heard more bolts breaking loose behind us. The trailer started rocking like a demonic cradle; the triceratops, it seemed to me, was throwing a fit. We got down the steps, and saw Johnny standing upwind while Ben-a perfect picture of misery-was sitting on an upturned soft-drink case with his face buried in his hands.
    “He was tryin’ to get out,” Davy Ray said as we watched the trailer shake, rattle, and roll. “Did you see that?”
    “Yeah, I did. He went crazy.”
    “Bet he never had a candy bar before,” he said. “Not in his whole life. He likes Zeros as much as I do, huh? Boy, I’ve got a whole boxful at home he’d like to get into, I’ll bet!”
    I wasn’t sure the taste of a candy bar had done it, but I said, “I think you’re right.”
    The trailer’s rocking subsided. In a few minutes Mr. Attitude came out. His clothes and face were splattered with gobbets of mud and dookey. Both Davy Ray and I started shaking trying to hold in our belly laughs. Mr. Attitude drew the curtain, pulled a door shut, and locked it with a chain and padlock. Then he looked at us and exploded. “Get outta here, I said! Go on, before I-” He came at us, waving the nail-studded baseball bat, and we let our laughter go and ran.
    The carnival was closing for the night, the midway’s crowd dwindling, the rides shutting down and the freak-show barkers hanging up their superlatives. The lights began to go off, one by one.
    We walked to where we’d left our bikes. The air had gotten frosty. Winter was on the march.
    Ben, his load somewhat lightened, had returned to the land of the living and was chattering happily. Johnny didn’t say much, but he did mention how neat the motorcycle riders were. I said I could build a haunted house that would scare the pickles out of people, if I had a mind to. Davy Ray, however, said nothing.
    Until we got to our bikes. Then Davy Ray said, “I wouldn’t like to live that way.”
    “What way?” Ben asked.
    “In that