Joyland

hour, kiddies, then you’ll learn while you earn. Start with the rides.” He pointed to us one by one, naming rides. I got the Carolina Spin, which pleased me. “Got time for a question or two, but no more’n that. Anybody got one or are you good to go?”
    I raised my hand. He nodded at me and asked my name.
    “Devin Jones, sir.”
    “Call me sir again and you’re fired, lad.”
    “Devin Jones, Pops.” I certainly wasn’t going to call him come here you old sonofoabitch, at least not yet. Maybe when we knew each other better.
    “There you go,” he said, nodding. “What’s on your mind, Jonesy? Besides that foine head of red hair?”
    “What’s carny-from-carny mean?”
    “Means you’re like old man Easterbrook. His father worked the carny circuit back in the Dust Bowl days, and his grandfather worked it back when they had a fake Indian show featuring Big Chief Yowlatcha. ”
    “You got to be kidding !” Tom exclaimed, almost exultantly.
    Pops gave him a cool stare that settled Tom down—a thing not always easy to do. “Son, do you know what history is?”
    “Uh . . . stuff that happened in the past?”
    “Nope,” he said, tying on his canvas change-belt. “History is the collective and ancestral shit of the human race, a great big and ever-growin pile of crap. Right now we’re standin at the top of it, but pretty soon we’ll be buried under the doodoo of generations yet to come. That’s why your folks’ clothes look so funny in old photographs, to name but a single example. And, as someone who’s destined to be buried beneath the shit of your children and grandchildren, I think you should be just a leetle more forgiving.”
    Tom opened his mouth, probably to make a smart comeback, then wisely closed it again.
    George Preston, another member of Team Beagle, spoke up. “Are you carny-from-carny?”
    “Nope. My daddy was a cattle rancher in Oregon; now my brothers run the spread. I’m the black sheep of the family, and damn proud of it. Okay, if there’s nothing else, it’s time to quit the foolishness and get down to business.”
    “Can I ask one thing more?” Erin asked.
    “Only because you’re purty.”
    “What does ‘wearing the fur’ mean?”
    Pops Allen smiled. He placed his hands on the mooch-counter of his shy. “Tell me, little lady, do you have an idea what it might mean?”
    “Well . . . yes.”
    The smile widened into a grin that showed every yellowing fang in our new team leader’s mouth. “Then you’re probably right.”

    What did I do at Joyland that summer? Everything. Sold tickets. Pushed a popcorn wagon. Sold funnel cakes, cotton candy, and a zillion hot dogs (which we called Hound Dogs—you probably knew that). It was a Hound Dog that got my picture in the paper, as a matter of fact, although I wasn’t the guy who sold that unlucky pup; George Preston did. I worked as a lifeguard, both on the beach and at Happy Lake, the indoor pool where the Splash & Crash water slide ended. I line-danced in the Wiggle-Waggle Village with the other members of Team Beagle to “Bird Dance Beat,” “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight,” “Rippy-Rappy, Zippy-Zappy,” and a dozen other nonsense songs. I also did time—most of it happy—as an unlicensed child-minder. In the Wiggle-Waggle, the approved rallying cry when faced with a bawling kiddie was “Let’s turn that frown upside-down!” and I not only liked it, I got good at it. It was in the Wiggle-Waggle that I decided having kids at some point in the future was an actual Good Idea rather than a Wendy-flavored daydream.
    I—and all the other Happy Helpers—learned to race from one side of Joyland to the other in nothing flat, using either the alleys behind the shys, joints, rides, and concessions or one of three service-tunnels known as Joyland Under, Hound Dog Under, and the Boulevard. I hauled trash by the ton, usually driving it in an electric cart down the Boulevard, a shadowy and sinister thoroughfare lit by ancient fluorescent bar-lights that stuttered and buzzed. I even worked a few times as a roadie, hauling amps and monitors when one of the acts showed up late and unsupported.
    I learned to talk the Talk. Some of it—like bally for a free show, or gone larry for a ride that had broken down—was pure carny, and as old as the hills. Other terms—like points for purty girls and fumps for the chronic complainers—were strictly Joyland lingo. I suppose other parks have