Joyland

guess at that lively worm (he was from Dartmouth, oh God yes, he’d probably pledged the best frat and drove a Mustang his folks had given him as a high school graduation present). Nor was jealousy the worst of it. The worst was the horrifying realization—that night it was just starting to sink in—that I had been really and truly rejected for the first time in my life. She was through with me, but I couldn’t imagine being through with her.
    Erin also took a beer, and raised the can. “Let’s toast the next one to come along. I don’t know who she’ll be, Dev, only that meeting you will be her lucky day.”
    “Hear-hear!” Tom said, raising his own can. And, because he was Tom, he felt compelled to add “Where-where!” and “There-there!”
    I don’t think either of them realized, then or all the rest of the summer, how fundamentally the ground under my feet had shifted. How lost I felt. I didn’t want them to know. It was more than embarrassing; it seemed shameful. So I made myself smile, raised my own can of suds, and drank.
    At least with them to help me drink the six, I didn’t have to wake up the next morning hungover as well as heartbroke. That was good, because when we got to Joyland that morning, I found out from Pop Allen that I was down to wear the fur that afternoon on Joyland Avenue—three fifteen-minute shifts at three, four, and five. I bitched for form’s sake (everybody was supposed to bitch about wearing the fur) but I was glad. I liked being mobbed by the kids, and for the next few weeks, playing Howie also had a bitter sort of amusement value. As I made my tail-wagging way down Joyland Avenue, followed by crowds of laughing children, I thought it was no wonder Wendy had dumped me. Her new boyfriend went to Dartmouth and played lacrosse. Her old one was spending the summer in a third-tier amusement park. Where he played a dog.

    Joyland summer.
    I ride-jockeyed. I flashed the shys in the mornings—meaning I restocked them with prizes—and ran some of them in the afternoons. I untangled Devil Wagons by the dozen, learned how to fry dough without burning my fingers off, and worked on my pitch for the Carolina Spin. I danced and sang with the other greenies on the Wiggle-Waggle Village’s Story Stage. Several times Fred Dean sent me to scratch the midway, a true sign of trust because it meant picking up the noon or five PM take from the various concessions. I made runs to Heaven’s Bay or Wilmington when some piece of machinery broke down and stayed late on Wednesday nights—usually along with Tom, George Preston, and Ronnie Houston—to lube the Whirly Cups and a vicious, neck-snapping ride called the Zipper. Both of those babies drank oil the way camels drink water when they get to the next oasis. And, of course, I wore the fur.
    In spite of all this, I wasn’t sleeping for shit. Sometimes I’d lie on my bed, clap my elderly, taped-up headphones over my ears, and listen to my Doors records. (I was particularly partial to such cheerful tunes as “Cars Hiss By My Window,” “Riders on the Storm,” and—of course—“The End.”) When Jim Morrison’s voice and Ray Manzarek’s mystic, chiming organ weren’t enough to sedate me, I’d creep down the outside staircase and walk on the beach. Once or twice I slept on the beach. At least there were no bad dreams when I did manage to get under for a little while. I don’t remember dreaming that summer at all.
    I could see bags under my eyes when I shaved in the morning, and sometimes I’d feel lightheaded after a particularly strenuous turn as Howie (birthday parties in the overheated bedlam of Howdy House were the worst), but that was normal; Mr. Easterbrook had told me so. A little rest in the boneyard always put me right again. On the whole, I thought I was representing , as they say nowadays. I learned different on the first Monday in July, two days before the Glorious Fourth.

    My team—Beagle—reported to Pop Allen’s shy first thing, as always, and he gave us our assignments as he laid out the popguns. Usually our early chores involved toting boxes of prizes (MADE IN TAIWAN stamped on most of them) and flashing shys until Early Gate, which was what we called opening. That morning, however, Pop told me that Lane Hardy wanted me. This was a surprise; Lane rarely showed his face outside the boneyard until twenty minutes or so before Early Gate. I started that way, but Pop yelled at me.
    “Nah, nah, he’s at the