Joyland

"Thanks, but I'm okay for now."

"I know you are. I've been watching how you handle yourself, and I'm impressed. But Eddie's not your average bear."

"He's a bully," I said.

"Yeah, but here's the good news: like with most bullies, you scratch the surface and find pure chickenshit underneath. Usually not very far underneath, either. There are people on the show he's afraid of, and I happen to be one of them. I've whacked his nose before and I don't mind whacking it again. All I'm saying is that if the day comes when you want a little breathing room, I'll see that you get it."

"Can I ask you a question about him?"

"Shoot."

"Why does he always wear those gloves?"

Lane laughed, stuck his derby on his head, and gave it the correct tilt. "Psoriasis. His hands are scaly with it, or so he says--I can't tell you the last time I actually saw them. He says without the gloves, he scratches them until they bleed."

"Maybe that's what makes him so bad-tempered."

"I think it's more likely the other way around--the bad temper made the bad skin." He tapped his temple. "Head controls body, that's what I believe. Come on, Jonesy, let's get to work."

We finished putting the Spin right for its long winter's nap, then moved on to the irrigation system. By the time the pipes were blown out with compressed air and the drains had swallowed several gallons of antifreeze, the sun was lowering toward the trees west of the park and the shadows were lengthening.

"That's enough for today," Lane said. "More than enough. Bring me your card and I'll sign it."

I tapped my watch, showing him it was only quarter past five.

He shook his head, smiling. "I've got no problem writing six on the card. You did twelve hours' worth today, kiddo. Twelve easy."

"Okay," I said, "but don't call me kiddo. That's what he calls me." I jerked my head toward Horror House.

"I'll make a note of it. Now bring me your card and buzz off."

The wind had died a little during the afternoon, but it was still warm and breezy when I set off down the beach. On many of those walks back to town I liked to watch my long shadow on the waves, but that evening I mostly watched my feet. I was tired out. What I wanted was a ham and cheese sandwich from Betty's Bakery and a couple of beers from the 7-Eleven next door. I'd go back to my room, settle into my chair by the window, and read me some Tolkien as I ate. I was deep into The Two Towers.

What made me look up was the boy's voice. The breeze was in my favor, and I could hear him clearly. "Faster, Mom! You've almost g--" He was temporarily stopped by a coughing fit. Then: "You've almost got it!"

Mike's mother was on the beach tonight instead of beneath her umbrella. She was running toward me but didn't see me, because she was looking at the kite she was holding over her head. The string ran back to the boy, seated in his wheelchair at the end of the boardwalk.

Wrong direction, Mom, I thought.

She released the kite. It rose a foot or two, wagged naughtily from side to side, then took a dive into the sand. The breeze kicked up and it went skittering. She had to chase it down.

"Once more!" Mike called. "That time--" Cough-cough-cough, harsh and bronchial. "That time you almost had it!"

"No, I didn't." She sounded tired and pissed off. "God-damned thing hates me. Let's go in and get some sup--"

Milo was sitting beside Mike's wheelchair, watching the evening's activities with bright eyes. When he saw me, he was off like a shot, barking. As I watched him come, I remembered Madame Fortuna's pronouncement on the day I first met her: In your future is a little girl and a little boy. The boy has a dog.

"Milo, come back!" Mom shouted. Her hair had probably started that evening tied up, but after several experiments in aviation, it hung around her face in strings. She pushed it away wearily with the backs of her hands.

Milo paid no attention. He skidded to a stop in front of me with his front paws spraying sand, and did his sitting-up thing. I laughed and patted his head. "That's all you get, pal--no croissants tonight."

He barked at me once, then trotted back to Mom, who was standing ankle-deep in the sand, breathing hard and eyeing me with mistrust. The captured kite hung down by her leg.

"See?" she said. "That's why I didn't want you to feed him. He's a terrible beggar, and he thinks anybody who gives him a scrap is his friend."

"Well, I'm a friendly sort of guy."

"Good to know," she said. "Just don't feed our dog anymore." She was wearing pedal pushers and an old blue tee-shirt with faded printing on the front. Judging from the sweat-stains on it, she had been trying to get the kite airborne for quite some time. Trying hard, and why not? If I had a kid stuck in a wheelchair, I'd probably want to give him something that would fly, too.

"You're going the wrong way with that thing," I said. "And you don't need to run with it, anyway. I don't know why everybody thinks that."

"I'm sure you're quite the expert," she said, "but it's late and I have to get Mike his supper."

"Mom, let him try," Mike said. "Please?"

She stood for a few more seconds with her head lowered and escaped locks of her hair--also sweaty--clumped against her neck. Then she sighed and held the kite out to me. Now I could read the printing on her shirt: CAMP PERRY MATCH COMPETITION (PRONE) 1959. The front of the kite was a lot better, and I had to laugh. It was the face of Jesus.

"Private joke," she said. "Don't ask."

"Okay."

"You get one try, Mr. Joyland, and then I'm taking him in for his supper. He can't get chilled. He was sick last year, and he still hasn't gotten over it. He thinks he has, but he hasn't."

It was still at least seventy-five on the beach, but I didn't point this out; Mom was clearly not in the mood for further contradictions. Instead I told her again that my name was Devin Jones. She raised her hands and then let them flop: Whatever you say, bub.

I looked at the boy. "Mike?"

"Yes?"

"Reel in the string. I'll tell you when to stop."

He did as I asked. I followed, and when I was even with where he sat, I looked at Jesus. "Are you going to fly this time, Mr. Christ?"

Mike laughed. Mom didn't, but I thought I saw her lips twitch.

"He says he is," I told Mike.

"Good, because--" Cough. Cough-cough-cough. She was right, he wasn't over it. Whatever it was. "Because so far he hasn't done anything but eat sand."

I held the kite over my head, but facing Heaven's Bay. I could feel the wind tug at it right away. The plastic rippled. "I'm going to let go, Mike. When I do, start reeling in the string again."

"But it'll just--"

"No, it won't just. But you have to be quick and careful." I was making it sound harder than it was, because I wanted him to feel cool and capable when the kite went up. It would, too, as long as the breeze didn't die on us. I really hoped that wouldn't happen, because I thought Mom had meant what she said about me getting only one chance. "The kite will rise. When it does, start paying out the twine again. Just keep it taut, okay? That means if it starts to dip, you--"

"I pull it in some more. I get it. God's sake."

"Okay. Ready?"

"Yeah!"

Milo sat between Mom and me, looking up at the kite.

"Okay, then. Three...two...one...lift-off."

The kid was hunched over in his chair and the legs beneath his shorts were wasted, but there was nothing wrong with his hands and he knew how to follow orders. He started reeling in, and the kite rose at once. He began to pay the string out--at first too much, and the kite sagged, but he corrected and it started going up again. He laughed. "I can feel it! I can feel it in my hands!"

"That's the wind you feel," I said. "Keep going, Mike. Once it gets up a little higher, the wind will own it. Then all you have to do is not let go."

He let out the twine and the kite climbed, first over the beach and then above the ocean, riding higher and higher into that September day's late blue. I watched it awhile

, then chanced looking at the woman. She didn't bristle at my gaze, because she didn't see it. All her attention was focused on her son. I don't think I ever saw such love and such happiness on a person's face. Because he was happy. His eyes were shining and the coughing had stopped.

"Mommy, it feels like it's alive!"

It is, I thought, remembering how my father had taught me to fly a kite in the town park. I had been Mike's age, but with good legs to stand on. As long as it's up there, where it was made to be, it really is.

"Come and feel it!"

She walked up the little slope of beach to the boardwalk and stood beside him. She was looking at the kite, but her hand was stroking his cap of dark brown hair. "Are you sure, honey? It's your kite."

"Yeah, but you have to try it. It's incredible!"

She took the reel, which had thinned considerably as the twine paid out and the kite rose (it was now just a black diamond, the face of Jesus no longer visible) and held it in front of her. For a moment she looked apprehensive. Then she smiled. When a gust tugged the kite, making it wag first to port and then to starboard above the incoming waves, the smile widened into a grin.

After she'd flown it for a while, Mike said: "Let him."

"No, that's okay," I said.

But she held out the reel. "We insist, Mr. Jones. You're the flightmaster, after all."

So I took the twine, and felt the old familiar thrill. It tugged the way a fishing-line does when a fair-sized trout has taken the hook, but the nice thing about kite-flying is nothing gets killed.

"How high will it go?" Mike asked.

"I don't know, but maybe it shouldn't go much higher tonight. The wind up there is stronger, and might rip it. Also, you guys need to eat."

"Can Mr. Jones eat supper with us, Mom?"

She looked startled at the idea, and not in a good way. Still, I saw she was going to agree because I'd gotten the kite up.

"That's okay," I said. "I appreciate the invitation, but it was quite a day at the park. We're battening down the hatches for winter, and I'm dirt from head to toe."

"You can wash up in the house," Mike said. "We've got, like, seventy bathrooms."

"Michael Ross, we do not!"

"Maybe seventy-five, with a Jacuzzi in each one." He started laughing. It was a lovely, infectious sound, at least until it turned to coughing. The coughing became whooping. Then, just as Mom was starting to look really concerned (I was already there), he got it under control.

"Another time," I said, and handed him the reel of twine. "I love your Christ-kite. Your dog ain't bad, either." I bent and patted Milo's head.

"Oh...okay. Another time. But don't wait too long, because--"

Mom interposed hastily. "Can you go to work a little earlier tomorrow, Mr. Jones?"

"Sure, I guess."

"We could have fruit smoothies right here, if the weather's nice. I make a mean fruit smoothie."

I bet she did. And that way, she wouldn't have to have a strange man in the house.

"Will you?" Mike asked. "That'd be cool."

"I'd love to. I'll bring a bag of pastries from Betty's."

"Oh, you don't have to--" she began.

"My pleasure, ma'am."

"Oh!" She looked startled. "I never introduced myself, did I? I'm Ann Ross." She held out her hand.

"I'd shake it, Mrs. Ross, but I really am filthy." I showed her my hands. "It's probably on the kite, too."

"You should have given Jesus a mustache!" Mike shouted, and then laughed himself into another coughing fit.

"You're getting a little loose with the twine there, Mike," I said. "Better reel it in." And, as he started doing it, I gave Milo a farewell pat and started back down the beach.

"Mr. Jones," she called.

I turned back. She was standing straight, with her chin raised. Sweat had molded the shirt to her, and she had great breasts.

"It's Miss Ross. But since I guess we've now been properly introduced, why don't you call me Annie?"

"I can do that." I pointed at her shirt. "What's a match competition? And why is it prone?"

"That's when you shoot lying down," Mike said.

"Haven't done it in ages," she said, in a curt tone that suggested she wanted the subject closed.

Fine with me. I tipped Mike a wave and he sent one right back. He was grinning. Kid had a great grin.

Forty or fifty yards down the beach, I turned around for another look. The kite was descending, but for the time being the wind still owned it. They were looking up at it, the woman with her hand on her son's shoulder.

Miss, I thought. Miss, not Mrs. And is there a mister with them in the big old Victorian with the seventy bathrooms? Just because I'd never seen one with them didn't mean there wasn't one, but I didn't think so. I thought it was just the two of them. On their own.

I got no clarification from Annie Ross the next morning, but plenty of dish from Mike. I also got one hell of a nice fruit smoothie. She said she made the yogurt herself, and it was layered with fresh strawberries from God knows where. I brought croissants and blueberry muffins from Betty's Bakery. Mike skipped the pastries, but finished his smoothie and asked for another. From the way his mother's mouth dropped open, I gathered that this was an astounding development. But not, I guessed, in a bad way.

"Are you sure you can eat another one?"

"Maybe just half," he said. "What's the deal, Mom? You're the one who says fresh yogurt helps me move my bowels."

"I don't think we need to discuss your bowels at seven in the morning, Mike." She got up, then cast a doubtful glance my way.

"Don't worry," Mike said brightly, "if he tries to kiddie-fiddle me, I'll tell Milo to sic 'im."

Color bloomed in her cheeks. "Michael Everett Ross!"

"Sorry," he said. He didn't look sorry. His eyes were sparkling.

"Don't apologize to me, apologize to Mr. Jones."

"Accepted, accepted."

"Will you keep an eye on him, Mr. Jones? I won't be long."

"I will if you'll call me Devin."

"Then I'll do that." She hurried up the boardwalk, pausing once to look over her shoulder. I think she had more than half a mind to come back, but in the end, the prospect of stuffing a few more healthy calories into her painfully thin boy was too much for her to resist, and she went on.

Mike watched her climb the steps to the back patio and sighed. "Now I'll have to eat it."

"Well...yeah. You asked for it, right?"

"Only so I could talk to you without her butting in. I mean, I love her and all, but she's always butting in. Like what's wrong with me is this big shameful secret we have to keep." He shrugged. "I've got muscular dystrophy, that's all. That's why I'm in the wheelchair. I can walk, you know, but the braces and crutches are a pain in the butt."

"I'm sorry," I said. "That stinks, Mike."

"I guess, but I can't remember not having it, so what the hell. Only it's a special kind of MD. Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, it's called. Most kids who have it croak in their teens or early twenties."

So, you tell me--what do you say to a ten-year-old kid who's just told you he's living under a death sentence?

"But." He raised a teacherly finger. "Remember her talking about how I was sick last year?"

"Mike, you don't have to tell me all this if you don't want to."

"Yeah, except I do." He was looking at me with clear intensity. Maybe even urgency. "Because you want to know. Maybe you even need to know."

I was thinking of Fortuna again. Two children, she had told me, a girl in a red hat and a boy with a dog. She said one of them had the sight, but she didn't know which. I thought that now I did.

"Mom said I think I got over it. Do I sound like I got over it?"

"Nasty cough," I ventured, "but otherwise..." I couldn't think how to finish. Otherwise your legs are nothing but sticks? Otherwise you look like your mom and I could tie a string to the back of your shirt and fly you like a kite? Otherwise if I had to bet on whet

her you or Milo would live longer, I'd put my money on the dog?

"I came down with pneumonia just after Thanksgiving, okay? When I didn't improve after a couple of weeks in the hospital, the doctor told my mom I was probably going to die and she ought to, you know, get ready for that."

But he didn't tell her in your hearing, I thought. They'd never have a conversation like that in your hearing.

"I hung in, though." He said this with some pride. "My grandfather called my mom--I think it was the first time they'd talked in a long time. I don't know who told him what was going on, but he has people everywhere. It could have been any of them."

People everywhere sounded kind of paranoid, but I kept my mouth shut. Later I found out it wasn't paranoid at all. Mike's grandfather did have them everywhere, and they all saluted Jesus, the flag, and the NRA, although possibly not in that order.

"Grampa said I got over the pneumonia because of God's will. Mom said he was full of bullshit, just like when he said me having DMD in the first place was God's punishment. She said I was just one tough little sonofabitch, and God had nothing to do with it. Then she hung up on him."

Mike might have heard her end of that conversation, but not Grampa's, and I doubted like hell if his mother had told him. I didn't think he was making it up, though. I found myself hoping Annie wouldn't hurry back. This wasn't like listening to Madame Fortuna. What she had, I believed (and still do, all these years later), was some small bit of authentic psychic ability amped up by a shrewd understanding of human nature and then packaged in glittering carny bullshit. Mike's thing was clearer. Simpler. Purer. It wasn't like seeing the ghost of Linda Gray, but it was akin to that, okay? It was touching another world.

"Mom said she'd never come back here, but here we are. Because I wanted to come to the beach and because I wanted to fly a kite and because I'm never going to make twelve, let alone my early twenties. It was the pneumonia, see? I get steroids, and they help, but the pneumonia combined with the Duchenne's MD fucked up my lungs and heart permanently."