'Right.'
'Well, when this ride is going full steam, the little car we're sitting in whips around on its little circular track and sometimes develops up to seven g, which is only five less than the astronauts get when they lift off from Cape Kennedy. And I knew this kid ...' Johnny was leaning solemnly over her now.
'Oh, here comes one of your big lies,' Sarah said uneasily.
'When this kid was five he fell down the front steps and put a tiny hairline fracture in his spine at the top of his neck. Then ten years later - he went on the whip at Topsham Fair... and ...' He shrugged and then patted her hand sympathetically. 'But you'll probably be okay, Sarah.'
'Ohhh. .I want to get olliff...'
And the whip whirled them away, slamming the fair and the midway into a tilted blur of lights and faces, and she shrieked and laughed and began to pummel him.
'Hairline fracture!' she shouted at him. 'I'll give you a hairline fracture when we get off this, you liar!'
'Do you feel anything giving in your neck yet?' he inquired sweetly.
'Oh, you liar!'
They whirled around, faster and faster, and as they snapped past the ride starter for the - tenth? fifteenth? -time, he leaned over and kissed her, and the car whistled around on its track, pressing their lips together in something that was hot and exciting and skintight. Then the ride was slowing down, their car clacked around on its track more reluctantly, and finally came to a swaying, swinging stop.
They got out, and Sarah squeezed his neck. 'Hairline fracture, you ass! ' she whispered.
A fat lady in blue slacks and penny loafers was passing them. Johnny spoke to her, jerking a thumb hack toward Sarah. 'That girl is bothering me, ma'am. If you see a policeman would you tell him?'
'You young people think you're smart,' the fat lady said disdainfully. She waddled away toward the bingo tent, holding her purse more tightly under her arm' Sarah was giggling helplessly.
'You're impossible.'
'I'll come to a bad end,' Johnny agreed. 'My mother always said so.'
They walked up the midway side by side again, waiting for the world to stop making unstable motions before their eyes and under their feet.
'She's pretty religious, your mom, isn't she?' Sarah asked.
'She's as Baptist as you can get,' Johnny agreed. 'But she's okay. She keeps it under control. She can't resist passing me a few tracts when I'm at home, but that's her thing. Daddy and I put up with it. I used to try to get on her case about it - I'd ask her who the heck was in Nod for Cain to go live with if his dad and mom were the first people on earth, stuff like that - but I decided it was sort of mean and quit it. Two years ago I thought Eugene McCarthy could save the world, and at least the Baptists don't have Jesus running for president.'
'Your father's not religious?'
Johnny laughed. 'I don't know about that, but he's sure no Baptist. After a moment's thought he added, 'Dad's a carpenter,' as if that explained it. She smiled.
'What would your mother think if she knew you were seeing a lapsed Catholic?'
'Ask me to bring you home,' Johnny said promptly, 'so she could slip you a few tracts.'
She stopped, still holding his hand. 'Would you like to bring me to your house?' she asked, looking at him closely.
Johnny's long, pleasant face became serious. 'Yeah,' he said. 'I'd like you to meet them ... and vice versa.'
'Why?'
'Don't you know why?' he asked her gently, and suddenly her throat closed and her head throbbed as if she might cry' and she squeezed his hand tightly.
'Oh Johnny, I do like you.'
'I like you even more than that,' he said seriously.
'Take me on the Ferris wheel,' she demanded suddenly, smiling. No more talk like this until she had a chance to consider it, to think where it might be leading. 'I want to go up high where we can see everything.'
'Can I kiss you at the top?'
'Twice, if you're quick.'
He allowed her to lead him to the ticket booth, where he surrendered another dollar bill. As he paid he told her, 'When I was in high school, I know this kid who worked at the fair, and he said most of the guys who put these rides together are dead drunk and they leave off all sorts of...'
'Co to hell,' she said merrily, 'nobody lives forever.'
'But everybody tries, you ever notice that?' he said, following her into one of the swaying gondolas.
As a matter of fact he got to kiss her several times at the top, with the October wind ruffling their hair and the midway spread out below them like a glowing clockface in the dark.
4.
After the Ferris wheel they did the carousel, even though he told her quite honestly that he felt like a horse's ass. His legs were so long that he could have stood astride one of the plaster horses. She told him maliciously that she had known a girl in high school who had had a weak heart, except nobody knew she had a weak heart, and she she had gotten on the carousel with her boyfriend and...