They went over a bump in the road. Hawley looked out the rear window. It was roadkill, something with fur and feathers mixed together. A rabbit and an eagle, he thought. A coyote and a vulture. In the seat beside him the baby moaned and whimpered and then the baby began to cry.
“He’s hungry again,” said Amy, but they couldn’t stop so she started singing. “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “Rock-a-bye Baby.” Hawley closed his eyes and listened. Her voice wasn’t pretty but she was trying.
“You’re a good mother,” Hawley said, or at least he thought he did, and then the bullet pulled him the rest of the way into the dark.
Dogtown
WHEN LOO WAS SIX YEARS old she got lost at a county fair. She was distracted by a sword-swallower, disoriented by the swirl of noise and colored lights, turned around by the crowds, and suddenly found herself separated from Hawley. He’d won a giant teddy bear for her earlier that day, and Loo clutched it tightly, the synthetic fur prickling her skin as she looked for him. Without her father the world turned dangerous, each step she made weighted with magnitude and meaning. Loo did not cry or ask anyone for help. She turned away from the sword-swallower, who was busy clutching and gulping his steel, and focused on the carny games and the smell of cotton candy and caramel apples and popcorn and used them to retrace her steps. By the time she found Hawley he was so frantic he’d started scuffling with the security guards. They were escorting him off the grounds when he saw her standing by the carousel, right where she’d let go of his hand.
She still loved going to carnivals. The biggest one near Olympus happened each October, when the leaves turned color and the air got its first chill—a giant county-wide agricultural fair. Underneath tents and inside barns the 4-H clubs judged livestock and ran pig races. There was a draft-horse show and a pie-eating contest and who could grow the largest pumpkin and a midway with games and rides.
The fair fell near her birthday, and her father let her choose whatever rides she wanted. When she was thirteen, Loo asked for the bumper cars. When she was fourteen, they went up in the Ferris wheel. At fifteen, she wandered with Hawley in and out of the House of Mirrors, and they waved at each other and bumped into walls. The year Loo turned sixteen she was ready for something new. She walked up and down the midway with her father and chose the scariest contraption she could find: the Galaxy Round Up. Hawley took one look at the metal wheel covered in flashing lights that spun faster and faster, lifting on its giant arm at an angle into the sky, the floor dropping out beneath the screaming riders’ feet, and told her that this time she was on her own.
“I’ll wait for you by the exit,” he said, and then he took the box of popcorn she was holding and walked toward the gate.
The line was short and Loo was ushered in with the next batch of customers. She hurried along the wheel, past the drawings of Saturn, Venus, Mercury and Neptune, and chose a spot to stand on her own, pressing her shoulders against the padded back wall, gripping the bars on either side of her cage, and lining up her heels so they were firmly on the metal edge. A teenage carny walked the length of the ride and got it ready to go. He was wearing a T-shirt with some kind of writing.
“What’s it say?” Loo asked.
“Song lyrics.” He flashed a smile as he locked the safety bar in place. He was not handsome but he had nice dimples. “You look scared.”
“I’m not.”
“Don’t worry.” The carny winked. “It makes you feel weightless, like a walk on the moon.” Then he smiled again and scurried off the ride and flipped the switch.
The motor started and the planets began to spin, orbiting around the sun painted at the center of the wheel. Riders began to shout and scream. Loo’s palms were slick against the metal poles. The ride began to lift, and instead of becoming weightless her body grew heavier and heavier and heavier, until it was crushed into the padded wall behind her. She tried to move, but her head was stuck tight, as if her skull had been sewn through with lead. Then the floor dropped out beneath her feet, and there was nothing between her and the world.
Loo screamed and found that the more she screamed, the less afraid she was of dying. The air whipped through her open mouth and the galaxy tilted upside down and it was like some massive creature had rolled over on top of her life until it was flattened. Loo’s mind swirled and her boots turned in the open air above the crowd playing Milk-Bottle Toss and Plinko and her father staring up at her, clutching the box of popcorn.
“What’d I tell you,” said the carny afterward as he unlocked her cage. “Like flying, right?”
Loo tried to nod but instead she stumbled, her legs gone weak.
He caught her elbow. “Careful.”
She tried to read his T-shirt again. It seemed important that she know what it said. But the writing was in a loopy, cursive scrawl that disappeared up his sleeve. And then her father was there and his arms were around her and he was whisking her through the gate and away from the ride and over to a trash can, where she promptly threw up.
“Happy birthday.” Hawley handed her a napkin. “Still want your popcorn?”
Loo shook her head, embarrassed. She wiped her mouth.
Hawley tossed the box. “That asshole was flirting with you.”
“He was not.” She glanced back at the Galaxy Round Up. The carny was flashing his dimples again and locking a blond woman into one of the cages.
“He was,” said Hawley, and then his hand slid behind his back, and Loo knew that he was checking his gun. Reminding them both that it was there. As if any part of him would not remember. As if Loo could ever forget.
—
ON MONDAY SHE was back in school, still flush from the fair. She didn’t care that she’d thrown up or that the carny had so quickly forgotten her. All that mattered was that she’d drawn his attention. It felt like she’d discovered some secret ability within herself that had appeared only because someone else had pointed out where it was hidden.