The day was as steamy as the day before. Being a veteran carnie, I at least had the intelligence to wear shorts. As I had not yet bonded with my fellow carnies, I could only fathom a guess at the collective intellectual level. I did, however, strike up some conversation with Ike during lulls in the softball throwing business.

"So where are you from?"

"Cain't pacifically say. Last year I went to school in three places, Kansas City, Knoxville and Birmingham. 'Course, I was born in Gary, Indiana."

He wasn't a bad-looking kid, considering he was spawned from the loins of Turtle and Potato Chip Hair. Regardless of the bizarre upbringing he might have had, Ike was pretty well-mannered and seemingly well-adjusted.

"Have you always been in this business?"

My line of questioning was like rowing an anchored boat;  you go through the motions but there's little doubt where you'll end up.

"For as long as I can remember. Really ever since daddy got out," Ike replied.

"Out of what, or, I mean where?"

"Joliet, you know, prison. He got paroled when I was four. I was born while daddy was still in."

The boat had broken free of its anchor and I was really getting somewhere. Little Ikey was most likely the product of a conjugal visit I didn't want to picture.

"Interesting. What was he in for?"

"Bad checks and other stuff."

Bad checks didn't set off alarms. The other "stuff" worried me just a tad.

Just as things were getting juicy, a sixty-ish woman and her two grandkids interrupted us looking to play our little game for the big, big prize. After we'd relieved them of about eight dollars of grandma's social security money, I felt a twinge of something I recognized (like any good Catholic would) as guilt.

"So, what's the deal, Ike? Why hasn't anybody won?"

I really was not expecting the answer I got. 

"'Cause it's rigged thataway."

I was as surprised by my naiveté as I was by his answer.

"Yeah, I figured that. But, how?"

"Well ya see these bottles are weighted down here at the base and if ya set 'em up jist right"—he demonstrated the job he'd perfected—"ya jist cain't knock 'em all off the table."

"Cool," I lied.

"When daddy sees us getting a little slow like this, he'll have me set 'em up different so somebody can win and tote the prize around the Midway to drum up more business. But, we never give away more than a prize a day."

Quickly processing his confession, and being fairly certain that rigging a game was a crime, I realized I had unknowingly become Turtle's accomplice. I was working for an ex-con and current con artist.

Man, what were Mom and Dad thinking when they let me get a job at the fair? Didn't they know what kind of people I'd be dealing with? Maybe I inherited my naiveté.

I grabbed Lee for our guess-what's-on-the-stick lunch and blurted out the story between bites.

"Bummer," she concluded.

"Lee, I can't keep doing this."

I chewed on the idea of theft and a piece of mystery meat, neither of which I was able immediately to digest.

"He's ripping people off and I'm helping."

Mom and Dad would be proud. Their investment in Catholic school tuition was paying off nicely; instead of field trips, we go on all-expenses-paid guilt trips.

"If you're going to quit, then so am I. But, we can't quit in the middle of the day. Turtle might get mad and not pay us." Her reasoning seemed sound to me.

"Okay, but, we're not coming back tomorrow."

.

It was almost eight when we hit the road for home and I was ready to relax.

"Boy, I could use a dip in a pool."

With that in mind, about three-quarters of the way home, we stopped at a city park and hopped the fence to have ourselves a private pool party. I took a moment to remove my Beatles watch and macramé belt. Shoeless, but otherwise fully clothed, we loitered in the shallow end, too tired to take full advantage of the entire pool we were trespassing in.

"So we're working for a convicted felon," Lee muttered with a combination of amusement and angst. I sat on the edge of the pool, drip-drying myself and smoothing out three folded ten-dollar bills, the damp spoils of a very disturbing day.

"It's getting dark. We'd better get going. I want to talk to my parents about this. Maybe we should report him to the police," I said, unsure of what our next move should be.

"Yeah, but first let's get out of here before someone reports us to the police."

Easy Go

It rained that night so the morning was overcast and cooler, making the formerly pungent fairground air a bit more breathable. As we passed the Ferris wheel the operator pursed his lips together and then made some sort of sucking sound.

"Gross, what is that, a carnie mating call?"

Lee didn't seem to hear me over the screams of a dozen Ferris wheel riders voluntarily imprisoned in their swinging cages. We had once again jumped into the genetic pool of carnival people. And what a shallow pool it was. Obviously most of them couldn't read the NO DIVING sign.

We entered a little building at the far end of the grounds. This was the office of the Lucas County Fair Board. Lee's parents and mine had decided the previous night that this was the right thing to do. Our plan was to turn in Turtle, then go enjoy the fair. A middle-aged woman with a huge beehive and cat eyeglasses greeted us from behind a countertop.

"Can I help you?"

Her voice purred a doubtful, anticipating arrogance. We'd interrupted something she was eager to get back to. From the looks of the man and the woman on the cover of the Harlequin romance novel she slyly tried to cover with one clawed hand, it involved heaving bosoms and lots of throbbing. She was an old cat, who'd been sitting on the hot tin roof too long.

Lee was our spokesperson and, pointing a guilty finger at me, she began.

"We're working at the fair and the game she's working at is rigged." 

"What do you mean, rigged?" Beehive Woman asked.

Alert now, she narrowed her gaze at Lee and furrowed her brow.

"I mean it's impossible to win."

"What game are you talking about?"

"It's the knock-down-the-milk-bottle game with big stuffed dogs as prizes. I've been working there for two days and nobody's won. The guy we work for, Turtle, well, he's an ex-con and his son sets the bottles up a certain way so they won't go off the table."

There. I'd told her the whole story in one succinct sentence.

"Young lady, these people are licensed and abide by all the rules and regulations of the governing board. I'm sure you're mistaken."

"His kid admitted it," I argued.

"All right, I'll have someone look into it next week when the fair is over. Right now we're just too busy to answer every little complaint."

At this point she cut off eye contact with us, patted the top of her hairsprayed tower—quite a reach for her short, pudgy arms—and picked up her book. Pawing the cover with her well-manicured claws and adjusting her glasses, she tuned us out in favor of the hot promise of paperback.

I was still numb from shock at Beehive's indifference as Lee led the way out of the building. She was talking as fast as she was thinking.

"Bullcrap. This is not fair."

I was amused by the pun.

The fair is not fair, and the fair smells like bullcrap.

I thought to myself as my mind played ping-pong with the words. Beehive woman was digging a hole in the sand to insert her head, a very deep hole. Lee's words were getting louder, which brought me back to reality.

"If they're not going to do anything, we are. Do your shorts have pockets?"

"Yeah," I answered, glancing down at my fringed, jean-shorts with front and back pockets.

"Okay we've been sweating our asses off for two days, so he can make hundreds of dollars, and all we have to show for it is sixty bucks. I mean, he didn't, like, even pay us for overtime. We deserve more!"

I knew what she was suggesting.

"So, what you're saying is that because he's cheating it's okay to steal from him? It's not exactly Robin Hood, unless we're going to buy pagan babies."

I was mixing Catholic school maturity with the Stanfa family sarcasm.

"What are pagan babies?"

Although it was an excellent question for a non-Catholic, I answered in total disbelief of her ignorance.

"Foreign orphans. We save money to adopt them to get them baptized, and we can name 'em too."

"Weird."

It hadn't dawned on me until that moment, but it was weird. I briefly wondered if the Church actually used the names that we came up with, because our class—led by my irreverence—produced a few doozies.

"So we stash a few twenties, you know, to make up for the money we would have made the next couple of days, and then we'll take off at lunch. What'ya think?"

Stealing from an ex-con. Good idea or bad? Sin, or justifiable robbery?

"What if he catches us?"

Lee had already thought this through. Man she was smart.

"We'll do it very carefully, like when he goes off to the bathroom or to get a coke or something and when potato-chip hair is blowing up balloons."

As we approached the games Turtle yelled at us.

"Yer late."

We quickly grabbed the money aprons he threw our way. Lee was giving him the middle finger behind her back, so only I could see.

My first patrons were a great-looking, muscular guy, about twenty, and his cute, dimpled, blonde-shagged girlfiend. He was intent on winning her a St. Bernard.

After dropping five bucks and coming closer than anyone yet to knocking the bottles off the table, I tried to talk him out of a bigger loss.

"You know, this is really hard, I mean REALLY hard to win."

"He can do it. He's a pitcher at Bowling Green State."

Great, now I'm taking money from a starving college student.

I walked over to Ike who'd already reset the bottles and was picking his way through a funnel cake.

"Couldn't you set them so he can win? Please?"

"Naw. We gave one away last night after ya left. Business looks good so far today. Besides, daddy has to say when."

The handsome pitcher reluctantly retired after 45 throws, and $15.00. I wanted to be traded to another team, fast.

As the pitcher and Dimples slunk away, I felt desperate enough to plead their case to Turtle. Unfortunately he was already walking behind the booths toward the small "family" trailer, probably to take a leak.

Opportunity lost, or opportunity found? I glanced over at Lee, who, thinking ahead of me, already had her hand in her money apron. Her eyes darted toward the dartboard to make sure Betty was busy replacing balloons; she was. Lee's hand left the apron with deftness and dived smoothly into her front pocket, depositing the pilfered cash.

My heart began to beat faster just considering breaking the 7th Commandment. Before I could think through the justification of the deed, my sweaty hand closed around several reasonable facsimiles of dead presidents who were slyly exhumed to the nearest pocket of my shorts. While Ike was happily juggling softballs, I was unhappily juggling emotions.

By noon I had pocketed three twenties. Lee and I plotted our escape plan at the lemonade stand.

"We're not leaving until I find that baseball player."

I had told Lee about him and his embarrassment in front of his girlfriend. She laughed, not understanding my intent.

"DC, he's too old for you and besides, he has a girlfriend."

"I just want to give him back his money."

"That's cool, but we have to stay far away from the Turtle family. They're gonna be pissed off when we don't come back from lunch."

We zigzagged around the Midway in search of the baseball player, avoiding the games of little-or-no chance and our recent employer. I imagined the baseball player being so grateful to me for giving his money back, he'd pick me up in his strong arms and hug me. Then maybe he'd go knock out a few more of Turtle's teeth with a softball.

After an hour of sincere but futile effort, Lee suggested, "How about if we go on a few rides, maybe we'll catch up with them in line somewhere."

It seemed like another good Lee idea.

"Want to ride the Bobsled first?" I asked, noticing her eyes had gotten as big as Ferris wheels in a warning.

"Don't spaz out, Turtle sighting! He's over at the lemonade stand."

She started backing away from her spot, then turned and ran. I followed her clear to the other side of the Midway. We both gasped for breath in front of the Freak Show. Grotesque, cartoonish paintings depicted Gorilla Woman, Snake Man, and Lobster Boy in absurd habitats.

"Wanna duck inside here and hide for awhile?" I suggested.

With guilty glances at each other, we took out some of our ill-gotten Turtle money to buy tickets.

There are many uncertainties in life. This was not one of them. There comes a time, usually in adolescence, that you have to experience some things for yourself.

Stealing from an ex-con. Good idea or bad? Sin, or justifiable deed?

I decided in the end, as an unholy testimony to the Unfair, it was good that some of the money had gone to the other poor freaks of the carnival.

Copyright © DC Stanfa 2003