Slow Dollar Read online

  But Patsy was happy as she and Reese wandered away and Tally Ames turned back to us.

  “Guess your weight, guess your age, guess how long that goldfish is gonna live?”

  Avery and Portland laughed and Dwight held up his hands in surrender. “You’re too good for us.”

  She laughed and called to one of the women standing at a Bust the Balloon concession. “Hey, Lia, mind the Guesser for me a few minutes?”

  “Sure,” said the woman.

  Past the midway and one row over, I saw a large and colorful slide that undulated as people slid down the rainbow arc.

  “Is that your Pot O’Gold?” I asked.

  “That’s it,” Tally Ames said.

  As she led us toward her slide, I heard the woman behind us chant, “Guess your age, guess your weight, guess if you’re gonna get lucky tonight? Two bucks to play, win a bear if I’m wrong.”

  Along the way, our tour guide paused at a Cover the Spot game, where the object was to drop five flat metal disks so that they completely covered a large red dot. It was being tended by a lanky teenager who exhorted passersby to give it a go. “A game of pure skill, folks. All it takes is a steady hand. A dollar tries and you choose your prize.”

  Even if I hadn’t heard Mrs. Ames’s courtroom testimony, the boy’s height and coloring would have told me he was her son Val. He fanned the metal disks, then dropped them one by one almost casually on the target. Not a smidgen of red could be seen. Avery couldn’t resist. He immediately handed the boy a dollar. Four dollars later, he admitted defeat.

  Reid asked to see it demonstrated again. Five dollars, no prize.

  “Sorry, guys,” said Mrs. Ames. “Val? This is the judge I told you about.”

  He smiled and said he was glad to meet me, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes and he didn’t stick out his hand to shake mine.

  He did offer me the disks, though. “Want to try? No charge.”

  “Sure,” I said. I’d watched his demonstration and I was doing just fine till I dropped the last disk and left a tiny arc of red no bigger than a fingernail clipping exposed.

  “Not bad,” said Mrs. Ames as we moved on through the crowd to the Pot O’Gold.

  “Just two tickets to ride,” chanted the wiry man taking tickets and handing out ride sacks. “Land in the pot, win a prize or a free slide.”

  “Herve,” said Tally Ames, “this is Judge Knott.”

  All the warmth lacking in Val’s was in his smile, even though several of his teeth were missing. “You the lady judge took care of those jerks that tried to wreck this ride?”

  I nodded.

  “Want to try it out?” Mrs. Ames gestured toward the opening in the vinyl “tree” that led to the stairs. “On me,” she added, brushing away my string of tickets. “You and your friends, okay?”

  I was game since I, too, was wearing cutoffs and sneakers, but Sylvia wasn’t about to risk her pale pink slacks. “Besides,” she said, reaching for the big stuffed dog, “somebody has to hold Mr. Dots.”

  Portland patted her thickened abdomen and blandly said she’d hold Mr. Tuna, so Avery handed over the goldfish. The air was stuffy inside and smelled like warm plastic as I climbed the spiral iron staircase ahead of the three men.

  From below me, Dwight asked, “Hey, shug. When was that woman in your courtroom?”

  “A few weeks back. Some jerks put a knife in this slide.”

  We emerged through the painted cloud doorway atop the thirty-foot-high arch and could see the whole carnival spread out below us. Above the colored neon and flashing lights, the moon floated in a cloudless sky. I don’t have a great head for heights and the ground looked a lot further away than I expected.

  We positioned the burlap sacks we’d been given, then pushed off, aiming for that very small pot of gold sponges at the bottom. As we slid down, the bow twisted and rippled beneath us. My legs got tangled with Dwight’s, then we both crashed into Reid and ended up in a heap at the bottom. Only Avery managed to slide into the pot. When the number on the bottom of the sponge he’d picked was matched to the prize board, he’d won a fluorescent yellow kazoo, which he immediately put to his lips and began blatting out “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead.”

  While we were climbing and sliding, more customers had plunked down tickets and I heard myself called from above. Four young men had come through the clouds and were getting their slide sacks in place. One of them was yet another nephew, Haywood’s Stevie, home from Carolina for the weekend, and his friend Eric Holt, who’s at Shaw. Eric’s Uncle Cletus and Aunt Maidie work for my daddy and I’d heard Maidie say she was expecting Eric for Sunday dinner. Eric and Stevie had graduated from West Colleton High together, but I didn’t recognize the other kids who were with them.

  We watched them push off, then try to maintain direction as the vinyl rainbow undulated like a drunken horse, rolling them off to the side troughs like gutter balls in a howling alley. Eric was the only one to make it into the winner’s pot for a bright green yo-yo with tiny lights at the center that twinkled like little flames as it spun up and down.

  “Remember how to walk the dog?” asked Dwight, who’s known Eric since he was a baby.

  Eric laughed and with a flick of his wrist made the yo-yo “sleep” so he could walk it along the ground.

  I collected hugs from Stevie and Eric both before they and their friends drifted on to the next attraction.

  Tally Ames showed me the place where Victor Lincoln had sliced the vinyl with his knife, but the mend was so good I could barely see it.

  “Take another slide?” she asked.

  We thanked her, but we were ready to try out the swings and the Tilt-A-Whirl.

  After that came a rather tame haunted house, although the fake spiderweb felt uncomfortably real when it brushed my face in the pitch blackness of the maze. And okay, yes, I jumped when my shoulder set off one of the sensors and an eerie flash of green light unexpectedly revealed a grotesquely lifelike rubber face only inches from my own. Sylvia squealed and tucked herself under Dwight’s arm.

  We hit some of the food carts for nourishment—elephant ears, cotton candy, and popcorn—then stood and watched the action on the kiddie rides as we ate. Events like this graphically illustrate just how fast our Hispanic population is growing here. Knots of immigrant Mexican workmen paused to watch as Mexican parents guided their children through the ride gates. Spanish was almost as prevalent as English.

  Reid spotted his son there with his ex-wife and her new husband, and he and young Tip went off together to ride the Ferris wheel.

  “Cal would love this,” Dwight said with a sigh as he shifted the stuffed Dalmatian to the shoulder Sylvia wasn’t leaning on. I saw Portland’s hand reach for Avery’s and knew she was probably imagining their own child here in two or three years.

  And where would I be by then?

  Still alone?

  I’m independent enough to know that no man is better than the wrong man and God knows I’ve had my share of those, beginning with the one I ran off with when I was eighteen. After two back-to-back fiascoes in the spring, I had taken a vow of chastity which I had kept all summer, but dammit all, I like men. I like kissing and touching and waking up with a stubbly face on the pillow next to mine. If it’s for keeps and Mendelssohn, though, it’ll have to be someone who’ll do more than just warm my bed. I want someone who’ll share my life and let me share his, someone who’ll be there through PMS and bad hair days and who’ll give me a chance to do the same for him.

  I’ve made so many bad choices in the last few years that I’ve started doubting my own judgment everywhere except in the courtroom. What if I’d already met the man who could have been perfect for me and bobbled my big chance? Gone chasing after the sexy one and missed out on the steady one?

  Like Bradley Needham, for instance. Brad and his wife had stopped to speak to Portland and Avery, with nods for the rest of us. Janice is one of our better courtroom clerks and Brad’s director of marketing for
Longleaf, a sausage and meat-packing company headquartered here in the county. I realized I hadn’t seen Janice in the courtroom since early summer.

  “You haven’t been sick, have you?” I asked.

  “Oh, no,” she said, plucking a stray hair from the collar of my shirt.

  Janice is a picker—hair, threads, bits of lint. She can’t seem to help herself, and we either pretend not to notice or stay out of arm’s reach.

  “Bradley had a temporary assignment with Longleaf’s West Coast distributor and we’ve been in California since the end of June. It was only supposed to be for a month, but everything was such a mess, it took twice as long as they thought for him to straighten everything out.” She picked a gnat off my bare arm. “We didn’t mind, though. Longleaf put us up in a residential hotel with a swimming pool, maid service, everything. Didn’t cost us a cent. It was like a second honeymoon.”

  “Y’all been back long?” Portland asked politely.

  “Tuesday.” Portland’s nubbly blue shirt had picked up so much fluff from Dwight and Sylvia’s plush dog that Janice didn’t seem to know where to start. Her thin fingers darted in and out. “We decided to take the rest of the week off, give us time to unpack and get the house in order. I really ought to be there right now—you wouldn’t believe the dust!—but Bradley just had to come see the carnival. Like we hadn’t been to Disneyland twice while we were out there in California. He doesn’t even enjoy it all that much. But he thought he ought to come out tonight to support the harvest festival, and as much as he has to travel, I don’t like him to have to go places here by himself. You know how husbands are.”

  Her fingers moved compulsively toward Portland’s shirt.

  “Yes, I know,” said Portland, and move out of reach.

  If I’d been less choosy, I probably could have had Brad Needham for a husband. He called me at least a half-dozen times when I first came home to Colleton County several years ago, but I didn’t have much enthusiasm for sausage back then or for Brad, either, though he’d been considered a good catch. A little dull maybe, but cute, decent, hardworking, no bad habits. His best features were his dark brown hair and eyes. He had thick eyelashes and even thicker curly hair that still fell boyishly over his forehead and almost touched his collar in back. Probably made a comfortable living back then, too. But I was still getting over someone in New York in those days and I never even let Brad buy me a cup of coffee.

  Of course, there was also that matter of height. Every man in my family’s at least five-ten and most are over six feet. It would have been cruel to bring in someone a good six or eight inches shorter, no matter how sexy his eyes.

  Hadn’t bothered Janice. She’s three inches taller than Brad and four or five years older, a house-proud woman who wears silky pastel dresses and holds her long hair back with headbands that match. Tonight she wore pale coral and the color looked good against her dark hair and the tan she’d picked up in California. No children, but they seem happy together and there’s been no courthouse gossip about their marriage, even though Brad’s on the road a lot, from what I hear.

  By ten-thirty, parents with small children had drifted toward the gates, noticeably thinning the crowd so that walking the midway was a little easier. We’d tried almost every game and had acquired more prizes—a purple-and-green plush snake (Reid), an eight-inch pink teddy bear (Portland), and a poster of Richard Petty, which I’d probably wind up giving to Reese to liven up the bare walls of his trailer. (I’d actually been aiming for Willie Nelson, but someone jiggled my arm just as the dart left my hand.) We were at that point of debating whether to call it a night and go find a quiet watering hole, or just call it a night, period.

  Even though she can’t drink now and was already yawning, Portland insisted that it didn’t matter to her. “Whatever y’all want to do.”

  Sylvia, who hadn’t yet won a thing on her own, was still anxious to try something called the Dozer, which sat slightly apart from the other stands beneath its own red-and-white-striped tent. The tent’s two end walls acted as a divider from the kiddie duck pond next to it on one side and a cotton candy wagon on the other side. The other two flaps were tied open so that players could enter from either side of the midway.

  As for the Dozer itself, picture a rectangular box on wheels with its four sides hinged at the top so they could be folded up out of the way. Interlocking red A’s were stenciled around the bottom. It had been too crowded the first time we passed it. Now there were more than enough places to accommodate all six of us and we reached in our pockets for quarters.

  “I used to be pretty good at this,” Sylvia said. “Wait till the pusher goes back before you put your quarters in so they’ll land behind the pile.”

  The setup reminded me of an old-fashioned candy counter. Each station was a separate glass box. Just at eye level was a shelf heaped with quarters and poker chips that could be redeemed for prizes or cash. A pusher blade like the blade on a bulldozer came forward and the pile of quarters seemed to teeter on the edge. Then the blade went back and I quickly reached up and pushed two quarters through the slot while the blade was still retreating. The two coins rolled down to the empty part of the shelf and lay flat. As the blade came forward, it pushed my quarters toward the pile accumulated at the front edge. The pile quivered and a single quarter tumbled over and down into a cup at waist level. I immediately retrieved it and fed it back into the slot. When the blade came forward, though, that coin slid harmlessly to the side. I fed in two more quarters with no better luck than before. One landed on the pile, the other rolled off to the side and disappeared.

  A tiny hand-lettered sign there read COINS THAT FALL INTO THE SIDE SPILLS ARE RETAINED BY OPERATOR. (Like anyone really thinks the operator would give them back?)

  I could see the logic of Sylvia’s instructions, though. I needed to lay down a carpet of quarters at the back center so that when the blade pushed them forward, they in turn would push that front pile of quarters over the edge and into my cup.

  Unfortunately, I was out of quarters.

  I fished a couple of dollars out of my pocket and called, “Change, please.”

  There was no response from the well behind the boxes. I stood on tiptoes to catch the eye of the person who should have been standing ready to make change or redeem the poker chips for prizes.

  “Excuse me,” I called again. “I need some change down here.”

  “Good luck,” growled a black man a few spaces away. “I don’t think nobody’s working this place.”

  “We’ve not seen anybody anyhow,” said the woman with him.

  Across the way, strobe lights suddenly flashed and a siren wailed as someone won at the Bowler Roller stand. A guy there was high-fiving his friend, and everyone in eyesight turned to watch till the lights and siren turned themselves off.

  “I’ve got quarters,” Reid called from the woman’s far side. The others were around on the other side of the setup.

  “That’s okay,” I told him. There were two steps leading up into the wagon and the wooden flap that led to the dim interior was unhooked. I put my foot on the bottom step, pulled back the flap, and stuck my head in. “Anybody he—”

  The words died in my throat.

  A white man lay crumpled on the wooden floor. Blood clotted his nose and had oozed down the side of his face. His eyes were open and unblinking.

  His mouth was open, too, but it had been stuffed to overflowing with bloody quarters.

  CHAPTER 3

  FRIDAY NIGHT (CONTINUED)

  I backed out quickly and bumped into Dwight, who was holding dollar bills in his own hand.

  He grabbed my arm to steady me, took one look at my face, and said, “What’s wrong, shug?”

  I swallowed and pointed to the space behind me.

  He squeezed through the narrow opening, then immediately stepped back out and reached for the phone clipped to his belt to call for backup.

  As Reid came over to see what was going on, Tally Ames darted
out of the midway crowd with a frown on her face.

  “Hey,” she called. “No customers in the hole, okay?”

  Her eyes ran across the top of the game as if expecting a head to pop up from behind the glass boxes with their endlessly moving blades. “Braz!”

  With an exasperated sigh, she said, “I swear I’m gonna kill him, sneaking off again and leaving the store to run itself. Here, y’all need change? I’ll get it for you.”

  She tried to move past Dwight, but he held his ground in front of the opening. “Sorry, ma’am.” To Reid, he said, “I saw a couple of town officers around here earlier. Run see if you can find them.”

  While my cousin for once went off to do as he was told without asking why, Tally protested. “Officers? Hey, wait a minute, Mister. You got a problem with Braz or this store, you talk to me, okay? I’m the owner. And if I can’t fix it, I’m sure our patch—”

  “Wassup, Tail?” asked a man who was working the duck pond next door, an idle pond now since all his little customers seemed to have gone home to bed.

  She turned to him gratefully. “Is Dennis still on the lot, Skee?”

  “Yeah, I saw him up at the gate a few minutes ago. Want me to get him?”

  “Would you? And if you see Braz, tell him to get his tail back here right now, or he can just keep on going, okay?”

  She swung back to me and said, “Look, Judge, can’t you tell your friend here—”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ames.” I was almost positive that it was her older, missing son who lay just beyond the hinged flap, and even though Dwight was shaking his head at me, I couldn’t not start preparing her for the worst. “There’s been an accident. And this is Dwight Bryant of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Accident? Sheriff’s department?” She glared at us suspiciously. “What sort of accident?”

  The African American couple who’d been feeding quarters into the machine next to Reid started to edge away, and Dwight said sharply, “You two! Wait right there, please.”