Another fifteen minutes went by, and men and women came away from the church without their kids, got in their cars, and drove away. I thought about that. Parents bringing their kids to a safe place, the church. Leaving them with someone safe, the Reverend, assured in their hearts that their kids were off to have a good time.
And most likely they were. It wasn’t the loved kids the Reverend wanted, so just exactly what was the Reverend’s game? Figuring what he did want made my head hurt.
A minute or two later, the short bus came out from behind the church with its lights on. I could see the Reverend driving, glimpsed the shadowed forms of kids through the windows. The bus turned left and drove past the cop car and on down the street.
The cop car fired up quick and pulled around in the center of the street and went after the bus. Mr. Sneak. He might as well have been standing on a bucket, jerking his dick and singing a song.
Leonard cranked up and we followed after. Actually, neither we nor the cop had to be sneaky. The bus did what we expected it to do. It drove straight to the carnival, paused at the gate and went on into the fairgrounds. So far, things were going as expected.
Not having a special pass, we, along with the cop, parked outside of the fence, and walked up to the gate. When we got there, we were standing behind the cop. The guy at the gate, a black guy with a physique like the Pillsbury Dough Boy and black glasses with white tape on the nose bar, wouldn’t let the cop in because he didn’t have a dollar. The cop, a hard-boiled guy wearing what was once called a leisure suit, a style of clothing that went out of favor and production not long after the demise of the seventy-five-cent paperback, wanted to show him his badge and let that do.
“I don’t need a badge,” said the fat gatekeeper. “I need a dollar.”
“Listen, this is police business,” the cop said.
“You’re shittin’ me,” the gatekeeper said. “The carnival’s police business?”
“Here,” I said, handing the gatekeeper a dollar. “Let him in for heaven’s sake. You’re holding up the line.”
The gatekeeper took the dollar. The cop eyed us the way cops do, said thanks like he didn’t mean it, and went inside. The gatekeeper said to me, “Man, look at this, two white guys back to back, ain’t that some kind of lucky omen or something?”
“Two white guys, one in an ugly leisure suit, means it’s going to rain,” I said.
“I can believe that,” the gatekeeper said, “That guy, I don’t think he’s on cop business at all. I think he’s too used to free meals and shit. That might work uptown, but not here. And where’d he get that suit? What the hell color was that anyway?”
“Orange or rust or dirty gold,” Leonard said. “Take your pick.”
We paid and went inside. We saw the cop walking toward the lot where the permitted vehicles were parked. He walked wide of the lot and onto the pea gravel, went over and leaned against the fence where the carnival lights were weak, got a cigarette out, lit it, and tried not to act as if he was looking at the bus. He wasn’t very good at it.
The bus door opened and Fitzgerald got off the bus, and a line of loud, excited kids came out behind him, followed by a pretty, middle-aged black woman. I assumed she was one of the kid’s mothers, helping the Reverend out.
The kids, mostly six to ten years in age, evenly split between girls and boys, bounced on their toes and stood in a line that gyrated like a garter snake on a hot rock. The woman and Reverend Fitzgerald chatted amiably. He smiled. She smiled. The Reverend went back to the bus and leaned inside, then leaned out. I thought maybe he had said something to someone inside. T.J. perhaps. From where we stood, no one was visible, but the plywood window replacements in the back and on the side could have hidden them.
The Reverend smiled at the woman again. They spoke. Half the kids went with her, the other half with the Reverend. Mr. Leisure Suit followed after the Reverend and his charges. T.J., the walking eclipse, did not make an appearance.
Me and Leonard were trying to decide what we were going to do next, when Hanson walked up and surprised us. “You assholes,” he said. We turned and got a look at him. He was his usual pleasant-looking self, but he no longer had his cigar. I presumed it was in his pocket. I hoped he remembered to put it out before he put it up. “Didn’t I just see you fucks? I said I’d let you know.”
“I’ll say this,” Leonard said, “you walk light for a big dude.”
“It’s my fuckin’ Indian blood. What you two doin’ here? I said you were out. You done more than you’re supposed to already.”
“And very well, I might add,” said Leonard.
“Don’t let your dicks get too hard,” Hanson said. “You did all right, but you had some luck.”
“So did you,” I said. “We came along.”
“You didn’t even know for sure you had a case before we showed up,” Leonard said.
“I still don’t know I got anything,” Hanson said.
“Bullshit,” I said.
“All right,” Hanson said, “you’re goddamn wizards of detection. Now go home or take in the carnival. I want you out of my way. I mean it now. I got men on the job, and they even know what they’re doin’. Well, they got an idea, anyway.”
We left Hanson and walked around the carnival. It was bright with lights and the sounds of voices and the cranking of machinery and the blasting of music, presumably conceived by ears of tin and played on matching instruments. There was the smell of sweat from excited children and tired adults, the butter-rich aroma of popcorn and the sugar-sick sweetness of cotton candy, the burning stench of fresh animal shit from the petting zoo.
We were over by the petting zoo when we came across Hiram. He was standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking forlorn as a man who’d just prematurely ejaculated. He was looking at a spotted goat.
We walked up beside him. I said, “Hiram.”
He turned and looked at me, but it took him a moment to know I was there.
“Oh, hi,” he said.
“Surprised to see you here,” Leonard said.
“Mama’s with my sister. She drove down.”
“How is MeMaw?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Same. Doctor said she could stay like that awhile. A day, six months.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Me too,” Leonard said.
“I had to get out, you know?” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “Nothing wrong with that. There’s not a lot you can do.”
“I just needed a break,” he said. “Even if I just end up watching a goat.”
Hiram turned back to watch the goat, and a little boy came up and started petting it. We stood there in awkward silence for a time, then said good-bye and slipped away.
“Too bad,” Leonard said as we bought cotton candy. “I like MeMaw and Hiram.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but she lived a full life. We all got to check out sometime.”
“It’s not dying I hate for her,” Leonard said. “It’s lingering. I think we embarrassed Hiram.”
“Yeah, he feels guilty. Like he ought to be with her, but there’s just so much of the deathwatch a person can take.”
“You know what?”
“What?”
“This cotton candy is making me sick.”
I guess we wandered around for a couple of hours. We saw the Reverend and his kids and their leisure-suited shadow a few times, but the Reverend didn’t see us. We saw Melton, aka Mohawk, walking with a young black girl who looked as if she had not long back abandoned her training bra and dolls. They went around behind a hot dog stand and we lost sight of them. We saw Hanson a few times. He looked as sullen as ever, as if the sight of us was causing his nuts to shrink.
As we strolled, a lot of blacks looked at me like I was an exotic animal, maybe belonged in the petting zoo. And in a way, I suppose I was exotic, least here and on this night. There were only a handful of white people at the carnival, and some of them were cops.
