“On the nose!” said my nephew Reese, who’d suddenly appeared at my elbow. He’s one of my brother Herman’s sons. The one that hasn’t finished growing up. The one who owns nothing but a white Ford pickup and the contents of a trailer he rents from my brother Seth. An unfamiliar young woman hung on his arm.
“Aren’t they just the cutest little bears?” she cooed. “See if you can win me a pink one, Reese?”
“Guess your age within two years, your weight within three pounds, your birthday within two months. Only two dollars,” Tally Ames chanted.
Reese handed over the money. “Weight,” he said.
She walked around him, talking trash as she eyed his tall Knott build. “Muscles in those arms. Skinny backside, but a coupla beers too many in that belly. Let me see your hands. Umm, hardworking hands, but slow, right?” She winked at Reese’s girlfriend, who giggled in agreement.
She scribbled a number on the tiny pad in her hand. “A hundred and eighty-seven pounds, okay?”
Reese grinned, handed his foot-long chili dog to his girlfriend, and stepped confidently toward the scales. “I ain’t weighed but a hundred and seventy-five since—”
His grin turned to disbelief as the needle swung back and forth, then settled at 188.
“Better cut back on the beer and hot dogs, Reese,” I teased.
But my nephew was peeling off another two dollars. “So how old you think I am?”
She peered deeply into his eyes, then wrote the number on her pad. “I’ve written it down. What do you say?”
“Twenty-eight,” said Reese.
She showed him the pad where she’d scribbled twenty-eight.
“Damn!” said Reese, and two more dollars changed hands. “When’s my birthday?”
More scribbling. “I’m ready.”
“July,” Reese said.
She showed him her pad where she’d abbreviated “Jly.”
Reese swung around and glared at our laughing faces. “Y’all are telling her!”
“No, I they’re not,” said Tally Ames, her bright blue eyes sparkling from the roll she was on. “Son, I can even tell you what beer you drink!”
She took his two dollars and wrote
“I know y’all’re telling her,” Reese insisted.
“Tell you what,” said the guesser. “For two dollars, I’ll make ‘em stand behind me and I’ll tell you what kind of car you drove here tonight, okay?”
“Now here’s where I get you your teddy bear, Patsy,” Reese told his girlfriend as she joined us behind Tally Ames.
Once more, the woman looked Reese up and down, then started writing on her pad. Patsy peered over her shoulder and began to giggle. “She’s got you, babe.”
I looked, too.
“Now, how the hell you do that?” Reese asked, totally amazed. As if everybody in the world couldn’t look at him and know that he drove a truck and that the only chancy thing would be whether it was a Ford or Chevy. She’d had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right.
“You’re a good sport, son,” she said. “I’m gonna give you a free teddy bear, okay? You deserve it.”
My eyes met Dwight’s above Sylvia’s head. He winked at me and I knew I wasn’t alone in figuring out that Reese’s “free” teddy bear, a fuzzy little blue thing no bigger than my hand, had cost him ten bucks.
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
