This was freedom, and to make it taste just that much sweeter, we worked our way back to the speedway, where Jerry was setting up for the third stock-car race. 'I ought to kick ya'll's asses,' he said. 'Walking out on me the way you done, that's no way to treat a friend.' He handed us our uniforms, and we tossed them on the counter, announcing that we'd found an easier way to make money.
'Then get on out of here,' he said. 'And don't come crawling back, neither. I don't have no use for backstabbers.'
We had a high time with that one. Reminded of just how stupid a person looked in a paper hat, Dan and I returned to our panhandling, pausing every so often to tap each other on the shoulder. 'Backstabber, you might think I've got some use for you, but think again.' As the afternoon moved on, we replaced the wordbackstabber with the wordhippie, allowing ourselves to believe that Jerry had fired us not because we had walked out on him but because we were free and of the moment. It didn't matter that we'd never work for him again, as those days were behind us now. Work was behind us.
By five o'clock I had begged enough money to pay for my vest, but Dan and I were greedy and not ready to stop. Plans were made for stereo systems and minibikes, anything we wanted, paid for in dimes. Dusk approached and the midway brightened with colored bulbs. The early evening was lucrative, but then a different crowd swept through and the mood became rowdy.
'Spare change?'
The guy I'd approached had a downy, immature mustache, no more than a few dozen hairs positioned above a mouth the size of a newborn baby's.
'What did you say?' he asked.
I turned away, and when he spun me back around to face him, I noticed his army jacket, which wasn't the old ironic kind but a crisp new one, the type you'd buy as practice before you enlisted.
'Did you talk to me, weirdo?' His mouth was bigger now. 'Did you say something to my face?'
A second boy stepped up and put his hand on the angry guy's shoulder. 'Come on, Kurt,' he said. 'Take it easy.'
'Maybe you don't understand what's going on,' the guy named Kurt said, 'but this bozo talked to me.' He spoke with great outrage, as if I'd peed in his mouth. 'I mean, he actuallysaid somethingto me.'
Two of their friends who had walked ahead came back to see what the fuss was about and stood with their arms crossed as Kurt explained the situation. 'I was minding my own business and this piece of shit started running his mouth. Comes right up as if he knows me, but he doesn'tknow me. Nobody fuckingknows me.'
The only thing worse than a twenty-five-year-old with a Vietnam flashback was a fourteen-year-old with a Vietnam flash-forward. I turned my head to look for Dan and saw him backing away just as Kurt's fist caught my ear, breaking the stem off my glasses and sending them to the ground. The second punchgrazed my upper lip, and the third was interrupted by the friends, who grabbed Kurt by the arms, saying, 'Hey, man, take it easy. He's not worth it.'
I tasted the blood leaking from my lip. 'It's true,' I said. 'I'm not worth it. I swear I'm not. You can ask anyone.'
'He shouldn't go talking to people when he doesn't know who the fuck he's talking to,' Kurt said. 'The next time someone gets in my face, I'll fucking kill him. I swear I will.'
'We know, buddy. We know.' Kurt's friends led him down the midway, and a minute later one of them returned to hand me a dollar. 'You're cool, man,' he said. 'What Kurt did, that was wrong. He can kind of go off sometimes, but I know where you're coming from. I like peace.'
'I know you do,' I said, 'and I appreciate it.'
It was the first time anyone had given me an entire dollar, and it occurred to me that if I could get beaten up twenty times a day, I could make some real money. Then I saw my broken glasses, and the equation fell apart. I was picking them off the ground when Dan stepped up, pretending to have missed the whole thing. 'What happened to you?' he asked.
'Don't give me that,' I said.
'Don't give you what?' He bit his lip to keep from laughing, and I knew in that moment that our friendship was over.
'Just call your mom,' I said. 'I'm ready to get out of here.'
There were a million ways to hurt yourself at the state fair, so when my mother asked about my lip I told her I'd hit the safety bar while riding the Tilt-A-Whirl.
'Aren't you a little too old for that?' she asked. She had the Tilt-A-Whirl confused with the twirling cups and saucers designed for grade-school kids. My mother had actually pictured me wedged into a flying teacup.
'Jesus,' I said. 'What do you take me for?'
She offered to have my glasses fixed but drew the line when I asked for a brand-new pair.
'But the ones I've got make me look like a bozo.'
'Well, of course they do,' she said. 'They're glasses. That's their job.'
Dan and I had planned to return to the fair on Sunday morning, but when he came to the door I sent him away, saying I wasn't feeling well. 'I think I have some kind of flu.'
'Could be the chicken pox,' he said, and again he tried not to laugh. This was what you did to people you felt sorry for, to people too stupid to get the joke, and it was a lot worse than just coming out with it. He headed up the driveway and I thought again of the previous evening and of what I'd said after Kurt had thrown his first punch. Agreeing that I wasn't worth the energy it took to hit me was bad enough, but did I have to offer it as a matter of public record?You can ask anybody. It was no wonder he'd reared back and hit me again.
Late that night Dan knocked on my bedroom window. 'Guess who made forty-four dollars?' he said. The bills were held behind his back, arranged into a droopy fan, and he brought them forth with great ceremony.
'Oh, come on. You did not make forty-four dollars.' I denied it for the sake of argument, knowing that of course he had made forty-four dollars. The following weekend, his hair just that much longer, he would return to the fair and make even more. In no time he'd be wearing ponchos and sitting cross-legged before elaborate brass hookahs, our friendship as vague and insignificant to him as an old locker combination. 'The two of you grew apart,' my mother would say. She made it sound as if we'd veered off in different directions, though in fact we had the exact same destination. I just never made it.
It turned out that the vest was not suede but something closer to velveteen. This was a disappointment, but having suffered in its name, I had no choice but to buy it. With the money I had left over I got a pair of blue corduroy hip-huggers, which made an ironic statement when worn with the red vest and a white shirt.I love America. Yeah, right!
'Tell me you're not wearing that out of the house,' my mother said. I thought she was in some way jealous. Her youth gone, style was beyond her grasp, and she hated to see me enjoying the things that she could not.
'Could you please stop hassling me,' I said.
'Ooh,hassled, are we?' She sighed and poured herself a glass of wine from the gallon jug in the pantry. 'Go on then, Uncle Sam,' she said. 'Don't let me stop you.'
I debuted my new outfit at the Kwik Pik, where once again I ran into the hippie girl. She wasn't begging this time, just standing with a friend and smoking cigarettes. Hanging out. I nodded hello, and as I passed she called me a teeny-bopper, meaning, in effect, that I was a poseur. The two of them cracked up laughing, and I burned with the particular shame that comes with being fourteen years old and realizing that your mother was right.
The last thing I wanted was to pass the hippie again, and so I stayed in the Kwik Pik as long as I could, biding my time until the manager kicked me out. How was it that one moment you could look so good and the next you would give almost anything to crawl into your grocer's freezer, settling beneath the pot pies until you reached that mysterious age at which a person could truly think for himself. It would be so peaceful, more drowsing than actual sleeping. Every so often you'd come to and notice that the styles had changed. The shag had arrived. Beards were out. You would look at the world as if through the window of a bus, hopping out at that moment of time you instinctively recognized as your own. Here was the point where, without even trying, you could just be yourself and admit that you liked country music or hated the thought of hair against your neck. You could look and act however you wanted, and spend all day in the Kwik Pik if you felt like it. On leaving, you'd pass a woman dressed in a floor-
