“Yeah.”
“You’ll get a commendation for sure.”
Rudderham shrugged.
“Twenty-five sticks, huh? Where the hell did he get them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think they would have blown the tank?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus Christ!” said Chavez.
The two men just sat for a moment, neither speaking. Finally Rudderham said, “Well, buddy, I’m going in.” He yawned and then took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. “Werner gave me tomorrow off. Good deal, huh?”
Picking his sport coat off the rear seat, he slid out the door. He looked in the window and grinned. “Hey, the next time you call me in the morning make it for checking out a firecracker complaint, huh?”
He walked from the car to his home, wondering how he’d explain the scratches on his face to Helen.
The Clarion Call
by John Lutz
The ferris wheel, calliope, the barrel ride, played their sweet and clarion tunes, nostalgic accompaniments to a child’s death...
Grayville was isolated off minor blacktop highways that wove through thickly wooded hills. Not the usual place for a tourist to find himself, but then Mason was more than the usual tourist. Even on his two week summer vacation he was still the devout journalist of the offbeat, roaming in search of the remote and long neglected human interest story.
There was one in Grayville, his reporter’s inner voices told him as he drove his station wagon slowly down the main street. The buildings on either side of him were old but well kept up; a grocery store, loan office, barber shop. Not much in the way of commerce; the typical country community only smaller and less prosperous. The kind of town people moved away from young, and returned to old.
As he was driving past the town’s main restaurant, Mason became consciously aware of what had been on the edge of his mind. Calliope music, with its rising and falling lilting rhythm. He looked to his left, beyond the stark frame two story building he was passing, and there was the carnival.
Mason stopped the car and stared at the twisting, plunging tracks of a fairly large roller coaster, the flickering quick view of a bullet-shaped gondola revolving on a long metal arm, two girls walking past carrying lush cotton candy. Looming above it all, the skeletal frame of the most gigantic Ferris wheel Mason had ever seen. He slipped the station wagon in gear again and turned onto a sun-baked dirt road that led in the direction of the carnival.
He’d expected one of the fast dollar, portable carnivals that roamed the country during the summer months. Instead Mason found a permanent amusement park, complete with pecan shell midway and a pavillion. It wasn’t a large amusement park, and there appeared to be more people milling about it than actually were there. It struck Mason now that the town had been virtually — no, not virtually, completely — deserted. Everyone, apparently, was here to enjoy the carnival.
Mason parked his car, climbed out, stretched to shake off the long hours of driving, then began to walk about. “Must be some sort of town celebration,” he thought. Even though the amusement park was obviously a permanent structure, there couldn’t be enough people in Grayville to support the business on such a grand scale.
Of course, Mason didn’t know the geography of this back-woods, mid-west territory. Maybe there was another, larger town nearby. Or sufficient farms in the vicinity to add to the population.
“Easy enough to find out,” he thought. “Ask somebody.” As he began to look for someone who looked like an accurate source of information, he was suddenly aware that he was drawing mild double takes and odd, sometimes surprised glances from the smiling, excited crowd on the midway. Most of the men about him were wearing workman’s clothing and the women had the ruddy, healthy stamp of country wives. The darting and laughing children seemed to be dressed in bright but ragtag fashion as they whisked in and out of the crowd.
Mason chose a thin old man with a trimmed white beard who was standing watching the children ride their endless circles on the carrousel. The old man turned at Mason’s gentle hand on his shoulder.
“What’s the occasion?” Mason asked.
The man stared at him, one blue eye narrowing amid sun browned wrinkles. “Carnival,” he said in a puzzled voice, is if surprised by the question Mason had put.
Mason smiled at him, “But why today? Any particular reason?”
“Weather’s perfect for Carnival,” the man observed, squinting up at the clear, hot sky.
Behind and to the left of the smoothly revolving carrousel was a ride Mason had seen at various amusement parks; a circular platform that revolved and tilted simultaneously. Customers stood along the inside perimeter of the circular structure, their backs against a curved wall that went all the way around it. Then, as the ride revolved faster and faster, their backs were pressed firmly against the wall by centrifugal force and the floor dropped down a few feet to leave them giddily whirling unsupported from below.
“That takes a young stomach,” Mason said, motioning toward the walled platform that was beginning to rotate to frantic gay music. He turned and saw that the old man was gone. Mason caught sight of him some distance up the midway, shuffling through a crowd of women carrying picnic baskets.
Mason looked after him, shrugged, then with a glance at the carrousel walked toward the parachute drop near the other end of the short midway.
He didn’t know what made him turn and look up to see the arcing form against the blazing afternoon sun. It was a young boy, slender, his arms and legs outspread as if by some timely miracle he might be able to fly.
Above the music, his scream was barely audible as he fell outward and down. Horror stricken yet calm, Mason saw that a section of wall from the circular, madly revolving, platform had given way, hurling the boy up and out as if from a huge sling. There was no way he could live.
Mason trotted in the direction of the boy’s fall. The people stared at Mason as he passed them. “An accident!” he shouted. “Over there!”
When Mason reached the scene he saw that there was already a knot of people about a small figure covered by a gray blanket. From beneath the blanket only a worn blue tennis shoe protruded, twisted at an odd angle so that the sole was almost flat against the hard ground.
Three men stood with their hands on their hips, staring down at the gray bundle, and a hugely fat woman stood off to the side with an unbelieving, horrified expression on her bloated features.
“Who was it?” Mason asked. “Does anybody know the boy’s name?”
The four people simply stood as they were, staring at Mason now instead of the covered corpse.
“The boy’s parents?” he suggested.
One of the men, a tall redhead, twisted his florid face in anguish and looked down again at the body. “Six hundred to one!” he moaned.
“His dad,” a woman said near Mason’s ear. He was shocked to see her indicate the man who had just spoken.
“Listen,” Mason said, “somebody’s sure as hell got to tell whoever’s in charge.”
“You see what happened?” a voice behind Mason asked.
Mason whirled, relieved to see a brown uniform and a sheriff’s deputy’s badge. “I saw enough to know what happened,” Mason said. “A section of wall on that centrifugal force ride gave way and the boy was thrown through the air.”
Another man wearing a brown uniform walked toward them, a heavy set, muscular man with short cropped, frizzy blond hair and a lit cigar.
“This man saw it happen, Sheriff,” the first brown uniform said.
“Ever’thing?”