The Big Rock Candy Mountain (9 page)

“I never knew it to fail!” Eva said, and came along unwillingly with Bo and Elsa.

Walking on the other side from Eva, Bo took Elsa's elbow and squeezed it, and glancing up she saw the glow that had been in his narrowed eyes all during lunch. When he was excited or interested, she noticed, the cool blue-gray warmed in his pupils, and his square, almost expressionless face became lively and changeful. She remembered what Jud had said in the elevator the other day, and was trying to see evidences of it in his face when she caught herself. She was just an ignorant Norske girl from the sticks. He wasn't crazy about her. He couldn't be.

All the same, when his turn came up and she watched him go down alone, to stand in the lonely focal point between spectators and traps and break twenty-five straight, holding his fire sometimes until she almost yelled for him to shoot, but always shooting in time, picking off the birds close to the water when their swift flight had slowed in the drop—when she watched him like an infallible machine scatter the clay saucers one after another, she held her breath and felt something like a prayer on every shot. When his gun missed fire on the twenty-second bird she was in an agony for fear it counted against him, for fear it would make him nervous as the bad bird had in the first round. But they gave him another, and he broke it, and then the last three.

He came back with his face as expressionless as if he had just been for a drink of water, and when she clapped her hands he pulled down the corners of his mouth. “Lucky,” he said. “I'll probably miss a dozen next round.”

But his eyes did not think he would. They told her privately that he was going out there and score another possible. The last three men finished shooting, and the referee called out the running scores: Olson, seventy-three; Mason, seventy-three; Carter, seventy-three ; Gulbransen and Smith, seventy-one.

“Tied for first!” Elsa said. He just rubbed his shoulder, pounded sore by the kick of the gun, and kept his eye on the shooter coming up. ,

“I wonder where that Jud is?” Eva said. She had hardly said a word in the hour and a half they had been sitting there. She twisted and fidgeted, looking through the crowd.

“I'm going to look for him,” she said. “He gets gabbing and never thinks what time it is.”

Bo paid no attention to her words or her departure. He sprawled back, watching Olson shoot. His actions were faster than in previous rounds. They had to be. The birds came at sharp angles, from unexpected traps, and almost every shot was a quartering one. He ran nine, snapped a hurried side shot at a saucer spinning wide from the fifth trap. A tiny fragment zinged from the clay, its click coming back after the roar of the gun. The bird fell solidly into the water. “Lost bird,” the referee droned. Olson, red in the face, protested, but the official waved him back. “Dusted target is no bird,” he said.

The hustler was coming through. “Condon up, Mason on deck,
Williams in the hole.”

“All right, honey,” Bo said softly. “Hold your right ear and pray.”

He went down early, sitting at the official table while Condon shot, and when Condon was through he went out and shot another possible, shoot, relax, shoot, relax, break the breech and kick the smoking shells out on the ground, reload, shoot, relax, snap up the barrels, find the spinning disc in the split second of its rise, hands and eyes working together surely, impeccably. When he reached twenty without a miss Elsa was on her knees. When he broke the last bird hissing out at a high angle she was on her feet.

“Harder they get the easier they are for that guy,” a man next to her said. She nodded, waiting for Bo to come back.

“You did it!” she said. “Bo, it was wonderful!”

His eyes were warm and intimate, his voice a purr. “I had something to shoot for,” he said. He took her hand and sat down beside her while the last two unimportant shooters finished out their rounds. Then they were calling Bo Mason back to the table, and a man was standing, bellowing through a megaphone. “The winna! Harry Mason of Hardanger, singles champion of North Dakota! Harry Mason wins the fifty-dolla cash prize and the silva cup with a score of ninety-eight. That's shootin‘, folks! Give him a hand!”

He dropped the megaphone to clap, stopped that to pump Bo's hand. The crowd clapped and cheered. The representative of a sporting goods house was introduced and presented Bo with a shiny new repeating shotgun. Bo made a play of trying it out, winced and staggered when the butt touched his shoulder. The crowd laughed. Elsa saw that they liked him. Men went up to talk to him, and he was still speaking over his shoulder as he walked up the slope. Behind him the referee was shouting, “Runner-up, Bill Olson of Mandan. Bill Olson ...”

“Where'll we go?” Bo said. He held a gun under each arm, a packet of new bills in one hand. “This dough'll burn my pocket out.”

“Anywhere,” she said. “Bo, I think it's wonderful!”

“You do?”

“Well ... some ways.” They laughed.

“Where's Eva, do you suppose?”

Elsa stopped. “My goodness, we'll never find her, in this crowd.”

“Serve her right,” Bo said. “Jud told her where to stay.”

“But where can Jud be?”

“Jud? Jud's in a poker game.”

“Is that...”

“He'd be a sucker to pass up a carnival like this. We probably won't see him till late.”

It wasn't very nice of Jud, Elsa thought as Bo dragged her off exuberantly toward the fair. If he was going to do that, what did he bring her for at all?

They deposited the guns in the headquarters tent for safe-keeping, and three quarters of an hour later they found Eva disconsolately eating Norwegian cakes and trying to make conversation with the booth attendant, a plump, rosy Norwegian woman who spoke only a dozen words of English.

“I got hungry,” Eva said. “And I lost all my money on that horse race thing, and Jud isn't anywhere around. I looked all over. If they weren't giving these cakes away free I'd be starved by now, for all he cares.”

The Norwegian woman pressed
kringler
and cups of coffee on them. They ate and licked their fingers.
“Mange tak,”
Elsa said to the woman, and smiled at her. The three of them went off down the street.

“Bo won,” Elsa said. “Did you know that? He's champion of North Dakota.”

“That's fine,” Eva said. Her eyes were roving among the passing people. She stumbled on her skirts, and flew into a vixenish rage. “That's fine,” she said. “Maybe you can shoot that big fool of a Jud for me when we find him.”

“Hell with him,” Bo said. He winked at Elsa. “Let's go have some fun.”

They bought a bag of sunflower seeds from a Russian huckster and were experimentally trying out the peanut-like taste when the ferris wheel loomed in front of them. Bo hustled them into a swinging chair. Eva squealed as the wheel began to climb, carrying them up over the trees, over the fungus-growth of colored tents. The sun, which had been just down when they got aboard, showed like a thin red plate on the horizon. They reached the zenith, and the bottom dropped out of Elsa's stomach as they rolled down into the shadow.

“How do you like it?” Bo said.

“Wonderful!” she said. “It's like flying.”

“Let's go around again.”

They went around three times more until the thrill was worn off it. Eva declined. From the rising, swing-like seat climbing toward twelve o‘clock position Elsa saw her below in the edge of the crowd with her head turning right and left in search of Jud. She felt sorry for Eva. Such a frivolous, helpless, selfish thing. She must feel awful, being left that way.

But when they climbed out after their fourth ride Jud was there. “Oh-oh!” Bo said. “Now we'll have to referee a fight.”

“I don't care!” Eva was saying violently. “You said you'd be back in a little while, and I waited hours. If there was any other way of getting home I'd go right now. I'd have gone hours ago.”

“I'm sorry,” Jud said. “I got detained. That was a pretty big deal Joe had up his sleeve. Turned out I made some money on it.”

“What sort of a deal?”

“You wouldn't understand it, birdie,” Jud said. “Business.” He put his arm down around Eva's shoulders and she shook it off.

“Eva got tired watching us shoot,” Bo said. “We found her a while back stuffing herself with Scandihoovian cake.”

“I wouldn't have had even that if it hadn't been free!” Eva said.

“Well that's too bad, birdie,” Jud said. “Let's go find something to eat right now.”

“I'm not hungry now.”

“Quit your wrangling,” Bo said. “Let's go see the show.”

Lamps and Japanese lanterns were on down the carnival street, and crowds milled before booths and tents and tables. The nasal rigmarole of a barker stopped them before a long, narrow tent lighted by a half dozen lamps that threw jigging shadows on the walls. At the end, thirty feet or so from the counter that closed the entrance, a grinning Negro face bobbed and grimaced through a hole in the back curtain painted to represent a jungle river. The Negro's head came right out of the spread terrific jaws of a crocodile.

“Hit the nigger in the head, get a good ten cent seegar,” the barker said. “Three balls for a dime, folks. Try your skill and accuracy. Hit the nigger baby on the head get a handsome cane and pennant.” His lips moved over the drone of words like the lips of an ape kissing, and he spoke on steadily through inhalation and exhalation, never varying the penetrating nasal whine.

“Want a cane?” Bo said. He stepped over to the counter.

“Me too,” Jud said.

The barker shoved over six balls from a pile stacked like cannon balls. He stood back, indifferent to his present customers, his eyes on the passing crowd, his lips moving over the nasal pour of sound. Bo motioned to Jud. “Go ahead. Knock his head off.”

The black grinning face in the crocodile's throat weaved and bobbled; the curtain billowed out and in. In the inadequate light it was a deceptive target. Jud removed his coat and folded it on the counter. Then he wound up and threw, awkwardly, Elsa noticed, like a girl. The ball dented a deep shadowy hole in the canvas and dropped. The grinning face opened its mouth, cackled. Then it became fixed, its mouth stretched wide, and Elsa stared, so perfect was the illusion of a succession of red gaping mouths swallowing one another.

“Take him,” Bo said. “Your bird.”

Jud threw again. The face weaved easily sideward. “There's a percentage in favor of the house,” Jud said. His big hand went clear around the third ball as he squinted, aiming. Beside him Bo stood ready, and just as Jud let go he snapped a quick wrist throw. The balls travelled side by side. The swivel-necked colored boy rolled away from Jud‘s, saw Bo's coming, rolled back. Jud's ball hit him solidly on the skull and bounced clear to the tent roof.

“Got him!” Jud said. His incongruously masculine bellow of laughter filled the entrance. The Negro face pulled back in, leaving the crocodile a dark round hole for a throat. The barker stopped his bored droning and came over angrily. “What‘sa idea?” he said. “You can't both peg at once.”

“You never said we couldn‘t,” Bo said. “Come across with a cane.”

“I don't pay on that. You both threw at once.”

Bo's neck and shoulders stiffened as he leaned over the counter. Elsa could not see his face, but she heard his voice, soft. “This guy hit the nigger on the head,” he said. “You owe him a cane.”

Peaked and white with anger, the barker glared at him. “Like hell!”

“You aren't very smart, fella,” Bo said. He raised one hand as the barker started to speak. “And I wouldn't hey rube, either.”

“Tough guy, uh?” the barker said.

“No. I just like to see people pay off when they lose.”

After a minute the barker threw a cane onto the counter. Bo took it, laid down his two remaining balls, tossed two dimes on top of them so that they rolled off the board, and handed the cane to Eva.

Walking uncomfortably beside him, Elsa said, “Do you suppose the Negro is hurt? Jud threw that awful hard.”

He laughed. “You can't hurt a coon hitting him on the head.”

Almost immediately came the barker's voice. “Try your luck, folks. Try your skill and accuracy. Hit the nigger baby on the head, get a good ten cent seegar ...”

“Bo,” Elsa said.

“Uh?”

“Was it fair to throw both at once like that?”

He stared at her. “Sure. Every game in this carnival is a skin game. You got to out-smart ‘em.”

“The percentage is always in favor of the house,” Jud said.

Bo took her arm and pointed. “There's a sample. Go on over and try your luck.”

Curiously she crossed the street to where a small crowd had gathered around a table. A man at the table was manipulating three half walnut shells so fast that she couldn't follow his fingers. Bo stooped to whisper. “This is one of the oldest skin games in the world. Thimblerigger.” He pressed a dollar into her hand and nodded to her, go ahead.

Elsa watched the man's hands. His mouth went constantly in an unintelligible flow of sound like a barker's at the throwing tent. Finally the hands came to rest, the shells in a neat row. A tall, gangling, hayseedy man in overalls threw down a silver dollar and put his finger on one shell. “Follered her all the way,” he said. He turned the shell over, and the pea was there.

“Can't win all the time,” the thimblerigger said. He threw a dollar to the man, and his hands went intricately among the shells, caressing, touching, turning, mixing. Now and again he opened his hand and showed the pea, or raised a shell to reveal it. “Can't win all the time. Sometimes a quick eye beats a quick hand. Down with your bets, folks. Nothing up the sleeve, an open game of skill. Try your luck again, mister?”