Carny Short Stories Volume 2

by

S.E. Tomas

Copyright © 2019 by S.E. Tomas

All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

Falling In  1

Bunkmates  11

Yonkers, NY  23

On the DL  33

Freak Snowfall  45

Biggest Payday  57

Balloon Store  67

World’s Finest  79

Locked In  91

Circus Jump  99

Tropical Storm  109

Local Help  119

Falling In

It was ten o’clock in the morning and we were waiting for Anton, the joint manager, to come unlock the machine gun joint.

All of a sudden, I seen Anton walking up towards the joint. He had a very angry look on his face.

Before Anton even got to the joint, he looked at me. “You!” he said. “You’re fired! Fuckin’ smoking crack in my bunkhouse. Go pack your shit and get out of here.”

I didn’t know who had ratted me out, but it was obvious that some brown-nosing bitch had opened his mouth. I figured the guy smelled it through the vent for the central air and then seen me or my buddy Cory, who worked in the corn dog joint, going in and out of my bunk.

I could have denied it, but I didn’t bother. I knew there was no saving my job.

I went back to my bunk and immediately packed up my shit. Then I went to look for another job, since we were only on day six of the Dade County Youth Fair, which was an eighteen-day spot.

I knew the bosses would all talk to each other, so I didn’t even try to find a hole in another joint. I was finished in the joints. No one else was going to hire me now because they’d think I was robbing them so that I could smoke crack.

I went and found Doug Hannigan, the guy who ran the doppel loop roller coaster. I’d worked for him already, setting up the doppel loop for the spot, and he never fired me even though he knew I smoked dope. On setup, he’d actually asked me and my buddy Layne if we were on heroin. We’d just come off a crack binge, though, so he was right about us being fucked up. He just had the wrong drug.

Hannigan was at the shop for the doppel loop. “Hey, what’s up, Jimmy?” he said when he seen me.

“I lost my job for smoking crack in the bunkhouse,” I said.

Hannigan didn’t look too shocked. “Yeah, well, you can come work here, I just don’t need you till teardown,” he said. “You can stay in one of the tractor trailers.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Because I’d helped set up the ride, I knew where all the trailers were for the doppel. I found one that was right by the ride, within the fencing of the ride.

I put my shit in the semi-trailer. Then I went to the office of John Jorgensen, who owned the machine gun joint, to get paid for the five days I’d worked.

I went behind the joint line to John’s office and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” the office lady said.

I went into the office. “I’m here to get my pay,” I said.

“What’s your name?”

I gave the office lady my full name.

“Sorry, your pay’s not ready yet. Come back in a few hours. I’ll be ready for you by then, hopefully.”

“All right,” I said.

I had nothing to do, so I walked back to the semi-trailer. It wasn’t that hot outside, but I opened the two side doors of the trailer and the double doors in the back just so the air could circulate.

Inside the trailer, it was just a bare wooden floor. It was empty in there except for racking on the walls. There were also a few tools lying around from setup, a couple of canvas bags, and a candle.

I grabbed the canvas bags, folded them up, and then put them under my sleeping bag for extra padding.

After setting up a little bag for dirty laundry, I decided to take a nap. I hadn’t slept much since we’d opened because every night after work, I’d been smoking crack with Cory until three or four in the morning.

I slept for a good three hours. As soon as I got up, I went back to the office to see if my pay was ready.

The office lady had my pay ready. “We docked you ten percent because you got fired; you didn’t finish the spot,” she said.

I didn’t know about this rule, that if you got fired, you got docked ten percent.

Those bastards, I thought to myself.

“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “That’s bullshit.”

The office lady gave me an envelope with my pay. I immediately opened it and took out my money. Apparently, it wasn’t enough just to dock me. They’d also paid me all in one-dollar bills. I wasn’t too surprised by this, though, because I’d heard about what they’d done to Timmy the previous season, another guy who worked in the joints. He didn’t get fired; he’d just pissed the boss off. At the end of the spot, they’d paid him in quarters. The quarters weren’t even rolled.

I quickly counted my pay. Everything was there except for the ten percent they docked me.

Even though I’d gotten docked, it was enough money to keep me going until the end of the spot. Then I had a job tearing down the doppel as soon as we closed on the last day, so I knew I’d be fine.

I left the office and went back to the semi-trailer. I put on my street clothes, went and grabbed something to eat at the strip mall across the street from the lot, and then went back to the trailer and took another nap.

I slept until around seven o’clock at night. As soon as I got up, I thought to myself, “Yeah, I’m going to get fucking high tonight.”

I didn’t care what the rules were on the show about doing drugs. As far as I was concerned, it was none of the show’s business what I did after work, on my own time.

I decided to be a little less open about it, though, this time. I preferred getting high with other people, but I could see that my downfall would be to smoke it with other people on the show. It was other people, I realized, who’d get you caught.

Since it was still early in the evening, I had some time to kill. The dope man didn’t come to the lot until five minutes after we closed.

I decided to go to the convenience store to get some drinks and some smokes.

Since the show had taken my show ID when they’d fired me, I had no way back onto the lot if I left through the gate. So I went to the back corner of the lot where the doppel loop was located, went in behind the bathroom building, and then jumped the fence.

Right across the street from the lot were businesses. I crossed the street and went to the Mobil gas station.

As I was walking down one of the aisles in the store, I happened to see a tire gauge out of the corner of my eye. It reminded me of my buddy Layne who’d made a stem out of a tire gauge.

I’d never had my own stem. When I’d smoked with Cory, we’d used a pop can. Since I’d be smoking alone, I decided to experiment with using a stem.

I grabbed the tire gauge, a six-pack of Icehouse, a bottle of Pepsi for the morning, and then went to the till.

“Marlboro Lights,” I said to the clerk.

The clerk put a pack of Marlboro Lights down on the counter. He scanned the rest of the items. “Ten fifty,” he said.

I paid for my items and then left the store. I still needed a screen for the stem that I was going to make out of the tire gauge, so I walked up the street to this little grocery store in the strip mall and bought some Brillo.

I went back to the lot, jumped back over the fence, and then went back to the semi-trailer. It was dark outside now, so I grabbed the candle I’d found earlier and lit it.

The candle lit up the trailer pretty good. I had time on my hands, so I decided to get my stem ready.

There was a vice on one of the racks in the trailer. I put the top of the tire gauge in there, tightened it up, and then busted it off. All the guts fell out of the metal tube.

I cut off a little piece of Brillo. I rolled it into a ball that was small enough to fit into the end of the metal tube. Then I took a flat-head screwdriver that was in the trailer, put it into the other end of the tube, and then held the tube solidly on the floor of the trailer while I pushed the screen in really tightly with the screwdriver.

Now I was good to go.

I hung out in the trailer until closing. As soon as I seen the lights on the giant wheel turn off, I knew we were closed.

I blew out the candle, left the trailer, and then started walking to where the bunkhouses were located.

I ran into Cory.

“Are we partying tonight?” Cory asked me.

“No, I got fired today for what we were doing in the bunkhouse,” I said.

“Ah, shit.”

“Yeah. So I’m just going to chill by myself tonight.”

I didn’t tell Cory where I was staying. I didn’t want him to show up there.

Cory went on his way. I found the crack dealer. He was a younger black guy.

“Hey, I need a fifty of hard,” I said to the dealer.

The dealer gave me three pre-packaged twenties. He was giving me a deal because I was buying fifty bucks’ worth.

I put the dope in my pocket and then went back to the trailer. I knew I’d be safe smoking in there because there was no one else staying around me. Nobody went back there after hours.

As soon as I got into the trailer, I immediately tore off the knot in the plastic that the dope came in. Then I broke off a piece of dope and put it on the end of the stem, and then melted it into the screen a little bit.

“Lift off,” I said to myself.

I lit the lighter and did a blast. For some reason, not too much smoke was produced. I was sucking hard, but I wasn’t getting much smoke in my lungs. I didn’t get very high. I didn’t even get a ringer.

I smoked the whole piece like that and I barely got anything.

Either the dope sucked or the stem sucked, I thought to myself. It was one or the other.

I stashed the stem in my duffle bag. Then I went to sleep.

The next morning I got up at around eight thirty. I went to open my eyes and realized that I couldn’t open my left eye. I touched it. It felt really swollen.

I got out of bed and went to the door of the truck. Because the door was shiny, I could kind of see my reflection.

I looked at myself.

“Holy shit,” I said out loud.

It looked like somebody had punched me in the eye and my eye had swollen shut. It wasn’t just swollen, though. It was red and nasty-looking.

I knew it had to be some kind of bite because I could see the mark from where the thing had bit me. I figured it was probably a spider because what else, I wondered, could swell your eye up like that.

Fuck me, I thought. What else can go wrong?

I went back into the trailer and sat down. Then I dug the stem out of my bag. I felt so crappy about my eye that I said to myself, “I’m going to try to push this thing.”

I remembered seeing Layne push the screen from one end of the stem to the other and then do a hoot anytime we’d finished smoking crack. I didn’t think he’d ever gotten much off it, but I’d never asked him either, so I really didn’t know. I decided to try it for myself.

I took the flat-head screwdriver and used it to push the screen back and forth three times. I looked at the screen. It wasn’t silver-coloured anymore; it was a milky white colour.

Whoa, I thought. That’s where it all went.

I realized that all the dope had melted through the screen and into the pipe. That was why I hadn’t gotten very high. Now all that dope was in the screen.

I knew I’d get a good one if I did a hoot. So I took the lighter and held it in front of the screen. I sucked gently until the flame started going into the screen.

My lungs filled quickly with lots of smoke. I inhaled until I couldn’t inhale anymore. There was still smoke coming out of the stem after I stopped sucking on it.

I exhaled a huge cloud of smoke. It felt like I’d gotten that whole sixty from the night before in one shot.

Instantly, I started sweating like a fucking pig. My ears were ringing. I didn’t usually get paranoid when I smoked crack, but I felt so fucking paranoid. I was so fucking high. It was the best hoot I’d ever had in my life.

I waited ten minutes or so and then I got another good one . . .

Once the high wore off, I hung out in the trailer. For the rest of the day I only went out to get something to eat or drink or to take a piss because I was feeling kind of self-conscious about my eye. Every time I ran into somebody on the show that I knew, they’d ask me, “What happened to your eye? Did somebody punch you out?” After a while, I just didn’t want anyone asking about it anymore.

That night, I went and got more dope. When I went to smoke it this time, the stem worked great. Pushing the screen back and forth, it seemed, had fixed the problem. I was getting lots of smoke now. This time, the dope wasn’t melting through the screen.

Wow, I thought to myself. This is how I’m going to smoke it from now on.

Using a pop can just seemed primitive to me now.

End of Falling In

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Patricia Atkinson

★★★★☆

July 22, 2020

the stories of jimmys life as he was a carny continues just love reading his adventures