“When they come out,” she said, “they’ll get us down from here. So you’d better not try anything, you understand?”
He turned toward her, a knee pushing against the side of her leg. Though his eyes were hooded with shadow, she could feel their gaze roaming her body. “Denny likes you,” he said. His voice wasn’t high and childish, as Robin had expected from this man who looked like an overgrown boy. It was low, raspy.
Holding her shoulder, he slid his other hand up her thigh.
“Soft,” he said.
Robin grabbed his wrist. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Please.”
“Denny likes you,” he said again.
“Then don’t.”
He took his hand off her leg, and she released it. His other hand left her shoulder. He fumbled with the buttons of his filthy, ragged trench coat.
“Denny, no.”
He opened the coat. He wore a sleeveless undershirt and baggy trousers. The tight shirt bulged over massive muscles.
I won’t stand a chance.
He’ll only hurt me worse if I struggle.
Dammit, I’m not gonna let him rape me!
This is what I get for helping him.
Denny pulled the coat off his arms and tugged its tail out from under his rump.
He draped it over Robin’s shoulders.
Her throat tightened. As she slipped her arms into the sleeves, the man cupped a hand gently over her right breast. “Soft,” he said. Then he took his hand away, drew the coat shut, and began to button it.
When he finished, Robin leaned against him.
“Thank you, Denny,” she said. “Robin likes you.”
He put an arm across her shoulders.
“Sing?” he asked.
“Sure.”
She was singing “Amazing Grace,” Denny holding her and slowly rocking their perch high above the boardwalk. The song took Robin back to her father’s funeral. Her dad’s old buddy, Charlie MacFerson, had played the bagpipes at her side while she stood by the grave with her banjo, strumming the tune and singing the melancholy words.
This time, the song was for Nate.
Her voice trembled. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Denny looked at her and cocked his head. Then he pulled off his ball cap. He put it on Robin. It was way too big for her. It slipped down, covering her eyes. She kept singing as he slid it back on her head and turned it sideways.
Over the tremor of her voice, Robin heard a quiet thud. A chunking sound. A chopping sound.
She went silent.
Off to the left, a slat of wood flew off the front wall of Jasper’s Funhouse and clapped the boardwalk. The pale beam of a flashlight probed through the narrow gap.
The chopping went on. Wood flew and clattered down.
Soon the opening was the size of a doorway.
People began to emerge from the Funhouse.
Denny pointed. He began to laugh.
Robin could hardly believe what she saw. A woman down there seemed to have
two
heads. A man clutching his shoulder had a growth on his chest that looked like a small arm. A man—one of the cops she’d seen earlier—stepped through the break in the wall, carrying a man who had no legs.
Denny slapped his leg and pointed as a tall lean man helped a woman through the opening. The woman, clad only in bikini pants, seemed to have three breasts.
A man, or two men, sidestepped through the gap. They looked as if their hips were glued together.
A girl with a flashlight came out, turned to the opening, and shone her light on it while a woman ducked through, carrying a limp body.
Robin’s stomach clenched as she gazed at the boy cradled in the woman’s arms. She was too far away to make out the features of his face, but she knew him. She knew him by his size and dark hair and clothes, by the raw wound on his chin—made by her teeth.
That bastard Duke.
Dead?
Where’s Tanya? she wondered. Where are all the others?
Did they get away?
The woman crouched. She set Duke’s body down on the boardwalk in front of the Funhouse. As she started to rise, the kid suddenly grabbed the front of her T-shirt and tried to pull himself up. The woman fell to her knees. Duke screamed in her face.
Denny yelped with alarm and flinched.
Robin, patting his leg to soothe him, watched the woman twist Duke’s hands from her shirt and pin them to the boardwalk. Still screaming, he writhed and bucked and thrashed his legs.
The girl gave her flashlight to the male cop, squatted, caught Duke’s kicking feet, and helped to hold him down.
Robin took off the ball cap. She put it on Denny’s head and tipped the bill up the way he liked it. “Time we let them know we’re here,” she said.
“Denny likes it here.”
“I guess there are worse places to be,” she told him.
The gondola rocked back as she leaned forward and gripped the safety bar.
It tipped wildly when Denny did the same.
She shouted, “Help! Up here!”
Denny shouted, “Help! Up here!” He grinned at her.
Down on the boardwalk, heads turned.
“Are you ready for my big finale?” called Maxwell the Somewhat Magnificent.
The crowd in the stands yelled and cheered.
“I’ll require a courageous and beautiful volunteer from the audience. No men need apply.” Even as arms went up, he pointed at someone in the third row. “You. I think you’ll do just fine.”
As the young woman rose from her seat and started making her way forward, men in the audience whooped and whistled their approval.
Joan said, “Oh, my God.”
“It’s Debs!” Kerry blurted, and bounced on Dave’s lap. “What’s she going to do?”
“Watch and find out,” Dave told her.
“Doesn’t Steve get to go up too?”
“Boyfriends probably get in Maxwell’s way,” Dave said.
“But he’s all alone.”
“They wanted to sit by themselves,” Joan explained to the four-year-old.
“Can’t imagine why,” Dave said.
“’Cause you’re old farts,” Kerry said.
Dave gently cuffed the side of her head. “Watch your language, young lady.”
She laughed.
Then laughter erupted from the crowd as Maxwell the Somewhat Magnificent tried to mount his unicycle, clinging to Debbie, pretending to lose his balance as the wheel rolled and twisted under him. He fell against her, hugging her, squeezing her rump through the seat of her white jeans. Finally, perched unsteadily on the high seat, he lurched away. He careened around the stage, spinning and jerking as if out of control.
At last he seemed to find a semblance of balance. He mopped his brow with a red bandanna.
Debbie turned to leave, but he said, “Wait, wait! You don’t get off that easy!”
Maxwell’s assistant appeared with three flaming torches. He gave one of them to Debbie.
“Dear thing,” Maxwell said, “she’s carrying a torch for me.”
He kept up the banter, telling Debbie, “You really light my fire,” making nervous queries about her throwing arm, then instructing her to toss the torch to him.
“To
me, not
at
me. I’m gentle, but I’m not tinder.”
The audience didn’t respond to the pun, so he swept an open hand above his hair. Dave knew what the gesture meant—that the joke had gone over the heads of the crowd. He’d seen a lot of performers make the same sign during the years he’d been bringing his family to the Funland Amphitheater. He always found it annoying.
It didn’t go over our heads, he wanted to yell. It just wasn’t funny.
Debbie tossed each of the three torches to Maxwell the Somewhat Magnificent. The third went high. Maxwell swept backward on his unicycle and made a catch that Dave considered Truly Magnificent.
While he juggled the torches, he thanked Debbie and suggested that she meet him after the show to help him “put the fires out.”
Her long blond hair flew from side to side as she shook her head. Still shaking her head, she turned around and waved to the cheering audience. Then she rushed down the stairs as if eager to escape Maxwell’s further remarks.
Kerry leaned sideways and tugged the sleeve of Joan’s sweatshirt. “Mommy, why don’t
you
go up?”
“No, thanks, honey.”
“Come on, it’d be fun.”
“I don’t think Maxwell needs another dupe just now,” Joan told her.
“What’s a dupe?”
“Somebody to poke fun at.”
“Besides,” Dave said, “Mommy’s already done it. She went onstage once with Fred the Magician. So did you, kiddo.”
“Me?”
“You were in Mommy’s tummy.”
“God, don’t remind me,” Joan said. “The worst experience of my life.”
“Were you a dope?”
“I sure felt like one, honey.”
“You’ve gotta admit,” Dave said, “the guy had an amazing assortment of bun jokes.”
“He was pregnant with quips,” Joan added.
Maxwell finished his routine, leapt from his unicycle, and bowed. Then he did an encore. Blindfolded by his assistant, he juggled the torches. He ended by dropping onto one knee, reaching under his leg, and catching the last torch before it hit the floor of the stage.
Putting his arms around Kerry, Dave clapped in front of her stomach. She grabbed his wrists and helped.
Maxwell the Somewhat Magnificent left the stage after many elaborate bows.
The lights went out. The audience fell silent. Dave heard the faint sounds of calliope music, voices, and laughter from the boardwalk. He heard the distant roar of the Hurricane.
“Is it time for Robin?” Kerry whispered.
“I imagine so,” Dave said.
“Is she going to sing ‘The Land of Purr’?”
“She promised you she would.”
“Hope she doesn’t forget.”
In the darkness, a voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Funland Amphitheater is proud to present a very special attraction. Our next performer has just returned from her most recent engagement at the Grand Ole Opry.”
Dave heard eager murmurs from the audience.
“You may have heard her songs on the radio. You may have seen her on the Dolly Parton special last month.”
Let’s get
on
with it, Dave thought.
“Our own Boleta Bay songbird, Funland’s Banjo Queen,
Miss Robin Travis!”
The audience went wild. Joan’s shoulder pressed against Dave. Her breath tickled his ear as she said, “Nate sure laid it on pretty thick.”
“What do you expect?”
The crowd roared as brilliant lights hit the stage. Robin stood motionless in front of her band, smiling.
She wore an outfit that Dave hadn’t seen before: a buckskin jacket with fringe swaying in the breeze, a shiny white blouse, and a short leather skirt that left her slim legs bare to the tops of her white boots.
She glanced back at her band. Drums began to pound through the noise of the cheering crowd. Robin faced forward. Her right boot tapped the stage in time with the drum. With the first notes of her banjo, a hush descended on the audience. A quick, twangy tune filled the night. A roar came up again as those in the stands recognized the intro to “Gypsy Girl.”
I am the gypsy banjo girl.
I’ve wandered far and near.
I am the gypsy banjo girl
With a song for you to hear.
It’s a mountain song,
It’s a desert song,
It’s a song of the windblown sea.
It’s a prairie song
And a woodland song
—
It belongs to you and me.
Kerry bounced on Dave’s lap, and he heard her soft voice as she sang along. Joan leaned against him and slipped a warm arm around his back.
“My next number is very special to me,” Robin announced midway through the show. “I sang it for a fellow named Nate the night we met. He must’ve liked it, ’cause he married me. So this one’s for you, Nate, and for another special friend, Kerry Carson, the daughter of my two favorite cops.”
Then she began to sing:
Kelly and Kerry went off one day
For the Land of Purr where the kitty-cats play.
They packed their pockets with nacho chips,
Bubble gum, jelly, and chocolate lips…
Kerry twisted around on Dave’s lap. “It’s
me!”
she blurted.
“I’m
in it!”
After Robin’s final song and the standing ovation, she played and sang three encore numbers. Then the stage went dark. Seconds later, when the amphitheater lights came on, she and the band were gone.
Dave, Kerry, and Joan waited. When the crowd had diminished, Joan folded the old brown blanket she’d used to cover the bleacher seats. Dave took hold of Kerry’s hand, and they started down.
Debbie and Steve met them just outside the amphitheater’s entrance. The rides and attractions had already closed for the night. The bright carnival lights were dark, but lamps near the boardwalk railing still glowed to illuminate the way for the departing concertgoers. Funland seemed strangely quiet.
“You going to let me have your autograph?” Debbie asked Kerry.
“Huh?”
“Well, you’re a big celebrity now, you know.”
“Both of you,” Joan said.
“God, don’t remind me. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. I wanted to curl up and die when he was grabbing me that way.”
“He never could’ve gotten onto the unicycle without your valuable assistance,” Dave told her.
Debbie bared her teeth and punched his shoulder.
“Now, now, children,” Joan said.
Debbie took hold of Steve’s hand. “Anyway, we’ll see you guys later, okay?”
“Where are you off to?” Joan asked.
“Pete’s Pizza. Since Steve has to go home tomorrow and everything, we thought we’d…you know, make the most of it.”
“Can I go too?” Kerry asked.
“No, you may not,” Joan told her.
“Whyyyy?”
“Because it’s late, young lady. You should’ve been home in bed hours ago.”