Joyland

"It was very sudden," she said. Then, so softly I could barely hear: "My heart is breaking."

There was a hand on my shoulder. Jennifer's. I covered it Joyland with my own. I wondered who was in Chicago to put a hand on Annie's shoulder.

"Is your father there?"

"On a crusade. In Phoenix. He's coming tomorrow."

"Your brothers?"

"George is here now. Phil's supposed to arrive on the last flight from Miami. George and I are at the… place. The place where they… I can't watch it happen. Even though it's what he wanted." She was crying hard now. I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Annie, what can I do? Anything. Anything at all."

She told me.

42

Let's end on a sunny day in April of 1974. Let's end on that short stretch of North Carolina beach that lies between the town of Heaven's Bay and Joyland, an amusement park that would close its doors two years later; the big parks finally drove it to bankruptcy in spite of all Fred Dean's and Brenda Rafferty's efforts to save it. Let's end with a pretty woman in faded jeans and a young man in a University of New Hampshire sweatshirt. The young man is holding something in one hand. Lying at the end of the boardwalk with his snout on one paw is a Jack Russell terrier who seems to have lost all his former bounce. On the picnic table, where the woman once served fruit smoothies, there's a ceramic urn. It looks sort of like a vase missing its bouquet.

We're not quite ending where we began, but close enough.

Close enough.

''I'm on the outs with my father again," Annie said, "and this time there's no grandson to hold us together. When he got back from his damn crusade and found out I'd had Mike cremated, he was furious." She smiled wanly. "If he hadn't stayed for that last goddam revival, he might have talked me out of it. Probably would have."

"But it's what Mike wanted."

"Strange request for a kid, isn't it? But yes, he was very clear.

And we both know why."

Yes. We did. The last good time always comes, and when you see the darkness creeping toward you, you hold on to what was bright and good. You hold on for dear life.

"Did you even ask your dad…?"

"To come? Actually I did. It's what Mike would have wanted.

Daddy refused to participate in what he called 'a pagan ceremony.' And I'm glad." She took my hand. "This is for us, Dev.

Because we were here when he was happy."

I raised her hand to my lips, kissed it, gave it a brief squeeze, then let it go. "He saved my life as much as you did, you know.

If he hadn't woken you up…if he'd even hesitated-"

"I know."

"Eddie couldn't have done anything for me without Mike. I don't see ghosts, or hear them. Mike was the medium."

"This is hard," she said. "Just… so hard to let him go. Even the little bit that's left."

"Are you sure you want to go through with it?"

"Yes. While I still can."

She took the urn from the picnic table. Milo raised his head to look at it, then lowered it back to his paw. I don't know if he understood Mike's remains were inside, but he knew Mike was gone, all right; that he knew damned well.

I held out the Jesus kite with the back to her. There, as per Mike's instructions, I had taped a small pocket, big enough to hold maybe half a cup of fine gray ash. I held it open while Annie tipped the urn. When the pocket was full, she planted the urn in the sand between her feet and held out her hands. I gave her the reel of twine and turned toward Joyland, where the Carolina Spin dominated the horizon.

I'm flying, he'd said that day, lifting his arms over his head.

No braces to hold him down then, and none now. I believe that Mike was a lot wiser than his Christ-minded grandfather. Wiser than all of us, maybe. Was there ever a crippled kid who didn't want to fly, just once?

I looked at Annie. She nodded that she was ready. I lifted the kite and let it go. It rose at once on a brisk, chilly breeze off the ocean. We followed its ascent with our eyes.

"You," she said, and held out her hands. "This part is for you,

Dev. He said so."

I took the twine, feeling the pull as the kite, now alive, rose above us, nodding back and forth against the blue. Annie picked up the urn and carried it down the sandy slope. I guess she dumped it there at the edge of the ocean, but I was watching the kite, and once I saw the thin gray streamer of ash running away from it, carried into the sky on the breeze, I let the string go free. I watched the untethered kite go up, and up, and up.

Mike would have wanted to see how high it would go before it disappeared, and I did, too.

I wanted to see that, too.

Author's Note

Carny purists (I'm sure there are such) are even now preparing to write and inform me, with varying degrees of outrage, that much of what I call "the Talk" doesn't exist: that rubes were never called conies, for instance, and that pretty girls were never called points. Such purists would be correct, but they can save their letters and emails. Folks, that's why they call it fiction.