Painted Ponies
By
C.R. Boucher
Innocence is no joke. Naiveté is less funny and even more fragile. When either is torn from the soul of a seven year-old boy what remains is delicate and raw. When both are ripped away by the agonizing death of his mother what remains grasps with delicate fingers at mere vestiges of reason. That grasp, while without power, is mightily tenacious, what the boy becomes is another story altogether. What he sees is just the beginning. Freddy was such a child. Every step he took, from the day of Mommy’s death was guided by the certainty of Daddy’s unblemished love for his son. Beyond that single certainty, the boy only knew doubt. His mind saw doubt, lived doubt, and rationalized his doubt. Hidden in the folds of his damaged soul, a gift had been traded for the life of his mother, and while any one of us would rather not have made the trade; we sometimes are guided by a lack of choice.
Freddy watched a void replace his entire adult life as he walked step by step along the edge of a great darkness, insanity. An empty span of lost years was simply gone since Daddy had been killed in a horrifying car wreck on Route Six, just before the turn to Horseneck Beach. Freddy remembered the blood smears and screeching tires. He still felt the sharpness of bits of glass burying into his face, some of which, like all other memory, remained painfully buried. He remembered nothing else. He had fought to keep his memories, but nothing remained at the end of any given day. The sun would set, sleep would come and with sunrise he would start again. Had he married? Had he fathered? Had he lived at all? Insanity was indeed nothing more than a void, an absence of true living, while denying death, despite pain and prayers. If not for his journal, scraps of notes, and his persistence, he might have crossed over. The edge of the void was sharp, long and on both sides of his path. His heart ached to be whole again. To remember.
Freddy took another step into the ruins of the old park, his eyes accepting every detail from flipping maple leaves to shards of flaking, falling, faded paint. The old black top was cracked and filled with waist high weeds. He stopped and wrote. His scrawling handwriting looked child-like and unpracticed. He misspelled simple words and left others out altogether. His pencil dulled and he reached into the pocket of his black denim jeans, pulled out a sharpener, worked it, and continued.
A few steps later, he found himself standing beside a burned out husk. A faded sign leaned against the twisted trunk of a tree growing in the center of what was the main midway. Although desperately faded, the words could still be read. “Million Dollar Ballroom” simply put in ornate, stylized lettering. The fallen remains of the Monster House stood a few dozen feet away. Walking, and searching, he took a few uncertain strides to a bench that looked untouched by time or man. The paint seemed fresh and newly washed. Frankie satisfied an uncontrollable urge to sit.
And he smelled popcorn.
He stood and the aroma was gone. His hand scrawled words incoherently into his book, and he sat again.
He smelled the hot buttered, sweetness of fresh popcorn. He kept to his seat, hanging on to the smell as long as he dared. His eyes darted around the ruins and still saw only skeletons and waste, but the popcorn smelled so new. His mouth began to crave it just as he had loved it as a boy.
He stopped and looked up to the bright blue sky. A memory, a real and actual memory stung him with its potency. He had loved popcorn as a boy.
This place filled with ghosts and skeletons had provided him with a memory as real and powerful as the words he had written telling him this was the last place he had been with Daddy before the wreck. For the first time, he remembered that too. Tears began to flow as the drips of water had once fallen from under the dried up, old, flume ride.
He stood up excited and scared, and forgot it all.
Frankie stood again in the abyss of his lost life. It was all gone, but not the smell of the popcorn. It lingered, and then he remembered the taste of the salt, and the sting around his lips as he craved a root beer to wash it down. He sat down, closed his eyes and saw the face of his father. The resemblance was remarkable. Daddy could have been Frankie’s twin. The forty-five year old man in the flash of memory was the spitting image of his son without pockmarks and imbedded glass.
Freddie lost all control. Why here? Why now? Memory became fluid and persistent. Frankie lost track of now and then. Without any real recall to tell him the difference, the flashes of his past became stronger than his images of his now.
“Daddy, when can we go on the Comet? It looks like such a blast.”
“After my beer settles. I don’t want to puke. I’ll get you some popcorn and a root beer. ‘kay?”
“‘kay.”
They walked together toward the bright red booth. There were only three people in line. Daddy put his hand on top of Frankie’s hot, sweating head. His long, black hair was damp and clinging. The sun beat down on the crowds as they clustered in lines and strolled under the fifty-year-old trees. Calliope music spread from the carousel. Thirty-six painted ponies ran an endless race around a series of paintings depicting imaginary Europe. A fat man with a long gray and white beard clanged a big brass bell as the ride started and stopped. Frankie ate handfuls of slippery, hot golden popcorn, sipping at his root beer, while Daddy sipped at another cold Budweiser, and munched his clam cakes. Thin lines of oil dripped along his wrist. He never even drank beer until Mommy died three years ago. She had been thirty-eight when the ovarian cancer took her. Frankie looked up at his father’s bright blue eyes and remembered the gallons of tears falling and wetting his shirt.
He remembered he had cried too, for almost as long.
Frankie stood up from the bench. His own blue eyes were filled with tears and one still dared to trickle along his hardened, pale cheek. His notebook had fallen to the long, deep grass that surrounded the new bench. Mindlessly, he continued his walk without it, moving along the paths and walkways that branched from the old midway. Just minutes later, he found himself standing below the giant skeleton of the Comet. The old coaster stood defiantly tall, despite the fires and vandalism that had destroyed the rest of the park. It’s white bones, dark against the sky, without the thousands of white lights that used to flash sequentially, outlining the hills and twists of the once vibrant roller coaster. Behind the rotted turnstile one remaining car lie at an unusual angle, derailed on its last ever trip around the twisted circuit. To the left of the old turnstile, another bright red bench waited, almost beckoning him to sit.
His mind replayed the screams and clatter of the ride in its heyday. He knew if he closed his eyes he would be able to see the train being pulled up the first hill. The old sign was still standing at the very top. “LAST WARNING! Hold Your Hats and Safety Bar.” Near the turnstile was a cutout painting of a small boy with a small sign in his hand, “You must be as tall as ME to ride,” it read. A small bird sat on the very crest of the boy’s noggin, shitting a white stream, before flying on. Frankie allowed a small laugh to escape. Coming here had been a good decision. He almost felt good, and he had remembered. God alone knew if he would keep those memories, if he had earned them back, but for now, he felt almost good.
When he began to hear the calliope again, he thought he was flashing back, but when he looked up and saw the painted pony, one of the carousel horses standing under the shade of the old clambake pavilion, his heart skipped a beat.
“Insanity,” his mind yelled, “you’re walking along the edge!”
Frankie squeezed his eyes shut. The dragging sound of the painted pony seemed to come closer. Another scrape from another direction, and he reopened his eyes. Three ponies stood about fifteen feet from the bench. Frankie took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.
“Daddy, I’m scared.”
“That’s good, Frankie. Be with your fear. We can overcome it, together.”
They took three steps past the boy with the sign. Frankie was tall enough, and Daddy’s beer had settled. They were in line for the Comet. Frankie felt the vibrations in the wooden rails as the train passed over their heads. He watched distorted faces simultaneously scream in both joy and terror as the Comet pulled and twisted, rose and dropped for two and one half minutes.
“Daddy, I’m not sure anymore.”
“Well, I guess you just have to trust me, Frankie. It’s okay to be scared. When we get near the top of the first hill, just close your eyes, pretend you’re a bird, no not just a bird, but a great big eagle flying through the air.”
“Yeah right. A giant eagle that’s been shot and s flying straight toward the ground.”
“Or he’s not shot, Frankie, but swooping down to grab a fish from the lake. C’mon, you won’t be hurt and we’re not gonna walk back down this line. Look, there are little girls in this line. I think you need to do this. My own mother took me my first time. She scared the shit outta me going up that first hill, but this is the best ride in the park, once you face your fears you can live. There are worse things than facing your fears. Do you wanna spend your whole life riding painted ponies?”
There were worse things, by far.
But a ten-year-old boy did not know what a forty-five year-old man knew, or what he had forgotten. A ten-year-old boy had no understanding of dreams or visions, none at all.
Frankie opened his eyes, there were now six ponies standing in a line, waiting for passengers.
“Don’t you know you’re dead?” He whispered. “Damn you all. You’re ghosts from a little scared boy’s last day with his Daddy. I was afraid to ask for one more ride. He would’a teased me!”
He stood, turned his back on his guilt and walked to toward the old roller rink. The first of the dreams came right after Mommy had died, or maybe just before. He was unclear. He was clear, however, that these dreams frightened him. He had dreamed of planes falling from the sky. Trains crashing into each other, and he was sure he had dreamed of the fire that had destroyed the park. And one dream, he had it every day, showed him Daddy flying though the air and bending in half when his back hit the tree.
In the background of his mind, the calliope played Carousel Waltz. Frankie stopped in his tracks. He was facing the hollowed building that had to have been the Fun Arcade. It had been filled with pinball and skee ball games. He had won a long string of tickets that day with Daddy. His hand came out of his pocket, pulling a long string of thirty orange tickets, the word Winner and the numbers 00732 to 00762 printed on the ends. He dropped them letting a breeze take them away.
He dropped to the ground. The music got louder and he heard the scraping sounds of the ponies in motion. Behind him, the corpse of the old Merry-Go-Round stood hollow and bare. Ghosts made noise and called to a man on the edge of lucidity, welcoming him to join them. To his left, the broken figures guarding the Monster Ride beckoned to him in silent temptation. He could hear the old sounds. The echoes of a life he had known as a boy grew stronger with each step. Another painted pony crossed from the shadows and stopped. Frankie could swear it was freshly restored for a new season. His heart began to race. More ponies began to follow. Lines of them were just suddenly there. Frankie dropped to the ground and put his head into the cup of his hands, resigned to accept whatever fate was his. The edge of his reality was becoming too thin to stand on. He knew it would be moments before he fell from the edge and his crying, drooling remains would be sedated then wrapped and stored in thin white sheets.
He looked up, the ponies had formed a circle, facing toward his left, they curved away, from his right, they curved toward him. The music of the calliope began with force, the cymbals crashing and a drum thumping a haunted but steady beat. Each of the ponies lifted from the ground and began to rotate in a circle as though the merry-go-round was still in service. They rose and dropped, spinning in a swirl of color and rhythm. Franking saw how similar his life was to this spin of wooden horses. They never slowed, but never made any progress, every seventeen seconds they returned to the same place they began. Like his own circle of days without memory, there was only meaning in the very instant, nothing beyond. He felt exhilaration in every rise, excitement in every drop, but the peaks and hollows were empty meaningless nights. He watched as the patterns took them through elongated shadow, around the shucked hollow of the fried clam booth, behind the empty husk of the corn on the cob stand, and finally returning to view from behind the charcoaled remnants of the hamburger grill. There were ponies painted in every color, posed in dozens of positions, and ornamented in countless combinations of fantasy. In his mind they were all stallions, wooden horses could be nothing but stallion. Gold leaf accents flashed in the glinting touches of the hot afternoon sun, and Frankie just watched as his grip on real and imagined slipped and slid away from him.
“Daddy I’m scared,” he said aloud as they passed under the last warning sign.
“Good, fear is a good thing. Fear keeps us safe. Don’t turn from your fear, Frankie, stare at it all the way down.”
And as they surged forward and over the humping crest, Frankie kept his eyes open and his stare focused at the pit of a valley between the first drop and second lift. People all around him raised their hands and screamed in terror and exhilaration. The combination stirred the boy’s ten-year-old heart. The rush of wind in his ears roared with the power of a minor hurricane. The tears in his eyes were swept away as the rush of summer winds brushed his face and hair in waves. They reached the bottom and started the next climb well before the empty feeling in their stomachs regained a rightful place. At the top of the hill as they turned to the left, Daddy waved his arm in grand gesture.
“Look at the park, Frankie, look.” The joy in his voice was clear. The pride in his eyes was strong. Frankie let his own very unsteady gaze take in the entire park as the Comet took them around the bend, before dropping them down a deceivingly tame looking second drop that turned into a helix and continued from there to a series of camel humps. They screamed together, laughed together and rode again. Together.
The music filled the background with melody.
The ponies slowed and stopped, waiting for more riders. A brass bell clanged three times and the movement began, again,
“Daddy, the dreams are back.”
“When?”
“Almost all of the time now. I even have them awake.”
That was Daddy’s fear. The dreams his son had begun to have just before his Mommy died. He saw what no child his age ought to. He seemed to know things he was not told, or could have overheard.
He was certain neither had used the term ovarian cancer in front of him.
And they hadn’t. Frankie understood the phrase and its meaning, because he had seen it. It came to him in mysterious waking dreams that made no sense at first. Only after many repeated visions did the phrase make sense to him, and by then Mommy was dead. Understanding often comes in the wake of need.
Frankie took a deep long breath and turned his gaze toward the deepening blue of the late afternoon sky. The shadows had merged around him, surrounding him in an eerie void of silver light. He was finding it hard to distinguish between then and now. He could almost feel his Daddy breathing on the back of his neck, while at the same time he watched the ghosts of painted ponies prancing to music that should not be. In one world, one time, a forty-five year-old man fought to retain memory. In another world, another time, a ten-year-old boy grasped with issues of life and death, guilt and sorrow that no child should, but many must, learn to deal with and understand.
As Daddy led his son away from the comet, the light around the park began to flicker and glow. The Round-Up became a magical whirl of red and amber. The Bubble Bounce hissed and the neon glow reflected on the face of the laughing woman perched on the side of the Fun House. Her pre-recorded guffaws were redundant and silly. Frankie took his steps slowly. His eyes were seeing a different park, a dead park. He saw through those older eyes, as that older Frankie walked closer to the ring of ponies. He put his hand on the rump of a white stallion. They were still all stallions to him. His arms tingled with the hardness of the wooden flank. The white was covered with a blue saddle and dark brown leather stirrup. The gold leaf patterns were dull in the gloomy light. The day was almost gone. With night, sleep would come and with morning, he would start again. The circle would return to the very same place. His memories would be gone. His life would be gone. The sight of his father and the park in full glory, also just simply gone. And for what? Understanding comes in the wake of need. Where had that sentence come from? Frankie understood that his need was now. There could be no tomorrow without understanding now, not in the aftermath of some forecast tragedy.
His father had died on the way home from the park that night, right after the last ride on the Comet. He remembered that now standing in his gloom. He pulled one leg over the back of the pony, hopped up. He was ready to ride.
Frankie pulled his Daddy to a stone cold stop. “One more ride, Dad, the merry-go-round. Just once.”
“Sure, Frankie. I forget your only Ten. You’ve seen more than you should, one ride on the painted ponies for that part of you that will always be my little boy.”
They walked together, Frankie began to understand something new, maybe in time, and maybe not.
They gave their tickets and walked toward a pair of black horses.
“No, wait.” Frankie said with a bit of force. He walked toward a white one. He put his hands on the rear quarter.
“This one.”
“Fine,” Daddy said. He swung up to the one just beside it. “Getting’ up?”
“One sec.”
In the dark of the long dead park Frankie did understand, there would be no more memories. There would be no tomorrow. Night was here and with tomorrow it would start anew.
“Remember!” He screamed into the blackness, to a time before memories. “Change it. Don’t let it happen.”
Frankie swung his leg up and over the saddle. His bottom thumped into place. He had seen through those older eyes. His throat hurt from the last agonizing plea, understanding comes in the awake of need, but this time just before. A ten-year-old boy earned the knowledge he needed. Maybe, just maybe, it was enough. It was not a dream. It was not insanity. There could be no memory for a man without a past. And a boy stopped being a boy when he saw his fathers back bend around a tree trunk. The man and boy came together for one painful moment filled with truth. He saw the man he might become.
Frankie smiled a timid grin.
“Daddy, can you change the future just by knowing it.” The boy asked.
“If you change it, was it really the future?”
“I think so.”
“Then I guess you can. You’re a clever boy, Frankie. Make the future what ever you want.”
The boy grasped the leather straps in both pudgy hands.
“Let’s ride, then Dad, let’s ride.”
Story Contents Turnstiles Eternal Rose Demons on His Shoulder Tyrone Green