Honey Moon (41 page)

"Can't stand the sight of blood." He gave a comical shudder. "Miserable stuff.

Don't know 'ow you tolerate it."

She giggled, and then belatedly remembered her professional responsibilities.

Casually lifting her hand to tidy any errant salt-and-pepper curls that might have escaped her cap, she inquired, "Can I help you with something?"

"It's the other way around, now isn't it? I'm 'ere to entertain the kiddies. The bloke from the Rotary Club told me to show up at three. Did I get the time wrong again?" His look was devilish and unrepentant. "In addition to bein'

afraid of blood, I'm also unreliable."

The single eye not covered by the patch was the brightest turquoise she had ever seen—as crystal clear

as a candy mint. "No one told me that the Rotary had arranged for a clown to visit the children."

"Didn't they now? And I 'ave to be in Fayetteville by six to entertain at the Altar Guild bazaar. It's lucky for me that you've got an understanding 'eart, in addition to a beautiful face. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to earn the fifty bucks the Rotary's payin' me."

He was full of the devil, but so charming she couldn't resist. Besides, the rain had kept visitors down this afternoon, and the children could use a little entertainment. "I suppose there's no harm."

"Not a bit."

She came out from behind the desk and began to lead him down the hall. "As you can see, we're a small hospital. We only have twelve beds in Pediatrics.

Nine of them are filled."

"Anyone I should know about?" the clown asked softly, all traces of mischievousness fading.

If she'd had any doubts about letting him onto the floor without official authorization, they vanished instantly. "A six-year-old named Paul. He's in one-oh-seven." She pointed toward the end of the hall. "He's had a rough time with pneumonia, and his mother's been too busy with her boyfriend to visit very often."

The clown nodded and made his way to the room she had pointed out.

Moments later, Nurse Grayson heard the cheerful gravel of his voice.

"Ahoy, there, mate! Me name's Patches the Pirate, and I'm the mangiest dog that ever sailed the seven seas. . . ."

Nurse Grayson smiled as she made her way back to the nurses' station and congratulated herself on her good judgment. There were times in life when it paid to bend the rules.

* * *

Eric spent that night parked off the side of a dirt road in a small clearing just over the South Carolina border. When he emerged from the van the next morning, still dressed in his jeans and T-shirt from the day before, his mouth felt like dull metal from bad food and too many nightmares.

He'd bought the clown costume a week ago in a shop near Philadelphia, and since then he'd stopped at

a small-town hospital nearly every day. Occasionally he called ahead, posing as a civic leader. Most of

the time, however, he just followed the blue and white signs as he'd done yesterday and talked his way in.

Now he couldn't shake off the suffering of the little boy at the hospital yesterday. The child was thin and frail, and his lips bore a faint bluish rim. But it was the boy's pathetic delight at receiving Eric's undivided attention that had been wrenching. Eric had stayed with him for the rest of the afternoon and then gone back that evening and done magic tricks until the child had fallen asleep.

But instead of feeling good about what he'd done, he could only think about all the children he hadn't been able to comfort, all the pain he couldn't stop.

The chilly dampness seeped through his T-shirt. As he worked the kinks out of his muscles, he gazed up into the gunmetal-gray sky. So much for sunny South Carolina. Maybe he should get back on 1-95 and head directly for Florida. For a while now, he'd had vague ideas of hanging around the clowns at Ringling Brothers winter quarters in Venice for a few weeks. Maybe he'd get a chance to perform for well children, for a change, instead of sick ones. The idea of being with children who weren't suffering tantalized him.

He climbed back into the van. He hadn't showered in two days, and he needed to check into a motel so he could clean up. In the past he'd always been impeccable about personal cleanliness, but since he'd lost his children he'd grown lax. But then he'd grown lax about a lot of things, like eating and sleeping.

Half an hour later, he felt a tug on the steering wheel and knew he had a flat.

He pulled over to the shoulder of the two lane highway, climbed out of the van, and went around to the back to get the jack.

It had started to drizzle again, and at first he didn't see the splintered wooden sign that leaned in the palmettos at the side of the road. But the bad tire was mud slicked, and when he pulled it off, it got

away from him and rolled into the ditch.

He spotted the sign as he bent over to reclaim the tire. The letters were faded, but he could still make them out:

SILVER LAKE AMUSEMENT PARK

Home of the Legendary Black Thunder Roller Coaster

Thrillz 'n' Chillz for the Entire Family

Twenty Miles Straight Ahead,

Left 3 Miles on Rt. 62

Silver Lake Amusement Park.
He felt the tug of familiarity, but he couldn't remember why. It wasn't

until he secured the last lug nut on the spare that he recalled the name. Wasn't that the place Honey had talked so much about? He remembered the way she had entertained the crew with stories about growing up in an amusement park in South Carolina. She had spoken of a boat that had sunk to the bottom of the lake and a roller coaster that was supposed to be famous. He was almost certain it had been the Silver Lake Amusement Park.

He secured the hubcap with the heels of his hands and then looked thoughtfully back at the sign. His jeans were wet and muddy, his hair dripping down the back of his neck. He needed a shower, clean clothes, and a hot meal. But so did the majority of the world's population, and as he stood where he was, he wondered if the park was still in existence. The condition of the sign made it doubtful. On the other hand, anything was possible.

Maybe the Silver Lake Amusement Park was still open. And maybe they needed a clown.

24

"Honey, it's raining!" Chantal shouted. "You stop working right now."

From Honey's perch high atop Black Thunder's lift hill, she looked down at the miniature figure of her cousin gazing up at her from beneath the small red dot of an umbrella.

"I'll be down in a few minutes," she shouted back. "Where's Gordon? I told him to come right back."

"He's not feelin' good," Chantal yelled. "He's taking a little rest."

"I don't care if he's dying. You tell him to get back up here."

"It's the Lord's day! You shouldn't be workin' on the Lord's day."

"Since when did either of you ever care about the Lord's day? Neither of you likes to work on any day."

Chantal walked away in a huff, but Honey didn't care. Gordon and Chantal's free ride was over. She drove another nail into the catwalk she was building at the top of the lift hill. She hated rain and she

hated Sundays because the restoration work on the coaster ground to a halt. If she had her way, the construction crew would be on the job seven days a week.

They weren't union members, so they could work longer hours.

Ignoring the rain, she continued to nail together pieces of the catwalk. It frustrated her that she wasn't strong enough to do the harder jobs, such as repairing the track. The crew, under the supervision of the roller-coaster restoration expert she had hired to oversee the job, had spent the first two months removing the old track and repairing the frame wherever it was damaged. Luckily, much of it was still sound. The concrete footings had been installed in the sixties, so they didn't have to be replaced. AH of them had been worried about cracks in the ledgers, the giant boards the track rested on, but there hadn't been as many as they'd feared.

Still, rebuilding the entire track was a massive and expensive project, and Honey was rapidly running out of money. She had no idea how she would finish financing the new lift chain and engine that still had to be installed, not to mention the electrical system, as well as air-compressor brakes to replace the old hand-operated ones. The rain was falling more steadily and her footing had grown precarious. Reluctantly, she lowered herself over the side and began the long climb down the frame that they were using like a ladder until the catwalk was complete. Her body no longer screamed in protest as she made the arduous descent. She was thin, hard-muscled, and weary from two months of backbreaking work, seven days a week, as many as fourteen hours a day. Her hands bore a ridge of calluses across the palms as well as a network of small wounds and scars from mishaps with the tools she had gradually learned to use with some degree of competence.

When she reached the ground, she pulled off her yellow hard hat. Instead of heading to her makeshift home, she walked through the dripping trees toward the other end of the park. Any fleeting thoughts

she'd had about living in Sophie's trailer had vanished upon her first inspection.

The roof had collapsed, the robin's-egg-blue shell had caved in on one side, and vagrants had long ago stripped it of everything useful. After having the wreckage removed, she'd installed a small silver trailer on the same site.

Now, however, her destination wasn't her own temporary home but the Bullpen, the ramshackle building that had once housed the unmarried men who worked in the park. Currently Gordon and Chantal lived there. She was glad the Bullpen sat at the opposite end of the park from her trailer. It was bad enough being around people all day. At night, she needed to be alone. Only when she was alone could she feel

the possibility of some connection with Dash. Not that she really thought it would happen. Not until she could ride Black Thunder.

She'd snared her hair in a rubber band at the back of her neck, but wet strands stuck to her cheeks and her sweatshirt was soaked through to her skin. If Liz could see her now, she'd be wringing her hands.

But Liz and California were part of another universe.

"Who is it?" Chantal said in response to Honey's knock.

Honey set her teeth in frustration and jerked open the door. "Who do you think it is? We're the only people here."

Chantal jumped up nervously from an old orange Nauga-hyde couch where she'd been reading a magazine and sprang to attention like an employee whose boss had caught her loafing. The interior of the Bullpen was made up of four rooms: a crude living area that Gordon and Chantal had furnished with odds and ends bought from Good Will; the sleeping area that used to hold wooden bunk beds but now contained an old iron-framed double bed; a kitchen; and a bathroom. Although the interior of the house was shabby, Chantal was keeping it neater than she'd kept any of their houses.

"Where's Gordon? You told me he was sick."

Chantal tried to slide the magazine under an ugly brown velour pillow. "He is.

But he still went out back to change the oil on the truck."

"I'll bet he didn't go out until after you told him I was looking for him."

Chantal quickly changed the subject. "You want some soup? I made some nice soup a little while ago."

Honey threw off her wet sweatshirt and followed Chantal into the kitchen. Old metal cupboards covered with bile-green paint lined two of the walls, one of which held the park's only working telephone. The gold Formica counter-tops were dull and stained with use, and the linoleum floor had cracked like drought-stricken earth.

Because Honey and Gordon were working on the coaster all the time, Chantal was the only one free to take care of their meals, and she had learned that if she didn't cook, none of them ate. Surprisingly, the work seemed to have been good for Chantal. She'd lost a lot of the weight she had gained over the years and had begun to iook like a more mature version of the eighteen-year-old who had won the Miss Paxawatchie County beauty contest.

"Opening a can and heating up the contents doesn't constitute
making
soup,"

Honey snapped as she took a seat at one end of an old picnic table they had moved inside. She knew she should encourage her cousin instead of criticizing her, but she told herself she simply didn't care about Chantal's feelings anymore.

Chantal's mouth tightened with resentment. "I'm not as good a cook as you, Honey. I'm still learning."

"You're twenty-eight years old. You should have learned a long time ago instead of spending the past

nine years heating up frozen dinners in the microwave."

Chantal reached into the cupboard for a bowl, then took it over to the old gas stove and began filling it with chicken noodle soup. "I'm doing my best. It hurts my feelings when you're so critical."

"That's too bad. If you don't like the way I'm running things around here, you can leave any time." She hated her surliness and bad temper, but she couldn't seem to stop. It was like those early days on the Coogan show when any sign of weakness would have broken her.

Chantal's hand tightened around the ladle. "Me and Gordon don't have any place to go."

Honey set her mouth in an unforgiving line. "Then I guess you're stuck with me."

Chantal regarded her sadly, her voice quiet. "You've changed, Honey. You've gotten so hard.

Sometimes I barely recognize you."

Honey took a spoonful of soup, refusing to let Chantal see that her words hurt.

She knew that she was hostile. The men on the crew never joked around with her like they joked with each other, but she told herself she wasn't trying to win any popularity contest. All she cared about was finishing Black Thunder so that she could ride it again and maybe find her husband.

"You used to be so sweet." Chantal stood by the sink with her arms hanging at her side, her face full of regret. "And then after Dash died, I think something twisted inside you."

"I just decided to stop letting you and Gordon freeload off me, that's all."

Chantal bit down on her bottom lip. "You sold our house right out from under us, Honey. We loved that house."