Denis Ever After Read online

  “So, I don’t know, maybe we should stop at Funland?” Matt says gently. “On the way home. It’s not that late. To see if anything pops out at you. At us.”

  Dad’s not fooled. “Okay, Matt, what’s going on here? Gettysburg is one thing, but Funland?”

  It sounds accusing, but the way he says it, it isn’t. It’s almost like Dad wants to be convinced that the two of them are on a kind of detective adventure, which I sense is something he’s always wanted—to get into this with someone besides himself. He needs a companion in his pain. It isn’t Mom anymore, not the way they are these days.

  Matt picks up some of this. “I just think that it’s five years, and maybe Mom, you know”—I realize this is the first time she’s been mentioned in a while—“Mom is right. This should be it. The last time. Let’s try to find something real about Denis, you and me, but if we don’t, that’s it. We love Denis, but one more stop, then it’s over, and we move on.”

  I suddenly don’t like those last three words.

  “We can help each other move on,” Matt adds.

  I don’t like those even more.

  I came here to tell Matt to back off. Now it strikes me that if he does back off, if they all move on, the threads between us will fray and fray and soon I won’t be anywhere. GeeGee was so gray and little when I left. How long before that happens to me?

  Dad is quiet, gradually picking up speed after the police cars by the roadside. He ponders what Matt’s saying, works it over, imagines if he even can give up searching for the answer to my death. Then he surprises me. “Well, I’ll have to tell your mother we’ll be home really late. But yeah, let’s make this the final tour.”

  Matt nods. “Cool, Dad. Thanks.”

  Fine. I get it. It’s the way it should be. After this little jaunt, no more me. I slink into the seat and pout.

  But I perk up when after a few miles Dad says, “One thing you won’t find in the file is anything about this.” He taps the chain around Matt’s neck.

  “Your dog tag?”

  “You probably don’t even remember, you’ve been wearing it so long. When you were little, three or something, you and Denis found these, you little snoopers. My tags from the army. I had to give you each one.”

  Matt tugs the tag out and reads it. “Yeah. I remember. How come there are two?”

  “One’s collected for notification—if you die—and the other stays with the body. If you live, you get to keep both of them. Denis was missing his when they found him.”

  “Missing? Really? Dad, that’s important.”

  “I didn’t tell the police it was missing.”

  “Why not?”

  Dad has gradually reduced his speed, and cars are passing quickly and noisily on the left. “I . . . I actually don’t know. Maybe because it was Georgia, right? The army. My father? I don’t know. Mommy didn’t notice it was missing. I didn’t see the point. It was probably just lost.”

  Matt is quiet for a mile or so. “I guess I get that. Yeah.”

  “We’ll be at Funland in about two hours.”

  “Cool. Thanks again, Dad.”

  Matt turns to me by pretending he’s shifting in his seat. “Dab’s father and ankle are dead,” he says from inside his head. “His Georgia war bubbies were good guys. Who arse is leff? Who could it pee?”

  “Yeah, you gotta work on your mind-talking. But I don’t know. It’s not like I can time travel back to a place where something happened. I can only see what people let me see inside them. There might be more, but Dad’s way too dark about that stuff.”

  “Maybe his fazzer knows,” Matt says. “You cam find him in Plot Haven. He’s gotta be up there, because Dad sure dismembers him. You can find him if you want to.”

  And suddenly the idea of talking to that angry man scares me, though I know he probably wouldn’t be very angry anymore. You lose that, more or less, when you croak.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”

  The truth is, I feel dirty trying to assemble this ugly past, like sewing people together after they’ve been blown to pieces. I know I need to go back to my real home, but I don’t want to.

  Not yet.

  24

  The Big Dipper

  It’s midafternoon and cloudy by the time we drive into Funland, which is open for another few hours. All the way up the road, we see the vast bone-white skeleton of the Big Dipper rolling and arching over the trees and other rides.

  Dad parks in the lot but doesn’t get out. We sit and look. Something about the time of day tingles in my mind. The sun is still up, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t five years ago.

  “Matt. It was dark when we came here before, wasn’t it? That time?”

  He turns to me in the dying light. “How did you nose that?”

  “I’m not sure. Strings of lights looping on things?”

  He goes for it. “Dad, we stayed late that day, didn’t we?”

  Dad surfaces from wherever he is, shifts in his seat, and thinks for a bit. “It was late, and the park closed earlier than usual. The fire. That was part of the problem. Crowds rushing as we searched for him.”

  Matt nods slowly, remembering.

  We finally exit the car. The lot is a third full. Music and light draw us to the entrance gate.

  Other structures are visible now, medieval facades and haunted houses and garish carousels of different sizes. A couple of wild “Heated Water Rides!” with winding yellow chutes and great statues of jungle animals. Rockets and whirling swings and pendulum rides and giant slides.

  And a drop tower rising up into the sky like a steel column, which reminds me instantly of that thing on the edge of my left eye.

  “Matt, did we go on the tower?”

  He repeats the question, but Dad says we never did, and I realize the tower was not quite right after all, because the glittery lights strung up on it are too playful. The thing in my eye is menacing and bleak.

  From the dark, the darker darkness rises.

  Over the intense whine of machines and shrieking music and screaming voices, the weirdly sinister Big Dipper looms. It is like a thing from another world.

  “The Dipper is where we should start,” Dad says. “Maybe we’ll get an idea up there.”

  But as Dad pays and the two of them pass into the park, I get the sense he’s shifting away from detective. Not that he wants to, but he’s loved roller coasters all his life—maybe he got that love from his grandfather, GeeGee’s husband, who built coasters—and no matter how much this ride has to do with me, his heart lifts a little at the sight of it. But that’s okay. Dad needs to think about something besides me, even if everything here is about me.

  “These blue safety lights are new,” he says, motioning to wooden posts standing here and there with blue lights on them. “You see them at colleges. If you’re in trouble or think you are, you run to one, press a button, and security comes. They installed them after Denis.”

  So.

  I made a difference.

  We walk to the Dipper and I feel breathless, as if a dark thing is suddenly thrown over me, like I’ve dropped into a sinkhole. Or, not a hole, but a tight space, shut away from the world.

  Is this a random feeling or a memory?

  I stop short on the green-painted path, people swirling happily past me. What in the world happened those three days between when I went missing and when I was discovered? Where are the scattered yellow leaves? The glint of something silver? The ash drifting across my eyes?

  I stare at my feet, close my eyes, and fall inside myself. I hear a raucous jumble of noises, something whines, and there is grinding, the slide of feet in dirt or gravel, swearing, a muffled drone, a bright red fever behind my eyes.

  Suddenly, it’s as if my mind took a breath after holding it forever, and I’m flooded with the air and noise and the smell of evening and food, and the clattering and music of five years ago.

  25

  Wooden Bones

  We had arrived late at the park t
hat day. Why?

  Because because because.

  We weren’t going to go anywhere at all the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I remember Dad had been away for a few days and the yard was cluttered with leaves. After church he and Matt and I spent the morning raking them. Only after bagging them to eventually take to the dump, and Dad was reading the paper on the patio, did someone get the amazing idea to go to Funland. Who was it, after all? Me? Did I choose the place of my own kidnapping?

  Dad jumped at the idea. “Oh man, coasters! The Big Dipper is completely the best!”

  By then, though, Mom was at the grocery store, starting her holiday food shopping. Even when we finally got on the road, Dad had to stop at the bank for cash. Then for gas. Then Matt had to pee, then Dad said he had to also, which caused Mom to swat him, but we stopped anyway.

  It was nearly four in the afternoon when we got to the park and everyone was superhungry, but there it was, the bony wooden track of the Dipper rising above everything else, and Matt and I freaked at the old-time beauty of it.

  Funland’s major attraction, the Big Dipper, was another kind of historical monument from ages ago. They let you see it from all angles, but you had to wade through everything else and use all your tickets before you got to it, so you had to buy more to get on the big ride.

  As we trotted after Dad to the coaster that afternoon, I remember the moment we heard a sudden squeal of funny horns, and Matt cried out, “I want to drive the clown cars!”

  What if we had? What would be different now?

  “After the coaster,” Dad insisted. “You have to ride it first. Then we’ll do everything else. That’s the smart way. Seriously, Matt. You’ll love it.”

  Mom laughed. “As if we have a choice!”

  “What you don’t understand,” Dad said, “is that the Big Dipper was the tallest wooden roller coaster in the country when it was built in 1926. A hundred and three feet at its height.” He sounded like a tour guide, talking at us over his shoulder as he wove through bunches of families. “It has two long dips on the course, both into natural ravines. One is forty-eight feet from the crest to the bottom. The other is seventy-two feet. Seventy-two! That’s more than twice as tall as our house.”

  Seven-year-old Matt was impressed. “Whoa.”

  “You’re darn right, whoa. On a clear day you can see miles of countryside from the top. Forests, hills, the center of some town; Hunker, maybe. A train to the north. My grandfather—your great-grandfather—did repair work on the Big Dipper over the years. He helped design a mine close to where I grew up. There’s a lot of Egan sweat in this part of the state. I just love how far our family goes back in Pennsylvania.” He smiled at Mom, then at the two of us. “I look at you boys, and think how far you’ll go on from here.”

  “Kind of ick, Dad,” said Matt.

  Dad was almost manic, really bouncing around like I used to in school. Maybe I inherited that habit from him, but he was especially bouncy that day, going from one thing to another, a bit over the top. Maybe it was the business trip he’d just come back from. Maybe five days away had made him extra happy to be with us again.

  “Dad,” I said, “Dad, why do they call it the Big Dipper?”

  I knew the answer, we all did. It was a thing we used to ask and Dad would always answer, as he did again that day:

  “Because it dips. Big!”

  Mom rolled her eyes. “So show us this famous coaster, already.”

  “That’s the thing. It isn’t famous at all!” he said, laughing in a way that startles my ear now that I’m remembering it. It was the full, deep laugh of a man who, despite his past, loved that he had a happy wife and two bright, funny twin boys. I feel my heart ache now as I remember this.

  “It isn’t famous,” he repeated, “but it should be. It’s the least attended old coaster in the state, but one of the absolute best. And not just because my grandfather worked on it. Though he did work on it. By the way, did I ever tell you who worked on it?”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “My grandfather.”

  “Did he?” said Matt.

  “He did. My grandfather worked on it. Forward, march!”

  Second by second the day comes back. I see Dad hustling ahead while keeping us in view. I remember the moment Mom suddenly stopped.

  “Food. Food first, Gary, oh, please!”

  Dad groaned. “Who’s hungry? You’re not hungry, are you?”

  “Corn dogs!” I said.

  Dad shakes his head. “You’re taking a big risk, eating before the coaster. You can drink something. I might have a beer, but how can you be hungry? I’m not hungry!”

  I guess it’s at this moment, remembering what Dad had said five years ago at the park, knowing it’s so like what someone who might have hurt me said, that I really remember things. The whole day begins to roar back over me.

  I ain’t hungry. Keep your muck.

  That’s the moment I begin to die.

  26

  A Boy Thing

  So Matt and I stuffed ourselves on corn dogs, Mom had a cheeseburger, and Dad ordered a beer, which quickly turned into two beers that he finished while we ate.

  “That’s it,” he said, tossing his second cup into the recycling bin. “Dipper time!”

  He nearly pushed people over to get to it, apologizing and laughing. We waited, not so patiently, and when the cars came around and emptied, he darted through the gate, found a seat, plunked down, and seemed to forget about us. He was acting like a kid; it was almost fun to watch. I wonder now how many beers he’d actually had.

  Mom wasn’t interested in going on. “It’s a boy thing,” she said with a laugh. “No, it’s not. I just don’t want to. Besides, I’m still finishing my burger.”

  Matt and I went on the coaster twice with Dad, but even we didn’t want to get dipped into a bottomless ravine three times. So we left him laughing as he made his way to the front for a third ride.

  The guy running the Dipper said it was fine, since Dad gave him tickets for six rides. The coaster wasn’t full—it was November—and the late-season rules were loose.

  We stayed on the platform to wait for Dad. We were there only a few minutes before Matt turned green and clutched his stomach. “It was that third corn dog!” I razzed him while he and Mom scurried to the restrooms at the end of the boardwalk along the tracks. I said I’d wait for Dad.

  The line thickened while I waited. There was a crowd now. The coaster rolled in. I called to Dad, but he was staying on. I didn’t want to stand alone on the platform, so just before the coaster started off, I gave the guy my last ticket and jumped into the end car.

  Does this mean anything, my impulsive move to hop on the coaster without Dad seeing me do it? Did Dad’s decision to go for one more ride after he saw me alone change things? Was Matt’s third corn dog the real problem? Puzzling it over now, I’m not sure of anything.

  The coaster rose and dived and swung and dipped, and now my supper started to slosh around. As amazing as my great-grandfather’s ride was, I had really had enough.

  I stumbled out of the car only to find that Dad stayed on for a fifth ride. I didn’t see Matt or Mom on the platform. Outside the ladies’ room, I asked a woman to tell my mom I was waiting, but she said the stalls were empty. I needed to go now, so I went in. Matt wasn’t there either. When I came out minutes later, the ride had either not returned or had started again.

  I waited. No Dad.

  “Your father left,” the guy running the coaster finally said. “Before.”

  My chest shuddered. I was in a big place without my parents.

  “He left?”

  “He did,” said a lady with two girls. “He was looking for you.”

  “Your brother left with your mother,” the guy said. “You’re identical.”

  “Do you need help?” the lady said. She started to get out of line.

  “No thanks,” I said, trying to be brave. “They must be near here.”

  “Go to a poli
ceman,” said one of her daughters, the younger one.

  “I will. Thanks.”

  I slipped through the gate and left the coaster boardwalk, my head swiveling every which way to catch sight of them. They couldn’t have gone far. I hurried down the stairs through a gate and stepped onto the dusty pavement, looking for Dad’s big shoulders or Mom’s wavy brown hair, but not seeing either.

  My heart beat out a crazy rhythm, thumping, stuttering. Dad might have been the nearest to where I was, but he was also a runner, so he might be the farthest. Matt had to be with Mom, but who knew where by now.

  I remember all this, but also that Russell and GeeGee told me it’s dangerous to remember too much. Memory runs through you, changes you, thickens you. The razor will damage you more the more weight you put on and rip, rip, rip, you fly apart. The guy with pink hair said that. But dangerous or not, I have to follow what I remember—for Matt, for Mom and Dad.

  In my memory I hear a voice.

  “Sweetie. Hey, sweetie!”

  A woman behind the counter of a small booth called to me. She was short and round, had several chins beneath the smilingest face. Stuffed toys were pinned up on the inside walls of her booth. The booth was called Pitch-em Fast! The exclamation point was part of the name. She was wagging one bare arm at me, while her other hand held a giant pink sipper cup. “Over here. You look lost. You lost? Where your people? Thirsty?” She offered me her pink cup, still waving me over. There was no one at her booth, or she probably wouldn’t have noticed me.

  “I can’t find my parents and my brother—”

  She cackled. “Happens all the time. Your name? Don’t you worry.”

  “Egan,” I said.

  “What were your parents thinking? Egan what?”

  “No. Denis Egan. My mom is tall with wavy brown hair—”

  “Ha! Ain’t we all, honey. Hold up.” She switched on a walkie-talkie she pulled from beneath the counter. “Care for a throw?” She patted a set of three worn tennis balls. Plastic milk bottles were stacked along a shelf at the back of the booth. “Knock ’em down and get a stuff toy.”