In The Mind's Eye

"The Way Doug Sees It"

    The stillness bothers Doug more than the darkness.  Harry and Paul, who usually talk a lot, have only mumbled a few words, just enough to tell him where they’re going.  The stillness wraps around him, a comforter that makes him feel stuffy.  He almost wishes he had not lied to Mom.  The shortcut through the woods is not what he wanted.  That was Harry’s idea.  He said it would be more exciting right now.  Doug thinks Harry is as worried as he is, but Harry would never say so.  Doug knows that for sure.  He thinks Paul is probably just like himself, wishing he was in his father’s car on the way to the carnival, laughing, warm and easy, talking about the rides and all.  And his father would be nice about it.

    “Harry!”  He whispers so loudly he surprises himself.

    “Yeah.  I’m over here.”

    “How much longer?”

    “Not long,” says Harry, trying to sound like a leader.

    Doug moves towards Harry’s confidence.  The noise from the carnival seems to be getting closer.  Then Paul drifts out of Doug’s range.  He worries that Paul won’t stick with it.

    “Paul?”  There is no answer.  “Paul?”

    “What?”  A hoarse answer comes from the right and just ahead of Doug.

    “Can you see the lights of the carnival yet?” asks Doug.  He wants something more solid than Harry’s confidence.  He wants to feel that Paul is with him, too.  Harry and Paul are thirteen, and he’s only twelve.  They’ve been important, very important since his father stopped being around.

    “Yeah,” Paul answers.  “I can just see the top lights of the ferris wheel.  Boy!  It sure moves fast.  Looks huge!  Even from here!  But that’s all.  Can’t see anything else.”

    Doug rushes to be next to Paul, to get to look at the Ferris wheel.  He’s never been on one.  At other carnivals his mother never let him ride the Ferris wheel.  His father would have, but his father never said anything because his mother was afraid of being on high places.  So Doug never got to go on the ferris wheels.  He can remember standing and staring, stretching his neck to see the very top of the wheel, listening to the screams of the people as they rocked in the cradled chairs like puppies in a basket.  His stomach would curdle and his legs would tingle.  Nothing else at the carnival made him feel that way.  But that was all.  His Mom had said it was too dangerous.  Carnivals never take care of their rides, she said.  They were to dangerous.  But he always thought they must be great fun, all alive and everything, and he didn’t understand what his Mom was talking about.

    “Paul, have you ever been on a ferris wheel?”

    “Sure.  Millions of times.  It’s lots of fun.  ‘Specially if they make it go real fast,” says Paul, pausing a moment and squinting a little to collect his memory.  “but the great fun is when they stop to let people on and off.  Each time it stops you rock the chair like crazy and see how far you can tip it.  That’s what everybody screams about.”

    Doug looks again at the flashing wheel.  As it blurs against the sky, it draws him away from everything he has been expecting tonight.

    “Come on, you guys,” says Harry.  “What’re we standin’ here watchin’ for?  Let’s go!”

    Doug and Paul move toward Harry’s voice and follow his form toward the sounds and lights in front of them.  They can feel the sting and scratches of the bushes and smell the cool softness of the dead leaves as they move quickly now through the woods.  Gradually the woods thin out, and the entire carnival widens into their eyes.