In Concert

 It’s been years since I last visited Hot Springs. As I rolled into town, I thought the shotgun-spatter of houses hadn’t changed much from what I remembered. Which is a lot, by anyone’s reckoning, since the last time I drove through was in the year prior to the Event – the year before everything changed for everyone.

After the shock of the Event had passed, after the decade of panic, hunger, violence, and privation, after they have gotten used to the new sky, people craved normalcy again. Slowly, gradually, men started fussing over how their jalopies looked (half-Frankensteined and half McGuyvered as they were), or how fast they could go, instead of simply worrying about if they ran at all. Women started fussing about their clothes and their hair. Constant struggle for survival is taxing, and people wanted to wind down. Or party hard. It didn’t matter, really. People started wanting different kinds of trouble than they already have. And if it’s winding down, partying hard, or even some kind of trouble you fancy, the Hot Springs Annual Tri-County Fair is where it’s at.

Nobody can tell why Hot Springs became such a hub of post-Event social life in the tri-county area. The springs for which it was named have dried up; the amusement park rides all gone to hell a long time ago. Hot Springs wasn’t the spa town of its heyday long before the Event, just a crosshatch of streets dotted with houses and gardens to the side of the Interstate. It could just as easily have been West Lake, or San Marcos, both within an hour up or down the road. It could be that the good people of Hot Springs had gotten used to the trickle of tourist traffic that was still finding its way to town in the final pre-Event years, and thus could be the first to tear down the barrier of fear and paranoia, and declare everybody welcome. It took less than five years for everybody to truly feel so.

The prominent motorcycle gangs in the area, the Roughriders and the Defenders declare truce for the duration of the Fair. They draw weird designs on the cracked asphalt of the former athletic field with the tires of their metallic steeds, they knock back homemade nettle-beer and tub gin, they have arm wrestling contests. And the occasional bare-knuckle fistfight, of course, as knives and guns are frowned upon. I’ve shown my badge to the sheriff’s deputy at the town entrance, and was allowed to keep my service piece, but I remember to put it well away when passing the bikers. Mean-looking bastards, the bikers.

Vendors set their stalls in the street. Pitches are shouted, hands are shaken, deals get done. Pre-Event goods fetch the best prices, especially ammunition and canned foods, which are getting ever scarcer. A load of those was liberated recently when the local Wal-Mart – Fort Wal-Mart, now – was recovered, and found its way here. At the fair, though, you can get anything, from plastic dolls to axe heads, from zip-guns to headscarves, patchwork blankets to steroids. Books, even, though few people buy those. Difficult to carry around. They prefer to trade them for those they have already read.

As for food, there’s something for everyone. From lizard steak sandwiches and moth grub burgers, to the energy-packed meth-sprinkled funnel cake, the nomads’ staple. I feel a rumble in the pit of my stomach at the compound fragrances, and decide to indulge. A couple of greasy, deep-fried corn dogs (the sign at the stall suggests they were made with real dog meat), spicy and delicious, does it for me. I savor their crunchy goodness before I wash them down with a tall glass of icy cold lemonade spiked with rubbing alcohol.

Entertainment and games stalls are under patchwork canopies by the roadside. Shooting arcades stand side by side with fortune-tellers, kissing booths, strongmen, and bearded ladies (though they’ve become something less of an oddity in the recent years). I watched some local talent try to win stuffed animals at a shooting arcade. It’s a wonder some of them still have all their fingers. Brightly colored signs caution punters of a nervous disposition from entering the mutants’ freak show tents. After sundown, less chaste entertainments begin admitting customers, from dime peep-shows to sex toy rental stalls. My favorite thing to do is watching area wives launch raids on the area and drag their husbands by the ears out of the line for Three-Tit Sue’s Cabaret Extravaganza.