Chapter 2

"They love YOURS, Carol. But what about mine?"

"Hmmm. Let me see it."

I heard the sound of a zipper and then silence for a few moments and then female giggling.

"Well," it was Carol's voice, "It's a nice one. But let's go to my trailer and I'll trim it real pretty for you."

I would have loved to see that, but when I followed them to Carol's trailer, I found the door was locked and the blinds were all drawn. I stood there, by the screen window of Carol's bedroom, listening. I heard giggling and scissor snipping sounds for a while and then just giggles and then it got quiet for a time and then I heard the creaking of the trailer springs and panting and moaning from the window.

That was a month before the day of this story, when we were down in Florida. We were just on the outskirts of Louisville now and we'd been set up since late yesterday. We were in a large, vacant field near the edge of town but close enough to draw both people from Louisville and soldiers from Fort Knox which was only a few miles away. This was going to be a bonanza for us, this stop and the next one could be our biggest money-makers of the season. But we had to work hard.

That morning I helped Nick and Steve repair the old Tilt-A-Whirl and get it ready for us to open at 11:00. A couple of the wheel bearings were broken, on two of the cars, and it was getting harder and harder to get parts for the old, German ride. We had to have them sent all the way from Stuttgart and then the post office had to find us for the delivery. The two cars had been slow and loud for two weeks but, by 10:30, we had it fixed and ready.

I washed up and ma made me some lunch but I couldn't keep my mind off of the Indianapolis stop we were going to make next week.

We were going to be there, as the midway for a church festival, for two weeks. And then Trooper was going to lay over a week and put all of us up at a motel for a little rest. The 500 was going to be run at the end of that week.

My family was from Indianapolis. Me and Cookie were born there and I had gone to school there. I had a couple of buddy's who still lived there and they were going to get me into the race and into a pre-race party the night before.

Man, I wanted to get away from everyone for a couple days and blow off some steam!

What I needed though was some money! Some REAL money. Money enough to treat myself and my friends to some really high times. And I do mean HIGH!

Yeah, I liked a little weed now and again. And some brews too! And some babes! And I needed cash for all those things.

Don't get me wrong. I could bag a babe at the carny now and again. Sure, I couldn't get Gina or Carol (though they liked to tease me once in a while, when they saw me walking around with my shirt off) but sometimes I could get it on with a "town girl" who's eye I caught.

Well, that didn't happen too often. Parents like to keep a close eye on their daughters when carny people are around. But once me and Nick got these two junior high girls to give us blow jobs to ride the Himalaya, for free, all day.

That was wild because we took them into Trooper's trailer and had them do us while we sat on the couch and, just as I was about to cum into this cutie's sucking mouth, my sister Cookie opened the door and walked in.

The girls jumped up off their knees and me and Nick tried to casually cross our legs and lean forward, with our arms on our laps, as Cookie went to the counter for her change apron.

"What were you doin', Jackie?" she asked suspiciously as she stared at me and fastened her apron at her back.

"Nothin'. Just talkin' to the girls."

Cookie's eyebrows raised at me. "Talkin'?"

The two girls saw the mean, scornful look that my kid sister was now giving them and they rushed past her and out the trailer door.

"Shit!" Nick shouted and slapped his knee in frustration, keeping his other arm over his lap.

"Yeah, Cookie," I yelled. "We WAS just TALKIN'."

"Hmmm," she said as she turned to go. "Better not 'talk' in here 'cause I just saw Rose walkin' around the grounds and she's lookin' for Nick. I don't think she wants any town-girl trouble this stop.

"I hear Trooper's havin' problems with the sheriff's office because of the fix, that Sneaky got into last year, when we was here."

"Shit, Cookie," I yelled. "We ain't gonna' cause no trouble. You didn't hafta' scare those girls off! Damn!"

She laughed, as she went to the open door, and then she looked back, as she stepped out, and said, "Don't forget to tuck that thing in, before you zip up your pants, Jackie," and she closed the door.

I grinned at that memory. I grinned because those girls finished suckin' us off, behind the electric truck, a half hour later, and they got their free rides.

It was just that Cookie had a lot of nerve, spoiling our fun like that. At least she didn't tell Dad or Trooper about it. Carny people don't squeal on each other. But, damn her! Even though my folks and the others think so, Cookie ain't really no angel herself.

She got her cherry popped by some slick lookin' town boy in Des Moines early last summer. Oh, but my little sister had an excuse for that; she was in L-O-V-E!

In LOVE?

At FOURTEEN?

That's what she told Dad when she pointed this 19 year old dude out to him.

Dad was impressed by this guy too. So impressed that he and Glen broke both of his arms and tossed him into a dry creek bed just before we left town.

Cookie cried, of course. But only for a day. I think it wised her up when Dad showed her the pictures... the ones, they took from this guy's wallet, of him and his wife and kid.

I can't say I ever saw Cookie cry again.

Oh! And I KNOW that she gave it to this other screwball, in Chicago, last fall. The one who put the butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. He was 22 and in a band. She told me later that this creep took her to his place and got her high on weed and she confessed, to me then, that marijuana made her uncontrollably horny. She never goes near it now.

I know that Dad would have actually KILLED that fucker if he'd have found out. But Cookie wore a jacket, to cover her arm, till we left town and Dad didn't see the tattoo until we were in Texas.

He made her clean the Port-A-Johns for two weeks though.

When I finished my lunch, I checked my cigar-box stash and found I had one joint left from the bag that me and Nick scored, in Corpus Christie, last month.

Shit, we was wasted that night!

We scored it from a girl who was the daughter of the baptist preacher whose grounds we were set up on. She really liked the muscles of our bare chests and arms. The three of us smoked almost the whole bag (on the floor in the church nursery) and then I laid her back and she let me fuck her, right there on the floor, and then Nick fucked her right after I was done.

Getting an unexpected hard-on from that memory, I set the cigar- box back in the compartment, under my bed, and then I walked out of our trailer and into the hot, late morning sun to get ready for opening.

I helped Gina blow up and hang balloons for the dart-throw booth.

You had to do it just right. You had to stretch the rubber first and then blow up the balloon so it was just formed and didn't have much air. That way, the dulled points of the darts couldn't pop them unless you hit them hard and dead-center.

I heard my sister call my name and looked across to where Cookie was waving me over to the Ring-Toss.

A large, muscular man, in a white shirt and tie, was standing at the counter as I walked up.

"Hi," I said to him. "What seems to be the problem?"

The man, with the short-cut, red hair, square jaw and steely, grey eyes, gave me a curt smile and said, "The problem, kid, is that this game is crooked."

I smiled and looked over at the agitated look on Cookie's face as she planted her fists on her hips and was about to speak.

I held out my hand and motioned for her to keep quiet.

"Rigged, sir? OUR game?"

"Look at these rings," he said, holding one up. "They're barely larger than the tops of the bottles. I could hardly PLACE one on a bottle, let alone TOSS one and win."

I kept my smile on the man. I could sense that there was something about him... Something that conveyed to me that he was the heat.

Where was Dad or Trooper?

"Well sir," I said, keeping friendliness in my voice, "this IS a game of chance, you know. We can't just GIVE these valuable prizes away."

He glanced up at the cheap, stuffed animals and laughed and then scratched his nose as he looked down at my sister.

"And what about her?" he asked, keeping his gaze on Cookie. "How old is this kid? You have to be sixteen to work in this state you know."

Cookie started to speak but I cut her off again. "She's old enough, sir."

He bit the corner of his lower lip as he slowly looked her up and down, his gaze lingering all over her body. I could see her eyes blazing as she looked defiantly back at him.

"You look like someone... , " he said as he shook his finger in her face. "Someone I saw in a movie... Jody Something... " (He snapped his fingers a few times) "... Jody Foster!"

"My name's Cookie," she said icily.

"Cookie's my sister," I chimed in to cut her off again.

He looked at me now. "Yeah," he said. "I can see that."

"My name's Jack."

He was looking back at her now. "Cookie, huh? What kind of a name is Cookie? Like as in 'one hot cookie'?"

"Her real name is Sylvia," I told him. "after our grandmother on my mother's side. But she don't like that name and, since she was a baby (when she was always fussin' at Ma for one), she's just always been Cookie."

"Cute!" he said and then he turned to me. "Look, kid. Do you have a gaming licence?"

"My dad and his partner, Mr. Trooper, run this show, Mister. They have all the paperwork and they've been to the county clerk's and sheriff's office... "

"Yeah?" he said. "Well, I'm Officer Sharker. I'm with the Youth Bureau of the Louisville police department."

I KNEW he was the heat.