Romano’s with my brother in a plastic chair, and finally us snagging some Manic Size ’zas at Psycho Za, leading to a ride on the Rocket Sling later in the park.
Talk about it, excellent! Sometimes on the ride my brother almost throws up the Train Wreck and sometimes he almost doesn’t.
Then there are the nights when our mom calls up thelady from next door to come over to Psycho Za and this is not real excellent. Some nights our mom’s pencil points break and we don’t have a sharpener in her purse. Some nights her coffee soaks through her Jesus homework and her split lip beats in hiccups against her bent tooth. On these nights my brother and I know not to breathe Train Wreck breath on each other or jerk on the cigarette coin return over and over for pinball quarters until somebody says, Stop! We just sit there and work over our food while the lady from next door works over our mom, pulling tissues and gold sticks of makeup from her secret-compartment purse. Sometimes, if it is something we should not see that she should do, she and our mom go back into the ladies’ room for a long time, taking along the purse we are never left long enough with to go through. Whenever we can, we look in it, but mostly all we ever see when our mom’s head is tilted back and the lady’s back is turned, mostly only all we ever see over the Train Wreck down inside her purse is something looking like God or an odd Apostle.
What else is not real excellent about the lady from next door coming over to Psycho Za is that later she won’t get in the Rocket Sling down at the amusement park with us. She just sits on the railing talking to the man with the cast on his arm running the ride. You should tell him, whoever he is, every summer different, about the way the clutch handle slips and breaks your arm. Usually it happens into the summer when the ridehas been pretty good ridden and the handle starts to click like one of those piano clocks, back and forth, back and forth, until one night the handle wants to lie down flat against the place where the men running the ride like to rest their arm, waiting for the ride to be run. Every summer somebody different has it happen, it’s just always the same kind of cast over the same kind of arms, arms like with amusement-type tattoos that look deeper blue in winter when you see them doing some job else, like taking out restaurant trash or reaching for cigarettes through bars in the windows of the jail downtown.
And the next-door lady not getting on the Rocket Sling means that our mom will not get on either. And even with our mom behaving at home so our dad has to blap her, still me and my brother have to have her for the feeling we get when she screams excellent, us spinning around, tucked under the metal bar that other people eating fried mess and French fries have greased up, the rocket cockpit like a chicken wire box you can see through, you can almost stick your finger through the wire and touch the two bolts that hold you on, that keep the rocket on the ride. First you go up rocking slow and you can study the painted rust in the cracks of the metal arms with the bulbs lit in between where they are burned out, and then up, turning heavy, the rocket cockpit sloping me against my brother and my mother, you can smell Train Wreck and coffee, the ridetaking your breath up until you spin around calm at the top at first, above our town and the ocean black ink you are on the edge of, and maybe a secret pinball quarter you were saving for yourself falls out of your shorts about now, you knowing the man running the ride can hear the silver bounce down while he watches in the sand for it to land, him waiting for it to rain change from people’s pockets every time, like you wait all summer to show up and see his broken arm in a cast because nobody, even you, told him to watch out for that slipping stick on the clutch that starts and stops the ride.
And then, Down! you rocket-spin, going face first down.
Talk about it, excellent! Sometimes on the ride my brother almost throws up the Train Wreck and sometimes he almost doesn’t.
Then there are the nights when our mom calls up thelady from next door to come over to Psycho Za and this is not real excellent. Some nights our mom’s pencil points break and we don’t have a sharpener in her purse. Some nights her coffee soaks through her Jesus homework and her split lip beats in hiccups against her bent tooth. On these nights my brother and I know not to breathe Train Wreck breath on each other or jerk on the cigarette coin return over and over for pinball quarters until somebody says, Stop! We just sit there and work over our food while the lady from next door works over our mom, pulling tissues and gold sticks of makeup from her secret-compartment purse. Sometimes, if it is something we should not see that she should do, she and our mom go back into the ladies’ room for a long time, taking along the purse we are never left long enough with to go through. Whenever we can, we look in it, but mostly all we ever see when our mom’s head is tilted back and the lady’s back is turned, mostly only all we ever see over the Train Wreck down inside her purse is something looking like God or an odd Apostle.
What else is not real excellent about the lady from next door coming over to Psycho Za is that later she won’t get in the Rocket Sling down at the amusement park with us. She just sits on the railing talking to the man with the cast on his arm running the ride. You should tell him, whoever he is, every summer different, about the way the clutch handle slips and breaks your arm. Usually it happens into the summer when the ridehas been pretty good ridden and the handle starts to click like one of those piano clocks, back and forth, back and forth, until one night the handle wants to lie down flat against the place where the men running the ride like to rest their arm, waiting for the ride to be run. Every summer somebody different has it happen, it’s just always the same kind of cast over the same kind of arms, arms like with amusement-type tattoos that look deeper blue in winter when you see them doing some job else, like taking out restaurant trash or reaching for cigarettes through bars in the windows of the jail downtown.
And the next-door lady not getting on the Rocket Sling means that our mom will not get on either. And even with our mom behaving at home so our dad has to blap her, still me and my brother have to have her for the feeling we get when she screams excellent, us spinning around, tucked under the metal bar that other people eating fried mess and French fries have greased up, the rocket cockpit like a chicken wire box you can see through, you can almost stick your finger through the wire and touch the two bolts that hold you on, that keep the rocket on the ride. First you go up rocking slow and you can study the painted rust in the cracks of the metal arms with the bulbs lit in between where they are burned out, and then up, turning heavy, the rocket cockpit sloping me against my brother and my mother, you can smell Train Wreck and coffee, the ridetaking your breath up until you spin around calm at the top at first, above our town and the ocean black ink you are on the edge of, and maybe a secret pinball quarter you were saving for yourself falls out of your shorts about now, you knowing the man running the ride can hear the silver bounce down while he watches in the sand for it to land, him waiting for it to rain change from people’s pockets every time, like you wait all summer to show up and see his broken arm in a cast because nobody, even you, told him to watch out for that slipping stick on the clutch that starts and stops the ride.
And then, Down! you rocket-spin, going face first down.
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