CHAPTER TEN: Girl to Gorilla
A finger of land pointed north toward clean snows. On it a park had been built of six boroughs.
Or seven if one counted the huge parking lot, which was mostly empty on this late October afternoon. Brenton parked the Jaguar close to the gate and everybody piled out. Shockingly cold wind off the lake swept Dante’s hair. Immediately he took off his jacket and gave it to Sunny, who had begun to shiver. With a grateful smile she slipped her arms through its sleeves. The garment hung far too large on her tiny frame. Her chest had doubled in width; her hands had disappeared.
“How do I look?” she asked.
Only the truth would suffice. “Beautiful as ever,” Dante said.
Arm in arm, they followed her parents to the gate. Brown cornhusks were set up around the turnstiles. Jack-o-lanterns. Paper ghosts. In the ticket booth stood a tall girl wearing zombie make-up. Dante thought she’d done a rather decent job with the shading. Green skin faded to black eyes and bloody, drooling lips. She sold Brenton four orange tickets with cackling witches on them. He gave one to Sunny and one to Dante.
“Hooray!” Sunny yelled.
One at a time they went through the turnstiles—Sunny first, then Dawn, then Dante, then Brenton. A wide, gray midway met them on the other side, lined with shops colored for the season. Orange and black streamers fluttered from a number of small trees. Green witches grinned in yellow windows. Sunny gave a laugh. She was pointing at a maple grove to the left, where a large mannequin had been hanged by a noose from one of the branches. Its painted face gagged for air, which the teenaged couple posing next to it thought, to judge by their laughter, hilarious.
“Smile!” came the photographer’s muffled voice on the wind.
Immediately Sunny demanded that she and Dante copy their antics. Kicking through leaves, they entered the grove. The dummy swung and hit Dante on the shoulder. He pushed it back, which caused its head to loll and look straight at him. A spider crawled up his spine. The dummy’s face seemed familiar—crude, but familiar. Hairs from a messy brown wig hung across wide eyes framed with glasses. Fake, crooked teeth protruded from a frightened grimace. Frightened, or was it just being cagey?
“Say hello to Timothy Grass,” the photographer—a woman dressed like the bride of Frankenstein—said. “Then smile and hold still.”
“Got it!” Sunny said. “Hello Timothy!”
She stood on one side of the dummy, Dante the other. A Polaroid Instamatic picture was taken: Click! Bzzzz! The woman took the picture out, shook it, handed it to Dante.
“One dollar,” she said.
He paid with three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel. Then he evaluated the picture. It had come out reasonably well despite the dark day. He and Sunny were smiling, Sunny with her arm around Timothy’s waist. The dummy was not smiling, but its eyes had somehow managed to find the camera. Perhaps the wind shifted its body while Dante wasn’t looking. This could also be the explanation for its teeth, which had fallen partway out of its mouth to resemble a pair of vampire fangs. Seeing them called forth an odd memory from last year:
You’re going to get bitten, you’d better believe it. You’re going to get bitten.
“Dante?” Sunny said. “Everything okay?”
He turned to her. “Yeah,” he replied, though he wasn’t entirely sure. “Yeah. The dummy’s just creepy, that’s all.”
The remark earned him an elbow to the ribs. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Sunny told him. “No, sir.”
∞
He initially assumed she meant the park, and indeed, that assumption gained weight the further along the midway they walked. Nor could all of this be credited to the decorations. For one thing, the wind was getting stronger, swirling leaves high over the deserted fun-rides. Dante saw a number of parents herding their children into cafes for hot chocolate and began to wish he could have one, too. For another the day, though it wasn’t yet three o’clock, had turned dark enough to make most side streets off the midway look haunted. Cobblestones painted to look old beckoned from narrow, dreary passages. A few patrons, coaxed by their call, whispered from quaint marble doorsteps. Some smoked cigarettes. Others had transistor radios. From one alley a girl in a ripped skirt—a girl Sunny’s age—looked at Dante, and he could swear her eyes glowed green.
Then they were past her. Never minding the wind, the Desdemonas guided him leisurely through a smattering of less lively autumn displays—dry, dormant fountains; closed ice cream parlors—until they came to a puppet show set near the foot of Cedar Point’s giant Ferris wheel. Here two puppets, a girl and a man, were playing a scene with a mock Ferris wheel designed to look like the giant one. The girl, shaking in terror, kept looking at the ride and telling the man she didn’t want to get on.
“Don’t be silly!” the man said. “When’s the last time you saw a Ferris wheel fall over?”
“I dreamed about it!” came the girl’s squeaky reply.
“You shouldn’t put stock in dreams! They mean nothing!” The man’s plastic foot stamped on the stage. “Nothing I tell you! Now get on!”
“No!”
“Little lady!”
Suddenly the Ferris wheel began to shake. Children in the audience began to point and laugh.
“It’s falling!” the girl screamed.
And the man: “Run! Run!” Over the course of one second his opinion on Ferris wheels had done a total one-eighty.
“Oh no!” the girl screamed again in a far more sarcastic tone of voice. “No, Rudolph! Ferris wheels don’t fall over! Let’s have a picnic on the grass!”
“Are you crazy, girl! Run!”
Everyone in the audience was laughing now. Dante could feel Sunny trying to control herself but losing the battle. The Ferris wheel shook once more, slid over to where Rudolph was standing, and fell flat on top of him—SPLAT!
“YAY!” the children yelled.
Instantly appreciative of this, the girl puppet did a number of curtseys, pausing only to wave and say Thank you! Thank you! You’re all beautiful!
“Encore!” Sunny shouted. “Throw him off the Millennium Force!”
Rudolph heard. He crawled from under the Ferris wheel and shook his fist at Sunny. Ever the deviant juvenile, Sunny stuck out her tongue, to which Rudolph responded by turning around to shake his bottom at her. This put the audience into absolute hysterics. Wild laughter flew about in all directions. Even Sunny thought it hilarious. Tears flowing, she grabbed Dante’s shoulder for support. He laughed right along with her. Brenton and Dawn did too. Everyone was laughing like never before until Rudolph suddenly stopped shaking his butt and fell down for the second time.
Dante noticed it first. Rudolph wasn’t moving anymore. He looked, indeed, as dead as the wood that formed his essence. Gradually the laughter died down. Bemused adults blinked at the stage; children went back to their lollipops. Meanwhile Rudolph continued to be dead. Assuming the show had ended, people began to wander away. Then the girl puppet also fell over, and from behind the booth a lady began to scream:
“Gary! Gary! Oh my god!”
“What’s going on?” somebody next to Dante asked.
He opened his mouth to say he didn’t know, at which moment Brenton cut in: “I think the puppeteer had a seizure. From my angle I could see him fall down and start…you know, shaking.”
“Jesus,” the somebody said.
“A seizure?” Dante said. “Seriously?”
Brenton shrugged as if he couldn’t be less interested. “That’s what it looked like. How about we walk over to the freak shows? Those are always a hoot.”
Dante looked again towards the puppet booth. Two paramedics were now on the scene. One of them had kneeled to talk to the puppeteer. The puppeteer’s eyes were open, and he was nodding at the paramedic.
“He’ll be all right,” Sunny’s voice said at his ear. “If it’s really epilepsy then he shouldn’t have gotten everyone laughing so hard. Harsh noise can trigger seizures almost as easily as blinking lights.”
“But it was funny,” Dante told her.
Sunny’s head tilted. “Was it really?”
“Well…”
“Hey you two!” Dawn called, and Dante was surprised to see that both parents were already fifty feet down the next lane, which was sprinkled with wood chips. “We’re going to Frontier Town! Coming with us?”
“Of course we are!” Sunny cheered. She grabbed Dante’s wrist. “Come on, you. Show’s over here.”
About that he couldn’t argue. The area in front of the puppet booth looked forlorn. The audience had dispersed, leaving its used candy wrappers to dance in the wind. Not wishing to be counted among the abandoned, Dante let Sunny guide him away.
∞
Frontier Town greeted them with the smell of wood smoke. Its source lay somewhere along a dirt road made up to resemble an old west mining town. There was a saloon, a general store, a blacksmith, a tailor. Of all the boroughs at Cedar Point, this remained Dante’s favorite. Character-wise it couldn’t be beaten. From the saloon’s crooked wooden porch, littered with broken peanut shells, to the steamer from parts north that whistled in a pinewood depot, the terrain might have been authentic enough for an Eastwood picture.
As if he could read Dante’s thoughts, Brenton asked if anyone was hungry, and if so, maybe they could grab a bite in the saloon. They went inside to find a tavern filled with chatter and piano music. More peanut shells littered the floor. Brenton ushered everyone into a candlelit booth with ripped leather seats. Then he snapped his fingers at a pretty young waitress, who froze as if bitten by an insect.
“Four ham and cheese sandwiches,” Brenton said when she got to the table.
“And to drink?” the waitress asked.
Brenton tipped her a wink. “Pitcher of beer for me and the missus. Two Cokes for the kids. Oh and bring glasses for those Cokes, please.”
The waitress wrote it all down, clicked her pen, and disappeared.
“That,” Brenton said to Dante, “is how you do help.” He was no longer smiling. His eyes, in fact, had turned deadly serious. “Keep it friendly but don’t let them forget you mean business.”
“Yes, sir,” Dante replied.
“Too much patience,” the other continued, leaning forward, “and you stumble, and you fall to their level. You become content with failure, because hey”—now he leaned back, spreading his arms, smiling—“everyone likes you! What else do you need? Is that what you want, Dante? To be an amicable failure?”
“No, sir.”
The arms dropped. “Good lad. Good lad. Anyway, my Sunny’s sweet enough for the both of you. Isn’t that right, dearest?”
“Right as rain, Dad,” she said.
From under the table Dante felt her hand take his knee. She kept it there until the drinks arrived, at which point Brenton poured out, ordering him and Sunny to open the Cokes but leave their glasses alone.
“It’s dark in here,” he said, lifting the pitcher of beer. “No one’s going to notice. Or care.”
And with that, he filled Dante’s glass to the brim with foaming gold brew. Sunny’s came next, then Dawn’s, then his own.
“See them tumblin’ down!” the piano player began to sing. “Pledgin’ their love to the ground! Lonely but free I’ll be found! Driftin’ along with the tumblin’ tumbleweeds!”
“Dante?”
He looked at Brenton, who was looking back steadily. “Drink up.”
“But the waitress,” he stammered.
“What about her?”
“She’ll be coming back any minute with the sandwiches!”
“Then empty your glass quickly, before she arrives.”
“Go ahead, Dante,” Sunny said. In the candlelight her smile seemed to glow like a fire bolt struck through the heart of a lamb. “What’s wrong? Never had beer before?”
“I’ll know when night has gone! That a new world’s born at dawn! I’ll keep rollin’ along! Deep in my heart is a song!”
“Boo!” one of the patrons shouted.
“Shut up!” yelled somebody else.
“Driftin’ along with the tumblin’ tumbleweeds!”
Dante looked at his mug of beer. It was full to the brim—nothing like the little sips his dad would give him at parties from time to time.
“Time to earn your man card, Dante,” Brenton’s shadowy figure spoke. He raised his mug, Dawn hers, Sunny hers. “To young love,” the father said in a thoughtful voice. “May it be quick and keen as death’s arrow spearing. May it burn hot as the inhumed sea. And may the two of you, Dante and Sunny, be ever toward it endearing.”
Dante picked up his mug. He clinked it with the others (Sunny’s tiny arm trembled slightly with the weight of hers, making him wonder if she could really quaff such a large helping). Then he began to drink.
The first gulp refreshed him. The second was bitter. The third burned his throat.
Sunny couldn’t finish. Her mug hit the table half empty. Brenton’s mug—completely drained—followed. Then came Dawn’s, also empty.
“Come on, kiddo!” Brenton cheered. “You can do it!”
Dante took two more swallows. His head had begun to swim. The entire saloon now felt as if it were floating gently on Lake Erie. Over the glass he could see Brenton’s eyes twinkling like stars upon full masts. He took two more swallows. Sunny put her hand on his shoulder. “Do it, baby,” she whispered.
Determined not to disappoint her, he tilted the mug back farther. Farther. The beer trickled away. Almost gone. Almost gone.
Ah!
Now there was only foam! Victorious, Dante drank that too, then slammed the mug down hard enough to make the candle jump.
“Whoo-hoo!” Sunny screamed, throwing her arms round his neck.
“Well done!” Brenton pronounced. “I’m very pleased!”
For a moment Dante felt he might pass out on the floor. Sunny rescued him with a kiss on the cheek, which boosted his vigor.
Dawn began to clap. “You’ve got a man all right,” she told her daughter. In his drunken state Dante tried hard to deduce the amount of sarcasm in her tone. Yet she seemed quite sincere, and her face, like the others’, was radiant with pride. “It’s about time!”
∞
It was six o’clock by the time they reached the freak tents. Night had fallen, to which end the park became fully alive. Ghouls and ghosts capered in the streets. Some of them gave candy to the kids. Others tried to scare the teens and tweens. Sunny fell victim to this last, all but jumping into Dante’s arms when a green zombie lunged from behind the general store. Still feeling heroic, he pulled her close, shielding her body from the undead creature’s terrible maw.
“ARRRGHHH!” the zombie snarled.
“Arrgh yourself!” Dante told it.
“Would you like me to eat your braiiinnns?”
“No, thank you. I still use them from time to time.”
Cowering behind his shoulder, Sunny had gone from screaming to laughing. “Atta boy, Dante!” she said. “You ain’t afraid of no ghosts!”
The tents were not typically an attraction for Cedar Point—or at least, Dante couldn’t remember seeing them before. About ten stood at the edge of Frontier Town, each with a crier to tempt passers-by through their dark doors.
“See the Amazing Bertha!” one yelled. “Fattest woman in the history of humankind! Seven-hundred pounds of pure, sickening blubber! You’ll be shocked! Appalled! Disgusted!”
How politically correct, Dante thought dryly, his eyes on a picture of what looked to be a whale in a flower print dress.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” came the scream of another from across the street. “Ladies and gentlemen, inside this tent is an atrocity so stunning, so terrifying, you won’t believe your own eyes! Come and behold…the two-headed man!”
The crier stepped aside to reveal a cartoon drawing of a two-headed man. One of the heads wore an evil, twisted sneer, the other looked stupid enough to poop its own pants.
Brenton and Dawn paid it zero attention. They did, however, pause in front of another tent, where a giant picture of a snarling gorilla towered over the midway.
“Halo!” the crier sang, smelling fresh blood. He wore a checkered suit complete with cane and tweed top hat. To Dante, he looked perfectly ridiculous. “So you want to see the gorilla? Of course you do!”
“Of course we do,” Brenton said, nudging at Dawn’s rib.
“Ah!” the crier spieled on. “But the gorilla can only manifest itself through the body of a beautiful young girl! A young girl…like this one!” His white-gloved hand pointed directly at Sunny, who blinked but could not form a reply.
“You mean Sunny?” Brenton asked.
“Is that her name? Lovely! Perhaps she would be willing to take the stage! And then undergo a truly fascinating transformation!”
It was Dawn who spoke next. “You want to turn my daughter into a gorilla?” she said.
“Oh it won’t be me, madam! Instead, why don’t we make it her very own father!”
Brenton’s eyes grew wide. “Now see here, young man,” he blustered, “you can’t possibly think that I would ever—“
“Do such a thing!” the crier finished. As he spoke he raised his voice even higher, so that passers-by on the street could take notice. “Oh no! How could I ask a father to turn his sweet baby girl into a full grown gorilla? A beast! A monster! Well the answer is simple!”
“Tell me,” Brenton demanded.
A crowd of people were now gathering around the entrance to the tent. Sunny’s face wore an expression of one highly amused. She looked from one patron to the next, before finally settling her eyes on Dante. “Girl to gorilla,” she said.
“I doubt it,” he told her.
“Wait and see.”
“Because I see by your face that you think it’s impossible!” came the crier’s answer. The crowd was getting larger by the moment. Elbows bumped Dante’s ribs. Voices, most of them male, began to egg Brenton on. “Well, sir,” the crier said overtop them, “if it’s so impossible, then why not give it a try!”
“Yeah!” somebody shouted. “Go on! Change her into a monkey!”
“Gorilla!” corrected the man in the checkered suit.
“Whatever! Come on! I’ve got five bucks says it can’t be done!”
“And I’ve got ten,” Brenton said, grinning at the crier. Then, to Sunny: “What do you think? Wanna try?”
“Sure!” the girl replied.
Her answer didn’t surprise Dante. She would of course love the attention. Devour it like Hercules’ Nemean lion would a finger.
To a round of delighted applause, Brenton and Sunny walked into the tent. Dante and Dawn went next (as friends of the act, they didn’t need a ticket). Dim light welcomed them. Weak bulbs flickered on massive support posts. The floor consisted of odiferous yellow grass sprinkled with old popcorn. In front was a stage made of plywood. It smelled of spruce and glue. Sunny followed her father behind it, looking back at Dante once to blow him a kiss.
“Front row seats,” Dawn said to him. “That’s nice.”
There were no seats, of course. Everyone wishing to see the show had to stand. This fact in no way deterred the curious. Within minutes a hundred people occupied the tent. Once more Dante felt elbows getting too close. Heard puffs of hot breath. They talked in low tones—almost whispers—in regard to some undocumented respect for darkened rooms. Dante did his best not to pay attention. It wasn’t hard. A large purple curtain, the color of Sunny’s dress, hung over the stage. Along its hem he could see movement. Shuffling feet. People were working on the other side. Trying to set up whatever it was that needed setting up.
“What’s taking so long?” somebody wanted to know, though it hadn’t really been all that long. Five minutes at most. Yet the arrow of the complaint must have struck its target, for at that moment a jittery, creepy music piece began to play. High piano notes in staccato accompanied by guttural bass lines. Dawn informed him it was called The Witch by Tchaikovsky. When it was over the crier from outside took the stage. Smiling in the gloom, he raised his hands for silence. Everyone, including the complainer, obliged.
“Thank you!” the crier spoke. “Thank you all! The show—the most horrific show ever in the history of midway spectacles—is about to begin. Our subject is a sweet young girl, twelve years old, who will soon change, before your very eyes, into a savage gorilla!”
“YAYYY!” the crowd cheered.
“SAVAGE!” repeated the crier, to even more cheers. “Huge and bloodthirsty! Utterly insane! A monster to give you nightmares!”
“Really,” Dante heard Dawn say. “My Sunny isn’t a monster!”
“Are you ready?” the crier’s voice shrieked.
And the crowd: “YES!”
“Are you READY?”
“YES!”
Dante covered his ears. He didn’t know how good the crier’s act would be, nor did it seem to matter either way. To judge by the noise his audience was already well pleased.
“One more thing!” the crier sang out, raising his index finger. “One more thing! It should be noted here that I have instructed the girl’s very own father in how to change her!”
“NO! NO WAY!”
“Yes way! And to prove it, ladies and gentlemen let me introduce you to the kindly, the elegant, the distinguished, Mister Brenton Desdemona!”
Everyone applauded like lunatics as the curtain flew back to reveal Brenton, standing stage left, and Sunny, tiny and dainty, locked inside of an iron cage.
“Hello, Mr. Desdemona, hello!” said the crier. “You have a very lovely daughter!” He then held his microphone to Brenton’s lips.
“Thank you,” Brenton replied. “It’s a pleasure to be here.”
“Oh!” came the crier’s mock expression of surprise. “We have a gentleman in our midst! And tell me, Mr. Desdemona, do you feel you can incant the proper words to transform this beautiful girl into the hideous beast we saw on the poster outside?”
Brenton smiled. To Dante he looked perfectly at ease with his position. “Absolutely,” he told everyone. “It will be…very easy.”
At this the audience began to cheer again. A few of the men even threw their hats. It had no effect on Brenton. His face remained sober, his smile serene. He looked down at Dante and winked.
“Come on!” the crier said, all disbelief. “Easy?”
“My daughter,” Brenton said, never once taking his eyes from Dante, “always does whatever I tell her to do.”
“YAYYY!” erupted the crowd.
“You heard him, everyone!” yelled the crier. “Anything he wants done, gets done! So without further ado, let’s have our show