Balancing on the Ferris Wheel

Balancing on the Ferris Wheel

       Lying in bed as a toddler, he hung closely to the pleasure of touching himself, at times entering a sickly dark tunnel that made his insides want to retch. He felt as if he was being scraped off the side of a giant sticky soft Ferris Wheel that continued to revolve faster and faster until his head and body felt like an hourglass turned upright, draining all the sand.

       This was a time before he could understand that this feeling was one of impending death- of falling slowly off to the steel girders below.

       But as the descending particles of sand inside his head started to disappear, he stared open eyed at Jesus hovering around his bed, around the room on four walls... the black and white version of the Garden of Gethsemane was above him almost as wide as the twin bed and half the length of his four-foot height. A beautiful, serene Jesus looking up into the sky as the men behind him slept in piles, touching each other, feeling each other, growing, until John grew too, a child's pleasure spent, and only then placidly fell to sleep.

       His parents, the McDougal’s, knew what he was doing and at one early vague memory time, he remembered the feel of a rope around his wrists, tied loosely to the side of the crib so he wouldn't do “anything sinful”.

“This will keep you from hurting yourself, Johnnie,” his father was softly incanting to the air.

Through a Vaseline gaze, his mother was singing the traditional English " Lullaby and goodnight “; his father, John Sr. in his clerical white collar and Brylcreamed silver hair to match, sternly surveying his handiwork with the knowing smirk of a man of God saving one of his flock, this time his own son.

      The wheel kept spinning, the swinging chairs rising toward the sky, with bodies in seats motionless, waiting for change: for movement.

       John was the youngest with two older sisters and they didn’t know how to handle a boy. Yesterday for instance, he and his best friend Peter McIntyre, found the new supply of toilet paper the church had ordered for the year for the two bathrooms the parishioners used. Excitedly, they both tore open one of the clear covers and whisked the end of the roll like a ribbon on a birthday gift around the wooden tusks of the pews, tore up two more plastic packages festooning the wood around the church interior, first one then to the delight of the white ribbons floating everywhere on the seats where they were forced to sit every Sunday, they ended up opening all twenty packages evenly distributing them over every wooden bench, pew and foyer. Both boys, sweaty and gleaming broad smiles at their blasphemous decorations, then sneaked into the church “tuck” shop to steal two CARAVAN chocolate bars and then turning to run outside saw Ernie the Janitor chasing after them.

       Later, after they were turned into his pastor father, Rev McDougall, he knew he was facing the punishment of the stick. There sat his father with a long hickory branch about four feet long dangling between his legs.

       “This is for your own good, Johnnie. We don’t want you to steal and loiter anymore,” and he stood up and raised the hand with the stick. “Take down those pants.”

Johnnie’s mind wandered back to the Ferris Wheel trying to sit motionless as his father ministered the wooden surface to his five-year-old plump white flesh. When he was finished crying, sore and bleeding on the skin surface, he slumped to his bedroom to ride that crazy big wheel until he fell asleep.

      Johnnie was five then. Living in a small town that clung to the Atlantic Ocean like boxes landing on solid ground after a storm, his house looked out onto the sea and he was happiest when playing on this rocky shore, chasing the seagulls into the brine of kelp and Irish moss.

 Every year the town would celebrate their agrarian and fishing accomplishments at a yearly fair- The Provincial Exhibition- that included exhibitions of poultry and pigs and flowers and horse racing. But Jonnie only waited for the Cotton Candy and the Ferris Wheel.  When they went, he would try to escape his parents and hover around the large steel circular wheel looking up to the dangling feet of the two bodies at the very top.

“Was this the heaven that his father was always preaching about? Will I be up in the air hanging on and will I see Jesus up there peacefully siting amongst the other men in the garden?”

His mother Isabel watched him tearfully as he reached up to the lowest seat. She would check to see if the ride wrangler would allow such a young boy to ascend in this horrific rotating wheel.

“Only if you and your husband sit on either side and hold him close”. He stated gruffly. She wasn’t sure if she approved of this solution but decided on a next step.

 She grabbed Jonnie by the arm to go look for her husband, who was most interested in the Cattle show, so went in that direction, and found him with a young couple looking for a minister to marry them in the coming year. She waited until they were finished with their conversation.

“I am sorry Mabel and George; I can’t marry you. I don’t marry divorced women in our church. You can try with another church but this goes against what the Bible teaches.”

       The couple looked angrily at this expressionless man spouting the church doctrine and then turned in disgust.

 “John.” Isabel was quick to intervene and change the direction of the wheels of thought. “Our Johnnie really wants to go up in the Ferris Wheel. But the worker says we both must sit with him. What do you think?”

His father turned toward his two loyal and pleading faces  but was still in thought about the fleeing couple.

“I don’t know. It seems like a waste of money for the three of us to pay for one ride.”

“But Da I want to go up high… to heaven. Want to see what it looks like up there.”

His father looked at his son’s large brown eyes so like his mother’s. He squinted back with a smile and started to laugh.

“Well, if that’s the reason, it would certainly be worth the fifteen cents for the ride. Let’s go!”

They walked quickly past the tents full of Freaks displaying their size and ugliness for all to see for a price, the barker’s voice swirling through their ears.

“Come inside and see the most bizarre humans God ever made. The fattest woman in the world and Lizard man with skin as scaly as a snake in the garden of Eden. Come one, come all.”

 They scurried past the tent and the rides that had made Johnnie sick last year.

“There’s ‘Tilt a whirl and the Rocket. No thanks.” His stomach started to ache until he finally caught sight of the large upright rotating wheel that dominated the fairgrounds, its multiple cars full of screaming couples swinging their legs in the air to make the tubs sway in the warm summer wind. Johnnie and his mother looked up at the moving wheel as the pastor hurriedly went to buy the tickets. The three of them stood in a queue of equally excited children and their parents. Each of them ready to ascend to the top of the wheel.

“Will we see Jesus up there Da?” Johnny was sputtering his words, unsure of how his father would react.

“You never know, Johnnie, you never know. “His father was laughing at his son’s quizzical lines on his face.

       Suddenly the wheel lurched to a stop and the first couple, looking exhausted and blanched, spewed out to the terra firma. It was the couple that the Reverend had recently been talking to over in the cattle barn. He tried to look away as they descended, noticing the Mc Dougal family.

“Hello Reverend, I hope you don’t get too sick on the Wheel that allowed us to get to the top together.” She was yelling now as her husband grabbed her arm to pull her away to keep them walking.

Jonnie noticed how this made his father crouch deeper into himself.

“You know Da, Ma really want to go to the top too.” He said to his father, watching his mother’s face daring him to get on the seat. His father’s countenance changed as he listened to the sage advice of his son.

Isabel entered first, hanging onto Johnnie’s small wrist, still marked red from the rope they used to tie him up last night. When they were settled in one corner, John collapsed in the other, then circled his arm around both of them to keep them secure in the tub.

“You must hang onto this bar with one hand and the other onto your son, Sir. Please follow these instructions so that you’ll all be safe when the car starts to rock at the top.”

The left hand quickly grabbed the bar in front of him to parallel Isabel’s, while they each clung to their son in the middle as the wheel lurched to load the other groups of two and three, until each seat was full, and the man was ready to start the rotation of the wheel.

       Johnnie could feel the dust floating inside his head as he closed his eyes, his parents firmly grasping each of his arms.

“Whew,” Isabel chirped as the car started to rock and she looked at the ground disappearing in the distance.

 “That was a bit of a shock, John. Let’s try to keep the car from rocking so much. Here we go!” she whooped, and the earth and sky started to merge as they looked from one to the other.

“Open your eyes, Johnnie. You’re missing the view” His Dad was calm and full of encouragement to his young son. “We’re almost at the top of the world.”

Johnnie slowly opened each eye to see the sun shining so bright in the sky that at first there was nothing but white and yellow streams of light opening up to the blue.

 “Could this be heaven?” he thought. Not wanting to speak. He looked up and felt his stomach fall to the bottom of the seat in a quick lunge as the wheel started to descend and Johnnie looked down in horror as the tub rocked so violently that he was starting to float out to the sky, released by his parents to the steel in front with the screaming couple. Down, down, he felt himself go to a darkness so deep that he knew he would never come out of it. Then he felt the pressure on his arms as his parents grabbed him.

“Having fun Johnnie? Here we go again! Up and away.” His mother’s voice was high pitched and song like, as she tried to calm him down. He closed his eyes again at the top although he wanted to see the light, he knew the second after would come the dark and he didn’t want to see that again.

       But by the third time around, he opened his eyes again and started to look forward to that moment when the car descended from the top so secure in his parents’ grip that nothing else seemed to matter.

Looking straight at the flecks of dark dots, people like ants. scuttering around below. He wanted to be with them again.

After the fourth time, the motion was stopped, and their car was silent at the top and he opened his eyes wide to the sea. The blue waves crested by the white curling breakers like the roller coaster he was afraid to go on. Now it seemed like a safe place to be. Safe like the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus was safe with his disciples around him. Johnnie rubbed the red welts of his wrist and sighed.

“Jesus wasn’t up here. Just the sky and the earth.” He sighed and he could feel the squeeze of the arms of both his parents on each shoulder as they shuddered to a stop.

The Ferris Wheel slowly evacuated each group including the MacDougall’s, and Johnnie pleaded again with his father,

 “Can we go get some Cotton Candy, Da?”