Gerrit's Game

There was no rain yet, but the night above was gray and brooding. Storm clouds lowed in the distance, the sound masked by the monotonous moan of the sea.

Gerrit McCole wore a dark scowl. Before him was a small and freckled kid wearing a baseball cap that was too big for his head. The kid nervously handed Gerrit a damp wad of cash.

Gerrit snatched the money from the child, then counted the assortment of bills. He tried to hide a smile. It was all there, all hundred dollars.

“So you’ll make sure I win, right?” the kid said, his voice timid and afraid.

Gerrit gave him an evil scowl and a ghastly eye. “What did I say, huh? I’ll take care of it, okay?”

The kid beamed at that, face showing a strange mix of joy and malice. He ran off to find his brother, Dominic.

Gerrit McCole had an unseemly face, which was made worse by his blemishes and his perpetual scowl. When the kid was gone, though, he managed a smile. He was down to his last five bucks, but this money would change that.

For a second, he peered off into the distance. He could vaguely hear the thunder, but the low fog on the pier obscured the clouds. He shook his head, and stepped back into the stall.

Gerrit ran the water gun race at Joe’s Carnival. Big, metal guns were mounted along the stall, and participating kids would try to hit a tiny, little target with a stream of water. Hitting the target would cause an ugly, horrific clown, wearing a joyless smile, to rise up a track. Whoever’s clown reached the top first won one of the mangy stuffed animals kept caged at the back of the stall, locked up as though they might one day try and escape.

Gerrit found the game stupid, but he was seventeen, so he found most things stupid. Still, thinking of the wad of bills lining his pocket, he managed another rare smile.

Yes, sir, he thought, looking at the darkness of the wharf all around his dimly-lit booth. Things were looking up.

***

Later in the night, the kid, Nicky, showed up with his fat older brother, Dominic.

Seeing them approach, Gerrit slightly corrected his slouch, and straightened the straw hat he was forced to wear. It was time for him to uphold his end of the deal.

As the two kids were passing by, he barked out in a harsh and grating voice (void of life and energy, full of obnoxious volume), “Ladies and gentlemen! Step right up and prove yourself! Win the most miraculous of prizes! Demonstrate your prowess and skills in a test of marksmanship, here at Joe’s Carnival!”

The carnival was slow today. The heavy fog, rolling up from the sea below, covered the pier, making all those old tales about the wharf, of suicides and forlorn lovers, weigh on one’s mind. Only the most senseless of hearts would be here tonight.

The two kids turned at Gerrit’s barking, and approached the stall. With so few people here tonight, they were the only ones who went up.

Nicky’s older brother, Dominic, was a thick, heavyset kid, who looked like he could knock down a house with one smack of his hand. Gerrit particularly disliked his shirt, which featured a white skull on a black background.

“Hey, Mister,” the fat kid barked, “we want to play!” He slapped two crumpled dollar bills on the counter.

Gerrit scowled, amazed at how poorly children treated their money. Gerrit carefully smoothed out the bills, and adopted a look of great focus. He counted the bills, then held them up to the dim lights hanging from the ceiling of his stall.

“Hey! They’re real!” Dominic shouted.

Gerrit closed his eyes, and took on a look of wearied patience. “Well, I don’t know if they’re real if I don’t check them, do I? Now shut it, you’re breaking my concentration.” Ignoring the fat kid’s loud protests, Gerrit peered closely at the crumpled face of the first president. The face looked blankly back. Satisfied, Gerrit folded the bills, and put them neatly in the front pocket of his uniform.

“Okay,” he said, his voice turning serious, “man your guns.”

The bigger kid waddled up to his gun, licking his chops at the thought of demolishing his brother at yet another activity. The smaller kid, meanwhile, twisted his baseball cap back, stood on his toes, closed one eye, stuck his tongue out in concentration, and pressed himself against the stall.

The contest was about to begin.

***

“Alright,” Gerrit says, brow furrowed, suddenly realizing he has no clue as to how he’ll go about rigging the game. “Ready? Get set… Go!” He presses his foot down on a steel pedal, releasing the flow of water. A tiny bell rings overhead, signaling the game has begun.

Gerrit, to his alarm, sees the smaller kid is just a mess, spraying water everywhere, hitting Gerrit in the face at one point. The bigger kid is a real marksman, though, and hits his target in moments, keeping a steady stream leveled against it. Gerrit, not really knowing what to do, casually reaches behind the big kid’s target and jams his thumb against it, stopping the clown from rising.

Almost immediately, though, the big kid notices something is wrong, and loudly complains. “Hey! What’s the big idea? My clown’s not going up. Stop the game! Stop the game! It’s rigged!”

At this accusation, sweat breaks out on Gerrit’s head. If the kid really suspects him of cheating, and rats him out, Mr. Joe, the owner of the carnival, will surely fire him. He has just five bucks left to his name. He can’t afford to lose this job. He removes his thumb from behind the target, smacks the clown as though that will fix something, and says, “Um, here, kid, try again. I think it’s working now.”

The fat kid, eyes alight with the need to crush his brother, levels his gun against the target once again, and his clown rises. In a few moments, it is over. The bell rings out, signaling the end. The smaller kid only got his clown halfway up the track.

The bigger kid yelps with joy, leaps away from the counter, and starts a dance that is both lithe and cumbersome, his thick, awkward legs shifting about as his hips gyrate and his arms swing about. “I won! I won!” he yells out. “I did it! I’m the best!” Some patrons, passing by, seeing this display of unexpected grace, stare at the smooth, yet lurching, dance.

Gerrit, at first transfixed by this impossible dance, gulps when he sees the smaller kid’s face. He wouldn’t have thought that such a look of anger and hatred could spill from a child’s face. If this kid rats him out, he’ll also be fired.

The sweat pools on Gerrit’s head. He might even have to give the bribe back.

What to do? What to do?

***

Luckily for him, the smaller kid is willing to give him another chance. Still bearing that look of hatred and righteous indignation, he pulls out two more bills, and says, with a voice shrill from anger, “I believe, my good sir, we will play another round.” He smacks the bills onto the counter.

Meanwhile, the fat kid has ceased his dance, and loudly complains that he hasn’t gotten his prize yet. Gerrit unlocks the cage, and pulls out a stuffed dachshund for him.

The kid looks at his prize, then turns to his brother, face smug with satisfaction. “You know, Nicky,” he says, voice dripping with condescension, “I bet I can beat you with one arm.”

“You cannot!” Nicky spews out with spastic rage.

The older brother smirks, then looks down at his dachshund. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to, won’t I? This arm of mine seems to be full.”

Nicky’s face grows purple with rage, and he casts another evil look at Gerrit.

Gerrit gulps. It’s time to put up or shut up, he thinks. But he needs a better plan. And he needs to buy himself time to think if he’s going to come up with a better plan.

“Alright,” he drawls out, as slowly as he can, sweating beneath the dim lights. The fog swirls just outside the stall, looking dark and menacing, like some strange, misshapen beast. “Man your guns, okay?” The boys step up. “Ready?” he asks, then pauses for some time. The boys are quiet. “Get set,” he says, and allows still more silence to fill the air.

“GO!” he roars, and jams his foot on the steel pedal, causing the bell to ring overhead.

His idea of coming up with a better plan failed, so he jams his thumb behind the fat kid’s target as soon as the race begins. Luckily for Gerrit, the big kid has a hard time aiming with just one arm, and it takes him some time to find the target. Once he does, though, he realizes the clown still isn’t rising, and cries out that the game is fixed.

The accusation causes Gerrit’s blood to run cold once more, and he removes his thumb from the circle. Dominic’s clown begins to rise.

Nicky, meanwhile, had built up a decent lead this time around, his clown halfway up the track at this point. But, seeing Dominic’s clown rise, he is stunned, and loses his focus. His spray misses the target, and he fumbles to find it again.

It is too late. The bell rings, and Dominic is victorious once more. He steps away from the stall, and begins a beautiful, yet lumbering, waltz with his dachshund.

It is too much for the smaller kid. He steps away from the stall, slams his hat to the ground, and lets loose an awful string of profanities that make even Gerrit blush. When he is done with vulgarities, the kid screeches to the fog overhead, “Is this what I paid for! Is it! Huh, is it!”

Gerrit, stunned by the kid’s voice, which doesn’t even sound like his, but some evil entity speaking through its puppet, doesn’t realize the kid is talking to him. When he does, he says, “Well, uh, I-”

“One thing! One thing! I paid you to do one thing!” the kid screams, shouting at the fog, which offers back an inscrutable reply. The kid claws and rends the air, as though this will do something. He screams with an anguish as profound as Christ’s was in the garden.

Dominic, meanwhile, has a dreamy look on his face, as though this agony has fulfilled all of his deepest wishes. He hugs his stuffed toy close, and continues his waltz to the tune of his brother’s howlings.

Gerrit is trying to figure out what to say, when he sees Mr. Joe walking over. Gerrit’s throat closes up.

Joe is a thick, short man with a big gut and a balding head. God had compensated him for the balding pate with a proliferation of hair everywhere else on his flesh.

“What’s the problem?” Joe grunted through his cigar.

“Oh, um, nothing, Mr. Joe,” Gerrit mumbled.

The little kid was howling like a thing possessed, shouting out with a voice that wasn’t his own. Staring at the ground, he gestured back an accusing finger at Gerrit. “I gave him a hundred bucks, a hundred bucks, to help me win this stupid game, and he couldn’t even do that!”

Joe’s protruding brow furrows at Gerrit. “Is that true, Gerrit?”

Gerrit’s face is as pale as death. “Oh, well, I, um-”

Mr. Joe holds out a thick, calloused hand, one of the fingertips missing.

Gerrit, afraid of that hand, never sure of how it had lost that fingertip, wonders how to get out of this. Like all of us, he is too dumb and stupid to find his way in a world as cold as this one.

Silently, he pulls out the cash, and hands it over to Mr. Joe.

Mr. Joe stares at him blankly, and says, without emotion. “You’re fired.” Then he looks down at the wad of cash and smiles.

The little kid, his howling done, looks up at the thick, heavy man and says, suddenly bashful and shy, “So, um, can I have my money back?”

Mr. Joe looks down at the kid, as though he had forgotten he was here, and gives a shake of his head. “No can do, kid. It’s illegal to bribe a carnival worker. You know that, don’t you? If I gave you your money back, I’d have to call the cops. You wouldn’t want that, now, would you?”

The kid swallows a big, jagged gulp of air at that. Tears sting his eyes, and he drops to his knees, folding his hands together in penitent pain. “No, please, Mister, don’t call the cops on me! Please!”

His older brother laughs, his triumph complete.

Mr. Joe, oddly, smiles at the big kid. He goes behind the stall, unlocks the cage, and gets Dominic a big, stuffed whale.

“Don’t worry, kid,” he says to Nicky, handing Dominic the whale, “just don’t let it happen again.”

Gerrit walks into the fog, head heavy, heart mired in confusion and hurt.

It would cost him two bucks to take the bus back home.

***

He rides the bus home, feeling dejected and alone. He presses his face against the glass, feeling the faint light of streetlamps wash over his acne-ridden skin.

The bus comes to his stop, and he starts the long walk home. The storm clouds finally break, replacing the fog with sheets of rain. Cold and miserable, he reaches his house at the end of the cul-de-sac. The lights are off, but the blue bug zapper on the porch glows warm and heavy every time an unwitting fly or mosquito meets his end.

When the zapper glows, it casts a weird, blue light all along the porch, and, for just a second, he can see his father, smoking a cigar on the wicker chair. When the zapper goes quiet, Gerrit can still see the tip of his father’s cigar, orange and crimson amid the dark.

Gerrit pulls his soaking limbs up the steps, taking shelter beneath the roof of the porch. “Hi, Dad,” he says, voice glum and morose. He plunks himself onto the wicker chair beside his father, sinking deep into its cushion.

“Son,” is all his father says. Gerrit’s father is a man prone to few words.

They sit in the random, intermittent glow of the bug zapper, until his father asks, “How was work?”

“I got fired,” Gerrit says, still soaked and miserable, his last three dollars wet and damp in his pocket.

His father is quiet, respecting his son’s privacy.

Gerrit just sits there, staring into the dark, seeing sheets of rain whenever the zapper glows. He doesn’t know what he’ll do for money. His car has been broken for weeks, and he can’t afford the bus anymore.

His father taps at a slim cardboard box, laid on the table before them. “Pizza?” he asks.

Gerrit’s eyes widen in surprise when he sees the box. He hadn’t noticed it. The blue light, shed to either celebrate or lament the death of some insect, briefly illuminates the pie. “Pepperoni?” Gerrit asks, voice trying to mask his excitement.

His father nods, and Gerrit watches the tip of the cigar go up and down in the dark.

Gerrit fumbles for a slice, and his father passes him a soda. Gerrit opens it, and greedily sucks it down. The soda is warm, and the pizza is cold, but both taste impossibly, impossibly good. “Thanks, Dad,” he wheezes through another mouthful of pizza.

Gerrit’s father stares at his son, seeing him in random, blue glows. He is not a happy man, but seeing his son happy causes a big, warm smile to spread across his face.

He wants to hide his smile from his son, for some reason, so he looks away, up at the bug zapper, and watches another poor insect meet its death in a fiery burst of cold, cold light.

Gerrit eats his pizza and slurps his soda, forgetting about work, forgetting that he is cold and that his clothes are wet. Impossibly, he feels happy.

It is the happiest he has felt in a long, long time.