Gideon

In the autumn, a carnival came to our town and set up in a field on the outskirts. The field had cows grazing that year and they’d been fenced into the back corner to make room for the rides and games and stalls selling sweet and savoury treats.

        I agreed to take my little brother along. We were both slightly surprised that neither of our parents had insisted on coming along to keep an eye on him.

        We went on all of the rides at least once and we ate overpriced, unhealthy food. At the top of the Ferris wheel, he told me he could see our house, pointing in the general direction we lived in. I pretended he could and asked him to show me again. We laughed our way through the House of Horrors and my brother kept wanting to karate kick the skeletons and zombies as they popped up.

        As we left the House of Horrors, I saw some girls from my class, smoking by the side of the helter skelter. More accurately, they saw me. They shouted my name and waved. I felt shy, being there as a babysitter, but my brother didn’t and he shouted back and waved to them happily, so we went over.

        They all said my brother was cute, which he loved, but pretended to be shy, knowing that they’d ruffle his hair and hug him. Jenny Beahrs said she wanted to buy him some candy floss and I said fine while I talked to the others and Hannah Ford offered me her cigarette, but I told her I was trying to give up, even though I’d only ever tried one once. She asked me if I’d been on the tilt-a-whirl yet, and when I said no, my brother’s too small, she took me by the hand and told me to go on it with her. I wasn’t about to say no.

        After the ride, the girls met us at the bottom and wanted to go on the bumper cars. I looked around for my brother, but he wasn’t there. Jenny said he’d been there a moment ago, and then she laughed and said he’d probably gone off with a girl.

        I spent the next twenty or thirty minutes running around the place calling my brothers name. Hannah came with me and the other girls said they’d check in a different direction, but when we saw them again, they were riding the carousel. I was furious but Hannah said to forget it, and maybe we should find a policeman or security or something, but after we walked around for a while, we couldn’t find them either.

        We went out into the car park and trudged through the churned up mud looking between cars and calling for him. We even walked out onto the road, but Hannah said there was no way he’d have gone that far.

        When we went back in, we found him almost straight away. He was at a shooting game next to the tilt-a-whirl, where he told us he’d been since he came back from getting candy floss with “that girl,” as he referred to Jenny.

        He seemed totally perplexed by the near hysteria I was in at this point. His biggest concern was that he hadn’t managed to win anything yet. Hannah gave him a big hug and told him he had to come and ride in a bumper car with her.

        “What about my brother?” he asked.

        “He has to go in one on his own,” she said. “So we can bump him.”

        “Ok,” he told her. “But I want to steer.”

        “We take turns,” she said.

        My brother thought about this for a fee moments, scratching his head, which he’d started to do recently to show he was giving serious thought. “Ok,” he said.

After the bumper cars, I bought us all hot dogs and drinks. I paid for everything because my brother had spent all of his money on the shooting game. I told him the games were all fixed, but he kept on wanting to play them and saying he would win. He was so determined. Besides, he knew that with Hannah there he could take advantage of me wanting to look like a good big brother, so he asked me to pay for his games again and again, or even asked me to play them for him. Some of the times I said no, and others I did what he asked and the look of joy on his face whenever he was lost in the game was worth it, I guess. And then it happened, and he actually managed to win something for throwing rubber balls into buckets. Hannah hugged him and kissed his cheek, but he pushed her away. “Hey,” he said, wiping his face, then he pointed excitedly, bouncing on his feet and reaching with his pointing finger for a large black bear wearing a bright red t-shirt with an eagle on it.

        The bear was nearly as large as my brother. Seriously. He struggled to carry it, so I offered to take it for him, but he was having none of it. He wanted to carry it himself. It suited me fine, I’d done enough, I felt, in paying more than the bear was worth anyway in goes on various games.

By the time we left, we’d missed the last bus home. The bus that went our way didn’t run very late, but it was still later than my brother was supposed to be out. I’d lost track of time and I’d have to explain that when we got back.

        Hannah was staying because the girls were all getting picked up together later, so we said goodbye in the entranceway and she gave me a hug and said she’d see me on Monday.

        “Great,” I said, and then I didn’t say anything else.

        I just stood there, feeling awkward, and then I lifted my hand in a little wave and turned away.

        “You didn’t even kiss her,” my brother said as we walked through the car park.

        “Shut up,” I told him.

        “I got a kiss.”

        “Shut up.”

        “Maybe she likes me better than you.”

        “Maybe I could sell you to one of the stalls.”

        “What would you tell mum and dad?” he asked.

        “I don’t know,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. They’d forget you soon enough.”

        “Would not.”

        “Would too,” I told him. “They forgot Jimmy quickly enough.”

        “That’s not funny,” he said and stopped walking and stamped his foot.

Jimmy was an imaginary brother I’d made up to tease him with. Jimmy was younger than me and older than him and he’d been annoying, so mum and dad had sold him to buy me a bike because they loved me so much. Then he’d been born as an experiment.

        He’d believed me for a while when he was a bit younger. I would maybe even have done lasting psychological damage if mum and dad hadn’t found out and told him it wasn’t true. I’d been banned, in no uncertain terms, from talking about Jimmy.

        I still brought him up from time to time though.

        It was out thing.  

I put my arm around my brother’s shoulder and walked with him to the end of the car park. We stood there and looked back at the carnival. I looked to see Hannah, but there was no chance. We stepped into the road and looked down it towards the lights of the town. “Come on, ladies man,” I said, and we started the walk back, my brother tottering slightly, slowed by the effort as he held tightly to his bear. I offered again to take it but he, once again, declined.

        We didn’t talk much as we walked. After a while, around the time we moved onto pavement for the first time, I noticed that my brother was walking faster, coping more easily with the bear. The night on the outskirts of town had that dark yet dully lit feel to it, like a dying torch, and my brother started to look sleepy with his drooping eyes and lazy grin.

        When we got as far as the churchyard, I thought to offer again to carry the bear, but by now it was tucked comfortably in the crook of his arm. I asked him if he knew his bear was shrinking. “Gideon,” he said.

        “What?” I asked him.

        “The bear. It’s called Gideon.”

        “Ok,” I said to him. “But did you know he’s shrinking?”

        My brother stopped walking for a moment and looked down at the bear he held. “I think he’s just tired,” he said in a yawny voice with a slow flapping wave of his free arm.

        By the time we got to the end of our street, he could fit the bear in his pocket. He did so and carried it with the head poking out the top, making him walk with a slight limp.

        When we finally reached home, I apologized to our parents for bringing my brother home late. They didn’t mind though. They told us it was ok, as long as we didn’t think we could do it all the time. They took us into the kitchen, where the lights were bright and dazzled us, and they asked about what we’d done that night. My brother, tired as he was, found a new, wide-eyed lease of life telling them stories of Ferris wheels, bumper cars, and deep fried food. He didn’t tell them about getting lost because I’d made him promise not to, and promised to take him to the cinema the following weekend. When he started talking about the games he’d been playing and reached into his pocket to show off his prize, his fingers came out holding black and red lint.