The Bear He Won Twice

So I knelt down on the gravel in front of my son. The lights from the Tilt-A-Whirl were spinning across his face in red and yellow.

“You okay, buddy?” I asked him.

He thought about it. Mack thinks about questions the way old men think about the weather, slow and serious, like the answer matters.

I have never once heard him lie to make me feel better.

“I’m sad,” he said finally. Then he looked off down the midway where his aunt had gone. “Kinsey needs one too.”

“You won that one fair,” I told him. “You worked all summer for that one.”

“I know,” he said, and nodded like that settled it. “I’ll win another.”

He dug into his pocket and pulled out his last five-dollar bill, smoothed it flat on the counter, and slid it across to the man with the mustache, who took it without a word and handed him three rings.

I should explain about Malcolm, because people always ask where the husband was. My husband is a volunteer firefighter, and every year the department runs the pork steak tent at the fair to pay for gear.

He had been standing over a smoker since three in the afternoon on the other side of the fairgrounds, by the livestock barns, turning meat and handing out plates. He did not see any of it happen.

Mack threw his three rings. Nothing. He looked back at me, and I opened my wallet.

I had fourteen dollars in it and a truck to fill up on Monday morning. I handed him a ten.

“Two more rounds,” I said. “Then we’ll see.”

The sun was going down behind the Ferris wheel by then, a big orange smear over the cattle barns, and one by one the strings of bulbs over the midway started to come on.

The air smelled like kettle corn and diesel from the generators.

Mack threw. Clink, off. Clink, off. Clink, off.

He threw again. One ring landed on a neck and spun and slid away, and the whole line groaned out loud for him, and I realized the line had not gone anywhere. They were still standing there. They were watching.

A little girl behind us, maybe six, started counting his rings out loud. “Fifteen,” she said, very serious. “Sixteen. Seventeen.”

When my second five ran out, Mack did not turn around and ask me for more.

He just stood at the line holding his empty hands, looking at the bottles, like he was still working the problem.

That was when an older farmer stepped up beside me. He had sun on the back of his neck and hands like leather, and he reached past my shoulder and laid a five-dollar bill on the counter.