Six Hundred Corn Dogs on Opening Day

The Boy Whose Steer Did Not Place

Around three o’clock, the line was shorter. The show ring was between classes and the heat had pushed a lot of people into the barns and the shade.

A boy came up alone. He was about eleven. He had on a green 4-H shirt with a clover on the pocket and his show number still pinned to his back. His boots had shavings stuck to them.

He had five dollars out already. He held it flat in his hand like he was afraid he would lose it.

I knew that look. I had worn that look myself, the summer I was fourteen and my heifer came in last in a class of eleven. You hold yourself very still so nobody will see how bad it is.

Lacey knew it too. She had shown rabbits two summers before and come home with nothing, and she cried in the truck the whole way to the house.

She took a corn dog from the rack and handed it to him in a paper boat. When he held out his five, she pushed his hand back gently.

“It’s on the house,” she said. “I saw your steer this morning. He was the prettiest one in the barn.”

The boy did not say anything. He looked down at the corn dog, and then up at her, and then he nodded once. He held it with both hands like it was something he did not want to drop.

Then he walked off toward the barns, slowly, eating it.

I had to stare at the oil for a while after that. I let the next batch go a little darker than I like. Lacey did not say a word about it, and neither did I.

Later, when I asked her about it, she just shrugged. “He was sad, Mama,” she said. “And we have plenty.”

That is the whole of it. He was sad, and we had plenty. I have been to church my whole life, and I am not sure I have heard it put better.

Hank

I heard Hank before I saw him. He has a whistle he does between his teeth, two notes, and he does it every time he walks the midway. Everybody who has worked this fair knows it.

Hank has managed the Darcy County Fair for twenty-two years. Before that he was on the grounds crew himself, for eighteen. He has hauled more cable and set more fence posts on that fairground than anybody alive.

He came walking down the row about four o’clock. He stopped at the funnel cake stand and said something to the man in the window, and then he looked over and saw me.

He stopped whistling.

He looked at the burners. He looked at the dark trailer. He looked at my orange cord hanging loose from the post, still swinging a little every time the wind came up.

Then he looked at the power pole, and at the two black cords coming out of it, running straight across the midway to Kayla’s green awning.

He walked over to my table slowly. He took off his cap and wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist, and put the cap back on.

“Josie,” he said. “Who unplugged you?”

Behind me, the line went quiet. Even the kids. It was the kind of quiet where you can hear the oil popping and somebody’s balloon squeaking against a stroller.

I did not answer right away. I turned the corn dogs in the pot and lifted them out and set them on the rack. I did not want to be the one to say it.

I did not have to. Hank followed my eyes down the row.

Trent was standing by the ring toss, twenty yards away. He had stopped walking. He was looking right at us.