Happy Birthday Rudolph Randall!

My name is Rudolph Randall and my family has been in the carnival business for probably about four or five generations. Granted, our generations aren’t too long, probably shorter than those of most folks, so, you know, make of that what you will.

But yeah, we’re what the outsiders call carnies. And honestly, we probably fit the bill of what you’d think of when you thought of carnies. Hell, right now, I’m wearing a pair of cutoff overalls, a hole in the thigh, and nothing underneath except my boxer-shorts… And you don’t even want to know the details of those poor old things.

I’m sixteen as of today. Nearly a man. Nearly old enough to own my own ride if I wanted. Probably wont, don’t got much ambition to tell the truth—man, Pops sure would be tickled to hear me agree with him… But yeah, I’ll probably end up just working on our ride for a couple more years. Life ain’t too bad the way it is.

My family owns the ferris wheel. I fuckin’ hate ferris wheels and I have since I was a kid. I think it was because when I was around eight or so my bastard brother Larry stopped the goddamn ride with me in it at the very tippy-top. The sadist left me up there for what eight hours or something like that, an hour for each year of my age… Ma eventually got me down when she heard me sobbing in the middle of the night.

Larry ain’t really a bastard, everybody knows Larry’s father is Tony Pezeretti, the dude that owns the corndog stand. Pops and Ma were on a break at the time—I think Pops went out on one of his benders or something ‘round then, and Ma heard he had gotten into some of that crank with the bikers—so she said to hell with that rot and decided to corn Tony’s dog to get back at Pa.

But yeah, so it goes I guess. These things’ll happen. That’s life.

Me and Larry were always pretty close and Pa always raised the two of us the same, as if we were both his own. I guess it was all kind of Pa’s fault anyway, so Pops ate the oats he reaped or something like that.

Larry took off last year. He met some stripper in some town we were traveling through. Last time we saw him he had a habit forming and a baby on the way. Had some job at a gas station. Sounded like a real boring way to live. I mean, sure, being a carny ain’t for everyone, but I can’t imagine small town life being for anyone. To each his own or something, I guess.

I also got a sister. She’s older than me by a year, well, a little more than a year—she turns eighteen in like a month or two. Her name is Heaven-Leigh. Ma named her, thought it was real witty. When Pa gets real drunk he likes to tell the story about how he about doubled over laughing when he found out Ma wanted to name their only daughter Heaven-Leigh.

It is kind of funny I guess… Though I’d never dream of laughing about it or making fun about it to Heaven-Leigh herself. Hell, I wouldn’t even want to show her this writing to be honest, she’d probably beat my ass… But yeah, as you might of guessed, Heaven-Leigh can punch. Like, even if you were Hulk Hogan big, she’d beat your ass and serve it up with a smile.

One time, Heaven-Lee fought Patricia Gutiérrez, the daughter of Beto Gutiérrez, the old dude from Chihuahua that owns the ‘Shoot the Clown in the Face with a Water Gun Until the Balloon on Top Fills’ game—Beto bought the game off Lester Chickenfield a handful of years back after an incident that lead to everyone living in the carny camp to call Lester Mo’Lester all the time. Lester disappeared and we never saw him again after he sold his game to Beto.

But yeah, my sister and Patricia fought one night; I think it was when they were both around fifteen or so. If I remember right, it was over this dude named Kevin who was most certainly a convicted felon—Tony Pezeretti hired him one summer so Tony could spend more time doing H in his camper van.

Kevin disappeared shortly after the two girls fought. I think my Pops threatened to kill the bastard or turn him in if he kept running around him and Beto’s daughters.

But yeah, that fight was fuckin’ brutal. My sister beat the holy hell out of Patricia. Everybody felt real bad for Patricia afterwards. It was all a real shame really. But after that night, Heaven-Leigh had a reputation of being one queen of mean.

Larry and I knew that to be true long before that night though—all the times she had wailed on the two of us when we were growing up…

Patricia and Heaven-Leigh worked out their differences after that. Without Kevin around, it turned out the two had a lot in common. Surprisingly, or maybe not that surprisingly, the two ended up becoming good friends; near-inseparable after all was resolved actually.

Beto, which was a shorter version of Alberto, had a bunch of kids. Four kids. All daughters. Patricia was the oldest, the rest were two years apart each. It went: Patricia, Josephina, Valencia and Bertina. The last one, Bertina, was supposed to be a junior, Beto’s first boy… It was a real surprise when the baby came out a girl. But Beto smiled his big, sad-looking smile, decided this was going to be his last go ‘round fathering a child, and decided his junior would be female, thus Bertina was christened.

Not that I want this getting out or anything, but Josephina was actually my first kiss. She’s about a year younger than me, but we both get homeschooled in the same group by Mr. Scrotsburg, the guy who doubles as schoolmaster when he isn’t running the shitty children’s rollercoaster he owns that is shaped like a dragon.

Mr. Scrotsburg gives me a pretty hard time in class. Ma says it’s because he sees something in me. I think it’s because Larry noticed very quickly that Mr. Scrotsburg’s name bore a resemblance to a part of the male genitalia. I don’t think Larry ever once referred to Mr. Scrotsburg by his actual name again…

So yeah, I bear the weight of my brother’s sins. It ain’t really that often that I have to though. We don’t really get schooled all that regularly, and even when ol’ Scrots has regular class in session, me and a couple of my buddies often just skip out, go wander around whatever town we happen to be in that week…

It started off as one of those days—myself, my friend Chuck, my other friend Pickle, and Bertina were running around some small town in northern Nevada. Chuck was walking around with an unlit cigarette he had stolen off his dad before we snuck off from the fairgrounds.

“Why you got that stupid thing in your mouth? That shit is gross!” Bertina spit in the dry sand that covered the unkempt concrete sidewalk, glaring at Chuck afterward…

“He looks hella cool! What the fuck are you talking about, Beta?” Pickle exclaimed—I should also probably note, Pickle was Chuck’s little brother, so he pretty much thought Chuck “walked on water” as my grandmam used to say… Also, we called Bertina “Beta” as a nickname, in case you were confused…

But yeah…

“It doesn’t look cool! It’s damned disgusting!”

In a flash, Beta had snatched the cigarette from Chuck’s lips, threw it on the ground, and rounded her heel over the paper and tobacco. Some of the small brown leaf shrivels were picked up by a light breeze as she lifted her foot from the crumpled carcass.

“Much better…”

“You bi…”

“I’d watch yourself, Chuckles—remember what I did ta ya last time?” Beta spit again as the four of us continued walking.

I feel like I should probably give a little more detail on Beta—she was a hell of an interesting girl and one of the only girls that were part of our ‘carny caravan’ that us boys actually liked being around for an extended period of time. I guess Beta was what you would call a tomboy—she walked like us, cussed like us, and spit better than any of us—seriously, we measured her hawking a loogie one time and it went close to five yards! That’s some distance, man!

But yeah, Beta was one of us guys, even though she was a girl, and was younger than all of us except for Pickle, who was the same age as Beta by like a month or something. Chuck was my age and had been my friend since I could remember…

Chuck looked a little pissed off as we made our way through the mostly empty town. It was a weekday, so most of the people were still at work—even the carnival wasn’t running yet, as there wouldn’t be enough business to actually pay for the electricity to run the rides. We’d all probably get in trouble for not helping set up, as that was all that was going on at the time, but it certainly wouldn’t be the first time any of us got a talkin’ to…

“Think there’s some kinda arcade or something around here?” Pickle asked, his eyes scanning building to building, studying the windows of the casinos especially close, “They usually got some kinda arcade in the casinos, they do—for the kids of gambling addicts and drunks and the like, I think…”

“Our daddy’s a drunk and we don’t got an arcade, Pickle…”

“Yeah, but we also don’t got a fuckin’ casino, Chuck…” Pickle made a smart-alecky face toward Chuck, who returned the gesture with a punch to the arm.

“What the fuck, Chuck?” Pickle swung at Chuck but missed, Chuck dodging the punch and hurrying ahead, out of Pickle’s reach…

“Knock it off, you two!” Beta glared at the brothers before opening one of the doors to the casino and walking inside, leaving the three of us standing outside dumbly.

The thing about walking through casinos is, especially when you’re not accompanied by an adult, is to stay on the tile parts of the floor. As long as you are on the tile parts, the most notice you usually get is some kind of look. If you step on the carpet though, you’ll get all kinds of looks, plus a near-guaranteed one way ticket back out to the street…

But yeah, the four of us carefully walked along the tile, trying to navigate Pickle’s potential arcade…

“Found it! Fuck yeah! I found it!” Pickle exclaimed, a big smile coming over his face, teeth missing here and there.

“Why ya always gotta cuss so much? Ma’s gonna give you another whoopin’ for that, you don’t check yourself!” Chuck said, following Pickle into the arcade room.

“Aw, fuck you, Chuck! Ma ain’t here and you ain’t Daddy, so why don’t you just fuck off?” Pickle pulled a quarter out of his pocket and let it drop into the slot of a Marvel vs. Capcom machine. His eyes never left the screen, even when he was cussing his brother.

“Jesus Christ, Pickle… You’re gonna damn us all to hell, you are…”

“Not anymore than you, Chuck... Blaspheming like that…” Beta, the Catholic, and probably only one of us to ever set foot inside an actual church, chimed in.

“When’s any of ya’ll been to a church anyway, huh? You were baptized in the back of a fuckin’ station wagon, Chuck—Ma’s got the polariods!” Pickle laughed before his face got real serious and his tongue stuck out his mouth, his concentration turning to the video game…

Chuck sighed loudly but didn’t bother to answer Pickle. The two of us each put a quarter into the Police Trainer machine and waited for the game to start. I had the red plastic gun and Chuck had the blue. We began blasting away at robots that were coming at us with baseball bats as Pickle cursed loudly behind us and put another quarter into his machine.

Beta stood in the corner and played Terminator II pinball. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice occasionally spouted catch phrases from the movie out of tinny speakers into the already noise-filled room.

“You know they’re planning a barbecue later for your birthday, don’t you?” Chuck asked as we both attempted to quickly diffuse a matrix of dynamite by shooting their detonators.

“Yeah. I ain’t too fussed, really. I’m not too fussed about getting older, honestly. Too much of a hassle, too much work and responsibility and all the other shit that comes along with it…”

“True… true…”

“Plus, fuckin’ Tony has been coming around more, acting weird. I’m sure he’s going to be there… “

“Trying to bang your mom?” Chuck interrupted, sort of finishing my sentence…

“Yeah… That…

“…

“Thanks for that, Chuck…”

We only stayed at the arcade a little over an hour before we took off to wander around the town more before going back. We’d return to our parents chewing us out for slacking off and the much-anticipated birthday barbecue, so we all figured we’d take our sweet time before making our return.

We left the downtown area and headed toward one of the freeway entrances—there was a gas station there and we figured we’d pool our money and grab some sodas. After purchase, we sat on the curb outside the gas station and drank our beverages in the warm afternoon. Well, we did until the attendant came out and chased us off for loitering…

“Fuck you, ya idiot jabroni!” Pickle yelled as the four of us walked off, back in the direction of the fairgrounds and our families.

The barbecue started off pretty uneventful really. Chuck had snuck a 40 oz beer from his dad’s stash, so we crept away to take sips off the bottle whenever we got a chance. That bottle never really seemed to empty though, after a while I had a sneaking suspicion that Chuck had saved up a few bottles for my birthday…

Everyone from the carnival was there except for Ms. Frautenkinder, the old widowed fortune-teller that rarely ever left her Chevy van, complete with crystal ball mural on the side, unless she absolutely had to—which was far less frequent than one might care to imagine…

But yeah, everyone was there—Beto, his wife, and all of their daughters, my family, Chuck’s family, the Foleys, who owned the renovated haunted house that Mr. Foley had instead turned into “Santa’s Magical Christmas Wonderland,” Mr. Galaxie who did magic shows that were often terrible because of his old age, palsy, and forgetfulness (those poor unfed pigeons—he could never afford real doves…), George Mans, the intense German dude that owned the loop-o-plane called the “Red Baron”, Mrs. Cornucopia, the lady that owned the carousel and often made little children cry from screaming at them for scuffing the horses or wiping boogers on the saddles (she once actually hit Chuck with a belt for fraying one of the reigns on her ride—true story), Mr. Scrots, Alfonso Estabien, the guy who owned the “Toss the Ping-Pong Ball in the Barely Big Enough Vase Hole and Get a Fish” game who was super obsessed with Fonzie from that show from the 70’s—so much so that he wouldn’t answer you unless you addressed him as “The Fonz”, Gary Groovesenson, who owned the house of mirrors called the “Doors of Perception” and who my dad said changed his name years ago, around the time a kid died on the ride he used to own, which was a devil’s wheel called “Strange Daze”—I guess the kid flew off and basically folded himself in half when he landed, Dad said Gary was never the same after that…

But yeah, long story short, there were a ton of people there; more people than I’ve listed… The whole caravan, like I said…

The whole caravan… Including Tony Pezeretti.

Honestly, I didn’t even know he was there for a good couple hours, I’d reckon. I was too busy having fun with the gang and flirting with Josephina to really notice. Josephina was being super flirty, brushing up against me whenever she got a chance—I think she was sneaking away and drinking with her friends just as I was with Chuck; I thought I could smell vodka if she got real close to my face when she talked.

I think Pickle must have got into some of the vodka with Josephina and her friends… The little dude was walking around and stumbling in the dust while slurring curse words before his mom caught him and gave him one of the cruelest whippings I’ve ever seen… Not that I think he felt much of it…

The lot of us were hanging out, Josephina and her friends, Chuck and I, plus some other people, including a dude that actually lived in the town we were in, which was a rare occurrence, though I think he was somebody’s cousin, when we heard a commotion come up… It was my pops and he sounded pretty pissed.

Right around then Patricia came over to where we were standing, “You hear ‘bout what’s been going on Rudy? That Pezeretti’s at it again, but this time not with your mama, but with your sister… I think your daddy’s ‘bout fed up with it…”

Heaven-Leigh stormed up, her face all red from shouting, though at the time I wasn’t sure if it was at Pa or if it was at Tony…

“Let’s get outta here right now, Patty!”

Patricia followed my sister away from the barbecue and into the actual grounds, where all the rides were set up but not yet lit for the weekend. Me and Chuck stood there with the rest of everybody else, looking kind of wide eyed, but also kind of cross eyed all at the very same time.

“You reckon we outta go over there and check it out?” Chuck hiccuped.

“I s’pose so…” I said weakly, not from lack of excitement, but instead too much to drink.

Pa and Tony Pezeretti were already squaring up by the time Chuck and I got there. Pa looked like he had already had a good amount to drink and he swayed as he stood, glaring at Tony, both of his fists tightly clenched. Tony had his fists up as well, but he didn’t look as tense, he had that usual sleazy smile on his mustached face, like he was laughing to himself over something, this time Pa…

“I’m going to beat your sleazy, Tony Clifton-looking ass, Pezeretti! It’s been a long time comin’ and I’ve waited jus’ long enough you sonofabitch!”

Tony laughed as he watched my father stagger forward. I don’t know how Tony managed to laugh, staring into Pa’s eyes like that—I’d seen Pa pissed off plenty of times before, but he had something like a demon in his eyes while he was looking at Tony right there…

“Keep laughing Pezeretti… Keep laughing…”

My father hunched forward and swung at Tony, missing wildly…

“Holy shit Randall! You’re a fucking mess…”

“I’ll show you a mess once I’m done with you, Pezeretti… It’s enough what happened before, but you so much as look at my daughter again!”

Pa swung again, again missing wildly, this time so much so he fell forward into the dirt. When he looked up his face was dirty and he spat on the ground where he fell, trying to get the sand out his mouth.

“You’re a disgrace, Randall… It ain’t no wonder your bitch came sniffing ‘round my van and now your daughter wants…”

Pops was like a strike a’lightening he was up so quick and swinging… His first punch was the one that put Tony out—a hard right hook to the jaw—but the ones that followed were the ones that left Tony suffering for weeks afterward. I mean, I’ve seen some fights in my life, one of those being Heaven-Leigh and Patricia, but goddamn! I ain’t never seen anything like that fight between my Pa and Tony Pezeretti...

I guess fight ain’t really the right word, brutal beating is more accurate...

The barbecue kind of cleared out after that…

Happy Birthday, Rudolph Randall!

But yeah, so that was my day for the most part, and this was the first entry in this new journal Mr. Scrotsburg got me for my birthday. I guess maybe Ma is right about him seeing something in me, maybe I’ll try and be nicer to him, and maybe I’ll even go to his classes more… Maybe…

I got to second base with Josephina tonight, which was pretty sweet… I wont go into too much detail other than that, being gentlemanly like I am, but I would say it was not too bad of a birthday all around, if I do say so myself…

So yeah, like Jerry Springer always says at the end of his show:

“Until next time: Take care of yourselves, and each other.”