You Were Kind to Me
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

The once-every-two years carnival was in town. Anybody who was anybody would go at least one night. Vicki-Vicki LaGrasse went on Saturday night, accompanied by two friends from high school, Pansy Dowd and Mary Lee Kaiser. When they arrived at the fairgrounds, it wasn’t quite dark yet and the crowds were thin.

“I want to go on the Ferris wheel first thing,” Pansy said.

“Before it’s even dark?” Mary Lee said.

Mary Lee was afraid of heights and, so she sat in the middle and kept her eyes closed the whole time.

“What good does it do you to ride the Ferris wheel if you don’t look down?” Pansy said.

“With my eyes closed it feels like I’m flying. I don’t have to have my eyes open to appreciate it.”

“When we get all the way to the top, I’ll push you out, and then you can really get the sensation of flying!”

After the Ferris wheel, they went to the House of Mirrors and howled with laughter at their ridiculous, distorted images. The three of them together looked three times sillier than one.

“We look like freaks!” Pansy laughed.

“Well, isn’t that what we are?” Mary Lee said.

“Say, I’m starting to get hungry. Let’s go get something to eat.”

They went to the food pavilion and ordered hot dogs and Cokes. While they were waiting for their food, they saw a tall boy across the way who seemed to be looking at them.

“Hey! Do you know him?” Pansy said. “He’s kind of cute.”

“I don’t know him,” Vicki-Vicki said without looking up.

“He’s been following us since the mirrors,” Mary Lee said.

“He’s not looking at me,” Pansy said.

“He’s not looking at me, either,” Mary Lee said. “I think he’s looking at Vicki-Vicki.”

“He’s not looking at me,” Vicki-Vicki said.

“He’s an older boy,” Pansy said. “He’s got whiskers.”

“Are you sure you don’t know him, Vicki-Vicki?”

“No, I said I don’t know him.”

“I never saw him before in my life,” Pansy said.

“He is definitely looking at Vicki-Vicki,” Mary Lee said.

“Well, I don’t want to be looked at,” Vicki-Vicki said. “So why don’t we just forget about it and go ride the Tilt-a-Whirl?”

They rode twice until Mary Lee began vomiting and the attendant had to stop the thing and let her off.

“I always get sick when I ride the Tilt-a-Whirl,” Mary Lee said.

“Then why do you ride it?” Vicki-Vicki asked.

“I’ll be all right once my head stops spinning.”

They found a place to sit quietly for a while until Mary Lee felt better. While they were sitting doing nothing, the tall boy walked past, eating from a box or popcorn.

“There he is again,” Pansy said. “It’s no coincidence that he keeps popping up.”

“Just ignore him,” Vicki-Vicki said. “He obviously just wants attention.

“He is so cute!”

“I don’t see anything about him that’s appealing.”

“Maybe you’re not looking at him in the right way.”

“I don’t want to look at him at all.”

“I’m feeling better now,” Mary Lee said. “Let’s do the Haunted House.”

“Are you sure?” Vicki-Vicki said. “I don’t want you vomiting on me again.”

“I only vomited on your shoes,” Mary Lee said. “I said I was sorry.”

They stood in a long line at the Haunted House. When they finally got in, they were surrounded by screaming younger kids.

“I didn’t know this was such a kiddie attraction,” Pansy said. “They need to be at home in bed.”

The Haunted House was screaming ghouls, severed heads, clanking chains, puffs of air, moaning corpses, flashing lights, and lots of screaming. Mary Lee admitted that she wet her pants when a monster jumped out at her but that it would dry on its own as soon as she got out into the air.

After the Haunted House, they were on their way to get some cotton candy when they stopped to watch the “Dunk the Clown” booth. A clown with an enormous nose and a painted-on mouth sat on a swing over a pool of water. For twenty-five cents, anybody could try to hit the target with a baseball that would dump the clown into the water. While the clown was in the water, he gestured to the crowd and made faces, eliciting screams and jeers. After a while he climbed out of the water and got back on the swing again for somebody else to try.

“Can you imagine being the clown?” Pansy said. “So degrading!”

“It’s his job,” Vicki-Vicki said. “Like any other job.”

“Wait a minute,” Mary Lee said. “There’s that guy again.”

“What guy?”

They all turned their heads toward the person trying to knock the clown into the water. There were lots of people standing in the way, so they had to wait for somebody to move before they could get a good look.

“Yes, it’s him,” Pansy said. “He’s there and then he’s here. He’s everywhere.”

He hit the target effortlessly with the baseball and the crowd roared. A carnival worker man handed him his prize of a stuffed animal, and the next person in line took his place.

“Now we’ve seen everything,” Pansy said.

“Let’s get some cotton candy,” Mary Lee said.

“No, he’s coming this way,” Pansy said. “He’s looking right at us.”

“Just ignore him,” Vicki-Vicki said. “He might be looking for somebody to knife.”

“I don’t think so,” Pansy said. “He looks very sweet.”

Ignoring Pansy and Mary Lee, he walked up to Vicki-Vicki and smiled at her. He towered over her.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” he said.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” she said with a tight smile.

“I remember you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Here. I want to give you this stuffed toy.”

“Thanks, but I don’t accept stuffed animals from strangers.”

“You really don’t remember me, do you?”

“I’m with a couple of my friends from school. We were just leaving.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “Don’t let me intrude.”

She looked at the stuffed animal in her hand and gave it back to him.

When she turned to go, he said, “It was in sixth grade.”

“What was in sixth grade?”

“When we knew each other.”

“That was years ago.”

“I know,” he said, “but I always remembered you.”

“I think you have me mixed up with somebody else.”

“It was Miss Spengler’s class. She had white hair and she looked just like the picture of George Washington hanging on the wall.”

“It wasn’t me. It was somebody else.”

“No, it was you, all right.”

Pansy and Mary Lee were standing behind Vicki-Vicki, taking in every word. Mary Lee giggled and Pansy pinched her on the arm.

“Maybe if you told me your name, I might remember.”

“It’s Harry.”

“Harry what?”

“Just Harry.”

“You don’t have a last name?”

“I was living in a foster home. I moved around a lot. I left school after a few months to go someplace else.”

“You sat in the back of the room?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You were taller than anybody else in the class.”

“I think you remember me now.”

“You were the only one in the class who could spell the hardest words.”

“That was me.”

“You had fried chicken for lunch. Everybody else had junk food.”

“What a memory you have!” he said.

She blushed, in spite of herself, and turned to Mary Lee and Pansy for support.

“Since you remember me now, I wonder if you’d let me give you a ride home.”

“What? Oh, no! As I said, I’m with some friends.”

“I can give them a ride, too.”

“I don’t think so. My friend’s mother is going to pick us up.”

“How about if you go with me, and your two friends can go with your friend’s mother.”

“I don’t think I should go off and leave them.”

“Surely they wouldn’t mind. Just this once. It’s a beautiful evening. There’s a full moon. We can go for a ride in the country. Tell me that doesn’t sound good.

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t think I should leave my friends.”

“Ask them.”

She turned away and consulted with Mary Lee and Pansy. They shook their heads and shrugged, showing how indifferent they were to Vicki-Vicki’s comings and goings.

In a minute she returned to him. “It’s all right,” she said. “My friends think I should go with you.”

She knew that if she didn’t accept his offer, there might never be another one. Never as in not ever. She’d die a dried-up old spinster, playing bingo in the church basement on Friday nights while smoking Marlboro cigarettes. She would be forced to remember that she had once been asked but had foolishly declined.

He drove far out into the country, twenty miles or more. She didn’t ask where they were going. She didn’t tell him she had to be home by a certain time. She didn’t care about any of that.

Finally he stopped on a bluff overlooking a river.

“I didn’t even know this was here,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

“People don’t know about it,” he said. “It’s private. That’s why I like it.”

“It’s kind of scary in the dark. You don’t know what’s lurking in those trees over there.”

“Maybe an owl or two.”

After a while she asked him about his life since sixth grade. He lived in foster homes until he was sixteen and then he struck out on his own. After he got his high school diploma, he said, he no longer needed to live with strangers.

“You’re self-sufficient. Most boys your age are still such adolescents.”

He reached her for and began kissing her. He smelled of soap and peppermint. She resisted a little bit, but not much.

“I like you,” he said. “I’ve liked you since sixth grade.”

“It’s funny how people meet again after years. When somebody appears unexpectedly in your life, I always think there’s a reason.”

“I know you didn’t think about me after the sixth grade, but I thought about you a lot. You made a very favorable impression on me.”

“Why me out of all the others?”

“You were kind to me. Nobody else bothered.”

“I’ve never done this before with a boy.”

“It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”

Soon she was on her back and he was on top of her.

When he drove her back to town, it was almost three in the morning. She was relieved to see that her house was all dark, meaning that her mother had gone to bed. She opened the door of the truck. Before she got out, he said, “I want to marry you.”

It was the last time she ever saw him.

In a few weeks she knew that something was happening with her body. She missed one cycle and then another. She was pretty sure what was wrong, but she hoped it was something else. When she told the school nurse the symptoms she was having, the nurse gave her a test to do on herself when she got home. When she saw the results of the test, she felt a stab of panic. She was going to have to tell her parents about the carnival, the boy from sixth grade, and all the rest of it. She couldn’t keep it a secret forever.

Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp