The Midway Goes Still

A flower-decorated carousel horse, a small wooden wheel, and a blue coat left hanging beside the fair

ARCHIVE / PLATE 01 · THE DAY THE FAIR OPENED

THE FIRST TURN01 / 05

The first promise.

The girl had two pennies, a blue coat too large for her and a grandmother’s warning she was trying very hard to forget. The boy had been staring at the carousel for an hour. When she caught him looking at the white horse with painted daisies, he said, too quickly, “I wasn’t frightened.” She told him she was, a little. That made it easier for him to admit the same.

They bought a ticket stamped ADMIT TWO. She chose the daisy horse and pointed to the dark one beside it. With her penny she scratched two little marks beneath a painted daisy. Then she tied a loose strip of blue cloth from her cuff around the dark horse’s rein. “So we’ll know which ones are ours,” she said. He touched the knot like it mattered. Their promise was simple: whatever happened, they would meet at the gate.

The organ began, warm and grand. Beyond the turning horses, people laughed with their mouths open. The boy reached across the brass pole and almost caught her hand. Above the music came five small flute notes. They played once, then again, a little nearer. On the second circuit, the gate had moved. On the third, the laughing people were perfectly still. A woman held a fallen apple in midair.

The girl called to the boy. He answered, but the carousel was suddenly wider than before. Between them stood rows of horses that had not been there a moment earlier. Far below, under the boards, something wet shifted in its sleep.

“When it stops, you’ll still be here, won’t you?”

He nodded. She tried to nod back. The music rose, and neither saw the other’s answer.

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A pale wooden horse appears almost to dissolve into the mist at the fair

ARCHIVE / PLATE 02 · A HORSE LEFT BEHIND

THE SECOND TURN02 / 05

The horse facing the wall.

The keeper came to them in white gloves, carrying a silver flute and the only key to the gate. “Bonsoir, mes petits.” He spoke gently, the way grown-ups do when they have already decided what a child should feel. He told the girl she would be safer on the horse turned toward the wall. He told the boy that she had asked to ride alone.

At first he took almost nothing. A penny. The smell of apples. Which direction the gate had been. Then he took the moment they had made their promise and put a different memory in its place. The girl remembered the boy laughing when she was afraid. The boy remembered her saying she wished he had never come. Neither memory had happened, but each one hurt exactly as though it had.

The girl's horse faced peeling plaster. Its painted mane was damp beneath her fingers. From the other side of the wall she heard the boy calling, then heard his voice say, “I don’t know her.” It sounded real enough to break something in her chest. She pressed her forehead to the cold wood and tried to remember the last kind thing he had said.

The boy passed an empty saddle with a blue coat hanging from its pole. The keeper told him she had left. He almost believed him. Then he felt the strip of blue fabric tied around the rein beneath his hand, still wet with rain from the first turn. Why would someone who meant to leave have tied a knot to find her way back?

“Why do I feel sorry for something I can’t remember doing?”

The keeper smiled. He had not separated their horses. He had separated what they believed about each other.

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Two gilded carousel horses stand beside two candles, with a blue ribbon draped across one of them

ARCHIVE / PLATE 03 · THE KEEPER’S COLLECTION

THE THIRD TURN03 / 05

A mouth full of borrowed words.

The flute played five notes, paused, and began again. After enough turns, the children could no longer tell which thoughts were theirs. Above the manège, the lamps drifted loose from their wires like wandering feux follets. The keeper kept a collection of old tickets inside his coat. On each was a sentence in a familiar hand: I enjoyed myself. I wanted to stay. No one made me.

He placed a ticket in the boy’s palm. The boy tried to say, “Let me out.” His mouth said, “Thank you for having me.” The words arrived in his own voice, smooth and cheerful. He bit the inside of his cheek to stop them. The metallic taste was the first thing he had felt that the Puppeteer had not given him.

The girl was taught to wave to the audience every time she passed. Her arm lifted before she wanted it to. She smiled while tears ran into her collar. She began to fear that the smiling girl was the real one and the frightened girl only a mistake. Then she saw two faint scratches beneath a painted daisy. She did not remember making them, but her hand knew the movement: one mark for her, one for him.

She could not remember the boy’s face. He could not remember the sound of her laugh. But whenever the carousel passed the wall, both felt the same sudden grief. He folded the false ticket until the paper split. In its centre, beneath the new words, the old stamp remained: ADMIT TWO.

“If I wanted to stay, why do you keep the key?”

For the first time, the keeper stopped smiling. He raised the flute before either child could ask the question again.

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A weathered carousel horse wearing a blue rein, illuminated by old fairground bulbs

ARCHIVE / PLATE 04 · THE BLUE REIN

THE FOURTH TURN04 / 05

The blue rein remembers.

Beyond the painted horses stood a black horse with a blue rein. The girl saw the knot she had tied around its rein before the first notes of the flute. Everything else could be rearranged: a name, a face, a promise. But the knot had not moved. The keeper could change their memories. He could not change what their hands had done.

She caught the rein. The boards seemed to tilt beneath her. Suddenly she remembered the two pennies and a boy who had confessed he was frightened because she had admitted it first. She remembered choosing the horse beside hers, not because she wanted someone to save her, but because she did not want either of them to be alone.

Across the turning platform, the boy heard her call. He could not remember her name. He could remember her honesty. He stepped from the rising horse onto the wet boards. The organ swelled to cover the sound of his boots. Behind him the keeper whispered that she had abandoned him. The boy looked at the blue knot and kept walking.

“Reste avec moi,” he called—the French words he had learned under the fair’s lamps. Stay with me. She answered with the Gaelic her grandmother had spoken in the kitchen: “Fuirich còmhla rium.” Stay with me. They could not reach each other yet. But the two languages crossed the space the Puppeteer had built between them.

“You don’t have to remember my name. Remember that I was here.”

The blue rein loosened. For the first time in all those turns, the keeper played only four notes.

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The Last Turn from the illustrated Midway story

ARCHIVE / PLATE 05 · THE LAST TURN

THE FIFTH TURN05 / 05

When the midway went still.

The fifth note would not come. Without it, the carousel slowed enough for them to hear what lay beyond the music: rain in the long grass, an owl beyond the fence, their own breath. The boy found the girl at the edge of the platform. Neither had a whole memory left. They had a knot, a torn ticket and the certainty that the other had been made to suffer.

They told the keeper what he had done. They named the lies, one by one, even when their voices shook. The boy said he had not chosen to forget her. The girl said she had never asked to be left alone. Above them, the wandering lights trembled. Beneath the boards the black water struck the wood hard enough to shake the brass poles. Gold leaf peeled from the horses like dead skin.

The gate appeared. It was only a few steps away. The girl took the boy’s hand and felt him grip back, the way he had tried to on their first turn. She was afraid. This time she let herself say so. He told her he was too. They began to run. The keeper moved to block them, not with a shout, but with a wounded look, as though leaving him were an act of cruelty.

“Le manège garde ce qu’il aime,” he whispered. The carousel keeps what it loves. Then the children saw the key in his hand and understood what he called love. The girl turned toward him. Her voice was small, but it carried over the organ.

“You can’t call it play when I can’t get off. You can’t call it love when you lock the gate.”

The keeper found his fifth note. The gate folded into darkness. Two pennies warmed in the girl’s palm; the boy stood beside the daisy horse, unsure why his eyes hurt. She looked at the blue ribbon on its rein. She did not remember tying it. Still, when he asked if the horse beside hers was taken, she moved her hand so he could climb on. Somewhere below them, the old water held its breath.

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