The Stephenson County Fair in Wartime
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The man taking tickets fantasizes he’s taking souls, and maybe he is. He takes mine, tears it in two, and hands me the lesser part.
The man running the Ferris wheel has a tattoo of a spider spinning a web on his arm. As he starts it spinning yet again he imagines
himself a spider and the lovers captured flies: he thinks of their blood as something sweet and commingled. The man who hands the kid
the bb gun assumes he’ll hit one, maybe two of the dented targets. The stuffed animal he’s trying to win for the girl standing behind him
costs half as much as the kid pays to play for it. But then, as if suddenly realizing that the man is taking advantage of his desire to take
the girl’s virginity, the kid swings the gun toward him slow and says, softly, “Bang,” and everyone around them stops breathing,
and the Ferris wheel stops spinning, and the couple at the very top stop kissing, realizing, suddenly, how alone they are, and how far from earth. [End Page 56]
Austin Smith is a Stegner fellow at Stanford. His story “The Black Blanket” appeared in the spring 2012 issue, and he will be publishing a book of poetry entitled Almanac.
