Read Online Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing by Lydia Peelle - Free Book Online Page B

on wallets, not as much to see the spectacle as to take something away from it to put up on the shelf.
    â€œCoffee?” Dub jerks his thumb back at the camper, jowls swaying. I nod and slam the tailgate shut. Five months, four thousand miles, Dub’s coffee has been slowly hollowing out my gut. He is a friend, or at least constant as one.
    â€œChrist, it better hold,” he shouts on his way back to the camper, shaking his finger at the sky. “I sure as hell can’t afford a slow day.”
    Â 
    Twenty minutes later, the coffee cranking through me, I head up to the port-a-johns on the midway. Up here, things are slow to creak into gear: the carnies fold tarps, run patchy safety checks on rides, shout to one another in English, Spanish, Portuguese. Sodas are plunged into ice at the concessions stands, hot dogs are eaten for breakfast, no buns. The old man in the cotton candy stand wearily starts his centrifuge spinning and shakes his cartons of pink sugar. Ed the Giant Steer, led out of his tent so that it can be flea-bombed for the second time in two weeks, sways on his stilt legs and groans, yanking his lead in his handler’s palms, diving for the grass. A heavy roll of ADMIT ONE tickets is dropped in the dust and rolls to a stop at my feet. No one looks up when Ipass. I might as well be just another faceless customer, passing through. The outfit is watertight. Us hucksters, relegated to the side strips, we’re nothing but gulls following a fishing boat, swooping in to snatch the leavings.
    Most of the vendors down on the back side are already at their booths, counting out money, listening to radios. Yawning, sleep still burning off, looking only half-ready for the droves. I nod to the few I know: Indian Jim, who sells five-dollar sunglasses and isn’t Indian in the least, Danny, the kid, sizzling on pills even at this hour, with his dream catchers and blown-glass beads on cords. They nod back, eyes hard.
    I stop at the wing stand to say hello to Kathy. She leans out on the counter with her hands clasped in front of her and smiles big and blank, like she’s waiting to take my order.
    â€œCole, baby,” she says.
    â€œGood goddamn morning,” I say.
    Kathy’s hair, as always, is done in two braids, a hairstyle she must have outgrown forty years ago. No makeup yet, which makes a big difference. She’s wearing a low-necked T-shirt covered with sequins that catch the light and send it sparking all over the place. I can see the tops of her breasts, brown and cooked-looking. Whenever I see them in the light of day, I can’t imagine how I ever find comfort there.
    â€œThink the weather will hold?” she says. Her bracelets jangle as she waves towards the sky. I squint up at the clouds, making out like I’m studying something she can’t see.
    â€œYes,” I say. “Guaranteed.”
    She laughs, too loud. “You getting into anything tonight?” Next to the deep fryer, turkey drumsticks and wings are lined up, ruddy and stoic-looking, as if they’re steeling themselves for the hot oil. Dinosaur Wings, they call them. There’s a pterodactyl on the sign in the window: BOB AND KATHLEEN DENNIS . PROUDLY SERVING YOU .
    â€œWhat’s today?” I say, though we both know it makes no difference. Every day is the same. Every night, the same clamor to erase it.
    She thinks for a minute, her lips moving, counting back. “Saturday,” she finally says, flipping a braid over her shoulder, triumphant.
    â€œOne more day. Tomorrow we go.”
    â€œWhere?” she says with a sigh. “I don’t ask anymore.”
    â€œWest. Over the river.” For weeks I’ve been looking forward to it, crossing the Mississippi, thinking things will be different on the other side. But as soon as I say it, all my anticipation fades, the way a trout loses color when it is yanked out of the water.
    â€œCome by the bus this afternoon and see