A Weekend At The County Fair

Avery Kavanaugh loved going to the county fair. It was always full of interesting things to do. There were they typical carnival rides, games that were just barely possible to win with prizes that every seven-year-old boy could take home and destroy in about a week, and sometimes Avery could even find some of his friends.

It was also in “town”. For a seven-year-old boy, living on a subsistence farm in southeast Ohio with his parents and older (by one year) brother, something as simple as travelling the twelve miles to “town” was a rare treat. Even though the summer was over and he now had access to his friends at school, being able to run-around and carouse with his peers outside of the antiseptic environment of the classroom for longer than the thirty-minute recess after lunch was crucial to maintaining his position in the rapidly developing social circle for that year.

Avery had been placed in the slow-paced 2ndgrade division at Newport elementary school. Each of the grades had been divided to allow the students who showed more “potential” to enjoy accelerated learning with better teachers. When Avery learned that he was placed in the slow division, despite his older brother, Andrew, having repeatedly been placed in the accelerated divisions consistently for his first three years, he felt lost. Most of the “cool” kids had been placed in the accelerated divisions for the first two years and Avery tried desperately hard to make his way into that division, to no avail.

Dyslexia held him back.

So, Avery looked for the cool kids at recess and at the county fair in hopes to develop a bond and, perhaps, peripherally, find out how to get into the accelerated division. When the Kavanaugh family arrived at the fairgrounds and parked the 1979 Monte Carlo on the driving range for $2, Avery’s dad, Vaughn, gave he and Andrew $10 once inside the gate with clear instructions to check in at the front steps of the fair building every hour. That was serious business. Violating this directive would result in the very embarrassing announcement of their names over the public address system and would likely end their right to enjoy the fair independent of parental supervision.

It being the Saturday of the fair, nearly all of the ticketed rides had prohibitively long lines so Avery and his brother made their way to the playground behind the fair building where they found a group of Andrew’s friends. When Andrew made to leave with them, Avery abandoned the slide to follow but his brother turned to him.

“You’re not coming with us.”

“But I want to come with you guys.”

“Find your own friends, we don’t want you around.”

Avery stood, in confused silence as his brother deserted him on the sandy playground. Stifling tears, he shuffled his way over to the only available picnic table near the fair building. It was dilapidated and worn from years of weather and abuse, but it was the only place Avery could find to console himself until the top of the hour when he would have to report into his mother at the steps, less than fifty feet away. He sat, alone, hiding from anyone he might know, in an attempt to conceal his shame at not being worthy of running with his brother and his friends.

When a cicada flitted down from the tree above where he was sitting and landed on the grass on the opposite side of the table, he stood, walked over and sat down with it. Feeling a bond of kinship with another lonely creature in a cacophony of humanity he began picking the sand burs from his new school shoes.

“I hate the sand burs too.”

Avery looked up and saw a girl standing a few feet away and to his left. She was probably his age, maybe a little younger and wearing a pink dress with saddle shoes.

“What?” Avery asked.

“I hate the sand burs too.” The girl repeated, then, glancing down at the locust still camped in front of Avery, “And the locusts get stuck in your hair.” The girl gave a tug on one of the pig tails sticking out from the nape of her neck, pulling the ribbon and hair band free of her hair and trying, in vain to re-tie it. The result was that the new pig tail was about an inch lower than it’s mate on the opposite side of her head and the ribbon was much less secure.

When she sat down, Avery picked up the locust in his hand and showed her.

“They don’t sting you, but they don’t really like to let go, either.” He held his hand upside down to demonstrate that the locust would, indeed, cling to his hand. After a moment, it flew away and, Avery dropped his head sad, once again, that something had left him there.

“I have Smurf comics.” The girl said.

“I have Smurf comics, too.” Avery answered.

“My name is Allison. Allison Desruisseaux Carson.”

“My name is Avery.”

“I live in Milwaukee, but my grandma and grandpa live here. We’re just visiting.”

“I live in Newport.” Avery answered.

For the rest of the hour, Avery and Allison played in the sand and picked sand burs from their clothes and talked about cartoons and comic books until the public address system announced the hour.

Avery stood and Allison stood up as well.

“I have to go see my mom.” Avery said.

“I have to go, too.” Allison stood with her head down, awkwardly waiting, and Avery ran off to the front of the fair building to check in with his mom. When he returned to his spot, Allison was gone. He went back to his spot on the picnic table and sat, waiting for her to return, but every hour for the rest of the day, when he came back from checking in with his mother, he went back to his spot to find himself alone again.

Finally, at the end of the day, the Kavanaughs packed up into the Monte Carlo and went back home.

Avery woke up again from the dream of Allison. After nearly thirteen years, he was no longer entirely convinced that she had ever been real, and that she was something his mind had concocted to console himself while he sat, miserable and alone, abandoned by his brother so many years ago. Their contentious relationship ever since had manifested itself in a rift that would never be bridged; they were too different, Andrew and Avery, and would remain so.

Andrew was once again off on a summer internship affiliated with his Paper Science & Engineering program at Miami University, Ohio’s bastion of conservative education in the state’s public university system.

Avery was once again off to work as a bagger at Giant Eagle, after having dropped out of Ohio University more than a year before. He knew that his path would lead him back to Athens, Ohio and OU, but he was stymied at every turn on how to accomplish that. Recently, Avery felt something tugging at the edge of his senses. It was an irascible tug toward a different path, one he envisioned to be desperately narrow, framed on either side with flame and darkness. The metaphor never escaped him, and he always knew that he walked a knife’s-edge with what may or may not be mental illness.

He dressed in shorts, t-shirt, and hiking boots, folded his work clothes neatly in his backpack and walked out the door. Once he reached the end of the driveway, he pulled a Camel from his pack of cigarettes and lit it with his 8-ball Zippo.

The twelve-mile walk to work normally calmed Avery’s nerves and steeled his reserve for the path he had chosen, but today he felt an atypical discomfiture. His mind took over, and it began to bombard him with information that he was unable to understand. A cyclone swirled around his mind and superimposed itself on his vision as he turned right onto Eightmile Creek road.

The vortex of information coalesced into a clarity of thought and the pattern began:

“7 . . . 14 . . . 16 . . . 24 . . . 36 . . . 27”

Avery Kavanaugh couldn’t shake the numbers from his head. They repeated, rhythmically, the entire morning. During the entire twelve-mile walk to work, Avery’s mind forced itself on him. In his own voice, over and over again…

“7 . . . 14 . . . 16 . . . 24 . . . 36 . . . 27”

His brain never forced anything on him unless it was important; it didn’t work that way. Concerned, at first, that his brain would stop repeating them, he typed them into the Notepad app on his phone. He had no idea what they meant or if they signified anything at all. He ran through the possibilities out loud:

“Dates? No, the numbers get too large; there are only 12 months and no more than 31 days in any of them.”

He pondered the next possibility. “Grid coordinates? Possibly, but there should be either 4 or 8 numbers for that.”

Eventually, he gave up and just let the numbers repeat…

“7 . . . 14 . . . 16 . . . 24 . . . 36 . . . 27”

Avery walked to work most days. It was a hike, however, he had become accustomed to it. Both of his parents worked in Marietta: the closest major town near Avery’s home, though he technically lived in Newport. Marietta was on the smaller size of “small city”, and was situated at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers in southeast Ohio.

Avery had grown up here and, aside from a brief 6-month-long dalliance with Ohio University in Athens, Ohio and another 3 months in Columbus after dropping out, he had spent most of his life here. Staying in Marietta wasn’t the plan, but he had been back for a little less than a year and had made no progress toward the goal of returning to school.

That had been the goal shortly after he found himself back in his hometown. He felt extraordinarily out of place here in his hometown. An odd feeling given that Avery’s family had founded the state.

“7 . . . 14 . . . 16 . . . 24 . . . 36 . . . 27

The numbers kept repeating all the way down Ohio Route 26: his usual walking route to Giant Eagle when Avery needed to walk. His parents both worked in town, but they usually left well before Avery’s shift at the grocery store began. His mother was a kitchen cook at one of the local restaurants and his father worked for a contractor as a builder and craftsman.

Just before 26 crossed Duck Creek on the way into town, the city had seen fit to build a sidewalk. For this, Avery was grateful. No longer forced to march along the undeveloped gravel shoulder of the winding highway or in the rocky drainage ditches, he strolled comfortably along the concrete sidewalk for the last 2 miles to work with less of a feeling that he would be hit by some hick with a truck, jacked up on giant tires that served absolutely no practical purpose.

“7 . . . 14 . . . 16 . . . 24 . . . 36 . . . 27”

Avery walked in the front doors of the Giant Eagle a little before 1:00 in the afternoon and clocked in for his 4-hour shift. He wasn’t the best employee. He was unreliable and called off about once a month. Somehow, however, he had managed to not get fired. He hung his name tag off the collar of his red golf shirt and walked toward the front end of the check lanes.

“Avery” A voice from the service desk called. He turned and walked toward the plexiglass shielded customer service desk.

“Good morning Karen.” Avery answered. “What’s going on?”

“Just need to get you your paystub. Then you need to go see Kyle.”

The imperative to see Kyle, the shift manager, was ominous. However, Avery got his paystub (about $300 for the week), and walked, uncertainly over to Kyle’s office.

“Come in” was the response to Avery’s knock on the door.

“Karen said you wanted to see me.”

“Yeah, Avery. We’re not going to need you anymore. Go ahead and clock out. You can return your uniform shirts next week when you pick up your last checkstub.”

Stunned, Avery didn’t even bother to argue. He pulled his name tag off his shirt and dropped it on Kyle’s desk. On his way out of the door he stopped at the wall locker and grabbed his backpack before walking out of the front door. He strolled across the parking lot, crossed Seventh Street and walked down Putnam toward the river. When he got to the corner at Third Street and looked up at the window at The Peoples News, he stopped cold.

“7 . . . 14 . . . 16 . . . 24 . . . 36 . . . 27”

Lottery numbers. The PowerBall.

Without hesitation, Avery stepped inside and filled out three play-sheets.

“7 . . . 14 . . . 16 . . . 24 . . . 36 . . . 27”

Then he filled out the rest of the sheets, and for all of these he just picked a different red PowerBall number. He selected all of them, from “1” thru “27" and then handed the play sheets: three, in total, to the clerk and paid the $54 for the tickets. He slid the tickets in his wallet and walked out the door toward Muskingum Park.

Avery walked down the mostly overgrown asphalt path that cut diagonally across the park to the river launch and sat on one of the benches overlooking the river. An hour passed, and then two, and before he was aware, it was nearing 5:00 pm so he walked toward Third Street to the deli where his mother worked. He walked in, caught his mother’s attention from the corner where the deli case met the wall.

“Giant Eagle fired me.”

“Well, you need to find another job soon. You owe us rent.”

“I know, I’ll start looking tomorrow.”

“Your father’s not going to give you a lot of time to figure it out; I suggest you take what money you have and go ahead and give us something.

Avery reached into his pocket, pulled out $100 and reached to hand it to his mother.

“I don’t have pockets; go find your father, he’s still up on Fifth Street." Avery stopped at the cashier on the way out of the deli and got a Irish Cream Latte to go.

Avery, looking for his father, walked two streets up to Fifth Street. Two streets “up” was, quite literally “two streets up”. While Third Street traveled along the course of the river in the old flood plain, Fifth Street, in Marietta, was up the hill. It wasn’t a tall climb, but on a hot day at the end of April, it left Avery winded.

He walked down the street to the house with the Architectural Renovations sign out front. When Avery’s father had quit his job at the hardware store last August, he had started his own business. Eventually, he became a sub-contractor for one of the local entrepreneurs but retained the rights to use his own advertising when he was on a job site.

Marietta’s Fifth Street was one of the most in-demand places to live in the entire state of Ohio. Large Victorian homes, with wide porches and tall gables made up the seven blocks of the maple and elm lined street. The street itself was paved with red brick from the long-defunct Cisler brick yard. In all, it was a window into the city's history; a time capsule holding the memory of Ohio firmly in its desperate grasp.

Avery’s father, Vaughn, was packing up his tools into his box trailer for the day. He would tow the 30’ white fiberglass trailer back across the Putnam Street bridge to his boss’s yard and lock it up behind the fence every day to save the hassle of pulling it all of the way out into lower-Newport and back.

“Hey Ave.” His father called, uncharacteristically cheerfully.

“Hey” Avery answered, pulling out the $100. “I need to give you this to soften the blow of telling you that I just got fired.”

“Well, if you’d go to work instead of calling off to go hang out with your friends, that might not have happened.”

“Well…” He trailed off as his father took the cash and pocketed it.

“You need a ride home?”

Sensing that he should say something else, “No, I’m going to walk down to Kroger and then to Wal-Mart and fill out applications. I’ll figure out something.”

That was enough of a deflection to send his dad down a different lane, “Alright. Well, we’ll see you later.”

Avery, instead, walked off toward the public library. It was a large building; one of the original Carnegie libraries. During renovations in the nineties, one of the walls had collapsed and it required extensive updating. That update eventually found expression in a massive expansion to include a second floor. Avery found himself at one of the reading alcoves there with a Star Trek paperback, losing himself in a story as he often did.

He loved stories. Avery managed to always lose himself in some tale, whether from the pages of a musty old book in the library, or one in his own head. He was always making up stories in which he saved the day, got the girl, and lived out his life in blissful happiness as a subsistence farmer with the princess by his side. His hero self was always waiting for more adventure though and frequently found himself enlisted in some quest to save the world from the ne-er do wells and other forces of “not quite evil”.

This time, however, the tales of Picard, Data, and Worf captured his attention so rapturously that he had to be pried out of his chair at a quarter of nine with a warning that the library was closing in fifteen minutes.

Avery re-shelved his book, and realizing that he “ain’t gots to go home, but he can’t stay here” left the library and started walking toward the Kroger. Rather than cross the street to bother them by applying for a job, he took a right turn into the Lafayette center parking lot. He passed up the Gordmans and the Family Dollar and walked to the theater.

He bought a ticket for one of the 10:00 showings of whatever was playing and stopped for some Sour Patch Kids and Junior Mints before taking his seat in the very center of the auditorium. As he usually did, when he was avoiding going home on a Wednesday night in the theater, he fell asleep about half-way through and had to be woken up by one of the employees. He hefted his backpack up to his right shoulder again and left.

He walked up Acme Street and turned right onto 26 again, walking on the sidewalk until he got to Faye Ave and turned again into Buckeye Park. It was closed after 11:00 pm, but he avoided the lights and found his way to a quiet thicket of trees and brush where he pulled his survival blanket out of his pack and, using the pack as pillow, laid down to sleep for the night

Homelessness wasn’t a problem in Marietta and neither was drug use, so Avery had frequently felt more than comfortable bedding down here for the night. There was no rain in the forecast and it rarely got below 60 at night this time of year, so he managed to sleep through the night. He awoke just before dawn and walked out of his hiding spot, rested and comparatively well-kept. He walked back down Acme Street, crossed over Pike Street and started walking toward the Wal-Mart.

He figured he might as well try applying there, but wanted to clean up first. He used the family restroom inside the store because it locked and had its own sink. Avery pulled the travel toiletry kit from his bag and began to clean up. He carried it with him in case he wanted to not have to stay at home if he didn’t have to. His parents were nice enough but it wasn’t a comfortable environment and he didn’t feel very welcome there. Avery’s mother was an undiagnosed narcissist and his father (as a result) was just a generally unhappy man.

This made for a toxic household and Avery tried to avoid it when he could. More often than not this manifested itself in staying, frequently, with other friends when their families would tolerate him. But, the goodwill of friends and family only went so far and he was careful not to tip the balance from welcome guest to too-frequent interloper. As a result, it had been several weeks since Avery had spent any time with any of his friends.

After shaving, brushing his teeth and changing his shirt, Avery walked out of the family restroom and started toward the service desk.

He stopped dead in his tracks and stared.

“7 . . . 14 . . . 16 . . . 24 . . . 36 . . . 27”

The numbers at the service desk for the previous night’s PowerBall glared back at him, seared into his mind. He read them again, not needing to check the ticket in his wallet; the numbers drove through his head all day yesterday like a boot-legger in the 1930s.

Rather than apply for a job, Avery turned on his heel and walked out of Wal-Mart.