THE CAGE DOOR SWUNG OPEN. The blond boy walked out. He ran to Ebby and hugged her. She laughed and they skipped over to the cakewalk booth. She bought him a ticket. The cakewalk music began. It was a waltz. Ebby held hands with the blond boy and all the other players, as they danced in circles around the numbers painted on the floor.
Patrick and Jimmy pressed their faces against the bars to get a better look. “Who the hell does he think he is, dancing with her?” Patrick said.
“I hear they dance all the time,” Jimmy said, “They go to that Monday Club.”
“The Monday Club?”
As the music warbled, the cake walkers landed on the numbers. Some were in. Some were out. Jimmy sat on the mourner’s bench and emptied his pockets of all the prizes he had won at the bb gun booth. Patrick pulled on the bars, looking for a rear exit, but it was no use. There was only a small sliding window on the side for feeding the birds. He watched the cakewalk without blinking. Ebby and the blond boy and a fat girl remained. The fat girl landed on the wrong number. Ebby and the blond boy looked at each other. Patrick watched their hands touch. He started to rattle the cage.
“Hey, Raven, let me out of here. My time should be up.”
Raven nodded and pretended to be looking at his jamboree watch, while he wound up his Pevely Dairy ruler and whacked Patrick’s fingers. “Now, get back and wait,” he shouted. Patrick held his fingers and hopped around the cage, wincing in pain. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” Jimmy clapped in rhythm to Patrick’s hopping.
“Shut up,” Patrick said.
“Poor Cindy, God, I wish I had a smoke,” Jimmy said.
“I wish I had a gun,” Patrick said.
“I won this sling shot.”
Patrick turned around. “Give it to me.”
“No, you can’t shoot it indoors.”
“You got any ammo?”
“No, just my Super Ball, but—”
Patrick took Jimmy’s slingshot and Super Ball and hurried to the feeding window on the side of the cage. Ebby and the blond boy skirted the rules and danced in wide circles around the numbers. The mission carnival crowd watched and clapped. Patrick held the loaded sling shot out the small opening. He pulled back hard on the rubber bands and aimed, trying to get a clean shot at the blond boy. Ebby and the blond boy looked into each other’s eyes. To them there was nobody else in the gym. They both felt the new thing. Patrick let the Super Ball fly. It narrowly missed the blond boy’s temple and zipped toward the math booth, where it knocked a first-prize replica of the solar system from the winning hands of a Roofus twin.
“We’ve been forgotten. We’ve been in here way too long!” Patrick yelled, pacing.
Jimmy shrugged.
“Five more minutes,” Raven said.
The waltz music ended. The blond boy bowed to Ebby. She won the cake. Everybody clapped for her. No one had ever won a cake walk so beautifully before. Then the situation went nuclear. The blond boy kissed Ebby—on the lips. Patrick turned the bench upside down and Jimmy fell on the floor.
“Damnation to hell!” Patrick yelled.
Out of the crowd came Monsignor O’Day. He was wearing his long black cassock—the same one he’d be wearing in the morning for first confessions. He walked up to Ebby with her parents. Monsignor put his hand on Ebby’s shoulder. He said something to her in Latin. She looked at her parents and the blond boy like it was Judgment Day. Monsignor O’Day picked up the bullhorn and addressed the crowd.
“Attention everyone! Attention … I have an announcement to make.” Everyone in the gym got quiet. The gypsy fortuneteller leaned out of her box. The tabletop hockey players let go of their control rods. The Rubber Ducky guessers stopped guessing. Everyone turned and looked. Monsignor looked over at Ebby.
“Children, I have some news which I don’t like to share, but I have to. It concerns a good Catholic family and their daughter. Their daughter is a lovely girl, an excellent student, a terrific dancer and the only girl to ever kick a ball over the fence for a dollar.”
Wild applause broke out for Ebby. The gym shook. But Monsignor motioned for them to stop. “No, please, that doesn’t’ make this any easier. The thing is … she has to leave our celebration tonight, because of something that happened, and she’s taking it very hard, so I want her to know we will always love her. Mr. Hamilton has been transferred to Florida, so tonight is Ebby and Raven’s last night with us. They are leaving in the morning. So, let’s all join in a song. I think you know the tune.” He cleared his throat and sang through the bullhorn to the melody of “Good Night Ladies.”
“Good night, Ebby,
“Good night, Ebby,
“Good night, Ebby,
“We hate to see you go….”
The gym full of six hundred students sang and clapped and swayed. The crowd parted as Ebby walked toward the exit carrying her cake. Her brother Raven handed over his Pevely Dairy ruler and his guard post to another scout and left with them. Everyone sang and waved and tried to touch her. Patrick yelled out for her, “Ebby!” But she didn’t hear him. Her parents waved thanks. Her mom was carrying the baby girl she got by Ebby jumping in front of the freight train with Patrick. Ebby’s eyes got teary. She turned near the door and blew a kiss to the blond boy. Then she started to cry and hurried out. The blond boy started to cry. He ran into the men’s room and went in a stall and closed the door to weep hard.
In the birdcage, Patrick and Jimmy watched, as Monsignor signaled the crowd. “OK, just one more announcement. I want to thank you all for participating in the carnival. I guess you know the fun you’re having has helped raise money for Catholic charities in forty-seven countries worldwide. The ticket sale booth is now closed, so I want the Boy Scouts to carry the treasure chest over to the priest’s house for the final count.”
Five Boy Scouts mounted the stage. Four lifted the treasure box to carry it off the stage. The fifth took the crucifix and followed the treasure box. Patrick clutched the bars and watched the treasure box containing his note to save Ebby leave the gym. Monsignor continued. “And one more thing … We had a little trouble counting the money today, because there were so many pennies. I kept thinking, where’s all the paper money? Well, we found the culprit. Is Mrs. Heimlich here?”
Mrs. Heimlich waved from behind the cakewalk booth.
“It seems Mrs. Heimlich, our cafeteria director, is so tired of carrying milk pennies to the bank, she asked a student to take out all of the paper money, so Mrs. Heimlich could exchange it for her pennies. Then she had the girl go back upstairs and dump nineteen dollars worth of pennies in there. What a dirty trick! What do you say we have Mrs. Heimlich arrested and put in the jail booth for all the trouble she’s caused us?”
Everyone laughed. Then the chant, “Jailbird, jailbird, jailbird….” Mrs. Heimlich laughed. The Boy Scouts accosted her and escorted her to the jail. They put her in with Patrick and Jimmy and shut the door. She was laughing. She was gripping the bars. Tears of laughter rolled down her Eskimo Pie face. She looked at Patrick and Jimmy.
“Are you my fellow prisoners?” she laughed. “What are you in for?”
In the men’s room, the blond boy wiped the angry tears from his face. He twisted together the fuses of six cherry bomb firecrackers, lit them and flushed them down the toilet.