Blessed Virgin of the Circus- 8.

LaShawn jolted awake as if someone had shaken him. At the moment just before he had awoken, the military base he’d lived on until he was seven flashed in front of his eyes. Camp was silent. It was an ungodly hour.

“What the fuck,” he whispered to himself.

**

Jorge the Ferris Wheel Operator lived nearby site, but in an actual house most of the time. Luckily he’d been able to keep it in the divorce, because he sure as hell didn’t get the time he’d wanted with the kids. They were almost teenagers now and that was terrifying enough. He roadied during most of the rest of the year and occasionally gave music lessons. Guitar and drums, but he hadn’t kept up with drums lately. They exhausted him more than usual and he just didn’t have the anger to fuel it like he used to. He remembered fondly when he’d run with the Sepultura guys, sometimes the RR Records festivals. He’d had to quit a lot of the concert festival season come circus season, but occasionally bands would still come through on winter tours. He never did promoter shit anymore hardly ever, but occasionally some of the neighborhood folks would hit him up to organize a gutter punk show. There were enough anarcho folks and anti-Nazi punkers. Usually from the barrio or the ghetto. The numbers were good, and they’d crawl out from all sorts of places when it happened. Sleeping on the municipal bus. Hell, a bunch of them lived on the bus.

“So how’d you get talked into dumping the roadie shit?” asked Bill one day.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Jorge genuinely wasn’t sure at that point. Off season now he’d sometimes pick up a hookup at a pretty high-paying call center job or other office gigs. The settlement from abuelita’s car accident plus inheritance was still nesting in his account, so at least that was usually taking care of the mortgage. Sometimes a friend would even hook him up with seasonal work at a friend’s law firm. Jorge knew how to ride out a situation to its ultimate end.

The divorce had been rough. He’d more or less given up after that. No dates, maybe a titty bar with the guys on rare occasion but it had ended up more a place to relax than for spank bank material, most of the time. The girls were friendly, no attitudes, no drama, and though very infrequently he’d flirt, he knew better than to take it home. He liked most of the tattooed cocktail waitresses better. He was usually zen. Seen too many bullshit cholo guys trying to be too hard, too young, too fast back in the day. Kept to himself, made sure he passed school and actually tried pretty hard on his AA. Even did a couple years at a four-year before the touring had snapped him up. Abuelita had always kept his nose to the grindstone with that and he was grateful for it later on, but even then he’d hated the fights and the posturing. Only when he had to. Being a man was dumb in that world but he hadn’t had the balls to pull the pretty boy shit and didn’t like most of the music anyway. As with so many others, rock n’roll had kept him sane. Metal shows, crust punk shit, everybody’s grunge band.

There had been that strange night last summer when he thought that somebody had popped something into his beer that he’d grabbed on meal break. He’d done his normal thing, then headed back to run the ride. All of a sudden all of the patrons on the wheel had halos around their faces. Jorge had only very faintly remembered church. It was a sparse, small building, and all he really remembered were the stark white folding chairs. Nobody had halos. There were no pictures. But he did dimly remember a story about Jesus where the disciples met him somewhere and his face seemed changed. And that story where their faces were changed, and flames were above their heads. All the riders’ faces had looked like that that night. He’d shaken it off, hoping maybe the park light generator was having some problem.

Everybody had cleared off for the night. He’d walked up onto the loading platform for a final check. It was only then that he had noticed the huge pool of blood on the seat before him.