Fifth Row from the Front (2)

It was fuller than Dennis had ever seen it, and smaller.

That was the thing he had not been ready for. The field had been the size of a county when he was fifteen. Now he could see the fence at the back of it from the gate, and the screen, which had stood over everything, stood about as high as a two-story house with a rust streak running down one side from the corner of the frame.

Cars all the way to the back fence, and past it, up on the grass where there were no posts, people parked at angles with their trunks open. Half the field had lawn chairs out. Kids ran the aisles between the rows with their coats off. Somebody had a radio going out of a hatchback, and the smell of the place came in the window all at once, cut grass and hot oil and cigarette smoke and the sweet chemical smell off the popcorn machine, and under all of it the wet clay smell of the field itself.

Beneath the screen, along the bottom, was the playground. Two swing sets and a slide and a merry-go-round with the paint worn off the bars where hands went. There were thirty kids down there already, and the shapes of them went back and forth across the white of the screen.

"Can I go down there," Bobby said.

"Let me get us parked."

Dennis found a spot in the fifth row, off center, close enough that he could see the playground clean without turning his head. He pulled in nose first and let the front wheels ride up the ramp until the hood came up, the way you did, and got out and unhooked the speaker off the post and hung it on the glass and rolled the window up on the cord until it held.

The speaker gave off a hum with nothing coming through it.

In the next car over a woman was saying to somebody in the back seat that they were going to run Burl's boy's picture tonight, and whoever was in the back said something Dennis did not catch, and the woman said, well, they are, it's on the sign.

---

"Now can I."

Dennis got the blanket out of the trunk and put it on the seat. Bobby had his windbreaker unzipped and the cola had left a ring at the corner of his mouth.

"Zip up. It's going to get cold on you."

"Yes sir."

"You know where the car is."

"Fifth row."

"Fifth row from the front. Count from the fence, not from the back."

"Fifth row from the front."

"Don't go past the fence and don't go up on the highway side and don't get in anybody's car."

"I know."

"I know you know. I'm saying it anyway." He got a dollar out of his wallet and folded it and put it in the boy's coat pocket and buttoned the flap down over it. "That's if you get cold and want a chocolate. That's not for anything else."

"Yes sir."

"Go on."

The boy went. Dennis watched him the whole way down the aisle, past a truck with two people sitting in the bed, past a woman handing a paper tray of something out a window to somebody standing in the grass, and then the boy went in among the other kids and Dennis lost him and then found him again, on the merry-go-round with his hands on the bars, walking it around, leaning back.

Dennis got in the car and sat with the door open and his feet outside on the gravel.

There was a man going along the front row picking up trash with his hands and putting it in a paper sack. He had on a windbreaker with STARLITE on the back of it in felt letters that had been ironed on a long time ago. He was sixty or better. He picked up every cup.

---

Somebody knocked on the roof of the car.

The man was standing back a little from the door with a chainsaw held down at his side, and he had on coveralls and an apron and a mask made out of something that was supposed to be a face. There was a straw hat on top of it. He pulled the cord and the saw came on with a shriek that made the woman in the next car scream and then laugh so hard she had to put her hand out on her husband.

He leaned down. He was about seventeen. There was acne along his jaw underneath the edge of the mask where you could see his real skin.

"Sir," he said, through the mask, over the saw, "I'm going to need you to step out of the vehicle."

"Is that right."

"Yes sir."

Dennis put his hands up about as high as his chest and got out slow, and the man walked him three steps toward the front of the car with the saw going, and the people in the next row over were hollering, and then the man let off the trigger and the saw wound down and he stuck his hand out.

"Y'all have a good night now."

Dennis shook it. The glove was cold and wet from the grass.

"You been doing this all night?"

"Since six." He pushed the mask up onto his forehead to breathe. Underneath he had a wide, plain face, red across the cheeks. "It don't work on the little ones. They just look at you."

He got the mask back down and went off up the aisle with the saw hanging, and a boy of about ten ran alongside him for a while, out of reach, saying something Dennis couldn't hear over the radios.

---

The lot lights went off at ten past seven and the whole field made a noise, four hundred people at once, a sound like weather coming.

Dennis stood up out of the car and got his hand up over his eyes against the last of the west light and looked down at the playground. The kids down there had all turned around and were standing on the equipment, facing back up the field at the screen, and he found Bobby on the top of the slide with his arms hooked around the rail.

The countdown came up. The numbers went 8, 7, 6 and the field hollered at each one.

Then the screen went to black and white, and a car came over a hill in a graveyard, and a girl in the passenger seat said something about the wreath, and Sink Creek settled down to watch the dead get up and walk.

Bobby came up the aisle at a dead run and got in and pulled the door shut and put his hands under his legs to warm them.

"Is it scary?"

"It's the oldest one there is," Dennis said. "Watch it and find out."

---

It ran an hour and a half and the field never settled the way a field settles. There was hollering all the way through it. Somebody blew a horn every time the men on the screen argued about the cellar. A truck four rows back had its brights come on twice by accident and both times the whole place yelled at it until it went off.

Bobby went quiet somewhere in the middle and stayed quiet. He got his knees up on the seat and the blanket over his legs, and he ate most of a box of Milk Duds without seeming to know it, and once when the girl came down the stairs he put his hand on his father's arm and left it there and then took it back.

It ended a little before nine. The field made the noise again, and somebody two rows up leaned on a horn until his wife made him stop.

"Well," Dennis said.

"They shot him."

"They did."

"He was the one that lived and they shot him anyway."

"That's right."

Bobby thought about that.

"That ain't how it's supposed to go," he said.

"No," Dennis said. "It ain't."

The screen went white and a clock came up on it, a big round clock with the numbers running backwards from fifteen, and under it the hot dogs came marching out of the popcorn box with the little tune going, and half the field started singing along with it. The woman in the next car sang it with her hands going. The man with her did not sing it, but he was smiling with his teeth showing.

"Come on," Dennis said. "Before the line."

 

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