The typical Tent Man can say he's had a good day if the weed didn't run out, the paper bag over the bottle of Budweiser didn't rip while he was driving, and a girl in a white sundress walked by the job and was blind-sided by the "automatic" sprinkler system in the nearby bushes.

 

That's not to say we didn't have our brushes with fame.  For example, there was that day former presidential candidate and man-in-a-tank Michael Dukakis came up to our tent at Northeastern University wearing shorts, sandals and a red Hawaiian shirt simply to ask the two most popular questions a tenter will ever hear:  "Settin' up a tent, huh?  Where are the elephants?"

 

Like so many of our fans-for-the-moment, that Goofy Greek went on his way moments later, leaving us to wonder if he really thought the Magnum P.I. look was working for him.  That asphalt parking lot wasn't his world.  We weren't guests among greatness there.

 

We only worked in the shadow of greatness once.  Who were we to know it would be the creepy, violent shadow of a man who would be taken out by a contract killer not long after he rolled into and out of our lives?

 

---

 

The day did not start well.  As we all rolled in to the parking lot of the TentCo shop that morning, our supervisor Carlos was already there--and had already half-loaded the biggest truck with some of the shittiest tents, poles and ropes the company owned.  That could only mean one thing:  fair day.

 

Fair days sucked.  While tenting was hardly easy livin', there was usually some variety in the day--you might go from some fancy school's graduation tent to a nice white tent by the sea.  If you were really lucky, you'd get to take down a party tent and they'd offer you the flat beer from the keg, figuring you'd turn it down.  They were so wrong.

 

On a fair day, you knew three things.  First off, you were going to be at that shadeless, dusty fairground all fucking day.  Secondly, you were going to have to protect every last rope, sledgehammer and lunch cooler from every sticky carny finger that passed by.  And worst of all, you were going to be setting up a tent that hadn't seen the light of day since the previous year, when you took it down on a spot that was so soaked in goat-piss that your sense of smell turned off for three days to keep you from passing out.

 

Thing started out particularly grim, as Kyle, Chris and I flipped one bag of tent section onto the truck, only to be showered with a muddy liquid that had collected in the bag since last year.

 

"Dude, something tells me that's not water..."  Kyle spoke for all of us as he watched the fluid in question run off his fingertips.

 

With the incredible timing all bosses seem to have, Carlos walked by a second later and shot us a look like we'd all just shat ourselves for giggles.

 

"Jesus Christ, you guys reek!  Go clean yourselves up--and put on new t-shirts."

 

I stood there, still afraid to move too much and activate the sleeping bacteria on my arms, but Kyle grabbed me and pulled me inside the shop.

 

"Dude, this is awesome."

 

"Are you serious?  I'm covered in ebola, I think..."

 

"No, dude.  Did you hear what Carlos said?  We gotta get new t-shirts..."

 

"Yeah, so?  I'll just run to my car.  I've got one in there..."

 

Kyle slammed his moist hand over my mouth, a dramatic flourish I certainly could have done without, before he whispered, "shut the fuck up, dude.  Of course you've got one in there, but I seriously think we all need to run to the gas station..."

 

All of a sudden, it hit me.  The chance to make an unsupervised gas station run with Chris was not one you should let slide.  After all, that man was never without weed.  Was he a dealer?  Did he have some sort of herb addiction?  Was he magic?  We never asked.  But we also never needed to ask him if he had weed or not.

 

"Uncle Carlos..." 

 

Oh yeah, it still weirded me out that Carlos was Kyle's uncle...

 

"What's up Kyle?  Jesus!  Why the fuck are you still wearing that shit-covered t-shirt?"

 

"Dude, none of us have t-shirts...  We need to run to the gas station."

 

"Goddammit.  Oh, well.  Make it quick."

 

By the time I squeezed into the truck that Kyle had started seconds before, Chris already had a massive joint rolled.

 

"That should start the day off nicely..."  Chris said this the same way a woodworker might note, "I'm very pleased with how these pine chairs turned out," and he was grinning with pride.  For him to be excited about a joint meant it had to be something truly special.  He was dead-on.

 

Even at the time, I couldn't tell you how long it took us to smoke that thing, sneak in a donut or two, and purchase a bunch of cheesy gas station t-shirts.  (They were awesome in their own right, although I couldn't wear the "Breast Inspector" one with a straight face.  Chris had no such problem.)  By the time we got back, though, we were greeted by nine pissed off co-workers and a fuming Carlos, who mystified us all when he commented, "it never takes me that long to buy clothes at a gas station..."

 

No one had a chance to comment, though, because it was time to roll out.  Destination:  the Brockton Fair, one of Massachusetts' time-honored traditions in a town that began its decline in the days when Boston's South Shore was still shoemaking capital of the world.  Oh, sure, "Marvelous" Marvin Hagler put them back on the map for a Gillette commercial or two.  But the town, like its fair, had certainly seen better days.

 

As for Kyle, Chris and me, our luck had turned around.  While we were busy figuring out if Kyle should get the "No Fear!" t-shirt of the "Bad Boy" tank-top (in the end, he went with a too-tight t-shirt that read, simply, "Balls" and had a representative collection of foot-, golf-, base-, volley- and tennis balls), the rest of the guys had loaded all the trucks.  More amazingly, Carlos told the three of us that we might as well drive together, in case what we'd spilled was infectious.  Luck was finally on our side.

 

---

 

It was a good thing the three of us knew where the Brockton Fair was, because, as we'd later tell Carlos, we got "caught up in traffic a bunch of times."  After all, it was hard to roll a joint with three people in the cab of a bumpy truck...

 

We had all worked the fair before, but our stoned brains were still stupefied as we drove onto the fairgrounds.  For the first time, the carnies had a head start on us, and a select crew of local vagrants, migrants and parolees had already been hard at work assembling the rides and sideshows.  Kyle might as well have just landed on the moon.

 

"Dude, that's incredible--it's the Tilt a Whirl, only without the 'whirls'...."

 

Chris and I looked over at the ride as Kyle slowed the truck.

 

"Dude, they have to put the 'whirls' on last.  Because of physics."

 

Kyle and I never realized that Chris was also a Junior Albert Einstein, but that morning his explanation made perfect sense.

 

"There's the rest of the guys, dudes!"

 

Kyle always seemed amazed when he finally found the rest of the crew, and this was no exception.  He went so far as to drive across a carny soccer field to get to the rest of the trucks, where nine surly guys were leaning against the trucks, fully aware that we'd run into no more traffic than they did.

 

"Dudes, what the fuck?  You guys haven't done a fucking thing!!!" 

 

Kyle always was the instigator, although it was hard to take a guy seriously in a shirt that said "Balls."

 

"That's because you guys have all the fucking hammers..."  Don brushed by him and shot Kyle a look like he was going to rip out his soul.

 

"Dude, you need to chill out..."  At that point, Kyle followed Don to the back of the truck, and they kept on walking behind a row of port-a-potty's ten yards away.  Minutes later, Don had been suitably chilled out by the last remains of the roach that Kyle had tucked in his sock.

 

Nobody had seen Carlos for a while, so we all started unloading the trucks in a big pile.  Suddenly, he emerged from one of the port-a-potties, stroking his moustache a little too happily and shaking his head.

 

"Well, I'm going to see if any of these motherfucking carnies has a sledgehammer--oh, you guys made it!  Great.  I'm glad I didn't have to go asking around--you can smell the fucking weed the carnies are smoking from inside the port-a-potties!  The last thing I want to deal with is a bunch of stoned carnies..."

 

Kyle, Chris and I, as well as newly stoned Don, nodded a bit too eagerly, and Carlos shot us a look, followed by that little nose twitch that either means something he ate was stuck in his moustache or he suspected something.  As he picked his moustache, we relaxed.

 

"OK, guys, I don't like these jobs any more than you do, so let's get to work.  This diagram shows where all the tents go.  In the meantime, I've got to go speak with someone in the fair office."

 

That, of course, meant only one thing.  Carlos had his own weed, and he needed to get as far away from us as possible to light up.  Well, it meant two things--we needed to fight fire with fire.

 

Chris was a step ahead of us and was already grinning from behind his sketchy goatee as he produced three joints from out of nowhere.  More accurately, he pulled them from his home-made denim shorts (cut off, naturally, at the knee).  The rest of the guys, who looked like they would have killed a man for a joint at that point in a soon-to-be-even-more-miserable day, nearly piled onto Chris like hogs at a trough--that is, until they were stopped mid-rush by Don.

 

"What the fuck, Don?"  Hypocrisy doesn't fly with tent people, and the rest of the crew wasn't going to let the stoned guy who would've been the boss if Carlos wasn't there get in the way.

 

"Chill out guys--someone's coming!"

 

Like a cooler version of Doug Henning, Chris made the joints in his hand magically disappear as soon as we heard the voices headed our way.

 

"Hey!  Hey you piece-of-shit tent motherfuckers!"

 

We turned slowly to see a bunch of skeezy carnies headed directly for us.  These guys had trouble written all over them--tattoos, blood-stained tank tops, mullets.  And one of them was carrying a crowbar.

 

"Dude, we're going to have to fuck up some carnies!"  Kyle's eyes lit up as he said this.  While he was definitely a stoner, he was also a pro baseball prospect with a body that even the most homophobic guy in the shop respected when it came down to swinging a sledgehammer.  Of course, in a fight, it didn't hurt that one of Kyle's favorite hobbies was seeing how long he could hold a lit cigarette against his forearm, "to get used to pain."

 

With the exception of Kyle and Don, who I still believe was the undiscovered strongest man in the world, the rest of us weren't exactly physical specimens.  I mean, we could lift the tents and swing the sledgehammers all right, but the second I caught a glimpse of the Latino carny with the eyepatch and Satan tattoo, I began to wish I'd stopped at donut number two that morning.

 

Don pushed Kyle aside like a rag doll and assumed the leadership of our motley gang.

 

"Is there a problem guys?"  Our brief confidence in Don disappeared when we heard him speak.  He was stoned out of his gourd.

 

"Yeah there's a motherfucking problem, you curly haired piece-of-shit.  You guys fucking tore up our motherfucking soccer field..."

 

Kyle suddenly got really small, although he did take a moment to utter, "how the fuck can you tell it's torn up?  It was already a fucking patch of dirt."

 

"You shut the fuck up, 'Balls' man!" 

 

The eyepatch must've given his other eye SuperVision, because even I couldn't read Kyle's t-shirt from right next to him...  Kyle got even smaller, but he did edge towards one of the sledgehammers.  Meanwhile, Don had suddenly become TentCo's own Ghandi.

 

"Hey, man.  We're sorry about the soccer field, dudes..."

 

Ghandi or no, Don was definitely stoned.  I don't know about the rest of the guys, but I told myself that if he tried to hug the eyepatch guy, I was going to hide in a horse trailer until nightfall.

 

"Oh yeah, motherfucker?  Well, sorry doesn't cut it.  How's that, huh?  So what are you going to do, motherfucker?  What are you going to do about it?"

 

Don just grinned.

 

"Um, we could get you high..."

 

As he said this, he turned to Chris and smiled.  Chris practically fell over himself stepping forward, at the same time somehow producing five joints from his shorts.  How did he do that?

 

"Unless of course, you guys aren't interested..."

 

Don didn't even have to ask this half-question.  Two of the carnies had already snatched their own joints from Chris' hands and were lighting them with those crackpipe lighters that I'd only seen in afterschool specials.  The leader, whom I had dubbed, to myself of course, "eyepatch guy," had a bit more subtlety as he reached out to take one, lit it, and returned the lit joint to Don.

 

"After you..."

 

---

 

The carnies turned out to be good guys.  After all, who hasn't made a mistake or two in his life?  If I learned one thing from them, it's that sometimes, the only thing you really ever do wrong is get caught.  Particularly when you're already on parole for assault.

 

Anyway, Don saved the day again by spotting Carlos returning from "the office," just as the last joint was getting killed behind the tent truck.

 

"Dudes, you guys should probably get out of here.  Our boss is coming back..."

 

Eyepatch man didn't even bat his eyelash.  "No problem, guys.  Hell, we should be getting back to the Ferris Wheel anyway.  It's not even half-done!"

 

The rest of the carnies had a good laugh at that one, and I secretly hoped they were just kidding around with us non-carnies.  They weren't.

 

"Take it easy, dude.  I hope that sheriff from Dade County doesn't find you any time soon!" 

 

Don had really bonded with Eyepatch Man... 

 

As our new-found friends walked off, Carlos returned, completely unsurprised that we hadn't done jack shit or that a literal gang of mullet-headed carnies just passed by him in the other direction.

 

"Jesus, I've got to take a shit again!"

 

With that, Carlos returned to the port-a-potty.  Seconds later, Chris had another joint in hand.

 

"Anyone want to fire one up without donating to the Carny Fund?"

 

We all had a good laugh at that one, except for Don, who had a way of getting paranoid when he was really stoned.  Which we all very much were.

 

"Holy shit, someone's coming again!"

 

"Shut the fuck up, dude!"  Kyle was used to Don fucking with us, but the look on the rest of our faces let him know this was no joke.  Like the superman-sized arm that Don was pointing with, the crowd headed our way was hard to miss.

 

Until that point in my life, I had never seen an entourage outside of pro wrestling shows on TV Saturday mornings.  But I knew I'd know one if I saw one.  And this was a motherfucking entourage. 

 

On the outer-most ring was a crowd of burly guys in tank tops, surveying the fairgrounds and pointing at us.  In the middle ring was a once-pretty fiftysomething blonde woman and a couple of bookish-looking types speaking with her.  And at the center, cruising along in a motorized wheelchair was the one and only Grady Stiles Junior.

 

I didn't know his proper name at the time, but I knew him the same way every fairground regular knew him.  Or, as Kyle put it, drawing out the words in amazement, "holy motherfucking shit, dudes--is that Lobster Boy?"

 

Don shot him a look like it was the dumbest question anyone had ever asked, Mike Dukakis included.  Chris nodded sagely, though, and remarked, "I do believe that's the legend himself."

 

As any members of polite society would do, we gawked open-mouthed until the Lobster Bunch had rolled right up to us. 

 

Lobster Boy was everything legend had made him out to be and more--while he'd aged since his heyday, he was still the freakish specimen so many had paid their hard-earned nickels to see.  His fleshy claw-arms glistened with sweat as they fiddled with the wheelchair controls, occasionally guiding a lit cigarette seamlessly to his Lobster Mouth.  He stared at us for a moment, and we stared at him, before he spoke those fateful words:

 

"Jesus Christ, who are you motherfuckers supposed to be?"

 

Stoned or not, we were all too stunned to reply.

 

"Goddammit, it's a motherfucking mute convention!  There goes the fucking neighborhood.  Jesus Christ, I need a goddamn after-breakfast drink and I need one now..."

 

And with that he rolled on, I suppose back to his Lobster Tent.

 

Finally, Kyle broke the silence by asking the question that had us all speechless.

 

"Dude, did we just get insulted by a fucking carnival freak?  I don't care if his life is a freakish tragedy.  He's a fucking Lobster Asshole."

 

We all nodded in agreement, staring at the Lobster Dust Trail he left behind as he rolled away, hypnotized by what a fucking jerk he truly was.  Our silence was finally broken by Carlos, returning from the port-a-potty, totally unaware that the King of the Carnival Freaks had just paid us a visit.

 

When we told him about Lobster Boy, he was quick with a response. 

 

"Yeah, that sure is something, but Jesus Christ, my ass is on fucking fire today.  Now let's get to work..."