Page 12 of Carnival’s Playground

CARNIVAL

The coffee Dutch hands me is lukewarm sludge, black and bitter as an ex-wife’s heart, but I down it like medicine anyway. It’s two in the goddamn morning. I’m standing under the soaked canvas awning of the main tent, watching the tail end of a brutal Texas squall grumble its way east over the black tree line. Opening night turned into a complete shitshow forty minutes before the finale when the sky ripped wide open—sixty-mile-an-hour gusts, torrential rain sideways, and a stampede of drenched tourists clawing for their trucks in the mud while we fought to keep the rigs from tearing free.

A few feet away, Avery stands shivering under the harsh halogen work light. She’s wrapped in a coarse, grease-stained moving blanket someone tossed her, her light hair plastered flat against her skull and water dripping off the sharp tip of her chin. She looks like a half-drowned alley cat that would rip your throat out if you dared call her cute. Every line of her body is tight with exhaustion and stubborn grit, her jaw locked hard enough to crack enamel.

Dutch comes sloshing through the red muck, his heavy boots squelching with every step, his clipboard tucked under one arm like body armor. "Got an update," Dutch barks, wiping rain from his bushy mustache. His gravel voice cuts through the thrum of the idling diesels, and the handful of crew members dragging sandbags immediately go dead silent.

"Good news, or the kind that's gonna make me regret ever riding into this county?" I ask, leaning back against the steel tent pole.

"Both, depending on how much sleep you think you're entitled to," Dutch drones. "City council liaison called my cell twenty minutes ago. Emergency phone vote on account of the storm wiping out local business revenue and making up for last year's flood cancellations. Long story short, they expanded our operational permit."

Avery pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders, her dark eyes narrowing as she steps toward us. "Expanded how, Dutch?"

"We’re not packing up next week," Dutch replies, tapping the clipboard with a thick thumb. "We're cleared to run clean through Halloween night. A full two extra weeks on top of the original schedule."

For a second, the only sound is the steady drip of rainwater off the tent lip and the distant rumble of thunder. Then Petey, half-buried in a pile of wet sandbags twenty yards away, lets out a guttural whoop that echoes off the equipment trailers.

"That's a fuck ton of shows," I mutter, running the brutal math in my head. More nights means more vibration tearing through stressed rigging, more hours on aging generators that cough blood on their best days, and a hell of a lot more wear and tear on a crew already running on fumes and caffeine.

"It's a fuck ton of gate money," Dutch counters, unbothered. "Which means we can actually afford the fuel, the replacement cables, and maybe two more hands if I can find anyone crazy enough to hitch their wagon to this circus mid-season."

"Crazy enough," Avery echoes, her gaze shifting to me, an eyebrow arched with pure, sharp attitude. "Present company excluded, obviously."

"Obviously," I shoot back, a smirk pulling at the corner of my mouth. "I signed on before the extension. My poor life choices are grandfathered in."

"Keep telling yourself that, nomad," she snorts, wringing a steady stream of dirty water from the end of her braid.

Dutch clears his throat, jerking our attention back to business. "Here’s the overnight triage. We’ve got less than fourteen hours until the gates open for tomorrow’s matinee, and this place looks like a bomb went off. The haunt walk took the brunt of the crosswind… props knocked flat, banners ripped, tarps shredded. The north generator’s been surging and coughing since the storm hit, and the fog machine from opening act needs a full teardown before it fries the relays."

"What about supplies?" Avery asks, wiping mud off her sleeve. "Half our lumber's splintered and we're down to three spare junction boxes."

"I’m running the flatbed over to the twenty-four-hour truck stop off the interstate right now to grab four drums of diesel and heavy-duty storm tarps," Dutch states. "Frank’s got the keys to the lockup in town, he’ll be at the contractor lumberyard the second they unlock the gates at seven in the morning for fresh plywood, posts, and structural wiring. Until sunrise, we stabilize what we’ve got with spit and safety wire."

"I'll take the north generator once we get the grounds locked down," I tell Dutch. "Avery, you know the haunt walk layout better than anybody. Let's get out there and reset the path before the rest of the crew trips over the wreckage."

"Depends," she sasses, tossing the moving blanket onto a dry plastic crate and grabbing a heavy-duty flashlight from her hip. "You planning on getting in my way and mansplaining rigging again like you did on the main entrance arch?"

"I saved that arch from caving in on your head," I remind her, falling into stride right beside her as she cuts across the muddy midway.

"You reinforced a brace I was already reaching for," she shoots back without missing a beat.

"Details, spitfire."

By three in the morning, the midway is a ghost town bathed in yellow halogen glare and thick, rising humidity. The haunt walk sits in ruined silence. Tarps hang in ragged ribbons from the wooden frames, plastic chains are tangled in the mud, and a couple of motorized skeletons lie face down like casualties in a bar fight. A hand-painted sign that reads Turn back while you still can dangles by a single rusted screw, the black paint streaked with red clay. "This whole section's fucked," Avery mutters, crouching beside a splintered wooden stake. A full-sized scarecrow prop is buried in the muck, its burlap body burst open and straw guts spilling out like entrails.

"Not fucked. Just needs a steel T-post and fresh wire." I reach down, wrap my fist around the frame, and haul the heavy frame upright. The soaked wood groans, but it holds. "Whoever slapped this together used cheap pine. Storm like that, it's a miracle the damn thing didn't snap in half during opening hour."

"Whoever slapped it together," Avery says, her voice flat, "was me. At four in the morning three weeks ago, working with fifty bucks and scraps from the discard pile."

I look down at the scarecrow's face. The burlap is hand-stitched with thick nylon cord, the mouth sewn into a jagged, sinister snarl with mismatched black buttons for eyes. It’s raw, vicious, and undeniably effective. Just like the woman standing in front of me.

"You built this?" I ask, letting my gaze drift from the prop to her mud-streaked face. "Damn good work, Avery."

"Don't sound so shocked," she snarks, but the defensive bite leaves her voice, and a faint, crooked smile tugs at her lips in the darkness.

For the next two hours, we work side by side in the freezing mud, our breath puffing white against the damp night air. We hammer steel posts into the saturated dirt, right the animatronics, and tape down torn weatherproofing. It’s backbreaking, filthy labor, but she doesn't complain once. She anticipates every wrench, every strip of heavy-duty tape, every brace I need before I even open my mouth to ask. We move around each other with a raw, electric rhythm—shoulders brushing, hands catching tools, the heat radiating off her skin cutting right through the Texas chill.

"Two more weeks," she says, leaning against a reinforced post while I wire down the scarecrow’s arm. Her face is pale with exhaustion, but her dark eyes are burning with something deep and restless. "That's a lot of road to cover."