On Top of the World

Kevin adjusted the greasy wrench in his hand and leaned back from the Ferris wheel’s steel frame. The setting sun bled pink and gold into the horizon near Springfield, Missouri, their latest stop on the circuit. He’d been sweating since noon, his muscles sore from bolting the enormous machine together with his coworker, Rick. The Ferris wheel was their kingdom. Dangerous, heavy, and finicky, it required absolute attention. It could thrill hundreds of strangers in a single day, but a missed bolt or an untested wire could wreak havoc. Just a few years earlier, a similar model in New Orleans had come dangerously close to spinning out of control.

Across from him, Rick grinned through a cigarette and slapped the wheel’s support beam. He was a grizzled man in his fifties, affectionately called “old-timer” because of his decades on the road.

“Solid,” he said. “Ready for some new revolutions.”

“Rock solid,” said Kevin, giving a thumbs up sign.

Kevin liked the weight of his responsibility, making sure that people could climb into the gondolas and rise into the sky, trusting their lives to both the steel and his operation. Most nights, when the crowds finally went home and the carnival lights dimmed, he had a little ritual. Rick would let him ride alone to the very top, then lock the wheel in place for a few moments. Kevin would sit back, legs stretched out, a glowing city or moonlit countryside stretching into the distance.

I’m on top of the world, he would say to himself.

He hadn’t always felt that way.

__

Kevin was thirty years old, though most people thought he was younger because he still had the boyish good looks and easy slouch of someone barely out of his teens. He’d dropped out of junior college after a year and a half, bored by textbooks and fluorescently lit classrooms. His parents had sighed, shaken their heads, and said things like, “You’ll regret this someday.” Maybe they’d regret it, thought Kevin. He never did.

Instead, he left home and drifted. He worked as a stock boy, a roofer, a dishwasher, and a mechanic’s assistant, but nothing stuck until he signed on with the carnival. He did so on a whim, tagging along with a guy named John, a fellow mechanic at a garage. John quit after only a month, but Kevin stayed. That was three years ago.

The pay wasn’t great, but it was steady. What mattered most to Kevin was the sense of community shared among the workers. The carnival was a misfit’s refuge for drifters, ex-cons, recovering addicts, and folks with broken pasts. People the world often shunned, yet in the daily routine of their comradery, they were family. They worked, they partied, they bickered, and they kept moving. Kevin liked the rhythm of it.

To save money, Kevin didn’t rent a room in one of the trailers offered by the company. Instead, he pitched his tent behind them, using the communal shower and eating cheap food from the cook wagon. It wasn’t glamorous, a Spartan existence, but it gave him a sense of freedom.

Perhaps for the first in his entire life, he felt like he really belonged.

__

Marcy caught Kevin’s eye the first summer he worked the wheel. She ran various game booths on the midway—ring toss one week, balloon darts the next—her voice scratchy from years of calling out to customers: “Step right up and try your luck! Win a prize! Don’t go home empty-handed! She was a couple years older than him but carried herself with the confidence of someone who had no regrets about her choices.

She had bleached blonde hair with darker roots showing, a nose ring, and tattoos creeping out from under her tank tops. Her skin had that sun-leathered look common among carnies who live under open skies. Kevin thought she looked exotic, beautiful in a way that felt raw and untamed. Most of all, he loved the way she laughed, a free and guttural sound that cut through the din of the carnival. Sometimes, when the Ferris wheel was near the game booths, he could hear her, and it made his attraction stronger.

He’d always been awkward around women. He’d had one serious relationship in high school with a girl who was equally introverted, but their lack of passion caused the relationship to fizzle. After that, he did some random dating, but nothing lasted. He could fix an engine, bolt a Ferris wheel, or patch a tent flap, but his tongue usually tripped when he tried addressing the opposite sex. With Marcy, though, he forced himself to try. A joke here, a question there, slowly building a connection between them.

One night after closing, they were sitting on overturned buckets behind the dart booth, sharing smokes. The carnival grounds were quiet except for the distant whir of generators.

“So, why’d you join up?” Kevin asked.

Marcy shrugged, blowing smoke toward the stars. “At this point, it feels like I didn’t join. I just never left. I ran away from Iowa when I was seventeen, hitched with a carnival, and here I am after fifteen years.”

He knew there was more to her story, something she had run from, but he felt awkward about asking. Instead, he said, “Well, you definitely seem to like it,” feeling lame for stating the obvious.

Her lips curled into something halfway between a smile and a sneer. “It’s better than starving. And better for sure than going back.”

Kevin nodded. “Yeah. Better than going back.”

Something passed between them—an understanding that neither of them had much else but this.

__

Kevin found excuses for being near Marcy. He’d swing by her booth before the gates opened, helping her line up prizes or restock darts. Sometimes she’d trade him free throws for fixing a loose hinge.

“Careful,” she teased once. “You hang around too much and people will think you’re sweet on me.”

He flushed, mumbling something about just being helpful, but Marcy poked his arm and laughed in that way he loved.

They started eating together at the cook wagon, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the worn benches. They’d walk the grounds after closing, Kevin pointing out constellations overhead while Marcy rolled her eyes.

“You sound like some kind of philosopher,” she said.

“Maybe,” he replied, grinning. “A philosopher who can also bolt a Ferris wheel.”

Late one night, leaning against the wheel’s frame, Marcy suddenly poured out the story of her nuclear family. The abuse she’d suffered at the hands of two different stepfathers and her mother’s complicity. She claimed she had never told anyone else about it, and as he listened, the bond between them deepened. In turn, he shared the story of his own upbringing, how he never felt adequate compared to his older brother—the golden boy to his parents—living in his sibling’s shadow until he felt invisible.

She listened intently, then suddenly surprised him with a quick kiss, her breath smelling of cigarettes. Kevin froze, his heart racing, but when she laughed at his expression, he found himself laughing too. From then on, they were lovers, periodically spending the night together in his tent.

But Kevin always sensed that she carried a quiet readiness to leave, no matter how close she seemed.

__

As months went by, Kevin’s feelings for Marcy grew much deeper than infatuation. He thought about her constantly, even fantasizing about a future in which they would get married and share a trailer.

That dream crystallized when Johnny, the carnival electrician, married Lisa from the funnel cake stand. Kevin and Marcy attended the wedding ceremony behind the trailers, with a makeshift string of lights and a preacher for hire from the local town.  As Johnny and Lisa finished their vows and everyone cheered, Kevin watched Marcy clapping joyfully, and he thought, why not us?

The idea wouldn’t let him go.

__

When the carnival rolled into Albuquerque for the state fair, Kevin skipped breakfast and hitched a ride into town. He found a pawn shop off Central Avenue, its neon sign flickering even during the day. Inside, one of the glass cases glittered with rings, some with real gemstones, others just costume jewelry. Kevin’s palms sweated as he chose a silver band with a large, bright stone.

“Good choice,” said the middle-aged man behind the case. “That’s a zircon and most people would never know it’s not a diamond. Who’s the lucky woman?”

Kevin blinked, his courage waning for a second. He was so far out of his comfort zone that he barely knew himself. “Her name’s Marcy. We’ll see if she feels lucky.”

“Well, I wish you the best possible outcome, young man.”

They dickered over the price, and after purchasing it, Kevin felt like he was now on auto pilot with his plan. No turning back. That night, after set up, he found Marcy behind the dart booth. The sweat and dirt on her brow only made her more beautiful to him.

His throat tightened as he pulled the ring from his pocket. “Marcy,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “Will you marry me?”

She looked at the ring curiously, then at him, giving no answer. Then she took it, slipped it into her pocket, and abruptly walked away.

Kevin stood there, thinking you fool, maybe you ruined everything.

__

Marcy seemed to avoid him the next day, and Kevin’s fear that he had lost her settled into his gut. That night, after a long day of keeping the Ferris wheel running, he was ready for his ritual. Rick gave him the nod, and Kevin climbed into an empty gondola. But just as the wheel creaked to life, he heard footsteps behind him.

“Hold up!” a voice called.

He turned. Marcy stood there, her hair messy from the wind. She’d applied makeup that had smudged around her eyes. Without a word, she climbed in beside him.

Rick grinned and started the wheel. Slowly they rose, the carnival shrinking below and Albuquerque stretching out around them, glowing like a field of stars across the high desert toward the Sandia Mountains.

At the top, the wheel stopped, the gondola swaying in the warm night breeze. Kevin’s throat was dry. He wanted to speak, to apologize for messing everything up, for being the kind of guy who didn’t know what to do around women, but Marcy just took his hand.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Kevin blinked. “Yes?”

She leaned closer, her lips brushing his ear. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

For a moment, Kevin thought his heart might burst. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight while everything else fell away. They kissed, slow and sure, and when they pulled back, they sat in silence, watching the city lights.

Kevin thought: This is it. This is what it really feels like to be on top of the world.