Island of Divine Music by John Addiego Read Free Book Online

handlebar mustaches, flapper dresses, wheels of fortune, and penny arcades, was depicted in garish colors which, though blasted by years of weather and generations of children, beamed at Joe through the fog as he approached.
    Penny wanted to go to the Funhouse first, and they stood in line before the mechanical hag, the laughing, wild-haired, freckle-faced old woman in the booth. Joe fumed about his brothers, his father, and, to some degree, his willful daughter, who had dragged him to this spot, in bitter fog, before this ugly, guffawing woman. Her head rocked back when she let loose with the biggest laughs, and her arms in the wild striped sleeves jerked like a spastic’s. It made Joe wonder about laughter itself for the first time in his life; it made it suspect in his mind. What a miserable thing it was, really, a desperate and mindless noise. What an ugly animal sound, imbued with nothing nobler than retching or ejaculating.
    Daddy, where are you? Penny shrieked and laughed, lost somewherebefore him in the house of mirrors. Joe’s anger was like his father’s, slow-building, deadly, filled with resentment and purpose. His brother Lu would explode at the slightest provocation and laugh a moment later, and Narciso’s fuse was so long it might circle the earth twice before a wisp of smoke could be seen on the horizon, but Joe banked his logs in silence toward a coming forest fire. He stepped slowly through the house of mirrors while children squeezed past him, shrieking black and brown and yellow and white kids giggling and yelling, and felt the familiar blood of injustice beat in his throat. He came to the junctures in the maze of reflections and locked eyes with the man in front of him, this idiot with the crew cut and monkey suit, and wanted to punch his own lights out. Which way? He asked the many images of himself. I don’t have time to screw around. Kids were swirling past him in each direction.
    Daddy, are you still in there? He could hear Penny’s voice above the din of laughter and yelling. I’ll meet you at the base of the slide, she yelled. Jesus Christ on a goddamned pogo stick, Joe muttered when he came to another dead end. A boy behind him laughed and said, You hear that guy?
    He had no inkling what the hell people found amusing about getting lost. Penny was probably ten yards from him, and he had to navigate through a maze five times that length. If the monster in the myth, the guy with the bull’s head, were waiting for him around the next bend, Joe would be ready to break his nose.
    Penny called to him again, and he was so mad he didn’t answer. By now Joe had his pen out and was making tabulations on the palmof his hand, five panels, left turn, three panels, right turn. Children zoomed past him. He was surrounded by facets of himself, the angry boy, the embarrassed boy, the lost boy; the little mathematician so poor he lacked a piece of paper, the little Italian kid in his sister’s saddle shoes. He stood in sight of the entrance, the fog, the laughing hag’s booth, back at the goddamned beginning, and swore. He turned and saw himself in a panel, mouth open in confusion, pen poised above his palm. Somebody yanked his coat.
    You lost, mister? a boy with black, curly hair, younger than Penny, asked him in Italian. Follow me.
    Joe followed the boy and was through the mirrors and in the center of the Funhouse in two minutes. He gave the kid four bits. The kid stuffed the quarters into his baggy dungarees and raced off.
    The open center of the Funhouse smelled like an old gymnasium, like dirty socks and stinky shoes and the pine-scented wax and cleansers used on the hardwood floor. Penny was flying down the enormous wooden slide on a potato sack, her black hair and her petticoat sweeping back, her mouth open in a huge smile. When she got to the bottom she grabbed a girl by the wrist and dragged her over to Joe.
    Dad, she yelled, her face flushed and damp, guess who this is!
    The girl was nearly a