See You on the Backlot by Thomas Nealeigh Read Free Book Online Page A

6
    Who’s that? Is that you, greenie?
    Yeah, you can come in. Sorry about the mess, but being stuck here in the trailer is not the best way to keep a clean house. Thanks! A good cup of joe was just what I needed. Nothing like a good cup of coffee to give you a quick lift. Heck, even a bad cup of joe would be better than drinking nothing but juice, like I have been. Stupid doctors.
    Well sure I’m healing up all right; but take a look at this, would you? I’m going to be limping around for a while with this stupid… Ah, I just can’t believe that it all went so badly wrong so quickly.
    Sure, sure. I’ll tell you exactly what happened. Sit down over there. Just shove that stuff off that chair. So our night was going along like any other, right? I mean, we’ve had a few blue dates in a row, so it was time to finally bring in some cash, right? Sometimes these carnival rules that Big Mike has to go along with – Dollar Days and other stupid ideas – I mean, who thinks up these things?
    You know what I mean by Dollar Days, gazoonie. Don’t get that look on your face like you haven’t put in even a single day on the midway. That’s when whoever it is running the lot, the one who called in Big Mike to bring the carnival there, decides to run some special on the rides and attractions. What was it this last time? One ticket for each ride or something dumb… Other times they offer wristbands to all the kiddies for a huge discount so they can ride all the rides – or make it so everyone rides on kids’ tickets. Always something dumb.
    Now, when they do it to the ride jocks – well honestly, why should we care? But thething is, sometimes they’ll try to arrange it so the special includes the shows, too. Now a single-o, like the six-legged cow Delilah’s daddy has, is one thing. But, for them to do it to us? It’s ridiculous! Our nut is huge compared to most of the jocks here. We have a full staff to pay, plus the space rental, the parking for our trucks and trailers, hooking up to the genny… When they include
our
show, we’re just messed up, aren’t we? We can’t ever make that money up unless management decides to just burn the lot.
    You know how I’ve told you that Big Mike don’t put up with any of us ripping off the townies or doing anything bad to anyone else? We never pull a red light job, where we get people to work for us then drive off without paying them, or burn anyone – but after a few days of this mess, I think even he’s changing his tune! Yeah, he’s definitely not interested in coming back to this locale at all. That’s what it means to ‘burn the lot’. I’m talking about going ahead and letting the agents just take everybody’s money and not care if we or any other carnival is ever allowed to come back to this town again.Wouldn’t bother me none to never come back here again, let me tell you!
    So, anyway, we haven’t been making our nut. That’s the amount of money we need to bring in to cover our expenses. I know it, Charlie knows it, and most of the show and crew do, too. I bet even you can see it, can’t you? After the past few days of being ripped off by the lot, it was finally our time to pull out all the stops and make some cash. Now, for a showman like myself, the best way to bring in the crowds is to put on the best show I can. Word starts building throughout the lot when a show’s really good, then those townies take it back to their friends, and next thing you know, the place is full of people ready to see what’s going on.
    Yeah, I know some of the nonsense that the other shows have been telling you. How it’s our job to rip off the rubes without any thought to them. How does that phrase go? ‘Never give a sucker an even break, or wisen up a chump,’ that’s what Charlie told me some of the agents always say. But Charlie doesn’t buy into that and, more importantly,neither does Big Mike. And you don’t want to either, greenie. Trust me on that!
    So, it was finally