Chapter 1 - The Fair

But on that day, the day it all started, this much at least is true. We were all at the fair. The five of us. The Last Battalion, we called ourselves, ages ten through twelve, sizes small through extra-large. ‘Course, Chester was the leader. Me? I was the runt of the litter, but I didn’t mind. The older kids let me run with ‘em. Called me Captain Expendable, which at the time sounded mean enough to chew and spit.

In any event, it was the morning of Halloween. Not quite mid-morning, the skies a light milky blue, not a cloud in sight. The All Souls Church grounds were proudly sproutin’ all manner of colorful stalls like a carnival out of Ivanhoe. Some of ‘em fancy like Mr. Hennesey’s Wendy house, which had taken him a whole day and most of a night to put up and which bristled with pots and pitchforks, jack-o'-lanterns and bushel brooms. Or, cheerfully humble, like Hankie Crankies’ beer barn made from hay bales and canvas. Others were no more’n a rickety table draped in sacking and manned by kids from our school, offering burnt fudge and sour lemonade, and where, under the grim eye of Miss Lafayette, you could bob for a crab apple from a horse trough foaming with the snot from the hundred kids went before you.

Meanwhile, out on the All Souls’ fringes, as though cautious of setting up camp on hallowed ground, were the stalls belonging to the out-of-towners. Roms and Luds, wayfarers from Africatown and Poarch Creek, and all manner of peddlers and ragmen from upstate. And it was here, amongst the torn tents, weather-worn wagons, and farm trucks, that the good stuff could be found. Bolo knives and tomahawks. Deaths-heads in spirit-filled jars next to candy cigarettes and El Diablo gum. Most of the stuff was well beyond the reach of mine and Chester’s half dollars, but that didn’t matter. They were still way better to gawk at than the lame townie junk.

Without question, our favorite stall belonged to old Mr Cudjoolla, a one-time slave who made Africatown his home after the Civil War. But Africatown is not Africa, he told us. And so he smoked his pipe and steered his truck across the state, aiming for fairs and carnivals, where he hoped to raise the funds for passage back to a home he said he barely knew. Passage for himself and for his two sons, mind. Both born free, but for whom, accordin’ to Mr. Cudjoolla, America held no promise barring a broken one.

Harlem Hellfighters, they were. He would preach us. Never lost a trench or a foot of ground to the enemy! And for what? If America won’t fight for ‘em, why in the Hell should they fight for America?

Truth be known, Hellfighters they may once have been, but they didn’t look it. Djembe was a slow bear of a man, a sad panda. He said little and smiled less. Roshawn was his younger antidote. The raccoon to Djembe’s grizzly. Quick as a thief and sassy as a saxophone. We liked Roshawn. Chester always scraped him for war stories, which Roach happily supplied, being the lead star in most of ‘em. And they often played ‘my army’s better’n yours’ with Chester pitting his ‘factuals’ gleaned from War Illustrated and Colts and Carbines against Roach’s ‘actual military fightin’ expertize!’       

 Anyways, on this occasion, old man Cudjoola had gone into town with Djembe, leaving Roach to man their stand. We were stood in front of their prodigious truck, a modified second-generation B-class Liberty that he called Lady, which was parked a little off from the other out-of-towner stalls.

 As always, we were the first ones there, and, as always, they had dropped one side of Lady’s wooden cargo box to reveal her treasures, displayed on a rickshackety maze of shelves and low-slung tables. Everythin’ from naked lady playing cards and thirteen-sided whalebone dice, to waterproof matches and Gypshun clocks. Powdered alligator teeth, jabberwocky-hide bull whips, and eastern singing bells. And a ton of potions, lotions, and other shiny stuff we couldn’t even begin to fathom.

The five of us were eyeballin’ a collection of grimy brass shells from the battlefields of The War, some of ‘em plain and empty, some cut, shaped, and carved into tiny everyday objects. Beer jugs, vases, coal scuttles, and more fiddly stuff like bicycles and wheelbarrows and the like.

“Trench art,” Roach pronounced as he squatted on the load-bed and placed them one by one in front of our hungry eyes. “Our boys’d make ‘em in the gaps between battles to keep their minds off meeting their maker. Rare treasures. ‘Specially being in such fine condition. Picked these ones up myself. During the Argonne push.”

“You pick ‘em off the dead bodies?” Chester asked, his dark eyes glittering as he examined a tiny brass artillery canon, perfect in every detail, with the beginnings of a name carved along its long barrel, Little Miss Misch, before the lettering ran out.

“Nosir, the fellas would leave ‘em behind, along with their letters to wives and such, if we ever went over the top.”

“Heck, Chester,” said Jaybee, who was fairer than Chester in every sense of the word. “You don’t wanna be buyin’ dead folk’s stuff.”

“Yeah? And why’s that?”

“Because it’s dead folk’s stuff.”

“Yeah? That bed you sleep in. Belonged to your grandad, as I recall. And he’s been dead ten years.”

“Yeah, but he died peaceably. These folks likely didn’t.”

“So?”

“Look at it,” Jaybee said, staring at the barrel. “I bet the fella who made it had to go over the top and never came back. S’why the name’s cut short. He never got a chance to finish it. It’s probably crawlin’ with his ghost,” he added.

Jaybee was usually the water-cart to Chester’s wildfire, often annoyingly so, but on this occasion, I was inclined to agree. The connection to the dead was all too obvious in the dullness of the brass. Doubly so, since, no doubt, some of the empty shells had once harbored grey angels of death themselves.

I glanced at Roach. He dipped his head. There is that, he seemed to say.

Chester ran a mulberry-stained finger over the canon’s barrel and looked me in the eye – Roach wanted a dollar for it.

“Uh, uh, no way. I ain’t spendin’ my fifty on a ghost!” I said.

Frowning deeply, Chester handed it back. Roach gave it a slow wipe before setting it down on the counter again. Somewhat closer to Chester than the rest of us.

“C’mon,” said Chester, “let’s go play Penny Pitch. ‘Bout the only thing we can afford at this damn fair.”

The others muttered agreement, but I had spied something earlier in the left-most corner of the topmost shelf that ran the length of the truck’s far side. A jumble of what looked like glass jars of varying shapes, sizes, and colors. They had been winking at me ever since we arrived.

“How much is that?” I asked, pointing to the nearest one, which was more or less clear glass.

Roach swiveled on his heels. “That little jar?”

I nodded.

“As it happens, that one is zactly fifty cents on the button.”

He stood to retrieve it. Maurice and Norman, the final two members of our battalion, crowded me from behind. The first, pig-big and potato-headed, the second, skinny as a prisoner of war, with dirtier clothes and a grey confederate cap hiding his baldness.

Roach returned with the jar. He knelt down and held it out between a thumb and forefinger, his face smug as he invited us to figure what it was.

Up close, it looked a little hazy and had a rusty screw-on lid.

“What is it?” asked Chester, eventually.

“This,” said Roach, “is a little luck jar.”

Chester snorted. “If it’s so little, then why’s it so much?”

The jar disappeared into Roach’s black palm. “Luck’s hard to come by, Chester Miller. Makes it a mite expensive.”

“But there’s nothing in it,” I said.

“Oh, the luck’s in there. Don’t you worry ‘bout that. All that’s needed to fire it up is a name.”

“That’s bull,” said Chester.

“What sorta name?” I asked.

Roach’s hand unfurled, and the jar was displayed to me once more. “You gotta tell Lady Luck who the luck is for, else how’s she gonna know? And you gotta write the name on a scrap of brown paper, gotta be brown, and don’t tell or show it to no-one. Not if you want Lady Luck to find them. And then you very carefully, and this is the tricky bit, you very carefully open the jar so as not to spill any. You take a red Chinese candle, and you burn that scrap of paper so the ash falls into the jar.”

“Why Chinese?” asked Chester, his frown darker yet.

“Because the Chinese know just about everything there is to know about luck. Ever had a Chinese fortune cookie?”

We shook our heads.

Roach nodded as though he had thought as much all along, and then he continued. “Again, takes an expert like me to get it right. Soon as all the ash’s in the jar, put the lid on as tight as you can. Luck don’t like being trapped, so it’s gonna try escape. But if you got the lid on tight, you’re all good. It’ll keep forever without losing its powers. Then, when you need some, you jus unscrew the lid and pour it out. Lady Luck’ll come your way presently.”

“How presently?” I asked.

Roach tilted his head. “Might not be straight away. Might not be right that ‘zact second. But it’ll come, ‘zactly when you need it. ‘Frinstance, if you be needing some luck with money, keep your eyes peeled on the ground. If you be needing some luck in the love department, keep your eyes lit on the eyes of the girl you’re chasing.”

“We don’t need no looove thank you very much,” said Chester. “Where’s the luck in that!”

Roach chuckled. “That’s where you gonna be needing the most luck, Chester Miller.”

Chester snorted and turned away. Jaybee, Maurice, and Norman did likewise. “You coming, Lewis,” he asked.

“Not yet. I’m still looking,” I replied.

When the battalion had moved out of sight, I called to Roach, who had put the jar back and was now placing some crumpled cigars in a tin mug. “Roach,” I said, “that luck jar…”

Roach looked up and winked. “What’s her name?”

“Huh?” I said, not getting his meaning.

“The girl—”

I cut him off with a scowl. “—There ain’t no girl!” That wasn’t strickly true, but I wasn’t ‘bout to ‘fess that to Roach or Chester or anybody. Nosir, I was wanting another kind of luck entirely. “What about them other jars?” I asked.

“What about ‘em?”

“They’re all different?”

“Well, there’s all different kinds of luck, young man. You got potluck and blind luck and dumb luck for starters. Then there’s chance, good fortune, and providence. And—”

 “—You got any bad luck up there?”