You Must Be This Tall

We were on the side, where there weren’t no one looking. We were up in the air, where not nobody could shake a fist at. We were down below, where they we could dodge their rubber soles when they took them giant steps above us. We was invisible. There were four of us at the time, pink cheeked and outta breath. We tongued suckers and lipped cotton candy the color of our ruddy faces. There was big-tops and trains, toy boats and freak apartments. That man with the no arms, he done rocked back and forth like a monkey in a straight jacket and we’d watched like anyone dumb enough to sit and giggle. It was summer, and like I said before, we’d run underfoot. Things ain’t like that place was. It was gold, and it was brown and summer-tasting. There wasn’t no fear like back when, in that gold place. It was warm and oblivion and we loved it. We would sit for hours in that place, would stick out our tongues at them leering clown faces, impressed to heck with our own grotesque faces we made in the mirror wall. During the noon hours the four of us worked to spoil that sweet of ice cream and chocolate round our mouths, spouting words like “Hell!” and “Damn!” and “Screw!” as loudly as we could into the midway. We’d look around like we ain’t had a clue if we was bein’ watched by someone’s gramma or somthin’. At seven, Josie, Cal, Dickey and my mamma’d come and get me for a supper we was never gonna eat from bein sick over all that junk. I got myself a beltin’ those nights from getting my dungarees all dusty and smudged from road dirt an sugar, but in the end, there’d been a few hours there where weren’t no-one looking and where not nobody could shake a fist at. Those gold days when we was invisible.