Life's Golden Ticket (8 page)

All the men onstage laughed as well.

Harsh chuckled into the microphone. “Now, wait a second, men—you're laughing at the women? I don't see you busting a move out there. What is this, a high school dance? You're a bunch of
chickens.
”

The men all put their hands in their armpits and started clucking. They kicked the ground, heads jutting out as if they had beaks, and moved jerkily about.

The man at the punch bowl dropped the cup he was drinking from. Eyes wide, he looked horrified.

Harsh pointed toward the strutting chickens and said, “What do you think, folks? How do our men up here
look?
”

Three people in the crowd jumped up and screamed, “They're
sexy!
”

I could hardly stop laughing.

One of the chickens suddenly approached the wallflower at the punch bowl and started ramming his nose into him, as though pecking him with a beak. The man jumped back and scrambled to the other side of the stage. One of the dancers intercepted him, though, and grabbed his butt. The man jumped again and bolted in the opposite direction, where another woman grabbed him lasciviously, pulling him close. She started dancing suggestively for him, and suddenly he didn't seem to be in such a hurry. Another woman came and danced behind him, sandwiching him between her and the other woman. The man grinned, then started putting his hips into it.

The crowd roared.

A
fter the show, I waited for twenty minutes inside Harsh's tent. Finally, the hypnotist walked in, grinning.

“Sorry,” he said. “I've been chatting with Henry for a bit. What did you think of the show?”

“I loved it—hilarious.”

“Oh, good. Thanks.”

“I couldn't believe how powerful your control was over them. Especially the shy people. They really screamed from their seats. Your mojo really worked.”

Harsh laughed. “So why do you think it worked? Why did people do all those things they normally wouldn't do? Why would they do things they would be embarrassed to see themselves doing?”

“I don't know!” I said. “I was wondering the whole time how you did it!”

“Actually, it's pretty simple. Other than the hypnotic relaxation mumbo-jumbo, I essentially did only one thing up there tonight. I momentarily stripped the volunteers of their
self-awareness
by preventing them from being able to answer the question ‘Who am I being right now?'” Harsh paused and chuckled. “You see, if they could have answered that question, their internal dialogue would have sounded something like ‘Oh, my gosh, I'm acting like Madonna up here, and the crowd is laughing at me!' or ‘I'm dancin' like a chicken in front of strangers!' or ‘I'm screaming something embarrassing at the top of my lungs!' But you see, they couldn't answer that question because I took away their ability to do so.”

“How? How'd you do that?” I asked.

“I simply took away the three reference points every person needs in order to be
self-aware.
First, I told them to stop paying attention to their thoughts and feelings. Second, I told them to stop paying attention to feedback from the outside world, to pretend the crowd wasn't even there. Third and most important, I told them who they were, in this case Madonna or a chicken.”

“That's it?” I asked. “That's all it took?”

“That's it, and that's powerful. Think about it. If you are unaware of the world within you—your internal thoughts and feelings—and you are unaware of the world around you—how people perceive you and your behavior—then you don't have the ability to answer the question ‘Who am I being right now?' Because you judge who you are at any point in time by your thoughts and feelings
as well as
by what other people are thinking and feeling about you. Follow me?”

“I think so. . . .” I paused to digest the discussion. “So you're saying that to be self-aware,” I continued, “you have to know what's going on in your internal world and you have to know what's going on in the world around you?”

“Close,” Harsh said. “Don't forget the third reference point. To be self-aware you also need to
know who you are.
You have to have an internal standard for who you are or who you want to be. This is the
most important reference point in self-awareness. Think of it as a three-legged stool. You can know your internal thoughts and feelings. And you can get feedback from the world. But if you don't have an internal standard for who you are to
compare
that information to, you aren't self-aware. In other words, you have to take your thoughts and feelings and the feedback you are receiving from other people and you have to ask yourself, ‘Are my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
supporting
who I want to be?'”

Harsh examined my face. “Get it? Self-awareness is all about paying attention to the world within us and the world around us and then
using
that information to decide whether we need to change our consciousness or conduct, what we're thinking, or what we're doing. Does that make sense?”

“Sure. So tell me again how that allows you to make people dance like chickens.”

Harsh and I laughed for a few seconds; then he suddenly got a serious look on his face. He looked at me quizzically, almost annoyed. “But listen, you know that you're not here to learn how to make people dance like chickens, right?”

I was taken aback by his sudden change in disposition. “Uh, yeah, of course.”

He didn't seem convinced. “Before I walked in this tent, Henry and I had a nice chat. He told me about your situation, and I think you can take an important lesson from our conversation about self-awareness. Are you willing to listen?”

“Yes.”

“You see, you're lucky. You have the gift of consciousness. Unlike the volunteers onstage, you
do
have the ability to tune in to your thoughts and feelings. You
do
have the ability to pay attention to how you're making others think and feel. You have the ability to define who you are. Because of these things, you have
always
been able to ask yourself, ‘Who am I being right now?' and you have
always
been able to decide if that person was the person you wanted to be or not. Do you agree?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Harsh's demeanor grew even more serious as he squared his shoulders, tucked his chin, and stared down at me with cold eyes. “Then it's about time you started asking yourself, ‘Who am I being right now?' a little more often, don't you think? Henry told me what you said to Mary.”

He took a menacing step toward me, as if he might knock me down.

“What?” I stepped backward.

“I heard what you said to Mary. About her parents not liking her very much.”

He took another step toward me.

“
What?
” I was so shocked by his sudden aggressiveness that I couldn't seem to say anything else.

“All you had to do was think about what kind of person you were being to her at that moment. All you had to do was
pay attention.
All you had to do was look at the horror on her face when you said that to her, and then shut your mouth and apologize.”

Harsh grabbed me by my shoulders and started shoving me toward the tent's exit.

His voice suddenly changed, and he no longer had an Indian accent. “Instead, you've always been a little coward, dancing all over Mary's self-esteem, still letting your daddy control your mind, scared as hell to love anyone.”

Harsh pushed me violently through the tent flap. I landed hard on the ground outside.

He stormed out after me and towered above me. “Stop being a chickenshit and start being a man!”

I looked up in horror. Those were words my father had spoken to me the last time I saw him.

T
hat's it. I'm out of here!” I yelled. I sensed that Henry was trying to keep up, but I wasn't about to slow down.

“Just one second!” he called out behind me. “Just wait!”

I marched away from the hypnotist's tent and back onto the midway, intending to leave immediately.

“Hold on a minute!” Henry yelled.

I charged through the crowd without looking back. “I didn't come here to get thrown around or brainwashed. Screw this place!”

Anger boiled in my gut, and I stalked off with a vengeance. I wanted out. How dare Harsh put his hands on me? How dare he give me a lesson in self-awareness, then throw me to the ground? How dare he echo my father's words by calling me a “chickenshit”? But, come to think of it, how did he
know
my father called me that? Was it a coincidence? No. Nothing was a coincidence in this place.

I peered over the rooftops of the food huts, searching for the Ferris wheel. I spotted it to my left and took a quick turn in that direction. I glanced back down the midway. No Henry.

I stopped in midstride. The crowds were gone again.

I stormed on and charged past the abandoned walkway where I had heard the carnies shouting at Mary, and then past all the kiddie rides.

Not a soul in sight.

I hurried under the Ferris wheel, past the park bench where Henry and I had sat, and into the open square with the flagpole. The emptiness of the entranceway struck me as eerie. I passed the flagpole and had almost reached the turnstiles when I heard someone yell behind me, “
Strike two.
”

The wizard. I turned around and saw him standing at the entrance of the tent with the cavern inside.

“You signed a contract. You agreed not to leave your host's side. Where is Henry?”

“I don't care where he is,” I shot back. “And I don't care about that contract anymore. I'm leaving.” I turned back around and stepped toward the turnstiles.

“STOP!” The wizard's voice boomed as if from the heavens. I felt its echo reverberate through my whole body. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I turned back around.

The wizard's eyes pierced me with anger. “Come
here!
” he commanded.

My feet shuffled helplessly toward him. The closer I got, the less angry he appeared.

He looked at me compassionately. “If you were anyone else, I would let you walk out those turnstiles. I would let you go back to your life. I would let you forget that any of this ever happened. But I cannot do that.”

“Why?” I asked. “What do
you
care?”

“I care for two reasons. One,” he said, pointing to my jeans, “is that envelope you have in your back pocket. I'm afraid that envelope can never leave here again until we figure out what happened to Mary and why. Two, I care for Henry. He put his reputation on the line for you to get in here. He cares about you for some reason, and I don't want to see my old friend make such a sacrifice for nothing.”

I stared at the wizard as if he had just spoken another language to me. “Why do you care about the envelope? Why can't it leave here? What sacrifice did Henry make by bringing me here?”

The wizard smiled. “You see, you still have questions. That is why you cannot leave. Your work here is not done.”

“What work?”

“Your learning. Piecing together your story and Mary's. Settling things with the past. Making things right in the present. Planning a new future. These things you will learn in time.”

“When?”

“That's up to you. I invite you to stay a little longer. Do you accept?”

W
e walked past the Ferris wheel and turned left between two candy-and-soda booths. The pleasant smell of cotton candy helped release the tension in my body.

“Tell me,” the wizard said softly, “why were you about to leave?”

The image of Harsh standing above me fired my blood all over again.

“Harsh the Hypnotist. He got violent . . . pushed me to the ground. I won't take that.”

“Harsh? He pushed you to the ground? Why?”

“I have no idea. He just pushed me down and . . . said something my dad once said.”

“Really? What was that?”

“My dad once said, ‘Stop being a chickenshit and start being a man.'”

“How did you feel when he said that?”

“Who? Harsh? Or my dad?”

“Harsh.”

“I don't know. Scared, I guess. I was lying on my back, and he was towering over me like a madman.”

“Just scared?”

“Mad too. Steaming.”

“Mmm,” the wizard grunted. “It's not hard to be scared and angry at the same time. Why were you angry?”

“Well, for one, because Harsh was being violent. It just brought up old emotions of anger, the ones I felt in the situation when Dad had said those words to me.”

“What was that situation like?” the wizard asked.

As we strolled past a row of small tents on our left and what the wizard referred to as the “Big Tent” on our right, I told him the story.

I was seventeen, a junior in high school. It was the middle of basketball season. I had been kicked off the team the year before, but my mom was throwing a backyard barbecue for me and a bunch of the guys anyway. It was a great day. We all had our girlfriends there. I was dating a girl named Jennifer. Dad was inside in the den, drinking as usual. When everyone left, Jenn and I sat on the bench on our front porch and talked for hours. We ended up kissing, my first real kiss. I was on cloud nine, but I'd soon be in my own private hell.

Dad called me into the house. I could tell by the sound of his voice that he was drunk. I told Jenn I'd be right back, then went into the house and glanced down the long hallway leading to the kitchen. I could see through the window that Mom was still out back picking up.

When I walked into the den, Dad jumped out of his recliner and stared at me, seething with anger.

“Why the hell haven't you helped your mother clean up the kitchen?”

“Dad, I was just outside with—”

“I don't want to hear your excuses. You're always full of excuses. Your mother just spent all day slaving to throw you this damn party, and you can't clean up?”

“Dad, I was just out front with—” I started, but before I could get the words out, he knocked me across my face with the beer can in his hand. I fell to the floor.

“You little shit! I told you I don't want to hear any excuses from you!”

He kicked me in the gut and hollered at me to get up.

As I tried to stand he screamed, “You've
never
appreciated your mother!” and slammed his beer can into my face again. I fell to the floor and curled into a ball as he kicked me again and again.

Finally, I heard my mother scream for him to stop. I looked up, and she stood between us, trying to calm him down. Jenn stood at the entrance of the den, horrified.

My mom drove Jenn home while I cleaned up my bloody nose and the kitchen. Dad, oblivious, watched television in the den.

Less than an hour later, the police were at the door. As my dad spoke to them and I watched from the kitchen, I figured that Jenn's parents must have called the cops. I hoped they would put the cuffs on him and lock him up forever. But they left quickly after arriving.

Dad walked into the kitchen, looking pale.

“Get the keys,” he said. “You're driving us to the hospital. Your mom's been in an accident.”

It turned out that after Mom had dropped Jenn off, a drunk driver had run a red light and slammed into her car.

She was in intensive care for six days. After I spent the first day in her hospital room, I could barely stand to visit her. The blood and the bandages horrified me. It tore me up to see her that way. Dad made me go the first three days, but I skipped the fourth and fifth and just stayed home crying. The fifth night Dad called home and asked me to come to the hospital and watch Mom so he could go get a drink. I told him no and hung up the phone. A few hours later he came home blotto and beat me until I couldn't move. He kept screaming at me, saying no real man would let his mother lie alone in a hospital. “Stop being a chickenshit and start being a man! Go see your stupid damn mother! You never did love her enough, you little coward!” By the time he exhausted himself beating me, I had decided to move out.

The next day I packed my things and went to Jenn's house to tell her I would be staying at a friend's house. Her parents answered the door. I asked to see her. They said she didn't want to see me, and they didn't want their daughter involved with someone like me.

Later I went to the hospital. All the nurses kept asking me if I had been in the car wreck too, since my face looked like hamburger from Dad's beating.

The doctors wouldn't let him or me into Mom's room in her last moments alive. They were trying to save her, and we'd have been in the way, I guess. When a doctor came out, he looked at me sadly and
walked up to Dad. The doctor whispered in his ear, patted him on the shoulder, and walked back into her room.

Dad looked at me and shook his head. As he turned and walked away, I heard him say, “If you hadn't made her throw you that damn party . . .”

And that was the last I ever saw of him.

B
y the time I finished my story, the wizard and I had walked completely around the Big Tent. On the other side, a fence encircled an area used for the animals in the circus show. We leaned on the fence, and I squinted into some of the animal cages. I could see lions, seals, giraffes, tigers, and monkeys. A few feet away stood four elephants. A gigantic man in a dirty burgundy Henley and a cowboy hat tended to them. When he saw us lean on the fence, he smiled and walked over.

“Mr. Wizard,” he said, tipping his hat and smiling broadly, “Good to see you—been a long while.”

“It surely has, Gus.” The wizard nodded toward the elephants. “How's the family?”

“Oh, they're doing just great,” Gus replied, beaming with pride at his charges. “Getting smarter and stronger by the day. You know, I got Jo-Jo there to lift up the back end of a truck with his trunk the other day. Stronger and smarter by the day. . . .”

Gus looked past us suddenly and grinned. “Well, I'll be! Henry?”

I looked over my left shoulder to see Henry approaching. A pang of guilt shot through me.

“Heya, right back at ya, Gus,” he said, leaning on the fence beside me. He glanced at me and nodded, then looked past me to the wizard, who was standing at my other side.

The wizard nodded, and an awkward few moments passed. Gus seemed to want to say something to Henry, but the wizard shook his head. I wanted to say something to him too:
I'm sorry.

“Henry,” the wizard finally said, “Gus here was just telling us about how smart and strong the elephants have gotten.”

“Is that right?” Henry replied. He turned to me. “You know much about elephants?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Oh. You might find them interesting. Gus, why don't you tell us about elephants?”

Gus grinned at the invitation. “Sure. I'd love to give you the rundown.” He motioned at the elephant closest to us. “Take Jo-Jo there—he's a perfect example of a good, healthy adult elephant. Adult elephants go anywhere from ten to thirteen feet tall; Jo-Jo's twelve feet. From trunk to tail, he's longer than your
car
—about twenty-three feet. He weighs more than
four cars,
around twelve thousand pounds. He can lift eleven hundred pounds and could tear a small tree out of the ground with his trunk. In the wild, where his habitat would be a five-hundred-square-mile stretch of land, he could run about eighteen miles an hour. But he's not just strong and fast—he's smart too. Like all elephants, he has the largest brain size to body weight of any animal on the planet besides humans.”

Gus clearly had a lot of pride in the animals and his job.