F I C T I O N
Tom Cantwell
Country Fair
Tom Cantwell
H
enry strolled the path, savoring the moist earth beneath his bare feet. Sandals strapped to his belt for the Honey Buckets. Dappled shade of oak and maple, relief from the sun, though the upside to the heat was the quick shedding of clothes. Guys like Henry shirtless, girls stripped to bikini tops and bras. Three girls passing on the far side of the path flaunted bare painted breasts. Probably in high school, bouncing with interlocked hands, swirls of pink and fluorescent green highlighted with splashes of silver glitter swooping over and around their breasts. Henry flushed and looked away, them barely more than kids. “Mind if I take a picture?” A balding man with his own shirt off, white paunch beneath grey chest fuzz, expensive camera strapped around his neck. Henry paused, took a moment to make sense of the thin shaft of metal extending from one sleeve of his cargo shorts. An artificial leg capped with a sneaker matching the one on his good leg. The girls looked to each other and hurried away laughing. Henry felt bad for the guy, even if he was a pervert. He flashed on the girl from elementary school who came and went inside a month. They’d secretly called her Peg, some kind of birth defect, lumbering around like Captain Ahab. Henry had secretly found her pretty, wanted to be nice to her, knew all about teasing because of his birthmark. But she had left before he did anything nice. And now the man with the camera was looking at Henry’s birthmark.