The Great Valentin's handwriting was spiky and slanted, half English and half something else, full of little drawings. Arrows. Stick figures with their arms at angles. A drawing of a hand with a ring on the thumb and a dotted line coming off it. The thumb does not lift, he had written. The heart lifts. The thumb follows. And further down: Never look at the line. If you look at it they will look at it. Look at the cup like it is a bird you are surprised to see. And: Wind is the enemy. Breathe with the wind.
Later pages were in Grandma Dot's capitals. JULY 1958 - DOUBLE KNOT HOLDS BETTER IN HUMIDITY. SEPT 1961 - WENDELL SAYS PUT A LITTLE BEESWAX ON. HE IS RIGHT, DON'T TELL HIM. 1974 - NEW AWNING, STRIPES 1/2 INCH NOT 1 INCH. BETTER. 1973 - JUNE BORN. GET HER UP HERE.
June read that last line four times.
On Saturday morning Linh came up on the early Greyhound from Ottumwa with a paper sack of her mother's spring rolls and a Back to the Future T-shirt she'd ironed for the occasion. Linh Pham had been June's best friend since third grade, when her family had come to Iowa through a church program and a girl at the lunch table had asked her if she ate dogs and June had dumped a carton of chocolate milk in that girl's lap and been sent home. Linh was small and serious and could do long division in her head faster than the teacher. She studied the tackle box for a long time without saying anything.
Then she said, "You need a counterweight."
"A what?"
"When you lift your hand, the line gets tighter in the middle and the cup jerks. Right? So what if the end on Mr. Tate's side isn't tied off? What if it goes through the screw eye and hangs down with a little weight on it? Like a curtain cord. Then when you pull, the weight comes up, and when you let go, it pulls back. It'll be smoother. It'll take up the slack for you." She shrugged. "It's just physics."
June stared at her. Then she went and got Wendell.
Wendell listened with his hat pushed back on his head. Then he started laughing, softly, and he couldn't stop, and he had to wipe his eyes with his white cloth.
"Valentin had a counterweight," he said. "He did, back on the carnival, on the big stage. Old bit of lead pipe on a cord behind the curtain. I'd forgotten that. Dot never used one, because she had me. Every time she lifted, I'd lean on my pole a little and take up the slack by hand. Thirty-two years. That's why she needed a partner." He looked at Linh with frank admiration. "Young lady, I believe you just retired me."
"We'll still need you," June said quickly.
"Oh, I know you will," he said. "Who do you think's going to keep a straight face over here?"
They made the counterweight out of six steel washers from the hardware stand by the Varied Industries Building, tied together with a twist of baling wire, hung inside Wendell's pole where nobody would see. And it worked. It wasn't perfect, but it was smoother. Saturday night after the gates closed, under the yellow concourse lights, June practiced for two hours. Up. Hold. Glide. Down. Linh sat on the sugar sacks timing her on her Casio watch. Wendell sat on his stool with his arms folded and said, every once in a while, "Breathe."