Free No Small Thing by Natale Ghent

Ma to take her to the doctor to remove her cast before we go to the fair. She says she doesn’t want to be “encumbered” while strolling through the fairgrounds. Ma agrees andwe take a taxi to the hospital. Cid and I read magazines in the waiting room while Queenie and Ma go in to see the doctor. It isn’t long before Queenie reappears holding the pieces of her cast. Her shoulder looks skinny and sallow.
    “Look,” she says, holding up the cast. “He cut it off with a giant pair of snips.”
    We admire the cast and inspect her shoulder.
    “Looks as good as ever,” I say.
    After the hospital, Ma walks us over to the fairgrounds. She gives us 2 dollars each for rides and ice cream. I don’t have the heart to tell her it’s 3 dollars just to get through the gate. I tell her not to worry about us if we’re late because we’ll probably go to the barn after the fair. Ma just nods. Like I said, she doesn’t really mind what we do. It’s not that she doesn’t care. She’s just busy and would rather leave us to our own devices, which is fine by me.
    We wait until Ma is out of sight before running along the length of the fence and hopping over behind the horse barns. I help Queenie over the fence, just in case. I don’t want her hurting her shoulder so soon after getting her cast removed. We brush ourselves off, then stroll through one of the barns, admiring the horses. There are giant Percherons and Clydesdales calmly eating haywhile their owners brush them. There are tiny miniature horses decorated with ribbons and braid. There are quarter horses and pintos and paints, perfectly groomed and waiting to compete in the games.
    “Let’s go see the lady who makes the plaques,” I say.
    We weave through the fair, the whirling rides and the loud barkers calling out to us. There are kids running all over, carrying big stuffed toys their fathers won for them. Disco blasts over the loudspeakers. Posters of Farrah Fawcett hang in every booth. I can’t help noticing there are pretty girls with tight shirts and short shorts everywhere. I feel kind of hopped-up and crazy. My hands are tingling and the hair is standing up on the back of my neck. The smell of french fries and cotton candy makes my mouth water. I wish we had more money.
    We walk along, past freak-show booths with everything from bearded ladies to a headless nurse, from a girl with the body of a snake to a wild man, and even a cow with eight legs—four regular and four on its back. The sign shows the cow running normally, then flipping on its back and running with its other set of legs.
    “I’d like to see that,” Cid says.
    “It’s just a fake,” I tell her. Dad would have said the same thing. He knew all about these things because he used to work for a carnival when he was young. He told us there are tricks to winning, and if you know them, you can beat the carnies at their own game. He was especially good at shooting the red out of the star. He won us all kinds of huge stuffed animals that way, which made the carnies furious.
    After about half an hour of searching we finally find the booth with the signs. It’s sandwiched among a bunch of other stalls selling horse tack, brushes, hoof picks and treatments of every kind. A woman with a face as hard as a fist is hunched over a table, carefully burning someone’s name into a thick strip of dark wood.
    “How much for a sign?” I ask.
    The woman doesn’t look up from her work. “For what name?”
    “Smokey. It’s our pony.”
    “Ten dollars.”
    We look at each other in dismay. We only have six dollars, all told. “I have six.”
    The woman finally looks up at me. “It’s 10 dollars.”
    I push Queenie forward and give her a pinch.
    “But it’s for my little sister. She broke her arm and just got her cast off today. She’s been waiting for months to buy a sign from you.”
    I nudge Queenie and she looks at the woman with her most mournful face. The woman stares at us, then holds up a smallish