County Fair
new fiction by Justin Carter
The last time I ever saw Mrs. Morris she was drunk on the back of a golf cart at the county fair. That was about two months after she took a leave of absence from the high school because of her lung cancer diagnosis and about three months before she died. In addition to being my favorite teacher, she was the president of the Linn County Fair Association and was a fixture there every fall. Usually you’d find her working the concession stand.
I don’t think she even noticed me as the driver wheeled her out of the member’s only clubhouse at the rear of the property. I was standing against the side of a building while Andy Molina, a good friend of mine who hitched a ride to the fair with me and my parents, made out with Gladys Kitley behind some bushes. It was their first time hooking up and they’d end up dating for three weeks before Gladys broke up with him for one of the Bronski brothers. She told Andy she liked the FFA kind of boys better than the football player kind of boys. He got mad and came up with a whole plan for what he was going to key on her car, but he never followed through.
Anyway, the whole reason we were even at the fair that night was that Russell Dunn was playing the main stage. He was a local guy from less than an hour away over in Fairgrove who’d made it pretty big in the Texas country music scene. He had this one song called “The Texas Beer Song” which was a pretty big hit. The chorus made it sound like a love song about Shiner Bock, but if you listened to the verses it was really about losing the love of your life because you can’t stop drinking on the weekends. I don’t think most of the people who go see country shows at the county fair really understood that.
My parents wanted to get there early because they had a friend in the first opening band. There were four acts playing and Russell Dunn was last, so Andy and I decided to wander the fairgrounds. That was how we ran into Gladys. Her and Andy didn’t know each other well, but I rode the same school bus as her so when we ran into her on the midway, she decided to hang with us. She wasn’t at the fair to see Russell Dunn though. She’d been showing a calf in one of the exhibition halls. Gladys was your stereotypical country girl—she always wore blue jeans and a button-down Wrangler shirt and her house was at the end of a long dirt road. The bus would speed down it, every little bump sending us out of our seats. One time, the driver got us stuck in Gladys’ family’s ditch while trying to turn around.
Andy went to find a porta potty while Gladys and I rode the ferris wheel. When we got to the top and could see the whole fairground, she looked at me and asked what the deal was with Andy—was he single, did I think he might be interested in her? I told her yeah on the first part, but I had no idea about the second question. Andy didn’t date a lot—he used to get teased for being a big kid, but now that he was the starting left guard on the football team, most of that teasing had ended, but he still didn’t have much luck with dating. He’d had an on-again, off-again thing with a girl who lived down the street from him that past summer, but they’d been off for awhile at that point.
When we got off the ferris wheel, I went to grab a Barq’s root beer from the concession stand while the two of them chatted. Like I said, that was usually where Mrs. Morris would be, and there was a part of me that thought she’d be behind that window, just living her normal life still. She wasn’t, and I handed my money to a stranger. When I got back to where I’d left Andy and Gladys, they were laughing, and Gladys had her hand on Andy’s hip. They didn't notice I was back at first and when they did, Andy said they were going to just go walk around. I paused for a second, not sure if they meant just the two of them or not, but when they started to walk away and I didn’t move, Andy turned back and told me to hurry up if I was coming.
Linn County has the third-largest county fairground in Texas, so there’s a lot of ground to cover. I was a step or two behind Andy and Gladys, who were walking real close together, the tips of their fingers grazing every so often. We passed out of the midway and went into one of the halls where the high school art was displayed. That was something I forgot to mention about Andy: he was this big jock guy, but he also did some damn good pencil drawings, and one he did of a pig was a finalist in the scholarship contest he entered. If he won, he’d get $1,000 to use at the community college. He walked us by his drawing and when he pointed it out, Gladys grabbed his hand and said it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. I didn’t disagree—I wasn’t a farm kid so I didn’t necessarily think it was beautiful, but it was the best drawing of a pig I’d ever seen. I still don’t know how he didn’t win for it.
After that was when we headed for the back corner of the fairgrounds, where the clubhouse was at, and that was also when I realized why they’d wanted me to follow along: they needed a look-out. They ducked behind the bushes and told me to make sure no one caught them, so I hung against a building while they vanished. It was then that I spotted Mrs. Morris. The clubhouse door opened and she stepped out, two men flanking her, holding her steady. They got her into the back seat of a golf cart and as the cart rolled past where I was, I got one final look at her. She seemed so frail—there was a scarf wrapped around her head and her cheeks were so much more hollow than they’d been the last time I saw her, the Friday morning where she gave us a weekend reading assignment from Johnny Tremain, only for the principal to be sitting at her desk Monday morning, there to let us know Mrs. Morris wouldn’t be back.
She slumped over on the golf cart, her eyes closed, and as she passed me, I thought, for a moment, to speak, but the words hung in my throat, and soon she turned a corner and was gone, forever. I knew then I’d never see her again.
Andy and Gladys finished making out two or three minutes later, and I didn’t say anything about what I’d just witnessed. Gladys said she had to go meet her parents to discuss the sale price of her calf, so Andy and I headed back over toward the bandstand. I texted my parents, who said they were over on the left side of the stage, underneath the speakers, and we pushed our way through the crowd until we found them. Russell Dunn came out ten minutes later, and halfway through his set, it started to rain, about a minute into him playing one of his best songs, “Rainy Day on the Gulf Coast.” It was exactly like that. When he was done playing, my father turned to me and said he had a surprise for me and Andy, and we stood there, the rain just a light drizzle by that point, until the entire crowd had moved out. My father led us over to the side of the stage, which was fenced in with a cattle gate, and a man came over, opened the gate up, and let us in. I had to talk to some people, Dad said, but we’re going to meet Russell Dunn’s guitar player. The man walked over and shook our hands, gave me and Andy a couple guitar picks each, and talked to my parents for five minutes about a bar out in the Hill Country that they all frequented.
When the guitar player walked away, my father put a hand on my shoulder. That was so exciting, he said. You’re going to remember this night for the rest of your life. I didn’t know how to tell him he was right, but not for the reasons he thought.
Justin Carter is the author of Brazos (Belle Point Press, 2024). His short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in BULL, HAD, Passages North, Rejection Letters, and other spaces. Originally from the Texas Gulf Coast, Justin currently lives in Iowa and works as a sports writer and editor.