The Fairground Flasher

My birthday was coming up, or rather Caren's was, and I was sitting in the back of the ambulance doing nothing for once. That's the thing about being a paramedic. You spend your birthday saving other people's lives, not your own marriage. Forty, fifty calls a year on the holidays, and I can't tell you how many birthdays I've spent with some stranger's chest under my hands instead of a cake. Caren says she doesn't mind, but she does. She'd never say it outright, oh no, she just goes quiet and watches TV and I know what that means.

So this year I decided to do something about it. Something big.

Well, I say big. I mean dumb, probably, but I didn't know that yet.

I'd talked to a guy I know through work, an off-duty EMT from two towns over who does a little acting on the side, community theater stuff. I asked him if he'd be willing to play a part. He said sure, as long as nobody punched him. I paid him two hundred dollars cash, which Caren would have had a fit over if she'd seen the checking account, but that's the point of a surprise, isn't it?

The plan was this. At the St. Jerome's Church Fair, I'd hand Caren a blindfold and tell her a stranger was going to lead her away to a private birthday gift. Then the actor would walk her out to the diner parking lot where I'd have candles and a bottle of wine set up in the back of my truck. Risky, sure, we live in a small town, but we've been married eleven years and things get stale. She'd been dropping hints, honestly she had, that she wanted me to be bolder. She said our love life was like a microwave dinner. Her words, not mine. I laughed, but it stung a little.

* * *

The fair was packed that Saturday. Geri Davis had the whole thing running like a drill sergeant, clipboard in hand, yelling at teenagers about the dunk tank. The bake sale tent was doing brisk business, and the livestock tent smelled like what you'd expect a livestock tent to smell like. I found Caren by the ring toss, looking fine in a sundress, and I felt my heart do the little flip it still does.

"There's my birthday girl," I said, sliding my arm around her waist.

"The fair's not for me, Henry, it's for the church," she said, but she was smiling.

"I know, I know. But I've got something for you anyway." I pulled the blindfold out of my jacket pocket, the silky kind, blue, I bought it at the drugstore and the cashier gave me a look I won't forget. "A stranger is going to lead you to a private birthday gift. Are you game?"

She stared at me for a second and I thought, here it comes, she's going to say no and I'll have wasted two hundred dollars. Then her cheeks went pink and she whispered, "Henry, you devil! What kind of gift?"

"The kind you don't get at the bake sale. Trust me?"

She bit her lip the way she does and said, "Oh, I trust you. God help me, I trust you. Where is he?"

"Right over there. Don't peek, and don't talk to him, and I'll meet you at the spot. Go on now!" I tied the blindfold on her myself and gave her hand a squeeze, and off she went with the actor, walking slow like a bride down an aisle. I watched them go and thought, this is either the best idea of my life or the worst, and honestly it could go either way.

What I didn't know was that Geri Davis had been standing about six feet behind me at the dunk tank, close enough to hear every word.

* * *

Now here's where it goes sideways. Geri heard "stranger," she heard "blindfold," she heard "don't talk to him." What she did not hear, because I said it too quiet, was that this was all planned. What she did hear, from somebody else at the fair, was that Lachlan Gentry's truck was parked over by the feed store. Lachlan owns the feed store next to the fairground, and he's had a grudge against me since the whole thing with the parade two years ago, which I won't get into except to say it involved a float, a fire hydrant, and my dignity. He's the kind of man who'd snatch a blindfolded woman just to spite me, in Geri's mind at least.

So when Geri looked up and saw the actor leading Caren away, big fellow in a cap, walking her toward the diner lot, and then saw Lachlan Gentry himself standing near the livestock tent in his feed-store apron, well. She put two and two together and got forty.

"That's him! That's Lachlan Gentry, and he's taking Caren!" she hollered, right in the middle of the cake walk.

I didn't hear it. I was already halfway to my truck, grinning like an idiot, setting out candles.

"He's kidnapping her, right out of the fair! Stop him, somebody stop him!"

The whole fairground turned around at once. You'd be amazed how fast a church crowd can mobilize when there's scandal involved. The dunk tank guy stood up in the tank, which I still think about. The pie ladies came out of the bake sale tent carrying pies, like the pies would help. And somebody, I never found out who, hollered for an ambulance, and guess who was on duty that day? That's right. My own crew.

Lachlan, meanwhile, was just standing there holding a bag of chicken feed, watching a mob of forty townspeople bear down on him while a strange man in a cap led a blindfolded woman across the parking lot. He said later he thought the rapture had come and he wasn't invited.

I came out of the truck bed with a bottle of wine in one hand and saw the stampede coming across the lot toward Caren, who was blindfolded and giggling, saying to the actor, "Are we almost there? This is so exciting!" And behind her, a wall of church ladies and deacons and one guy carrying a pie.

"Caren!" I yelled. "Blindfold off! Off off off!"

She pulled it up just in time to see forty people bearing down on her, and I swear she screamed like a banshee and jumped behind the actor, who had gone white as the church linens. "Henry, WHAT is happening? Is that the whole TOWNSHIP? Did you hire the whole town?"

"It was supposed to be a surprise!"

"Well I'm surprised! I'm surprised, all right!"

Geri Davis reached us first, breathing hard, pointing at the actor. "Sir! You put your hands up! Henry, I cannot believe you'd stand by while that Gentry man abducted your wife right out of a church function!"

"He's not Gentry, Geri, he's an ACTOR. I PAID him! It's her birthday!"

Geri squinted at the actor, then at Lachlan, who had wandered over still holding his chicken feed, wanting to see what all the fuss was. She looked from one to the other about four times. "Well. Which one of you is the kidnapper?"

"Neither!" Caren and I said it together.

Then the sirens started, and I turned around and there was my own ambulance, lights going, my partner Denny hanging out the window already laughing so hard he could barely steer. "Henry! Oh man, oh man, we got a report of a kidnapping at the fair, you want to tell dispatch it's your ANNIVERSARY or whatever this is?"

"BIRTHDAY!" I yelled at him.

"Well, happy birthday, I guess, to somebody!" Denny climbed out, wiping his eyes. "Dispatch wants a report, Henry. You know I got to write this up. 'Kidnapping, resolved, victim unharmed, perpetrator is our coworker.'"

The actor took his cap off and held it to his chest. "Ma'am, I'm terribly sorry, I was told this would be discreet. I've got a wife and kids and a church of my own, and I'd like to never be tackled by pie ladies again."

"Nobody's tackling anybody," Geri said, but she said it in the voice that means she's considering it. "Henry, I have run this fair for eleven years and I have never, never had a faux kidnapping. What in the world were you thinking?"

Caren saved me, actually. She put her hand on my arm and said, "Geri, he was thinking it was my birthday and he wanted to make me feel like a young woman again instead of a tired old office manager. Is that a crime?"

"In this town it might be," Geri said, but her mouth twitched.

Lachlan Gentry spoke up then, the first time I'd heard his voice in a year. "For the record, I came for chicken feed. Whatever this fool's fool business is, it's got nothing to do with me." Then he looked at Caren, and something about the look made me step a half inch closer to my wife, and he smirked like he knew it.

Denny cleared his throat. "So. We still need to check the victim out. Standard protocol, ma'am, a lady screamed and fainted-adjacent in front of forty witnesses. Ambulance. Now."

Caren looked at me, and I looked at her, and I don't know who grinned first.

The actor lasted about nine more seconds, which honestly I respect, because Geri Davis was still advancing on him with that pie-lady delegation forming up behind her like a church-shaped army. He put his cap back on, said, "So sorry, ma'am, so sorry everybody," and just went. Full sprint. Through the bake sale tent, which I felt bad about, because the tent pegs did not survive and neither did two dozen muffins.

"STOP HIM!" somebody yelled, and half the crowd peeled off after him. The other half stayed, because Caren was still the more interesting item on display.

"Denny," I said, "get these people back. I'll get my wife."

Caren grabbed my sleeve. "Henry, your actor friend just abandoned me! At my own surprise kidnapping! What kind of service is that?"

"He was probably told the whole thing would be discreet! You want to argue with him or hide with me? Because dispatch wants a report and I would rather eat that pie than file one."

She looked at the crowd, then at the feed store, then at me, and she did that thing where her whole face goes calculating. "Shed," she said. "The little shed behind the feed store. Go, go."

So we went. We ducked past the livestock tent, which smelled