Under the Electric Sky by Christopher A. Walsh

other perspective is a mentally taxing experiment.
    Verney felt the sting of this kind of preconception last year, after attempting to hire a nineteen-year-old girl who wanted to explore her job prospects for the summer. Her father came to the lot under the pretense of discussing the issue while checking out the living conditions and general welfare of his daughter, but before Verney could show him around, he hauled off and punched him in the eye, detaching his retina. For Verney, that would have been the start of something that in the old days would ultimately end in the guy getting his face rearranged, after the other boys jumped in. Or they’d treat him like a thief and take him out back with four stakes and rope they would affix to the ground and the guy’s limbs. Then they’d tear off his clothes and pour milk over his genitals and let the dog lick it off. But that kind of practice went out of fashion years ago. It’s bad PR.
    â€œWe already have a poor image coming in,” Verney says. “We’re gypsies. Hiring the girl shouldn’t have been a big issue, but this guy was bound and determined his daughter was not joining a bunch of gypsies. ‘They’re stealing my kids!’ is how the story went down in his mind.”
    That story has been played out many times in wholesome minds throughout the world. For a lot of people the carny is the present-day North American gypsy, with all the business ethics of a pimp, a man who lurks beneath every measure of human decency, a villain in the truest sense, a filthy testament to what happens when you don’t buy into society’s established order of finishing school, getting a job, marrying and settling down.
    The kind of everyday existence of work and home and clean sheets and paid bills never appealed to carnies – not the serious ones, anyway. As far as they were concerned, it didn’t work for their parents who they saw as constricted to a world of not only “modest circumstance”, but incurable misery. There was something free and romantically wild about being on the road, turning a buck and not having to answer to anyone. A lot of people cannot grasp the concepts behind someone’s decision to live that life and the outright rejection of the natural order is enough to piss some people off for reasons they can never effectively articulate. So, the small-town man has to find other ways to express his frustration and ignorance in the matter.
    Before Amber began the duet with Larry, she was singing a solo karaoke country classic when a local in soiled sweatpants jumped on stage with her. The man, in his forties, struck me as strange then, but I soon tuned out of the performance to talk to the others at the table. A little later on, the man reappeared and offered to shake my hand for reasons never made clear. He was drunk and alone, but there was something else about him that was off and the sweatpants didn’t help. He wore a ballcap and thick glasses that concealed part of his grey, expressionless face. His body was lanky, but not tall, like it was made of rubber. There was something inherently offensive about him and everyone shared the same weird feeling. It was partly because he didn’t say anything, opting instead to get his voice heard through abrupt gestures. Everybody’s impression aligned; he was a true creep, the kind women talk about running into in places like this.
    He extended his hand and I shook it, but the little weasel wouldn’t let go and ended up pulling me off the stool I was sitting on and knocking it to the floor. The bouncer came over to smooth things out and I left it at that, not wanting to get myself involved in anything. By this time the carnies had noticed him as well, Amber taking particular offence. She told me he had grabbed her breast while she was on stage by putting his arm around her and pretending to hum along to the music.
    He squirmed around the bar a little longer,