Fortune Read Online Free PDF

with four children of their own it hadn’t been easy.
    And it wasn’t that they hated him, though it often felt like it. They simply had their beliefs, and those beliefs were ironclad. They expected him to believe, and live, as they did.
    He couldn’t do that. It wasn’t in him.
    Chance began to pace, feeling as he often did, like a caged animal. They had buggied to town today, he, Uncle Jacob and Samuel, his aunt and uncle’s ten-year-old son. There, Chance had seen it. A traveling carnival, complete with a Ferris wheel and a fortune-teller. A traveling show, the kind whose troupe went from town to town, the kind of show Chance didn’t even know existed anymore.
    An opportunity, he’d thought. Maybe.
    While Jacob had been completing his business, he had looked it over, taking Samuel with him. When Jacob found them, he had been furious, though he hadn’t raised his voice. The things he had said to Chance had hurt, though Chance had hidden it; the things his uncle had left unsaid, the way he had looked at Chance, had cut him to his core.
    Later, Chance had heard his aunt and her husband arguing.
    Chance crossed to the window, looking toward town. In the distance he could see the faint glow of the carnival’s neon light. Frustration balled in the pit of his gut. Regret with it. He had brought tension to this house, had brought friction—between his aunt and her husband, between the children and their parents, the family and a community that didn’t like or trust outsiders.
    He was an outsider here.
    He always would be.
    Chance rested his forehead against the windowsill, thinking of freedom, thinking of traveling from town to town with no one telling him what he could think or how he should act.
    A traveling show. An opportunity. A way out.
    His heart began to pound. He didn’t fit in here, he never would. The feeling wasn’t a new one; he had never fit in, had always been an outsider, even with his mother in L.A. But he had big plans, dreams that he intended to make reality.
    His mother. As always when he thought of her, her image filled his head. He pictured her pretty face and smile, remembered the faraway look she so often had, recalled her habit of staring into the distance just over his right shoulder. With her image came a tightness to his chest, a pinch, an ache. Chance fisted his fingers against the smooth, cool glass. Connie McCord had longed for so many things, things life had kept beyond her reach, things death had denied her ever obtaining.
    They wouldn’t remain beyond his reach. He knew what he wanted, what he needed and deserved. He would grab it with both hands. He would not end up like his mother, always disappointed and unfulfilled, always on the outside looking in.
    He would not die without having obtained all that he desired.
    Chance swung away from the window. He would make his dreams a reality. Starting now, this moment. Somehow, he would find a way.
    A traveling show. The chance, the opportunity he had been waiting for.
    The time had come to go.

4
    M arvel’s Carnival was a seedy, tired affair, one of the last of its kind, a dying breed. Forty years prior, before the proliferation of high-tech, big-bucks amusement worlds like Six Flags, Marvel’s had been in its heyday. Part amusement park, part circus, the carnival and its troupe traveled from town to town during the summer months, staying a few days or a week, then moving on.
    These days, a carnival like Marvel’s was in less demand than during that glorious heyday. Now the troupe only traveled to small rural areas. Places with little access to big, fancy theme parks, places where the kids—young and old—were hungry for something to do, some way to fill the long summer nights.
    Marvel’s gave them plenty to do, plenty to gawk at. The fire-eaters and snake charmers were a big favorite with the preadolescent crowd, the teenagers gravitated toward the rides and games of