Ferris Wheels, Fly Fishing, and the Dumping

Abstract

### I. Ferris Wheel A mile from Salisbury Beach, there’s an old Ferris wheel built on the causeway. Made of wood and thin cable, the whole thing is painted white. The axle sits twenty-five feet above ground, held in a heavy housing supported by thick-trussed pedestals, one of which is capped in a bird nest. The other holds a cog, its teeth wrapped in an industrial chain that leads down to the engine, a salvage winch from a cod boat. The lot is bolted to a slab of concrete, the corners weathered and cracked where the exposed rebar endured cycles of freeze and thaw. A string of clear bulbs runs the circumference; here and there a bulb is missing, presumably loosened by those same expansions and contractions. At night, when lit, it looks magnificent, a poor man’s light for the seagrass maze of the Merrimack and Plum River marshes. The wheel hasn’t been lit in years. It still runs, if the old guy who tends it is there and sober. He’ll give you a long ride; there’s not a lot of business and he’s in no hurry to move you off or on. Tonight, Sarah Morgan sits with Charlie Darby, looking west to a late June sunset. Fifty feet below them is a chair loaded with six sacks of sand the old man threw on as a counterbalance. The couple are about to break up. “Sure is something.” “What?” “The marsh, the river, the sunset.” Charlie slapped a greenhead fly intent on sticking him, sucking his blood. Their nagging bites and swarming were on the wane for the day and already the first scout mosquitoes moved, ready to reinforce. They targeted Charlie. Sarah ignored them; with repellant on, they left her alone. She instead thought of the sand, did the math, three 50 lb …