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eyes saw, Tracy was gone again.
Tracy rode the roller coaster and dashed through the stalls. He hid in the hay bales and leapt into
the petting zoo, crouched behind the sheep. Finally, the mistake that would see him behind bars
again, was when Tracy Ray hid in the dunk tank, sitting on the trick stool over the cool water.
The sheriff, Tracy learned, was a deadeye and had a pinpoint fastball. One stitched baseball later
and Tracy was sputtering and spitting, soaked to the bone, and cuffs were slapped on his wrists.
Back at the prison the warden was eager to make an example out of Tracy Ray. He wanted a
signed confession of all past crimes, a public apology, and Tracy’s word that he’d never turn
rabbit again. Tracy spat on the warden’s shoe, and for that he earned an indeterminate stay in
solitary.
Every day the guards would ask for Tracy’s confession. Every day Tracy would reject them. Ten
years passed with Tracy stubbornly denying the warden’s wishes, until pity saw him freed from
solitary, and the assumption by the warden that Tracy had surely gone mad. When they released
him back into the general prison population the con who replaced Tracy in that lonely, dark cell
let out a whoop of delight. When the guards peered into the cell they learned how Tracy had
kept his sanity all those years. He’d cleverly turned the bare metal box-springs into a twisted
hoop-toss game.
For years to come Tracy would be a distraction to his fellow prisoners and a thorn in the warden’s
side. He used old rubber gloves, copper tubes, and ceramic to turn the urinal stalls into a game
of accuracy. The first time a prisoner was caught popping a rubber glove by relieving himself
at a stall, the warden cursed. After he caught his guards participating, he had the stalls ripped
from the walls and replaced with troughs. These, Tracy Ray turned into swirling pools full of tiny
rubber ducks.
Tracy used raw materials in the shop to make an air rifle, and rewarded prisoners and guards
who could shoot the miniature metal ponies he set on moving tracks. He learned how to make
cotton candy in the cafeteria, and encourage prisoners to trade in peanuts instead of cigarettes.
A basketball hoop in the yard was converted into a High Striker, where cons would use a barrel-
and-stick mallet to drive the ringer up the pole where a bell had been hooked to the backboard.
The warden had the yard leveled after that, with all exercise equipment sold to the public.
In response, Tracy Ray snuck milk jugs and softballs into the yard, and prisoners would try to
knock down pyramids of weighted bottles.
The prison band was taught to play The Circus Bee, Under The Big Top, and Rolling Thunder. The
warden grew to hate the sound of men laughing, and imposed a month of silent reflection. For
that month the men wore mime paint, and reenacted comical versions of their arrests.
Finally, with no recourse left to him, the warden hatched a plan to rid himself of Tracy Ray and
his insolence. Unable to free him legally, the warden contacted Mad McClellan’s Traveling Circus
and arranged to have the nearby fairground be made available. On that fateful day when the
circus came back to town the warden had Tracy Ray sweeping the walk near the front gate,
which was conspicuously left ajar. No one knows for sure what Tracy noticed first, the open gate
or the lack of guards on the wall. But in the end it didn’t matter, for the whole prison could hear
snatches of carnival music floating from the fairgrounds nearby, and none had a keener ear for
it than the grifter-turned-carnie Tracy Ray.

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