The fairgrounds just outside my hometown used to hold a pumpkin festival each year. It had a vintage theme that mimicked the style of the traveling carnivals from the late 1800s. No electronics, just things like ring toss, guess your weight, swing the hammer, and sideshows like sword swallowers and jugglers. It really felt like you walked into a different time in history.

As a young man, I worked there operating a game where the goal was to guide a wooden ball up a wall. The wall had a bunch of holes cut in it. A player had to pull on two ropes like a puppeteer to steer the ball to the top. The angles got more difficult the higher it went, and if the ball dropped into a hole or fell to the ground, the player lost. This meant more tickets purchased to try again, and more money in my pocket. I mastered the game in my down time. When people said it was impossible, I would shimmy and shake those ropes like an expert chariot racer, and I’d get the ball to dance and hop right at the special spot. The key to winning was knowing the trick.

“Voila! To the top! If I can do it, you can do it. See?”

Across the way there was a booth for a magician who went by the name Starro. He was a short fellow, a little overweight, with a black mustache, and a top hat. This guy was a total cliché. I always caught glances of his act over the shoulders of my own customers. He would fool people into thinking he could turn invisible and move objects around. But his routine was unimpressive. It goes like this:

Starro walks behind a curtain and booms out, “OK! Invisible Go!”

And then he starts whistling.

A small tower of bowling pins clatters to the floor.

Then one pin raises up about a foot off the ground.

And it glides through the air to Starro’s hiding spot.

Which leads him to step out to reveal himself holding the pin. Visible again.

“Tadaaaaa!!!”

Amazing right?

Well. All of us worked on commission, and his cheesy act always stole some of my crowd. At this time in my life, I’m a teenage expert on ropes and pulleys. And I work hard and deserve to get paid. Obviously, he had some super-thin thread that he used to manipulate the bowling pins. I refused to believe that magic was real, but my competition was. So, one night at closing time, I ducked under a table for the chance to sabotage him.

Now, you can’t beat a magician unless you can prove his secrets to the masses. And if you guess wrong about how it works, it means the magician was one step ahead. And then the magic spell gets to live on forever. And most importantly, hard-working game operators don’t get their fair share of the cash. My plan was to expose the truth of the illusion to the whole world.

Starro was the last to cleanup. As I hid, I remember him saying in a smooth soothing voice “There ya go. Yes, yes.” a few times. But when I peeked out, he was walking away alone in the moonlight. Odd, but no one else was around, so this was my chance.

There were no strings of any kind in his supply box. I inspected the ceiling and edges of his booth too. No pulleys or hooks. No notches. Nothing you could even tie a string around. Also, no magnets or mirrors.

Even the bowling pins were pretty ordinary, other than being a little scratched and chipped in the narrow parts. The curtains had a bit of an earthy, musty smell. But I thought, who am I to judge? As the days passed, I became so obsessed with the mystery of Starro’s gimmick, that I could hardly look away each time he performed it. It made me slow to react to my own customers. One time I accidentally dropped the ball on a tall man’s foot, and it rolled away.

The tall man’s face turned red, and he started yelling at me. He started to move closer but then he screamed “Aaheeeeyyyyeeeooowwwwch!!” and fell down grabbing his leg.

Suddenly the people were gasping and looking down, as though something was passing by their feet. And in the background, Starro was whistling very loudly.

I was so confused.

And then everything froze for a second.

Starro whistled and whistled, but the tower did NOT fall over.

Also, this time, there were no levitating bowling pins.

Then to my shock...

A rustling sound got closer.

And the ball from my game hovered toward me and fell to the ground by my foot.

Now I don’t know why I did what I did next. Maybe panic.

Or part of me knew before I figured it all out.

I picked up the ball.

And I threw it.

Moments later it came back, the same way. Suspended in the air, yet moving toward me.

It seemed like everyone at the fair had gathered around to watch.

I picked it up again. This time I noticed the ball was a little warm and wet.

I felt myself smile out of the pure joy of discovery.

And I threw it again, with jubilance.

And guess what, it came floating back!

Starro stepped out from his curtain, and we saw each other.

That was when I knew. Finally.

The magician was not invisible. But his best friend was.

So, I bent over, patted the fur that I could not see.

And I couldn’t help but say it:

“There ya go. Yes, yes.”

“Who’s a good boy.”