My arms prickled with goose bumps. It was a delightfully macabre claim to make.

“I heard they’re all salvaged,” Nancy said, from somewhere just behind me. She and Geri had circumnavigated the entirety of the carousel, examining the steeds, and were only now returning to us. “There was a piece in the Portland Press Herald last year.”

“The griffin came from Selznick’s in Hungary,” said the operator, “after they went bankrupt. The cat was a gift from Manx, who runs Christmasland in Colorado. The sea serpent was carved by Frederick Savage himself, who constructed the most famous carousel of them all, the Golden Gallopers on Brighton Palace Pier, after which the Wild Wheel is modeled. You’re one of Mr. Gish’s girls, aren’t you?”

“Ye-e-sss,” said Nancy slowly, perhaps because she didn’t quite like the operator’s phrasing, the way he called her “one of Mr. Gish’s girls.” “I work for him at the funnel-cake stand.”

“Only the best for Mr. Gish’s girls,” said the operator. “Would you like to ride a horse that once carried Judy Garland?”

He stepped up onto the carousel and offered Nancy his hand, which she took without hesitation, as if he were a desirable young man asking her to dance and not a creepy old dude with fat, damp lips. He led her to the first in the herd of six horses, and when she put a foot into one golden stirrup, he braced her waist to help her up.

“Judy visited Cooger’s in 1940, when she was on an extended tour to support The Wizard of Oz. She received a key to the city, sang ‘Over the Rainbow’ to an adoring crowd, and then rode the Ten Thousand Lights. There’s a photo of her in my private office, riding this very horse. There you go, right up. Aren’t you lovely?”

“What a crock of shit,” Geri said to me as she took my arm. She spoke in a low voice, but not low enough, and I saw the operator twitch. Geri threw her leg over the black cat. “Did anyone famous ride this one?”

“Not yet. But maybe someday you yourself will be a great celebrity! And then for years to come we will be boasting about the day when,” the old fellow told her in an exuberant tone. Then he caught my eye and winked and said, “You’ll want to drain that beer, son. No drinks on the ride. And alcohol is hardly necessary—the Wild Wheel will provide all the intoxication you could wish for.”