Will Corrigan held no love for the bagpipes. No swelling of the heart at their music, no tug of nostalgic reverie at their blast. An instrument fit for devils and sloe-eyed dullards by his reckoning. Scots, in fact.
Once the cacophony of evil had passed, he steered his FJ over to the farmers co-op and pinned up one last flyer to the community corkboard. It wouldn’t last long up there. Some halfwit would tear it down and crush it into a ball in moral outrage. Ah well.
He loaded groceries into the back, along with seven bags of ice and a new cooler. One last stop at the Beer Store, then back home. Today he’d go all out. When the tourists arrived for the Corrigan Horrorshow, he’d treat them to a barbecue under the shade of the willow trees. Burgers and corn on the cob. Ice tubs of beer and soda. Popsicles for the kids. Best of all were the little Canadian flags he’d bought. A hundred of them, planted into the ground on little sticks, marking out the path from the house out to the graves. It was almost perverse and the thought of it made him laugh.
Travelling back up Clapton towards home, he saw the dust cloud rising over the tree line. Then the yellow pickup parked on his road, a skinny kid snoozing on the tailgate. Three orange pylons blocking access to the Roman Line.
“Jesus on a pogo stick, what now.”
Corrigan turned onto his road and took out as many pylons as he could, knocking one into the ditch and crushing the others under his tires. The kid in the truck snapped awake and hopped down, swinging his little stop sign.
Corrigan climbed out. Further up the road, he could see the grader skimming off the road surface, the beeping dumptruck as it reversed. The kid was hollering at him, something about the road being closed for maintenance. No one in or out.
Corrigan wanted to know why he wasn’t notified and who ordered this bullshit. The kid didn’t know, he was just the flagman. Corrigan clocked the crew truck and the company logo on the door. Keefe’s Konstruction.
Crafty, he had to admit. They had pulled out the big guns and choked off his entire road to prevent anyone from coming to the day’s tour. A sly play, trotting out all this heavy equipment to close him down.
The kid was still yammering on, telling him he’d have to turn back and, Jesus, look at those crushed pylons. What was he gonna tell his boss? Corrigan snatched the little stop sign from the boy’s hand and hurled it into the weeds. “You tell your boss,” he said, “to get the fuck off my road.”
Back into his vehicle, Corrigan bombed up the road towards the crew. Laying on the horn, forcing the grader to stop, weaving past it. The crew cursed him blue, barking at the stupid bastard to turn around. Corrigan stuck his hand out the window and rather than flip the bird, he waved cheerfully at the men like they were old friends and drove on. Laughing and watching them in the rearview, he wondered if they’d park the grader and the backhoe overnight. If they did, then there would be one hell of a bonfire on the Roman Line tonight.
It was almost dusk before Jim and Emma drove into town. The parking lot at the fair grounds was full, cars banked along the grass all the way back to the road. “It’s a tailgate party,” Jim said. Emma spotted a car pulling out and Jim swung in, backing his dusty pickup between an immaculately restored ‘56 Thunderbird and a tricked out chopper.
Emma listed off the out-of-province plates as they walked through the lot. New York, Quebec, Michigan, Manitoba. “All these people, all the way to our little town.”
They stopped at the grass to take it all in. A Ferris Wheel spun slowly above them. Not a huge one, but an honest to God Ferris Wheel. A Tilt-a-Whirl and a Crazy Octopus ride clanged and spun, all twinkly lights and giggling teenagers. Larmet’s barbecue pit threw up woodsmoke, mixing with the cloying aroma of cotton candy and homemade baking. Puddycombe had set up a beer garden and another tent offered wine from Ontario and Quebec. There were midway games and a shooting gallery. A bouncy castle jostled and teetered with squealing tots. Patio lights were strung along the pathway and stitched from tree to tree. Set against the twilight of a burnt orange sky, it was pure magic.
They strolled the path, pointing at everything and couldn’t decide what to do first. Jim felt her hand slip into his. The afternoon had been a rough one. Him fessing up what he’d done and her furious for putting them all at risk in a fight that wasn’t theirs. The argument back and forth, a tug of war push and pull until they’d met somewhere in the middle. The ride into town was quiet, emotions still scraped raw but here in the dewy grass that rawness lifted, dissipating under the lights and tinny music.
He gave her hand a squeeze. Emma’s face was lit up so big he almost didn’t recognize her. He must have had a smile like hers too, the way his jaw muscles were stretching. They almost blushed together but looked away, Jim pointing out some other distraction to break the spell. He wished he hadn’t. When was the last time he’d seen that smile? Her eyes lit up like that in… what? Joy.
They walked on, palms sweaty but neither letting go, keeping some small part of the spell intact. When had they become so serious, so dour? He had fallen in love with Emma in high school and it was that smile that had sealed the deal. The way her eyes fired up and maybe it was a cliché or he just wasn’t smart enough to put it some other way but Emma beamed. So bright and warm it could guide lost ships back to shore.
“Travis!”
The boy zipped past on his bike, flashing between the tents and then disappearing again. Jim’s bark was involuntary, a parental instinct to holler at his kid, and he immediately regretted it. It snapped the mood and the light in his wife’s eyes dialled back to a dull glow of motherly responsibility.
“Where did he go?” Emma watched the shooting gallery tent, where she expected Travis to scoot out from. No one appeared. “He was just there.”
“We’ll find him..” He squeezed her hand, pumping oxygen back into their little magic but the moment was cold. They had all night, he told himself. They’d get it back.
Emma chewed her bottom lip. “Maybe we should have gotten him that cell he’s always asking for.”
“No thirteen-year old needs a phone.”
She fanned her face. “Wanna get something cold to drink?”
“Let’s go on a ride.” He pulled her hand to the Ferris Wheel. Three people waiting in line. She craned her neck up at all those twinkling lights going round and round. “God. When was the last time we were on one of these?”
“Lord knows. Come on, I bet the view’s great.”
The wheel slowed and they paid, climbed aboard. The tattooed operator clicked the bar over their laps, his hands grimed with grease. The wheel lurched up and their stomachs dropped and they looked out over the tree tops. The lights of town across the creek.
Emma squealed and when she looked at him, the beaming smile was back. “Ninety-four!” she shouted over the clanking gears.
“Ninety-four what?”
“The last time we were on a Ferris Wheel,” she said. “Spring of ninety-four, at that midway in Sarnia. Kurt Cobain had just died. Remember?”
Whammo. It all rushed back with a bang. Their third or fourth date. A little drunk, giggling on a rattletrap Ferris that clanked and moaned like it would snap from its moorings and roll away through the cornfield. Emma wore glasses back then. Not real ones, just thick-rimmed falsies she thought framed her face well. The brainy look contrasted with the band T-shirts she always wore. She had a hundred of them. Sebadoh, Pixies, P.J. Harvey.
“Mazzy Star,” he said.
“What?”
“The t-shirt you were wearing. That hypno-druggie band you used to like.”
Emma laughed, the detail shaking loose a few memories of that night. She slid closer to him as the bucket tilted backwards on the down run.