The weeds, constantly mowed, now resembled grass, and there was even grass, quack grass, an unkillable type of grass. The yard was bounded by plastic fold-out tables, borrowed from Emmaline’s school. There were lawn chairs, powwow chairs, folding chairs. Over on the side of the yard, they placed a pop-up arbor that Emmaline said was an investment. There would be four more graduation parties, after all, in the coming years. Josette spread Coochy’s worn Power Rangers sheet on the food table, then took the sheet off, refolded it.
Not festive.
Emmaline said they could use her flowered queen bedsheet.
Josette was extremely touched.
But Mom. People will spill stuff. Your best sheet will get ruined.
I’ll soak it after.
No, I’ll use your sheet for the card and gift table.
Josette folded and refolded her parents’ bedsheet, smoothed it onto the folding card table. She draped her own plain purple-red sheet on the long rectangular fold-out food table. Barbecue sauce would hardly show. They used the Power Rangers sheet wrong side out for the salad table. Josette stood back, cocked her head to the side. The tables had a gracious effect, standing there, legs hidden. She imagined where the food would go. Crock-Pots on the purple table, extension cords plugged into extension cords, running into the windows of the house, keeping the meats on low. Bread would go beside the meat in the big aluminum bowls, buns still in their plastic bags so they’d stay soft. She’d bought the sesame seeded ones. A little extra. There were also regular salads, macaroni, lettuce, and her own semifamous potato salad.
The day before, she had made Hollis and Coochy peel two twenty-pound sacks of potatoes. She had cut them into bite-size chunks and boiled them, not too soft. Overnight she had let the big dishpans of potatoes cool and marinate in oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and diced onions. She had left them in the basement, on top of the washing machine, covered with clean dish towels. Now Josette left off planning and brought the cooled-off potatoes upstairs. Carefully, she stirred in mayonnaise cut with enough mustard to give that jazzy goldeny color. But not too much mustard flavor. She diced a couple of jars of pickles, stirred them in too. Snow had hard-boiled a dozen eggs, plunging them into cold water so they didn’t grow green fuzz on the yolks. Over the bumpy yellow surface of the big green, orange, and blue plastic bowls of salad, they now laid the sliced eggs, then stippled the eggs with shakes of paprika. Josette plucked up one potato that was sticking out. Ate it. Nodded at the dishpan of salad with a slow, sage frown.
After the boys put out the coolers of pop, covered with coins of bought ice, and the big pot of wild rice and the cardboard box of frybreads, after the chokecherry jellies were opened, and the knives, spoons, and forks were set out in coffee cups, after the plastic bags of hamburger buns were opened and ready and then the potato salads, the bowls again covered with dish towels, Josette and Snow carried out the sheet cakes. They had turned out so well! The raised lettering was crisp in the sugar icing. The frosting diploma was perfectly curled at either end. The swirled tans in the camouflage icing looked exactly right. Josette had matched the pattern to Hollis’s uniform without letting him know. But she had changed the words. She had taken off the You Go. The cake had no words because there were no words.
She was keeping track of North Dakota Guard units: the 142nd Engineer Combat Battalion had entered Iraq at midnight on April 27. She was pretty sure that they were in charge of patrolling the roads for I.E.D.s.
Snow and Josette arranged cakes on the end of the two food tables, next to a vase of fresh lilacs. There was a large knife, napkins, paper cake plates. A spatula for each cake. They stepped back, looking at everything. They wouldn’t take the plastic covers off the cakes, or cut them, until they had been admired. Until the honor song was sung. Until after everyone had made their speeches, congratulating Hollis.
The guests parked on the dirt drive, then the grass, then the not-grass, then along the main road. The high school kids kept coming because everybody liked Hollis and knew his family would throw a big feast, lots of food. Cases of beer in the trunks of their cars, they came, the girls with graduation cards for Hollis. Mrs. Peace and Malvern arrived, driven by Sam Eagleboy in his low-slung maroon Oldsmobile. Zack came, off duty. Bap drove Ottie, and Landreaux strode out to help unfold Ottie’s wheelchair from the trunk and get him settled into it, under the awning in the backyard, with the elders, where they could watch the milling young people.
Don’t put Ottie near those pretty young girls, said Bap. They’ll try and take my man.
Ottie touched her hand.
The young people’s parents were arriving. Their younger brothers and sisters came too, tumbling out of the cars to race toward the snacks. Peter, Nola, and Maggie walked over to the house. Peter quietly shook hands all around. He got Nola a folding lawn chair. They sat together near the arbor, in half-shade at the edge of the yard. Soon the dog ambled up and settled down, leaning incrementally closer to Nola’s ankle until he touched and she let him stay. She had decided to come to the party. Strictly speaking, it did not make sense. Yet there was someone here with Nola’s body, voice, name. Soon she was eating a plate of barbecue with a dog warm along her ankle. Peter wiped sweat off his temples, giddy with effort. Compartmentalizing on such a high level was a strain. But Landreaux had invited him, not a word about what had happened. Was it some kind of traditional Landreaux thing or did it just mean that now life should go on? Maggie put their graduation card with the twenty-five-dollar check into Hollis’s basket. Then she went behind the tables to help her sisters dish out the food. After a while, Nola saw the husky boy who helped them now with farmwork sometimes. Waylon stood next to her daughter. He bent over, said something. Maggie shot her eyes up to him and put down the spoon.
I see, thought Nola. I know.
She understood herself and, in some ways, she understood her daughter.
Romeo was suddenly at the party now. Maybe he had parked far down the road, or hitched. He sat with the old people. Sam Eagleboy was talking about Mission Accomplished. Romeo said that Bush had looked okay in the jumpsuit, then his voice changed. A Hopi mom had died first — where was acknowledgment of sacrifice? The humility?
The old people stared at him, and nodded.
Hundred-day war, said Romeo.
All of a sudden he felt like he might faint. How odd. He rose and ghost-walked over to the edge of the yard and stood looking off into the deep green woods. That is our home, he thought, where we came from. And now we are living high on the hog. And our young boys are once again fighting for what used to be the enemy flag. Don’t have to scramble around for irony, or meat. There’s Crock-Pots full, and all that other food. There is Landreaux, whom I nearly got killed, so I must be satisfied with that. And Emmaline who knows I almost killed her man and so, now, will never love me. But Hollis. Hollis, whom it was a far better thing I did to let him go. But here he is, all grown up, and I have swum through my days until recently when I became aware. Too aware. My job making something out of me. And the pain in my body strangely as I move around beginning to subside. As though I’ve been cranked up wrong ever since Landreaux fell on me and by throwing myself down the church steps, I am starting to get cranked around right.
For he had risen from the church steps, Romeo, risen like one dead and walked alone, without pain, without his old familiar enemy, down the hill. As the days went on the bruises had healed. They hadn’t hurt much, well, because he had some prescription left, but then. Nada. He needed less. Then almost nothing. Something shocking — it was as if his bones were slowly shifting, inside of him, back into place. Over thirty years before, Landreaux had crashed off a Minneapolis bridge support; in landing violently he had crushed the right side of Romeo’s body. Two weeks ago, Romeo had thrown himself down a wicked series of concrete steps, landing on his left side. Then he’d gotten up and it was a miracle — flat-out. Nobody there to witness, nobody there to pity him, and, sadly, nobody else around to be thoroughly impressed. Somehow the fall had not killed him but fixed him, pushing everything all back together. That’s how it felt. A mysterious inner alignment was occurring. Romeo was increasingly calm right down the center. He could even balance with his eyes closed, sign of a healthy mountain climber.