“God.”
“What?”
“You suppose you could do me a favor?”
So I told her about the letter and how I needed to get it up there.
“You’d have to be fast.”
“I will be,” she said.
“And you’ll have to be crafty.”
“I will be,” she said.
“And you could get in some trouble if you get caught.”
“It’ll be neat,” she said.
So we went through it a couple of times, how she’d set the flowers down and then look around to see if anybody was watching her, and then how she’d set the letter down on the podium and get out of there, fast.
“You scared?”
“A little bit,” she said.
“You won’t tell Mom?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Or Clarence?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Promise?”
She held up her fingers in the Bluebird pledge. “I promise.”
That night, I actually got some sleep. When I woke up, the letter was the first thing I thought of.
Today it was all going to come tumbling down for Cushing. I couldn’t wait.
The event was right at noon. The only problem I had was passing the hours till that time came.
I rode over town and watched the city hall people put the final touches on the town square. There was so much red-white-and-blue it was almost blinding. The bandstand was draped in bunting and already a couple of chubby guys in red sport coats from the Dixieland band were there sliding their trombones and walking around as if they were pretty hot stuff, butch wax on their hair and real loud heel clips on their shoes. I guess I don’t like them because the time Clarence tried to get in with his clarinet they wouldn’t take him. Clarence acted like it didn’t bother him but I knew it did. Clarence is too nice a guy to get his feelings hurt like that. Anyway, they have a lousy band — every other song seems to be “Muskrat Ramble” and Clarence sure couldn’t have made it any worse, even though, I have to admit, his clarinet playing is pretty lousy.
Then I heard somebody say, “Hey! Here comes the heroes!”
And when I turned to look over by the bird-shit-speckled Civil War statue, there was Barney and his new best friend Detective Cushing.
Barney saw me but he pretended he didn’t. He just kept walking right up to the bandstand with Cushing.
I went home and lay down on my bed.
Debbie came in wearing a white blouse and red shorts and blue Keds. “Red, white and blue. Get it?”
I nodded.
“Where’s the letter?”
“On top of the desk.”
“You OK?”
“Not really,” I said. “But I’d rather not talk about it.”
She went over and picked up the letter. “You ever going to tell me what it says?”
“Maybe someday.”
“Boy, everybody sure is excited about the governor coming to town.” She smiled. “Everybody except Pop.”
Governor Hamling was a Democrat, a fact that Clarence wasn’t exactly crazy about.
She came over and stood above me. “You ever going to be all right again?”
“Someday.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Just a couple days.”
“Well, that’s a long time, isn’t it?”
“I guess.”
“Come on.”
“What?”
“You can walk me over to the square. It’s about time, anyway.” And so it was.
I went into the bathroom and got ready and then we went out to the garage and got my bike and Debbie got on the handlebars and we took off.
“Boy, look,” Debbie said when we were two blocks from the square.
The highway runs right through town. Right now an entire block of traffic was crawling along with motorcycle cops at the front and back and this long black limousine right in the middle. Emergency lights — but no sirens — flashed. The motorcycle cops wore sunglasses and looked real mean.
I’d never seen — or felt — this kind of fervor before, not even for Little Richard.
Women stood on street corners waving handkerchiefs at the governor. Grumpy old men waved wrinkled old arms. And little kids jumped up and down and laughed and shouted and pointed.
And it was all for a lie, a damnable lie.
For the next half hour, people came to the square. They came from in town and the small villages surrounding the town and they came from the farms and they came from places as distant as Des Moines. The Dixieland band was already whooping it up and a guy with a torpedo-like tank of oxygen sold red and yellow and green balloons and Harvey at his little white popcorn shack didn’t have enough arms to keep up with all the business and up on the bandstand itself the mayor was showing off his familiar pot belly and his brand-new Panama hat. It was just like the county fair only there wasn’t any cow-shit smell floating on the breeze from the livestock barns.
I’d gotten there early enough to get a front row seat. I wanted to get a real good view of the governor opening that envelope, reading the letter and then announcing to everybody that he would have to call off the ceremonies — “And why?” he’d thunder. “Because this man—” And here he’d point like God with a lightning bolt shooting from his finger — “Because this man Cushing is a liar and a thief and a murderer!” And the crowd would ooooo and aaaaa and the chief would take out his gun and arrest Cushing and—
“You belong on the stage, son.”
An older, male voice brought me out of my fantasy.
It was the mayor. “You hear me, Tom?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess.”
The mayor led me up the steps to the stage of the bandstand. The Dixieland band — “The Hellcats” was what they called themselves though in the newspaper letters column one day, Mrs. J. D. Bing, who was always writing letters, suggested for the sake of propriety that they rename themselves the “Heckcats” — the band was rolling out on “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The noise was deafening. And I’m a guy who plays “Summertime Blues” by Eddie Cochran so loud even our cats go down to the basement to hide.
Cushing and Barney sat to the right of the podium. The governor, who looked vaguely like the mayor with his big belly and his Panama hat, stood on the edge of the steps shaking hands and waggling his pudgy fingers at little babies and saying over and over and over what a fine lovely day it was for a festivity like this. That’s what he called it. A “festivity.”
The mayor led me to the front row. Cushing and Barney sat in folding chairs near the podium. Cushing was talking. Barney was laughing. The best of buddies. Didn’t Barney remember Roy at all?
The mayor had me sit next to Barney. I started to object — but what was the use?
I could feel Barney and Cushing staring at me as I sat down. They’d quit talking and laughing. They just sat there now.
People came over and shook our hands and clapped us on the shoulders. A newspaper guy snapped several pictures. Aunts, uncles and cousins in the crowd out there would spot me and wave and I’d wave back, feeling self-conscious and awkward but not wanting them to think that being a “hero” had gone to my head, the way it had to my second cousin Larry’s head the time he saved that dog from a burning building, and then had his friend in a country western band write a song about him. Larry had that damned thing recorded and pressed and four years later was still handing out copies of “Larry Baines, A Roy Rogers Kinda Guy.” And his wife, at every single family gathering I’d attended ever since, always talked about Larry’s “political plans” which he’d be announcing any day she always breathlessly confided. Larry pumped gas out at the Clark station on Highway 2.
Then the mayor brought the governor over to meet the three of us. The governor seemed like a real nice guy but shaking hands with him was like picking up a real fatty, greasy patty of sausage.