A short, bald guy named Roy passed him a bottle of bourbon. “You got somewhere to go, Butch?” Roy said. Everyone laughed. They knew we were stuck.
“They’re waiting for the fog to blow through,” Roy went on.
“It’s not going to blow through,” I said. There was only the faintest breeze.
“It’ll clear up,” Roy said. “We’re not supposed to have fog. We’re not even supposed to have clouds this time of year.” We’d met Roy our first night in town. He walked with a limp, told us he was wounded in Vietnam. Later we heard that Roy had never been farther than Barstow, that he limped because he took some shrapnel in his legs when the transmission in his VW Squareback exploded. So you didn’t know whether to believe this guy when he talked about clouds.
“They should just cancel it,” I said. “What’s the point?”
Roy said, “Son, you don’t cancel the Fourth of July. This is America.”
Then the show started with a loud, crushing thud that I could feel in my stomach and throat. There was the faintest glow of green from inside the clouds. People whistled and clapped, but I couldn’t see why. More fireworks went up. Some were like thunderclaps and war-movie cannons; some were smaller, sharper, like cracks of the bat, a roll on a snare drum, popcorn popping. But it was just noise. Noise, and muted flashes of light just bright enough to remind you of how much you were missing.
“This place is killing me,” I said.
“As shitholes go,” Trace said, “it’s not so bad.”
“We’re supposed to be moving. That’s the whole point. North.”
Trace drank a long swallow. “Well,” he said, “we could steal a car, if you want.” He sat up straight. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that sooner.”
I shook my head. “We don’t need that kind of trouble,” I said. Although looking back, it was probably the best thing we could have done.
He lit a cigarette, nodding, and looked out across the field. “We’ll be in Alaska before you know it,” he said. He passed me the bottle. “Think of all the money we’re going to make. We’ll save up and get our own boat for next year. We’ll get a boat with one of those Viking heads on the front.”
“Boats are expensive,” I said. “I’m pretty sure.”
“I’ll find a way. I always do.”
“We can’t steal one.”
“We’ll get a fixer-upper,” he said. Though neither of us was any good at fixing things. We’d proved that often enough.
Boom boom boom and clouds choking all the sparkles. It was unbearable, but there wasn’t any point in leaving, either.
Around us people were talking. “They’re changing the angle. Shooting lower.” “That’s not safe, is it?” “Keep your head down, then, candypants.” Laughs.
The new angle was no better. Just louder. Now and then I saw pinpoints of colored light leak out of the clouds and shine for an instant before they burned out close to the ground. By the end, the field was a big bowl of smoke. Trace and I would be blowing black snot out of our noses for days.
Trace came back to the booth. Somehow he’d gotten the baby to stop crying. He handed the thing to me and went back to the bar to pick up our drinks. I’d never held a baby before. I froze. It wriggled and kicked inside the towel, but its eyes were open and it stared up at me calmly, like it wanted to learn what fear was by watching me. I just held tight and didn’t move until Trace came back. I made him take it out of my hands. He sat down, cradled the baby in both arms, and sucked on his drink through a straw.
“The bartender doesn’t recognize it,” Trace said. “He said to wait an hour, see if anyone who comes in does. After that, he’ll call the cops.”
Trace held the baby up to his face and smiled. He rubbed noses with it. If Mo could have seen him like this, she’d never have left him. But it made me nervous.
“Seriously, did you steal it?” I asked.
“Call it by its name,” he said. “Call it Mo.” He unwrapped the beach towel. Underneath it the baby had on an old, faded green sleeper. On the chest was a cartoon duckling in a rain hat and boots, smiling. A happy, happy duck.
I ran my hand across the tabletop, which was gouged with years of drunken attempts to leave a mark on the world. “Think about this,” I said. “If we kept it, who would watch it while we were working?”
“Mo could. Big Mo, I mean.”
“I don’t think Mo is going to move to Alaska,” I said.
“She might,” he said. The baby slapped at Trace’s glass, but missed. Trace moved the glass away. “Or Little Mo could come on the boat with us,” he said. “Little Mo’s a good-luck charm. I can feel it. Fish will swarm around our boat.”
“Fish don’t swarm,” I said. “They school.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Exactly,” I said. “The point is, we have to find the mother.”
We were almost done with our drinks when Roy the shrapnel guy limped over with a pitcher of beer. He put it on the table. “My treat,” he said. “To make up for the shitty fireworks. You picked the wrong year to get stuck here.” Roy had been pretty nice to us. The other night he’d bought us a scratch-off lottery ticket, but it lost.
“Thanks,” I said. You could smell the fireworks smoke on him. I guess it was on all of us.
He knelt down in front of Trace and the baby as best he could, with his gimp legs and all. The baby gurgled and waved its arms in happy little ovals. “And what have we here?” Roy said.
“It’s a baby,” I said. “You know whose it is?”
“No,” Roy said, but he didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes on Trace and the baby. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
“We don’t know,” Trace said.
“There’s an easy way to find out,” Roy said.
“Good point,” Trace said. “We should check.” He moved his drink out of the way and laid the baby on the table.
“Don’t,” I said. “Not in the middle of the goddamned bar.”
“What’s the difference?” Roy said.
“It’s no big deal, Phil,” Trace said. “We ought to know.”
“It’s not right,” I said. I thought the kid deserved better. “Don’t do it, Trace,” I said, in the voice I used when he took things too far.
Trace picked the baby up. He knew I only challenged him when I meant it. Someone called Roy’s name for the next game of pool. “The little guy looks just like you,” Roy said to Trace. With his thumb and index finger, he tickled the baby’s chin. Then he tickled Trace’s, which was thick with stubble. “Tell Sundance to lighten up,” he said. He shot me a look and walked over to the pool table.
“He’s hitting on you,” I said.
Trace shrugged. “I know,” he said. “It keeps the drinks coming, though.” He smiled a smile that said he was in control, he’d take care of everything, he’d save the day all by himself.
I knew he wasn’t happy, though. I knew it bothered him that Mo was probably in bed with her utility infielder, happy and horny after a Yankee win and post-game fireworks in a starry sky over the stadium, while Trace was dead broke and stuck in the desert with Roy chucking his chin. So I wasn’t surprised when, once the beer was gone, Trace went quiet and his droopy eye sagged almost all the way closed and he started looking around the place like he couldn’t believe his life had come to this. And I wasn’t surprised, either, when he laid the baby on the table and went to the pay phone to call big Mo.
The baby waved its arms up and down like a drunk piano player, tiny fingers pattering on the table. I kept my hand on its legs so it wouldn’t roll over and fall. My father once told me that when I was little I’d fallen off a picnic table and hit my head on the cement patio. “Your mother was supposed to be watching you,” he said. “It’s her fault you’re a fuckup.” He said this the day before Trace and I saw him necking with a teenaged girl in the parking lot behind the bank.