About the Weather, Though

Two Legs of a Pale Yellow Lawn Chair

THE SKY WAS ALREADY slung low at nine AM, when the policemen were dropping orange cones at the intersection of Bridge and Main. They paused every so often in the heat to touch the backs of their hands to their necks and foreheads, glancing shaded eyes upward to the churns of sooty clouds. The cones hit pavement with a muffled thud, teetering on unsure corners before coming to an erect still. Traffic was already blocked three quarters of a mile down the road at the Gilmore Avenue traffic light across from Domaney’s Liquor, leaving the normally smothered pavement empty. Except for the cones—they marked the void territory, glowing like florescent smokestacks against the umber mesh of pavement and sky.

Two legs of a pale yellow lawn chair had scooted off the curb in front of St. James Episcopal during the night so that their rubber-tipped feet rested on the pavement’s edge, testing the sea of asphalt the way a child might test the floor of a forbidden room. There were about seventeen chairs in all, placed on patches of grass between the sidewalk and curb the night before by choosy geriatrics and nervous mothers needing to stake a claim on the best view. Most of them were pieces of second-string lawn furniture, brought up from basements or pulled from behind skis in the garage for this particular purpose. Dated by their frayed basket-weaved edges, they could be sacrificed in the off chance that some rowdy teenagers or a mentally handicapped member of the group home might steal them.

The Metallic Lake of the Lamppost

OFFICER RITT STANTON watched the policemen from the comfortable climate of his own squad car. He watched the shadows of sweat on their backs grow into dark formless stains that touched their shoulder blades and trickled toward their hips. He squashed the momentary urge to find form in the sweaty shapes, the way children find grasshoppers and guns in the contours of a cloud.

Stanton shifted in his seat to relieve the thoughts, instead focusing on the banged up lamppost in front of Subway, where a rough concave octagon had formed in the metal. He remembered the way the shape had flickered and faded in the blue light of his own squad car when he yanked the responsible driver by the sleeves from the seat and banged the man’s left wrist on the door. Officer Stanton had followed the old man’s Buick at a close distance, watching it drift absently through curves like an unattended tricycle until it rolled with finality into the lamppost.

At the moment of collision, he had felt a shadow of regret for not stopping the car sooner, and that shadow had balled itself up like a thick wool sock and lodged itself in the back of Stanton’s throat. In pinning the driver to the gray body of the car he had looked in the man’s eyes, cloudy with age and confusion, and then quickly looked past them to the metallic lake of the lamppost, filling and draining systematically to the rhythm of the siren light. The man’s plaid shirt hung vacant on his right side, swinging from the momentum of Stanton’s yank. He wore a beat up green hat with yellow stitching that read “WWII Veteran.” A gold eagle paused in mid-flight between the words. Stanton loosened his grip. The face of the driver took definition in the street that Stanton had not seen in the car. He felt the weight of the man’s absent arm as the sleeve brushed his own.

Stanton shifted again, touching the vents of the air conditioning and settling into the image of the night’s end, when he had brought the veteran to his home near Lake Buel in the squad car. He had walked the man inside, a firm grip on his left arm, only to find the tiny house dark and empty. Stanton had flicked on the living room lights, but the room remained dark, wood paneling on all four sides. It was sparsely furnished—a blue lazy boy, a bunny eared TV, and a coffee table were the main features. As Stanton turned to leave, his eye caught a glimpse of the flat-mouth that he knew was his former neighbor. The boy’s face stood out on the coffee table, depicted in a clipping from the local newspaper. WARE LOSES 19 YEAR OLD BOY IN IRAQ the title read above the boy’s brow. The veteran had disappeared down a hallway, disoriented, Stanton had left the house without saying a word.

Program

HAZ-MAT FIRE TRUCK with Fire Chief and Linscott family Dalmatian
Searles Middle School marching band (15 members)
Matt Townsend and his girlfriend in their 1961 Pontiac Bonneville convertible
Brownie Girl Scout Troop 47 (12 members)
Veterans of the SoCo Veterans Association (7 members)
Jefferson Memorial Regional High School marching band (31 members)
Cub Scout Den 14 (6 members)
Eagle Scouts (1 member)
Lewis Dunkerton in authentic garb of The Revolutionary War, pulling a replica antique spoke-wheel cannon on a rope: to be “fired” in front of Abram’s Antiques
Stanley the Jester on stilts
South County volunteer EMTs (9 members)
Ambulance
Second Haz-Mat Fire Truck
Bike and Rollerblade Parade (17 members)

Pink Skin Pinned Tight Behind the Ears

THE HISS OF THE HAZ-MAT drew the initial crowd to the street, and people continued to arrive late, seating themselves farther and farther down Main Street as if to urge the slow fire truck out of its coned boundaries. It was a better showing than Stanton anticipated.

Necks craned at Matt Townsend’s car while his girlfriend, small with pink skin pinned tight behind the ears, waved. Every ten feet or so she pulled a tiny fistful of tootsie rolls from a concealed fanny-pack to spew at the crowd. They fell short on the pavement, and the Brownies, marching just behind, stopped every few steps to scoop up the candies, brown butts in the air. On seeing his own daughter bend down, the American flag in her right hand dusting the double yellow line, Officer Stanton’s knee jerked.

The veterans marched with formally angled knees and elbows punctuating the beat of a drum line, faces unchanging in the confrontation of heat. A wash of sympathetic applause from the crowd greeted them. “Rat a tat tat rat a tat tat, bright uniform” an autistic adult stammered song lyrics next to the dumpster of Carr Hardware.

History

MARION KEEFNER, president of the chamber of commerce, claimed that a parade (in some sense of the word) had been a part of the Ware tradition since 1867. The first parade featured the newly returned and victorious soldiers of the Civil War (there were nine at the time). Although those were the only details on the event’s humble beginnings that Ms. Keefner could provide, she could give a list of every citizen of national notoriety that was born in the town (Gene Shallot and W E B Dubois were the headliners), along with a comprehensive account of the town’s first attempt to create an alternating current generator driven by the Housatonic River in 1886.

The parade route was exactly 1.1 miles. It was mostly flat with just a slight downward incline between Tunes Records and the town hall, and it included two left turns. The parade would start on Gilmore Avenue, turn down Main Street, proceed down Main from north to south, and then turn left onto Bridge Street shortly before Main merged into state route twenty-three. It traveled throughout the morning, starting north and working its way down the county. Russell Falls at 8:30, Hinsdale at 9:00, and the final showing was at 9:30 in Ware. The times had to be staggered because the middle school and high school were regional, and it was deemed important by Mr. Stevens, the band teacher of both the middle and high school (and some mothers) that each band member have the opportunity to play in their own hometown. And all three towns used, more or less, the same veterans: Three young men from Iraq, a very serious nurse from Desert Storm, and a myriad of old timers stuffed in dusty uniforms from Korea or WWII.

Angular Snowstorm

ANDY STOOD WITH his left side pressed against the lamppost on the corner of Castle and Main with a wooden sign by his feet, propped against the same structure. He had been there before the police, with a paper cup of coffee and two sesame bagels. His decision to stand on the corner at nine in the morning was independent of Independence Day. He hadn’t even remembered the parade until he took his usual position, and looking to the pavement before him, he realized the emptiness of the street. His sign read BRING THEM HOME NOW with the number 2106 taped to the bottom, indicating the number of American deaths since the war started.

Andy didn’t know how many days he’d spent on this corner—on the northern side of the Town Hall’s patchy lawn. He had a rough idea, of course, but no one had ever asked him that question prompting response, but he had considered it all the same. His theoretical reply, he had decided, would be given with earnest concern. He would say: well, the first time I stood out here this sign here—he would point to his silent, two-dimensional partner—said 34.

The first time he had stood on the town hall corner with his hands wrapped around the sign’s plywood edges he had written the number 34 on the back of April 12 and 13 of his wife’s Dave Barry rip-off calendar and taped it to the sign. This was his habit in the beginning: writing the numbers out completely on the flipside of calendar satire or on the clean side of botched printing jobs and phone-side doodles. But it had become troubling to see the numbers crushed in on themselves and mounting in the wire-mesh wastebasket in his office, sometimes soiled with vinegar or mustard from yesterday’s lunch. He had caught himself on several occasions during a pause from work, or in a moment of contemplation at his desk, staring at the trash basket through its grated wall, to the glimpses of the numbers peeping out at him. He had spent so much time wondering if the visible curve of a certain blue inky line belonged to a three or a five that he finally decided to make zero through nine on smaller pieces to reuse in the future. While a piece of him felt he was buying into the inevitability of the massacre by hand laminating the ten numbers and then gently trimming the edges over the same metal waste bin in an angular snow storm of clear contact paper, he also felt in control. Stanton would have understood the feeling, and the two men would have probably liked each other if the politics of small New England towns had allowed protesters and policemen to be friends.

Flesh, Undies, Stockings

BREEZY ST. CLAIR, voted by the Brownie Girl Scouts as official banner-holder, waited for the others on the courthouse lawn with a tattered collage of green and brown lying over her crossed legs. The vote had been quick and awkward, the other girls slowly raising their hands under the insisting stares of their mothers. In preparation of the parade, the Brownies had made paper American flags with a photocopy of Breezy’s brother’s military picture on one side, beneath the picture IN REMEMBERANCE was written. The library toner had been low the day they made them, making his face appear blurry and washed-away in some of the last copies. Breezy didn’t like to remember her brother that way—in a strange uniform with his flat mouth upturned so it almost looked like a frown. Breezy’s chin rested on an upturned knee while her fingernails dug at scabs the size of pencil erasers. The troop mom paced the parking lot nearby, a phone under her chin and an Emory board at her fingers.

Breezy’s shin was bleeding in two spots when the other girls arrived, pooled in three cars. The third, the Markham’s forest green minivan with a doublewide electronic door was easily recognizable. Breezy stood by staring, as Mrs. Markham wheeled Emily. She placed her calfskin mule on the chair-back, as to lessen a bumpy discharge. The two of them made Breezy want to press on the black bruises of her forearm. She watched them roll closer, a dusty cloud of chocolate brown: mother in a smart looking Bermuda short and sleeveless tank and daughter in the same shirtdress as Breezy. Mrs. Markham flashed a white smile at Breezy before depositing the loaded wheel chair directly in front of her, and moving forward to gather the other girls.

Breezy looked at the white flesh pressing through knee-high stockings. The sash was a bit twisted under Emily’s chin where a spot of drool had darkened the fabric to espresso, dripping toward her chest. Breezy wanted to straighten it, but she felt too fixed in her shoes to take the necessary step forward. She could see where Emily’s skirt had ridden up, showing stray dark hairs, half-hidden by pink cotton undies. “A little hot for stockings.” Breezy spun around, bringing herself eye-level to a circular badge that she had never seen depicted in the Brownie Badge Look Book: a blue X over a white V. She stumbled back letting the backs of her knees bump Emily’s. The man was older than her grandfather. His left wrist was wrapped sloppily in a dirty ace bandage. “The girl scouts are over there.” He had a shaky laugh that matched his shaky finger, pointing down the parking lot where Mrs. Markham was fastening someone’s sash. She watched the man’s vacant right sleeve sway like an empty windsock. Pinned between the veteran and wheelchair, Breezy made a wide step to her left and then shuffled backwards to get behind the wheels. She pushed Emily to the others with some difficulty, aware of when the veteran swiveled around to watch her retreat.

Mrs. Markham wiped her daughter’s chin as they joined the line up. She uncoiled the sash so the colorful badges were facing outwards and straightened the American flag pinned to the wheelchair’s backside, while Breezy unfolded the troop banner:
Brownie Girl Scouts of America
Troop 47

Those in Attendance

REGISTERED VOTERS: 298
Registered Independent voters: 56
Part-time town residents: 93
Catholics: 109
Blood relatives of Ritt Stanton: 64
Freemasons: 57
Mothers: 212
Senior citizens (>65): 199
Mechanics: 6
Blind Persons: 1
Level three sex offenders (registered): 2
Ordained rabbis: 3
Transsexuals: 4
Dogs: 33 (29 leashed)
High school dropouts: 33

Flat-Mouthed Boy

ANDY BEGAN CUTTING articles about the war out of the paper. Sometimes he tacked them to his office wall, letting the stares of uniformed men in sepia penetrate his concentration. He would sketch their linear smiles on post-it notes before throwing the clippings out.

For the three-year anniversary of the war’s start, Andy had advertised a candlelight vigil on several flyers throughout town—three or four on lampposts in his neighborhood (before they were ripped down) and two on the bulletin board of the coffee shop. He bought extra candles in advance. Andy was the only man at the vigil for almost two hours, a stack of green candles lying untouched next to his sign. A handful of women from The Haven co-housing community sang “We Shall Overcome” in a loop. A few teenagers with dreadlocks came later, on foot from the early college at Landon College.

It wasn’t until Andy was about to pack up, that a woman scurried up to him, her round shape shaded by the night, clutching a framed photograph to her belly. Andy recognized the photograph, the same flat-mouthed boy from his wall. The boy’s mother was a cafeteria worker at the Ware High School. Andy offered her a candle, but she didn’t want to stay.

Like a Toy from His Childhood

LEWIS DUNKERTON drew his spoke-wheeled cannon by the neck. A thick rope lead from his clenched fist to the base of the shaft like an animal on display. Recognizing the cannon like it was a toy from his childhood, the man at the dumpster dipped down the hill and ran to the street. A vein in the crowd tightened. A Memorial Day parade six weeks before and two thousand miles away in Superior, Colorado had included a gruesome misfire of a replica cannon, and the story made national news. “DECORATIVE CANNON EXPLODES: Man Loses Arm, Leg, and Eye.”

Spit and Blood

OFFICER STANTON EYED the parade from beyond the coned barrier. He leaned on his squad car, his eyes behind glasses. As the veterans approached, he slid the shades down his nose, squinting at the loose swinging sleeve of one elderly man in particular. The man’s awkward rhythm made Stanton’s throat swell, and he turned away.

Scanning the crowd for punk kids and illegal firecrackers, Stanton’s eyes locked with Andy’s. He remembered the pink flyers Andy had posted on lampposts in his neighborhood just days after the boy from Ware was killed in misfire. He spit on the pavement, thinking about the beads of blood that formed on his fingers when he had torn the flyers down.

The Toe of His Shoe

STANLEY THE JESTER’S fourth juggling pin was just airborne when the Brownies made the left turn down Bridge Street. The cyclists and rollerbladers were still idling on the lawn of the courthouse, making last minute adjustments to crepe paper weaved into bike spokes, when the eldest veteran, looking like a deflated hot air balloon in hunter green, fell to the pavement. He stumbled for two steps. The toe of his shoe caught the pavement on the second, causing his body to spiral as he fell. The body landed at an awkward side angle, imposing on his extended empty sleeve. It lay just so, teetering on hip-bone and ribcage for about three counts before he rolled a half-turn south, taken by the street’s slight incline. Not even the nurse from Desert Storm noticed. The others marched onward, turning the corner with angular precision in front of the town hall.

Stanley the Jester

THE MAN WAS only noticed when the first flautist of the Jefferson Memorial Marching Band planted a firm boot on his flaccid hand. Had the band been playing a bit softer, she most likely would have heard the crunch. Her misstep sent the flutes off, and then her scream caused the whole band to peter out altogether except one exceptionally deaf tuba player who cranked on even after the marching had come to a stumbling halt. From his vantage point on the town hall lawn, Andy saw the young flautist trip on her obstacle as it happened. At that point it was unclear to him what the obstacle actually was—his first thought was a remarkably large flour sack. It was only after she screamed that he grasped the gravity of the scene. Stanton, whose eyes were fixed on Andy’s face, caught on shortly thereafter. Chuckling to himself when Andy’s jaw went slack, Stanton didn’t look over his shoulder to the spectacle of the parade until after he saw Andy shout, seemingly addressing the members of the band.

But the message was stifled midway through the crowd as people turned their backs southward in anticipation of Lewis Martin and his cannon. It was minutes after the veteran had rolled prostrate on the pavement that the spoke-wheeled cannon exploded in all its replicated glory, and Lewis Martin took a deep red-coated bow. Those at the most northern end of Main Street wouldn’t understand the message until a full four minutes later. The actual ambulance, which had been decorated with fifty small American flags to be featured at the end of the parade along with the group of volunteer EMTs, could not be driven to the scene of the collapse until the whole street had been cleared away.

Stanton crossed the cones, his walkie-talkie pressed to his lips. Seeing the officer kneel at the elderly victim’s side, the drum major took it upon himself to throw off his hat and run through the parade to notify the ambulance. But he had neglected to tell Stanley the Jester, who took the jeering and honking from behind as a part of the planned spectacle. A confused crowd looked on as an EMT volunteer tapped the stilted man repeatedly on the hip to get his attention.

The sky opened, as if to urge on the stalled events, and people huddled under umbrellas and store awnings. Others ran to their cars.

If It Had Been Urgent

THE AMBULANCE switched on its lights and pushed forward to where the now damp veteran lay with Officer Stanton kneeling at his left shoulder. The crowd on the sidewalk shifted south in curiosity. The marching band had dispersed into the crowd walking away with their instruments in hand or (for those with larger charges) sitting back on the curb. People pooled onto the pavement where the band had been, mothers made half-hearted attempts at covering their children’s eyes. Their own fixed on the EMTs lifting the large man onto a stretcher—his eyes still open, eyeballs dampened by the morning rain. The ambulance took off silently, red lights cutting through the damp air. Well if it had been urgent they would have used the siren, the audience hummed. The mothers seemed reassured. Children hopped on skateboards and rolled away.

The veteran’s sudden removal looked void on the pavement. A dry spot was left where the body had been in the formless shape of a cloud. Andy watched from 20 feet away, meditating on the gray patch darkening to match rest of the slick black road. Stanley the Jester walked through, tracking clown-shoe prints, his stilts in hand. Nine or ten members of the bike parade sped through with their soggy crepe papers flapping behind them. They cheered and laughed as if the road had been blocked off exclusively for them. Soon Andy was one of only fifteen people left.

When the bikes cleared, Breezy St. Claire was the last child on the pavement. Her brown hair was stuck to her forehead and her sash hung like a wet necklace around her neck. Andy approached her on the street.
“Need a ride, Breezy?” she looked hesitant, eyeing Andy’s wet sign. “I know your mother.” Andy added. “Candace, right?” Breezy let out a slow nod. They walked together down Main Street, following the same course the parade had taken, turning on Bridge, approaching the cones. Andy tried to make small talk.
“Does your mother still work in the cafeteria?”

Weather

THEY WALKED PAST the scattered cones, dismantled by hurried policemen. Ritt Stanton was leaning on his car in a black rain slicker when Andy and Breezy passed in front.
“A lot of drunks on the road tonight.” Stanton spit out the half-warning with his mouth twisted to the left side of his face. Andy thought he might be sucking on dip.

“Happy Fourth.” He forced a smile in response.

“It’s a shame. Idn’t it?” Andy stopped mid-step and looked back to the officer. He felt sympathy in Stanton’s voice. He felt locked into the moment

“I don’t think there was anything we could have done, Ritt.” Andy’s eyes met the officer’s. Stanton’s fingers brushed the barrel of his gun.

“About the weather, though.” Stanton beckoned down Main Street toward the liquor store without shifting his eyes. “No barbeque.”