Tribute (36 page)

They’d beaten the odds, won the prize.

Angie walked by—so young, fresh, pretty—with the gan gly guy in baggy shorts she’d introduced to Cilla as Zach. Angie stopped, and for a moment Cilla was stunned to realize how much she wished she was close enough to hear the quick, animated conversation. Then with her hand resting on her mother’s shoulder, Angie leaned down to kiss her father’s head before moving on.

That said it all, Cilla decided. They were a unit. Angie would go back to college in the fall. She might move a thousand miles away at any point in her life. And still, they would always be a unit.

Deliberately, she looked away.

“I think I’ll get a beer,” she said to Ford. “Do you want one?”

“No, I’m good. I’ll get it for you.”

She nudged him back as he started to rise. “I can get it.”

She wandered off to the huge galvanized bucket filled with ice and bottles and cans. She didn’t particularly want a beer, but figured she was stuck now. She fished one out and, thinking of it as a prop, crossed over to where Matt manned the grill.

“Do you ever get a break?” she asked him.

“Had a couple. People come and go all day, that’s how it is at these things. Gotta keep it smoking.”

His little boy raced up, wrapped his arms around Matt’s leg, chattering in a toddlerese Cilla was incapable of interpreting. Matt, however, appeared to be fluent. “Let’s see the proof.”

Eyes wide, the boy pulled up his shirt to expose his belly. Matt poked at it, nodding. “Okay then, go tell Grandma.”

When the boy raced off again, Matt caught Cilla’s puzzled expression. “He said he finished his hot dog and could he have a big, giant piece of Grandma’s cake.”

“I didn’t realize you were bilingual.”

“I have many skills.” As if to prove it, he flipped a trio of burgers expertly. “Speaking of skills, Ford told me you ran some of the living room trim this morning.”

“Yeah. It looks, if I must say—and I do—freaking awesome. Is that your shop?” She gestured with the beer to the cedar building at the rear of the property.

“Yeah. Want to see?”

“You know I do, but we’ll take the tour another time.”

“Where are you going to put yours?”

“Can’t decide. I’m debating between putting up something from scratch or refitting part of the existing barn. The barn option’s more practical.”

“But it sure is fun to build from the ground up.”

“I never have, so it’s tempting. How many square feet do you figure?” she continued, and fell into the comfortable, familiar rhythm of shoptalk.

As evening drifted in, people began the short pilgrimage to the park. They crowded the quiet side street, carting lawn chairs, coolers, blankets, babies and toddlers. As they approached, the bright, brassy sound of horns welcomed them.

“Sousa marches,” Ford said, “as advertised.” He shifted the pair of folding chairs he had under his arm while Cilla led Spock on a leash. “You having fun?”

“Yes. Matt and Josie put on quite a cookout.”

“You looked a little lost back there, just for a couple minutes.”

“Did I?”

“When we were chowing down. Before you got up to get a beer, and I lost you to Matt and Tool Time Talk.”

“Probably too much pasta salad. I’m having a really good time. It’s my first annual Shenandoah Valley backyard July Fourth extravaganza. So far, it’s great.”

The park spread beneath the mountains, and the mountains were hazed with heat so the air seemed to ripple over them like water. Hundreds of people scattered through the park, sprawling over its greens. Concession stands did a bustling business under the shade of their awnings, in offerings of country ham sandwiches, sloppy joes, funnel cakes, soft drinks. Cilla caught the scents of grease and sugar, grass and sunscreen.

Over loudspeakers came a whine of static, then the echoey announcement that the pie-eating contest would begin in thirty minutes in front of the north pavilion.

“I mentioned the pie-eating contest, right?”

“Yes, and four-time champ Big John Porter.”

“Disgusting. We don’t want to miss it. Let’s grab a square of grass, stake our claim.” Stopping, Ford began to scan. “We need to spread out some, save room for Matt and Josie and Sam. Oh hey, Brian’s already homesteaded. The girl he’s with is Missy.”

“Yes, I met her.”

“You met half the county this afternoon.” He slanted Cilla a look. “Nobody expects you to remember names.”

“Missy Burke, insurance adjuster, divorced, no kids. Right now she’s talking to Tom and Dana Anderson, who own a small art gallery in the Village. And Shanna’s strolling over with Bill—nobody mentioned his last name—a photographer.”

“I stand corrected.”

“Schmoozing used to be a way of life.”

They’d barely set up, exchanged more than a few words with their companions, before Ford dragged her off to the pie ea ting contest.

A field of twenty-five contestants sat at the ready, white plastic bibs tied around their necks. They ranged from kids to grandpas, with the smart money on Big—an easy two-fifty big—John Porter.

At the signal, twenty-five faces dropped forward into crust and blueberry filling. A laugh burst straight out of her, drowned away in the shouts and cheers.

“Well, God! That
is
disgusting.”

“Yet entertaining. Man, he’s going to do it again! Big John!” Ford shouted, and began to chant it. The crowd picked up the rhythm, erupting with applause as Big John lifted his wide, purple-smeared face.

“Undefeated,” Ford said when Porter was pronounced the winner. “The guy can’t be beat. He’s the Superman of pie-eaters. Okay, there’s the raffle in the south pavilion. Let’s go buy some chances on the ugliest, most useless prize.”

They settled, after considerable debate, on a plastic rooster wall clock in vibrant red. Target selected, Ford moved to ticket sales. “Hi, Mrs. Morrow. Raking it in?”

“We’re doing well this year. I smell record breaker. Hello, Cilla. Don’t you look gorgeous? Enjoying yourself?”

“Very much.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I imagine it’s a little tame and countrified compared to the way you usually spend your holiday, but I think we put on a nice event. Now, how much can I squeeze you for? I mean . . .” Cathy gave an exaggerated flutter of lashes. “How many tickets would you like?”

“Going for twenty.”

“Each,” Cilla said and pulled out a bill of her own.

“That’s what I like to hear!” Cathy counted them off, tore off their stubs. “Good luck. And just in time. We’ll start announcing prizewinners over the loudspeaker starting in about twenty minutes. Ford, if you see your mama, tell her to hunt me up. I want to talk to her about . . .”

Cilla tuned out the conversation when she saw Hennessy staring at her from the other side of the pavilion. The bitter points of his hate scraped over her skin. Beside him stood a small woman, with tired eyes in a tired face. She tugged at his arm, but he remained rigid.

The heat went out of the day, the light, the color. Hate, Cilla thought, strips away joy. But she wouldn’t turn away from it, refused to allow herself to turn away.

So it was he who turned, who finally bent to his wife’s pleas to stride away from the pavilion across the summer green grass.

She said nothing to Ford. The day would not be spoiled. She soothed the throat the silent encounter had dried to burning with lemonade, wandered through the crowd as the sun began to dip toward the western peaks.

She talked, laughed. She won the rooster wall clock. And the tension drained away. As the sky darkened, Sam climbed up into Ford’s lap to hold a strange, excited conversation.

“How do you know what he’s saying?” Cilla demanded.

“It’s similar to Klingon.”

They announced “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the crowd rose. Beside her, Ford hitched the boy on his hip. Around her, under an indigo sky, with the flicker of glow tubes and fireflies in the dark, mixed voices swelled. On impulse, out of sudden need, she took Ford’s hand, holding on until the last note died away.

Moments after they took their seats again, the first boom exploded. On the sound Sam leaped out of Ford’s lap and into his father’s. And Spock leaped off the ground and into Ford’s.

Safe, Cilla thought, while lights shattered indigo. Where they knew they’d always be safe.

 

 

“GOOD?” Ford asked as they drove down the quiet roads toward home.

“Very good.” Amazingly good, she realized. “Beginning, middle and end.”

“What are you going to do with that thing?” He glanced down at the clock.

“Thing?” Cilla cradled the rooster in her arms. “Is that any way to speak about our child?” She patted it gently. “I’m thinking the barn. I could use a clock out there, and this is pretty appropriate. And I like having a memento from my first annual Fourth. It’ll be way too late in the year for a cookout when my place is done. But after today, I think I’m going to plan a party. A big, sprawling, open-house-type thing. Fire in the hearth, platters of food, flowers and candles. I’d like to see what it’s like to have the house filled with people who aren’t working on it.”

She stretched out her legs. “But tonight, I’m partied and festived out. It’ll be nice to get home to the quiet.”

“Almost there.”

“Want to share the quiet with me?”

“I had that in mind.”

They glanced at each other as he turned into her drive. When he looked back, the headlights flashed over the red maple. “What’s that hanging—”

“My truck!” She reared forward, gripping the dash. “Oh, goddamn it, son of a bitch. Stop! Stop!”

She was already yanking off her seat belt, shoving at the door before he’d come to a complete stop behind her truck.

Loose clumps of broken safety glass hung in the back window. More sparkled in the gravel, crunching under her feet as she ran.

Ford had his phone out, punching in nine-one-one. “Wait. Cilla, just wait.”

“Every window. He smashed every window.”

Cannonball holes gaped in the windshield, erupted into mad spiderwebs of shattered glass. As the cold rage choked her, she saw her headlights had been smashed, her grille battered.

“A lot of good the alarm did me.” She could have wept. She could have screamed. “A lot of damn good.”

“We’re going to go in, check the alarm. I’m going to check the house, then you’re going to stay inside.”

“It’s too much, Ford. It’s just too damn much. Vicious, vindictive,
insane
. The crazy old bastard needs to be locked up.”

“Hennessy? He’s out of town.”

“He’s not. I saw him tonight, at the park. He’s back. And I swear to God if he could’ve used the bat or pipe or whatever he used here on me then and there, he would have.”

She whirled around, riding on the fury. And saw in the car’s headlights what Ford had seen hanging from a branch of her pretty red maple.

Ford grabbed her arm when she started forward. “Let’s go in. We’ll wait for the cops.”

“No.” She shook off his hand, crossed from gravel to grass.

She’d been six, Cilla recalled, when they marketed that particular doll. She wore her hair—a sunny blond that hadn’t yet darkened—in a pair of ponytails tied with pink ribbons above her ears. The ribbon sashing the pink-and-white gingham dress matched. Lace frothed at the white anklets above the glossy patent leather of her Mary Janes.

Her smile was as sunny as her hair, as sweet as the pink ribbons.

He’d fashioned the noose out of clothesline, she noted. A careful and precise job, so that the doll hung in horrible effigy. Just above the ribbon sash, the cardboard placard read: WHORE.

“Optional accessories—sold separately—for this one included a scale model tea set. It was one of my favorites.” She turned away, picked up a whining, quivering Spock to hug.

“You’re right. We should go inside, check the house just in case.”

“Give me the keys. I want you to wait on the veranda. Please.”

A polite word, Cilla thought. How odd to hear the absolute authority under the courtesy. “We know he’s not in there.”

“Then it’s no problem for you to wait out on the veranda.” To close the issue, he simply opened her purse, pulled out the keys.

“Ford—”

“Wait out here.”

The fact that he left the door open told Cilla he had no doubt she’d do what he ordered. With a shrug, she stepped over to the rail, nuzzling Spock before she set him down. No one had been in the house, so there was no harm in waiting. And no point in arguing about it.

Besides, from here she could stare at her truck, brood over the state of it. Wallow in the brooding. She’d felt so damn
good
the day she bought that truck, so full of anticipation when she loaded it up for her trip east.

The first steps toward her dream.

“Everything’s okay,” Ford said from behind her.

“It’s really not, is it?” Some part of her, some bitchy, miserable part of her, wanted to shrug off the comforting hands he laid on her shoulders. But she stopped herself.

“Do you know how it felt to me today? Like I was in a movie. I don’t mean that in a bad way, just the opposite. Little slices and scenes of a movie I actually wanted to be part of. Not quite there yet, still pretty new on the set. But starting to feel . . . really feel comfortable in my skin.”

She drew in a long breath, let it out slowly. “And now, this is reality. Broken glass. But the odd thing, the really odd thing. That was me today. It was me. And this? Whatever this is directed at? That’s the image, that’s the mirage. The smoke and mirrors.”

The air sat hot and still while the smog lay over it like a smudge from a sweaty finger. Graves, housing stars and mortals alike, spread, cold slices in the green. And all the flowers, blooming tears shed by the living for the dead.