Chapter 12

On holidays, like Memorial Day and Fourth of July, the Bluebird Diner closed early. It opened for the breakfast shift and the lunch crowd and any late stragglers. Then they would call it a day. It wasn’t just a way to give the help a day off to enjoy the town festivities. There was little business to do. Most people had other plans with picnics or backyard grilling.

It was a lot easier to make one long shift for the truncated work day instead of two short ones. Bonnie asked for the day off, so Roxie worked from six until two. She left a little before the diner closed, leaving Millie and Stan to finish out the slow day. She got home a little while later and planned to spend the rest of the afternoon with her Aunt Flora.

The summer heat wave had let up some. Even with the relief in the weather she thought her aunt looked a little tired. Flora was usually excited on holidays. She didn’t even ask Roxie what young bachelor planned to take her to the fireworks, and that had always been the norm.

The honest answer would have been Junior, of course. Roxie wouldn’t have upset the older woman with the true answer. She would have evaded it, as always. It wasn’t that Roxie was hoping that Junior would ask her.

The incident at the diner a few days before had her thinking. It was when Fred Sherman had teased her—possibly even fending off a challenge from Cal Tucker over it. Roxie knew it was play acting. Still, it was nice to dream nice dreams.

So, she settled for her usual unofficial steady date with Cal’s brother. She felt herself living in two worlds. One was pretty and nice—just the one Aunt Flora had swimming in her imagination. The other, where she always found herself when all was said and done, was the real world. She shelved the pleasure of the first in a corner of her mind and accepted reality.

Of course, there was the interlude between that late afternoon and sundown when the fireworks started. She looked at her aunt lounging on the front-porch chaise. Roxie had to look twice to tell if Flora was dreaming or awake. If she napped in the afternoon she might want to tag along to the fireworks, and Roxie had other plans.

“Want to drive out to the Dairy Freeze and get an ice cream?” Roxie offered.

“It seems like such a bother for just for an ice cream,” Flora replied. “It would probably be nice, of course. It’s just that I’m so comfortable right here on the porch.

I can relax and watch all the traffic pass by at the same time. Sometimes I recognize the people in the cars. It’s a rather pleasant way to spend a hot afternoon. I always wonder where everyone’s going. I think I’ll just do that.”

Roxie looked at her aunt settling deeper into the chaise. Soon she would be in mid-nap, in full view of any car that happened to pass by and she wouldn’t even know it. Fourth of July only came once a year; it was such a shame to waste it sleeping on the porch. She tried again.

“Oh c’mon, Auntie. It’s such a nice day. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see someone we know when we get there.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

“Then, I would have to get dressed better and put on my face,” Flora yawned. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Roxie knew better than to argue any more. She stood looking out at the road, just as her aunt. She wondered what the people saw as they drove past the house.

“They probably don’t even notice us,” she thought.

The lawn looked straggly. It wasn’t much of a lawn. There were a lot of weeds and the snowplow threw slush laden with salt on some parts of it during winter, so nothing much would grow on those spots at all. There was no doubt, however, that the yard looked a hundred times better after it was mowed. She decided to do exactly that.

She ran up the stairs to her room and threw off her waitress uniform and put on her jeans and a tee shirt. She bounded down the stairs and out the back door. The mower was there. She hoped it would start. She filled the tank with gasoline and pushed it out to the front yard.

Flora was still ensconced on the front-porch chaise. She looked the same as when Roxie left her, except a little more drowsy.

“I don’t know why you’re bothering with that on a holiday.”

Roxie heard her but didn’t answer. She thought about explaining, but didn’t really know the answer so she kept silent. She primed the motor and pulled the cord. The motor coughed.

“The noise won’t bother you, will it, Auntie? The front won’t take long and then I’ll go mow the back and be out of your way.”

Roxie didn’t wait for the answer. She pulled the starter cord again and the ignition caught. Roxie let it run for a half minute to warm up, and then began to mow around the perimeter of the yard.

The job was more than Roxie had bargained for. In the hot weather of late June and early July the weeds had taken over. They were thick and hard to get to, especially in the drainage ditch that ran along the road in front of the house. At first Roxie questioned if she should keep at it with the broken down old lawn mower. She considered asking Junior to come and do it—for a favor to be named later, of course.

“Who knows, maybe I could get Cal to do it.”

The thought progression led her to remember that she should have mounted the Flag in the holder that was attached to the porch, in honor of the Fourth. It seemed so disrespectful to put up the Flag in such a crummy-looking yard. She leaned into the mower with renewed determination.

It took over an hour for her to finish the front. She pushed on to the back. She was trying to figure out what had come over her. She was hot and sweaty, but felt good, somehow. She took a look behind her. The mowed grass made a wake in her path.

She figured out that she was doing it because it would make her feel better to know that anonymous people passing by her house would think more of her for having done it. The thought crossed her mind that Junior would never understand if she tried to explain it to him, while Cal would understand exactly why she’d taken on the task.

She finished the back yard. She had been tired when she arrived home from her long shift at the diner, and the mowing had really taken out the last of what she had. She promised herself to rake the grass the next day.

She burrowed through the front room closet to find their American Flag, which hadn’t seen the light of day in at least two years. She placed it in the holder affixed to the front porch. There was only a slight hint of a breeze, so the Flag swayed back and forth as if it was waiting for something. Watching it made Roxie feel quite different and she liked what she was feeling.

“Well, at least I count for something.”

She wondered if her aunt was still dozing.

“Auntie, I made some lemonade.”

Her aunt shook herself awake. Roxie figured that the older woman had been dozing the whole time.

She set a full glass on a small table next to the chaise for her aunt and another alongside it for herself. There was a wicker chair alongside the chaise and she fell into it. She picked up the glass and took a sip. She stroked it along her neck and jaw, and even across her forehead and cheeks. It was cold from the ice cubes in the lemonade and wet with condensation. It felt good, and the lemonade was tart and sweet at the same time.

“That was very nice of you, dear,” her aunt attested after drinking some of the lemonade. She set the glass down. “You should have asked. I could have made it.”

“I just felt like doin’ it,” she answered. “I think I’ll sit here a while with you. That mowing was hard work.”

Flora leaned forward so she could see the whole yard and she glanced at the nearly-forgotten Flag. She looked at Roxie. Roxie shrugged and drank some more.

“Now you’ll be all tired out. I’m sure you have a date tonight.”

“I’ll just rest a little while,” Roxie answered. “I thought it would be nice if you and I could go to the fireworks together. I already called my date and told him I’d meet him later.”

Indeed, she’d called Junior while she was making the lemonade. It suited Junior. He answered that he didn’t really care about the fireworks—he just agreed to take Roxie because he figured she’d pout all night if she didn’t get to see them. He told her to meet him at the Dew Drop when the show was over.

“We can get something to eat at the park,” Roxie continued. “They’ll have a hot dog stand and an ice cream stand for sure.”

Flora smiled and giggled a little. She put her hand over her mouth to hide it.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Didn’t you have plans?”

“I’ve got new plans now, Auntie.”

Flora and Roxie sat on a blanket they spread out on the grass in the outfield of the town baseball field. There were a lot of people all around them. Roxie knew some of them. Many were men she knew from the breakfast shift at the Diner with their families in tow.

They acted a lot more formal in the unfamiliar setting. Everyone was polite enough, of course. They were careful not to look too friendly with their wives scrutinizing whomever they spoke to that they did not know. Roxie noticed; she was used to it. Flora didn’t seem to realize it.

They were all waiting for the fireworks to begin. It wasn’t yet dark enough. Roxie and Flora were still working on the hot dogs and soft drinks they’d bought at the stand the Volunteer Fire Company ran to raise money for its social agenda. Flora was busy balancing her cup of soft drink and eating her hot dog at the same time. It wasn’t a big challenge for Roxie; she had a lot of practice, after all.

“We should have picked up one of those disposable trays,” she said to her aunt. “Do you want me to go up there and get one?”

“It’s alright, dear,” Flora replied. “I’ll manage. I’m almost finished with my hot dog. After that I’ll just have my drink to worry about.”

Roxie shrugged, figuring what her aunt said was true enough. At the same time she would have gladly gone for the cardboard tray. She wouldn’t have been so nervous waiting for Flora to spill her drink, and it would have been a chance to walk around by herself. It wasn’t that she regretted bringing her aunt to the festivities. She knew when it was all said and done she would be glad for making the choice. Flora didn’t get out much and the excursion made her happy. She knew if she was with Junior they would have been in the beer tent getting a head start for their return to the Dew Drop Inn.

She sighed and looked around. She was in unfamiliar territory among the non-beer tent crowd. It seemed that most of the town was camped on blankets in that outfield. It occurred to her that despite everyone milling around, there seemed to be little interplay between the occupants of one blanket to those of another.

Sure, the teenagers flitted around the field like the gnats and mosquitoes that the people kept shooing away. They weren’t old enough to have learned the lessons that made the older people seek out their own small territories and keep to themselves. Roxie thought back to her younger days—before she came of age—that not much had changed.

She nearly missed him in the dusk; she caught sight of Cal Tucker. He was stationed in the general area of Home Plate, talking with Fred Sherman and Homer Barlow. It was a wise place for politicians to stand, because everyone who wished to get a place on the baseball field passed by that spot. They said hello to nearly everyone and shook every hand they could grab. Homer Barlow seemed to do it best, but Fred and Cal held their own.

“I hope Auntie doesn’t catch sight of Cal. She’ll start up about him all over again.”

Roxie noticed that neither Fred nor Cal had a date. For Cal’s part, Roxie could have guessed it. Fred Sherman’s fib of a few days before—and Cal’s accompanying one by his silence—came back to her. She thought about Junior, probably already at the Dew Drop waiting for her.

“Well, he’s not really waiting for me. He’s just there available for me to meet up with him.”

She scolded herself for letting Fred’s wise-guy joke lure her into a state of discontent. Maybe Junior was an option she settled for, and Junior settled for her. Cal had no options to settle for at all, so Roxie considered herself not all that unlucky. She chuckled.

“Their trouble is that they don’t know how to howl at the moon.”

She didn’t mean to say it out loud. Flora heard her and wheeled around.

“What was that, dear?” she asked. “What about the moon?”

“Oh, it’s nothing; just a saying Auntie.”

“But it is something,” her aunt insisted. “Why would you want to howl at the moon?”

“For fun, I guess,” Roxie answered. “Just to have fun with no purpose attached to it.”

“But the moon can’t howl back,” her aunt argued. “Why not find something to enjoy that has a purpose.”

Roxie took a deep breath, ready to argue back. She caught her words as they came out of her mouth, afraid that they wouldn’t stand a challenge.

“I don’t know, Auntie. I really don’t know. Like I said, it’s just a saying.”

There was a full moon on that Fourth of July. Roxie watched it struggle up from the grasp of the horizon, chasing away the final minutes of daylight. It provided all the light to be found. Roxie watched it hover over them, beyond the left field fence and over the railroad tracks behind it. It dared all those assembled on the field to howl. No one did. It stayed in the sky and waited.

Without ado, the first rocket shot into the sky. It burst against the canvas of the taunting moon. It was a red one—a run of the mill variety to get things started. Roxie watched the little sparkles dissolve. Without warning a secondary charge exploded with great force and rocked the crowd. Roxie felt the energy brush her face as she looked skyward. The boom created a murmuring in the crowd; Aunt Flora was startled and grasped Roxie’s hand. Then it was gone and the crowd waited for the next display.

Another rocket hurtled into the night, exploding in green against the moon. As one would have predicted, the ground shook with the explosion of the secondary charge and Flora squeezed Roxie’s hand once more. She felt it, but unlike Flora, the big noise didn’t impress her. She thought about Junior, surely already ensconced at the Dew Drop Inn. Maybe he was thinking about her—maybe not—as he gambled his share of the milk check on his skills at nine-ball.

“Red and green—stop and go and then a big noise just before coming to nothing. Haven’t I seen that before?”

Another rocket burst in the sky. This one had many colors, followed by the predicable boom. It was a little more elaborate than those before it but Roxie wasn’t impressed. She thought she saw a face on the ivory moon disk and she imagined that it was laughing at her.

She realized the futility in expecting much more from the fireworks display than a pleasant passage of time. She thought that she should take or leave it, but couldn’t tear herself away. She blamed Flora’s clutching hand holding her in place, but knew that it was an excuse.

A new rocket began its ascent. It traveled much slower than those that had preceded it, and didn’t climb as high. Its first burst of white sparkles was small; the crowd almost expected a malfunction. Just as Roxie was about to disregard it another, larger shower of red exploded from the aerial source—and then another of green and a final of gold.

Roxie felt the airborne flecks of color reflect off her face as they seemed to linger longer in the air than the noisier variety. They crackled as they disappeared, but never shook the crowd with a loud explosion.

“I hate that kind; I wish they would just do the regular ones,” she heard a lone voice speak for the crowd.

It was the voice of a faceless woman. It was a harsh voice; the kind that scoffed at anything new or out of the ordinary. The rest of the people were silent. They gave over their right to speak for themselves and waited for the next display.

Roxie didn’t agree. She thought it was the best one she’d seen so far. It was pretty and mysterious at the same time. The memory of it was still with her and she liked it. She reckoned more had been done to create that sparkling fountain of fire and light than all the noisy crowd-pleasers. As the last specks of color extinguished as they floated toward earth she noticed that the moon had moved behind a cloud. Its taunting smile ceased for the moment.

Roxie thought again, but this time of Cal. Somehow, the more pleasing display had made her shift her attention. It was deep, like Cal was, and she wondered if her pondering would ever her allow her to understand.

Her dreaming was cut short by the abrupt ascendancy of a new rocket. It left a trail of bright sparks as it rose high. The crowd cheered because they knew in advance that it was going to be one of those noisy ones that they liked so much.

Roxie and Flora watched the rest of the show. It lasted about forty-five minutes. After the grand finale the crowd cheered and then rose as a unit and made for their cars. The two women joined the slow procession over the infield and home plate. The show was over until the next year. The politicians who stood on home plate were gone.

Roxie carried their rolled-up blanket and Flora had their used plates and cups from the hot dogs and soft drinks.

“You were nice to bring me to the fireworks,” her aunt said to her as they made their inexorable shuffle to the parking lot in the midst of the crowd. “You could have left me home and gone with your friends.”

“There’s plenty of time left for that,” she answered. It was just ten o’clock. “I had fun coming to the fireworks with you. It’s nice that we could do it.”

Flora didn’t answer; Roxie knew what she was thinking and she was glad for having fought off the urge to leave her aunt in the lonely house on the Fourth of July in exchange for a few more hours with Junior. She knew well enough that he would be at the Dew Drop when she got there later.

They climbed into Roxie’s car at last. She started it and looked for an opening to back out of her space and blend into traffic.

“It’s been more than a few years since I’ve been to the fireworks,” Flora said as Roxie waited for her chance.

“How did you like them?” Roxie asked.

“They were fine. There was more to them than in past years. There were some kinds that I’d never seen before. It was a much bigger show than the old days.”