Flora & Ulysses

Flora was on the side of the highway.

There were, she had discovered, all kinds of ridiculous things strewn along the side of a road. Shoes, for one thing. And balled-up knee-high stockings. And polyester slacks, baby-blue ones, with a permanent crease. Did people undress as they drove down the road?

There were metal objects: hubcaps, a pair of rusty scissors, a sparkplug. And there were truly inexplicable things. For instance: a plastic banana, glowing a bright and unreal yellow in the dark. That one was interesting. Flora bent down to examine it more closely.

“What are you doing?” said William Spiver. He stopped, too, because she was attached to him and he was attached to her. Which is to say that William Spiver and Flora Belle Buckman were, unbelievably, still holding hands.

“I’m looking at a banana,” said Flora.

Tootie was marching ahead of them, holding the little shepherdess out in front of her and shouting Ulysses’s name.

William Spiver’s hand was getting kind of sweaty. Or maybe it was Flora’s hand that was getting sweaty. It was hard to say. William Spiver was still crying (silently) and Ulysses was still missing, and here they were walking along a highway behind an unlit lamp, stopping occasionally to look at knee-high stockings and plastic bananas.

It all must mean something.

But what?

Flora mentally flipped through every issue of The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto!, every issue of TERRIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN TO YOU! and The Criminal Element Is Among Us, that she had ever read. She searched for some kind of advice, acknowledgment, the tiniest clue about what to do in this situation.

She came up empty-handed. She was on her own.

She laughed.

“What are you laughing about?” said William Spiver.

Flora laughed louder. William Spiver laughed along with her.

“What’s so funny back there?” said Tootie.

“Everything,” said Flora.

“Wheeee,” said Tootie.

And then they were all laughing. Except for Mary Ann, who couldn’t laugh because she was inanimate. But even if she had been capable of laughing, she probably wouldn’t have done it. She just wasn’t that kind of lamp.

They were all still laughing when the temporarily blind William Spiver stepped on the cord of the little shepherdess and tripped.

And because he refused to let go of Flora’s hand (or did she refuse to let go of his?), Flora fell, too. She landed on top of William Spiver.

There was a crunch and then a tinkle.

“Oh, no,” said William Spiver, “my glasses! They’re broken!”

“For heaven’s sake, William,” said Tootie. “You don’t even need those glasses.”

Flora was so close to William Spiver that she could feel his heart beating wildly somewhere inside of him. She thought, I sure have felt a lot of hearts recently.

“Wait a minute,” said William Spiver. He held his head up. “Everyone be quiet. Shhh. What are those tiny pinpricks of light?”

Flora looked where William Spiver was looking. “Those are stars, William Spiver.”

“I can see the stars! I can see! Great-Aunt Tootie! Flora Belle, I can see!”

“It’s a miracle,” said Tootie.

“Or something,” said Flora.