Ordinary Grace

17

There was a parade that afternoon as there was every Fourth of July. The high school band marched in their braided uniforms and so did members of the VFW, many of them dressed in the military finery in which they’d served. The firemen drove their trucks, and the mayor and other city politicians rode in cars and waved, and there were flatbeds made into floats and hauled behind pickups cleaned and waxed for the day, and the Highsteppers rode their beribboned show horses, and even kids joined in the parade, pulling their pets or small siblings behind them in Radio Flyer wagons decked out in crepe of red, white, and blue. The procession marched along Main Street between cheering throngs and turned at Luther Avenue and continued a quarter mile to Luther Park which was full of vendors selling cotton candy and hot dogs and bratwurst and mini-donuts and helium-filled balloons. Every organization in town seemed to have a table where they hawked homemade pickles or baked goods or beautifully crocheted antimacassars and pot holders. There were games with prizes and there were polka bands and a temporary dance floor that had been laid out on the grass. There were shows in the band shell that included local musicians and storytellers and performers of odd feats. And there was a beer tent courtesy of the Brandt brewery.

Jake and I watched the parade and with some of the money we’d earned mowing my grandfather’s lawn we bought stuff to eat and tried our hands at ring toss and knocking down milk bottles in hopes of winning a stuffed toy that we really didn’t want. We ran into Danny O’Keefe and he joined us. When the sun dropped from the sky and evening settled over the park the crowd drifted to the band shell behind which had been set the fireworks for a huge display that would follow the performance of Ariel’s chorale and crown the day. All the folding chairs were occupied by the time Jake and Danny and I arrived and we leaned against the trunk of a big elm on the periphery but still with a good view. Stage lights came on and the mayor stepped to a podium and gave a brief speech and then a girl named Cindy Westrom came up to read an essay about freedom that she’d written for a contest sponsored by the VFW and that had won her twenty-five dollars. I said I had to go to the bathroom and left Jake and Danny and headed toward the portable toilets that had been set up near the beer tent.

I waited in a short line and while I stood there I saw Morris Engdahl come out of the tent. He was alone and sipping his beer, eyeing the crowd over the lip of the cup as if he expected to fight us all. I turned my back and a moment later a toilet became free and I shot for it. I took care of business and even though it smelled pretty bad in there I lingered inside for a couple of minutes more to give Engdahl a chance to move on. When I stepped out a man shoved past me into the toilet dragging a kid of about five who was holding his crotch in desperation. I looked around carefully, relieved to find no sign at all of Morris Engdahl.

Back at the elm tree I found that Jake and Danny had been joined by Warren Redstone. They weren’t talking, just standing there together staring at the stage of the band shell where a girl in a drum majorette outfit was twirling a baton that had flames at both ends. It was a pretty good trick and when I joined the group I watched the girl too and didn’t feel like I needed to say anything. The flaming baton was followed by a banjo player who plucked out a rousing rendition of Yankee Doodle while another guy tap-danced like crazy. We all applauded wildly. Then a woman who taught drama at the high school got up and read the whole Declaration of Independence and right in the middle of it someone grabbed my arm and swung me around and I found myself staring into the angry besotted eyes of Morris Engdahl.

“I knew I’d find you, you little shithole,” he said and tried to pull me into the gathering dark beyond the edge of the crowd.

A huge hand shot out and wrenched Engdahl’s grip from my arm and Warren Redstone stepped between Engdahl and me. He said, “Are you the kind of man who fights only boys? Or would you be interested in fighting a man?”

Danny’s great-uncle may have been old but he was tall and powerful looking and he glared down at Morris Engdahl with a look hard and pointed enough to split rocks. Engdahl took a step back as if he’d already been struck a blow and he stared up into Redstone’s dark unblinking eyes and it was clear that he had nothing in him to match the old man’s grit. He said, “This is between me and the kid.”

“No, I’m between you and the kid. You want to get to the kid, you come through me.”

For a moment I thought Engdahl might do something stupid. At least it seemed to me that taking on Warren Redstone would be stupid. But Engdahl’s cowardice was greater than his stupidity. He backed up a few steps and pointed a finger at me. “Dead,” he said. “You’re dead.” Then he turned and vanished into the dark in which he’d sought to drag me.

Redstone watched him go. “A friend?” he said.

“He wouldn’t let us swim in the quarry,” I replied, “so I shoved him in. Pissed him off pretty good.”

“You shoved him in?” Redstone looked at Danny. “You were there?”

“Yes, sir,” Danny said.

He looked me over again, differently this time. “Drum,” he said as if my name pleased him. “You sure you don’t have any Sioux in you?”

Fifty yards away the singers began to mount the stage of the band shell and take their positions on the risers. I didn’t do an exact count but there were easily three dozen. The crowd started to quiet and a few seconds later my mother led Emil Brandt by the hand up the steps to the grand piano placed there for him. This was a true rarity, Emil Brandt in a public performance, and the crowd broke into applause. He kept the scarred side of his face turned away from the audience and seated himself at the piano and my mother went to the center of the stage and everything grew quiet. I could still hear people laughing faintly at the food stands and someone shouting along Luther Avenue and from the Flats in the distance the howl of a horn as a train approached the crossing on Tyler Street but my mother’s voice rose above them all.

“Thank you for turning out today to celebrate our nation’s birth. The history of this country has been written with the blood of patriots and the sweat of farmers and laborers and men and women no different from all of us here this evening. It began with a dream conceived by our forefathers, a dream every bit as alive and vibrant and promising today as it was to those brave patriots one hundred and eighty-five years ago. To celebrate that dream and the nation built upon it, my daughter Ariel has composed a chorale titled The Freedom Road, which the New Bremen Town Singers, accompanied by our town’s world-famous composer and piano virtuoso Emil Brandt, are proud to perform for you for the first time anywhere this evening.”

My mother turned to her singers and raised her hands and held them poised a moment, then called out to Brandt, “Now, Emil.” The chorale began with Brandt doing a slow gallop of his fingers on the keyboard that gradually increased in tempo until it was a furious flight and the singers chimed in with the urgent cry, “To arms, to arms!” Ariel’s chorale covered the history of the nation from the Revolution through the Korean conflict and celebrated the pioneers and soldiers and visionaries who created a nation from, as Ariel had written for the chorus, the raw dirt of God’s imagination. My mother conducted with dramatic flourish and the music was electric and Brandt on the piano was inspired and the voices of the singers pouring from the white cup of that band shell made the whole thing intoxicating. It lasted twelve minutes and when it was finished the audience went crazy. They stood and applauded and added their cheers and whistles and the sound was like thunder off canyon walls. My mother signaled to Ariel who’d been standing with my father and Karl at the bottom step of the band shell. Ariel climbed the steps and took Emil Brandt’s hand to lead him to the center of the stage but he pulled back and remained seated at the piano with his smooth cheek to the audience and he spoke something into Ariel’s ear and she went on without him and stood with my mother and together they took their bows. That evening Ariel had worn a beautiful red dress. She wore a gold heart-shaped locket inset with mother-of-pearl and a mother-of-pearl barrette, both of which were heirlooms. She wore a gold watch that had been a graduation gift from my parents. And at that moment she wore a smile that could have been seen from the moon. I thought my sister must be the most special person on earth and I knew absolutely she was destined for greatness.

Warren Redstone touched my arm. “That girl’s name is Drum,” he said. “Any relation?”

“My sister,” I called above the din.

He looked at her keenly and nodded. “Pretty enough to be Sioux,” he said.

After the fireworks had ended we drifted home, Jake and I. All over New Bremen the celebration continued and the sky was alive with burning blooms of color and from the dark down the cross streets came the rattle of strings of firecrackers. Gus’s motorcycle was gone and I suspected he would finish celebrating Independence Day in a bar. The light in my father’s church office was on and his windows were closed and the sound of Tchaikovsky bled through the glass. The Packard was not in the garage and I knew that my mother was at a post-chorale celebration with Ariel and Brandt and the New Bremen Town Singers and would not be home until late.

We’d been instructed about our bedtime and we got into our pajamas and hit the sack at ten-thirty. Through the screen of our bedroom window I listened as the sounds died to an occasional distant pop or crackle and I heard my father return from the church and much later through the dim veil of sleep I dreamed the sound of the Packard crushing gravel in our drive and a car door slamming closed.

And even later I woke and heard my father on the telephone and my mother’s worried voice prompting him and the dark outside was thick as tar and not even the crickets chirred. I got up and found them downstairs with their faces pinched and tired. I asked what was wrong and my father said that Ariel had not yet returned and go back to bed.

Because of my father’s occupation I was used to late night urgencies and because I’d witnessed her comings and goings that summer I was used to Ariel sneaking off in the dark and returning safely before dawn and because I was little more than a child still wrapped in a soothing blanket of illusion I trusted that my mother and father together could handle anything and I went back to my bedroom and drifted selfishly into sleep listening to the distant distraught voices of my parents while they continued their telephone calls and waited anxiously for word of their daughter.