Our Souls at Night

30

In August there was the annual Holt County Fair and rodeo and livestock judging at the fairgrounds on the north side of town. It started with a parade coming up from the south end of Main Street, coming up the street toward the railroad tracks and old depot. It was raining the day of the parade. Louis and Addie put on raincoats and cut a hole in the end of a black plastic trash bag to put over Jamie and the three of them walked over to Main Street and stood along the curb with the other people. There were crowds along both sides of the street despite the weather. The honor guard came first, carrying the limp wet flags and shouldering dripping rifles, then there were old tractors muttering up the street and old combines on flatbed trailers and antique hay rakes and mowers, and more tractors, puttering and popping, and the high school band, reduced in the summer to only fifteen members wearing white shirts and jeans all soaking now and sticking to their skin, then the convertible cars with the county notables inside but with the tops up because of the weather, and then the rodeo queen and her attendants on horses, the girls all good riders wearing ranch slickers, followed by more fancy cars with advertisements on the doors, and cars for the Lions Clubem; margin-top: 3em; margin-bottom: 2em; text-align: know art doesn’t matter and the Rotary and Kiwanis and the Shriners zigzagging around in the street, like fat show-off kids, in their hopped-up go-carts, and more horses and riders in yellow slickers and a pony cart, and toward the end of the parade there was a flatbed truck with a cardboard religious picture on it and a riser at the front, entered in the parade by one of the evangelical churches in town. On the riser there was a wooden cross and a young man standing in front of it with long hair and a dark beard, wearing a white tunic and because of the rain he was holding an umbrella over his head. When Louis saw him he laughed out loud. The people standing nearby turned and stared at him.

You’re going to get yourself in trouble, Addie said. This is serious here.

I guess he can walk on water, but he can’t keep it from falling on his head.