As they got closer and the people’s faces began to differentiate themselves, in all their unique ways, Cal felt light-headed. It was the same feeling he’d experienced his second year at Plank, when he’d gone to a street fair three towns over and seen so many people he felt drugged by the newness.
He’d gone with Micah and a first-year they hardly knew. And that guy’s cousin—a real live girl. It was Micah’s Toni, though at the time, Cal had called her Antonia in his mind because her nickname sounded too much like a guy’s. She was three years older and lived in L.A.
No one was supposed to sleep on campus except for Plankers, but visitors came so rarely, and female ones never, that everyone let it go. Besides, she’d come with a trunk full of groceries for the students: Cheez-Its, celery, and apples from New Zealand, almost too expensive to eat. Her grandmother had money, though she claimed she never talked to her, that she’d run away years before. After one night on campus, Toni said even the quiet itself was boring, and so she’d driven her cousin, Micah, and Cal to the strange fair she’d seen signs for on the drive over. Cal wasn’t sure how he and Micah had smuggled themselves into that car; the other Plankers had been so envious.
The fair was in a suburb. An exurb, really. Wasn’t that the word? It had been so clean and antiseptic, Cal thought now. It was transformed into a Community soon after.
“How stimulating,” Micah had remarked as they passed beneath a banner painted with a garish rainbow, and Toni had laughed, thrown her head back as if she wanted him to slice open her neck. She’d been smitten with Micah immediately, the lucky bastard.
There were packs of people everywhere: watching juggling acts, eating corn on the cob, dancing to the music of a leather-vested fiddler. Cal wasn’t used to so much diversion, so much information. The colors, the noise, the sugar, and the salt. The fair left him giggling like a stupid drunk.
That’s what Cal wanted to do now. Giggle. He wasn’t happy, and this wasn’t funny; he was just overwhelmed. For months it had been just the two of them, Cal and Frida; even when the Millers were around, and even with August’s monthly visits, they negotiated a very limited universe. The same trees to count and admire, the same gardening routines. Suddenly everything and everyone were new. No wonder Frida didn’t want to look at him.
He would look at her, at least.
She was bobbing her head like a pigeon, taking in the sights, and smiling with her mouth closed. She was trying to appear kindly, he realized. She wanted these strangers to like her. As far as he could tell, they would. Most of the men seemed around their age, or younger, like Sailor, and none of them walked with the defensive stance he’d expect from a culture that did not allow outsiders.
The women were more hesitant, hanging back, and maybe a little older on average: in their forties or early fifties. One of them wore her hair in a thin braid down her back like a second spine.
Frida put her hands to her lower belly as she walked. She was thinking of their child. He could see she already felt safe, protected, that she was fly-casting them into a future in this world. She was being na?ve. Again. They would have to talk, and soon.
Dave had left their little posse. Maybe he’d been pulled back to the lookout tower to finish his shift, but Peter and Sailor led the way through the crowd, which parted to let them pass, just as Cal had imagined it would. The people, up close, were so varied: heavy browed or not, ugly or cute, plain or strange and uneven looking, long or pert nosed, fair or olive skinned.
There was a woman with a stripe of gray in her curly black hair, thick red suspenders holding up baggy corduroys. She had a rag in her hand, and when she smiled, she was missing a front tooth. Cal reared back. He couldn’t help it. No doubt this woman had lived out here for a long time.
Cal accidentally brushed past a heavyset man, about his own age, who stepped back with a sneer. That was the only rudeness he encountered, and Cal couldn’t hold a grudge: he and Frida had invaded their space.
A guy with dreads so blond they were almost colorless muttered to his friend, “Would you look at that.” He pointed to Cal’s chest.
Peter turned around and began walking backward. “You do a lot of mushroom hunting, Cal?” he asked.
“I guess.”
“Your shirt,” he said.
“You knew the Millers?”
Peter frowned. “Who?” He spun back around and kept walking.
People had begun to come up to him and Sailor. They were asking the same question— Who? Who are they?—and pointing at Frida and Cal.
A woman stepped into Sailor’s path and asked, “Who let them in?”
“You’ll see, Pilar,” Sailor said. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Someone get Mikey!” The woman in the suspenders took off running down the path.
“Who’s Mikey?” Cal asked. “Do you mean August?”
Peter stopped walking and turned back to Cal. “You better hold her.”
“Me?” Frida said. “Are you about to sacrifice me or something?”