Our mayor, a stout, well-respected man with a nose the shape of a lightbulb, holds the microphone. He reads about Tawny, long sweeping paragraphs about her financial generosity and kind demeanor that everyone knows is bullshit. Then he reads about Caroline, who is the poet laureate of Kentucky and a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army.
I’m next. Feeling ridiculous, I step forward, wave. He reads: “Elizabeth McCaffrey is the daughter of local minister Scott McCaffrey and local artist Clare McCaffrey. She is a third-generation McCaffrey to attend Otters Holt High School. She is the first teenager in the history of Otters Holt to be nominated for a Corn Dolly.”
That’s it. People are polite enough to clap. Including my parents, but they wear bewildered faces, either from his short paragraph or my clothes.
He didn’t mention rescuing Janie Lee from the water moccasin or the recent service projects. Perhaps because I was late. Perhaps because the person in charge of writing them isn’t my fan. Instead, I am a blazing example of why Woods put me on the guys’ side of the Hexagon. Hair tangled. Clothes rumpled. Hot dog chunks on my jeans.
He pets the air, begging the crowd to pipe down. “As you’ve probably guessed, with the passing of our benefactor, this year will be the last Harvest Festival. So the last awarded Corn Dolly will go to one of these ladies.” Whether it is planned for effect or he’s momentarily overcome, he pauses, keeps pausing, keeps pausing, says, “Let’s make sure it’s the best one yet.”
A pattering, polite as a golf crowd, moves through the bleachers. The mayor disappears like a referee after a terrible ballgame. The platforms are wheeled away by a high school crew.
The football team returns to a quiet stadium.
23
At halftime, a swarm of people are gossiping and searching for another bag of popcorn. All around me, the old tell the very young they are “sorry” and the young ask the old, “For what?” Many of them, like the John Winterses of the world, don’t understand the joy of eating roasted corn row-on-row or the pleasure of savoring Mrs. Rankin’s pumpkin-flavored lollipops to the last lick. The very young haven’t danced “Sally Down the Alley” or the “Potta Potta” or stayed up watching a movie on the side of Vilmer’s Barn. The very young don’t know the crescendo of emotions when a woman climbs three stage steps and accepts the Corn Dolly.
In my mind, I taste, I dance, I watch, I swell with memories. I am nostalgic for a future where I will have done all these things for decades.
I am not very young.
I am also in trouble.
Dad invites me into a makeshift office under the bleachers. We are among the bubble gum wrappers and dropped popcorn and paper cups. The throwaway things. Directly above us are the Corn Dolly winners. They are talking about me. Some using the word disgrace, others modern. Unaware that we are beneath them, one says, “I don’t see how Scott McCaffrey can control a congregation when he lets his daughter run all over him.”
“Do you even go to Community Church?” someone asks.
The accuser says, “No.” She says No as if to say Why would I?
Dad and I are frozen, listening for the next comment, but some football thing happens and cheers drown out the discussion. Dad points upward and gives me a face. The this-is-what-I’m-talking-about face. And I try to give him a face too. Just because they’re talking . . . are they right? His hands dive deep in his pockets; I get a view of his chin. A long view. As he prays or decides what to say first.
“What happened?” he asks.
A level question. The benefit of doubt.
Rather than explain, I say, “Nothing you’ll believe.”
“Try me.”
When I reach for explanations, they are not there. He is furious and ashamed of my behavior, but he hugs me anyway. I am pressed against him, his arms circle my back, we twist in a tiny swaying arc of love. I am inside his jacket, the silky lining soft and warm on my arms. I do not cry; I am numb with disappointment.
I tell him what happened. How John Winters showed up and I couldn’t leave Davey. How my gut was ringing and singing that being there was more important than dressing up. But that I did have dress clothes hanging in the girls’ bathroom. That I even had lipstick in my pocket. Bright red that could be seen from the top of the stands.
“It’ll be okay,” he tells me.
But we both know the words are as empty as the cups that have fallen from above.
Behind us, Coach Tilghman, Fifty’s uncle, barks, “Hustle up!” and “Come on, defense!” at his players. The scoreboard changes by three points. Above us the crowd watches and follows the cheerleaders’ prompts. “Give me an O! Give me a T!” But I doubt they have forgotten the halftime show. They will take to landlines. Sit in booths at the Fork and Spoon. Gather on porches, in cars and church pews, by newspaper stands, and they will “discuss” with vigor the faults of Elizabeth McCaffrey. It is easy to speculate, because it is a repeating piece of history. Some will blame my parents. Some will blame my youth. Some will blame the modern age. But they will blame.
“I love living here and I hate living here,” I whisper.
Dad puts a finger under my chin. He looks directly into my eyes. He says, not sweetly, not firmly, but somewhere in between, “You did your best. Anytime you can promise me, ‘Dad, that was my best,’ it’ll always be enough for me. If we move, we move.”
Three hours later, he will forget what he has said.
24
Davey’s Part
A phone conversation between David Winters and Thomas Cahill after the football game.
THOMAS: You don’t sound good.
DAVID: Thom, if I tell you something, will you promise not to laugh?
THOMAS: No. But I promise I’ll stop eventually.
DAVID: You know the Harvest Festival?
THOMAS: The one your Octagon is working to save? The one you talk about all the frickin’ time?
DAVID: Hexagon.
THOMAS: Parallelogram. Rhombus. I’ll stop.
DAVID: Thank you.
THOMAS: What’s going on now?
DAVID: It’s stupid.
THOMAS: When has that ever stopped you before?
DAVID: When I was a kid, maybe six or seven, Big T took me to the festival.
THOMAS: Nostalgia is not stupid. What’s that Santayana quote? “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
DAVID: I can hear you googling.
THOMAS: I want to make sure I said it right. Keep talking.
DAVID: My parents went to the festival. I have all these vague fond memories. Playing Wiffle ball. Meeting a girl in a Batman costume. I even have this memory of my parents dancing. They might not have been happy, but in my head, they still loved each other then. They met at the Harvest Festival. Evidently, in college, my dad owned a couple of those inflatable bouncy things and rented them out to make money.
THOMAS: Sounds like him.
DAVID: And I know it’s childish, but if it ends— THOMAS: You’ll lose your parents again.
DAVID: No. It’s not so much them. It’s that a piece of the place I came from will be gone. Does that make sense?