Mr. Nix says, “A thousand-dollar coat for a thousand-dollar girl.”
I’m drenched from running around with Mash. My hair’s in a million hairpins. The bags under my eyes should be labeled cargo. The town got my makeover. I wouldn’t change that. Women press Book Dollies against hearts and make them dance for gleeful daughters. They tell one another, “This is so nice,” and point at Mash and me because we made the deliveries. Men have Dollies peeking out of breast pockets. Davey has his threaded through his bandanna.
KickFall and Book Dollies have done CPR on the dying heart of my town. The mayor and Woods shake, and he announces to the crowd through a jankety karaoke speaker system, “Ladies and gentlemen, today’s efforts raised two thousand two hundred and ten dollars toward saving the Harvest Festival! Bravo!”
“Go up there.” Woods knocks me off balance with a hand on the small of my back. I see that he duplicated the large cardboard check Davey and I were given at LaserCon. When I cannot find it in myself to move up the stairs to the stage, he trots up to the mayor himself and whispers something.
The mayor cups his hand over the microphone and listens. Then he says, “Well, this young man tells me that one of the Corn Dolly nominees won a costume party this week, and she’s donating all the proceeds to the fund. Come on up here, Billie McCaffrey.”
No one cares that I am a hot mess today. I hand over the cardboard check. Taking the microphone from his hand, I say, “It wasn’t just me. That crew over there did it with me. Go on, stand up, Hexagon.”
And they do. And everyone claps just as loudly for them.
“Save the Harvest Festival!” Woods yells like a cheerleader.
And again, because Woods has spoken, everyone in the stands echoes, “Save the Harvest Festival!” The mayor reins in the crowd with final instructions. “Now, if you can all make your way inside and cast your ballots. Thank you for coming out.”
The field evacuates. Woods nudges my shoulder. “You’ll win,” he says.
I want to believe him. But this is the one place my imagination cannot stretch. If the Corn Dolly could be bought, nearly all the winners would have been different.
Politely, eyebrows inching toward his cap, eyes bouncing between Janie Lee and Davey, he says, “You’d better decide which of those two you’ll be dancing with.”
Every year, the winner of the Corn Dolly dances the first dance of the harvest. For unmarried candidates, the town uses this dance to start wedding registries at the Mercantile on Main. For the happily hitched, it’s a barometer of health. Occasionally, it is used to predict divorce. Though only rarely, and the women are sympathetic, unless it’s the woman stepping out.
My heart suddenly thuds in my ears. I have not thought of who I would dance with.
But it will not matter, because I won’t win. We have saved the festival, not me.
“I see you over there, McCaffrey.” Woods rocks all the way up on his toes with nervous energy. “And here’s the problem with what you’re thinking. We can’t always be right, so you’d better have a plan if you’re wrong. Especially if the town is watching.”
“I’ll figure it out if I have to,” I say, feeling very positive that I’ve finally found the thing that Woods Carrington is wrong about.
“Well, either way, you realize we have to walk that damn beam now. You know Fifty’s about to have a heyday and a half.”
We trudge toward the group, where the weariness of several hard weeks of manual labor strikes Fifty first. He throws himself in the middle of the pitcher’s mound and yells, “Two thousand two hundred and ten dollars! Hot damn!” Even though it’s too late to matter, he lifts his head and checks for small children.
“You’re insufferable, Fifty,” Mash says, which only serves to make Fifty happier.
He taunts us, repeating the number in victory. “Guess what that means, bitches?”
Woods lies beside Fifty and then Mash and Davey do the same. They are laid out like spokes on a wheel, letting the sun punish them. Janie Lee and I fall between them. We are a heap of dirt and limbs. “Do we really have to?”
Woods says, “Indeed, we must, or the stakes lose their power.”
Everyone sighs a great big sigh except Fifty, who says, “Hell yeah,” with several more syllables than are required.
32
Vilmer’s Barn has large cross-beam sliding doors, a high loft window, and a half-hexagon-shaped metal roof. Once upon a time it had a vibrant paint job, but the weather has worn the bright-red colors into a lovely gray-and-maroon smudge. It’s well built, sturdy considering its age. There’s a narrow rafter stretching from loft door to loft door, nearly thirty feet in the air: Vilmer’s Beam.
Unfortunately for us, the barn isn’t full of straw and hay as it was the last time we walked Vilmer’s Beam. The Harvest Festival’s tables, chairs, and vendor booths are stacked and stored in neat rows beneath the beam, and it would take too long to move everything. Everyone cusses. Gerry, who trails Thom, who trails Davey, suggests that we’re all off our nut. I’m inclined to agree.
I am tugged backward by my sweatshirt. The rest of the group files wearily by, Fifty in the lead, leaving me with Davey. His arms are folded over his chest. He is dubious. “Why?” he asks.
I give a very Billie answer. “Because we said we would.”
“Do you do everything you say you will?” he asks the way someone might ask, And if Woods jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?
A million comebacks are on my lips. “Yes” comes out first.
“I’m not worried about you.” He nods toward Janie Lee. Then, in the same fortuneteller voice in which he’d said, You’ll burn down the church, he comments, “This is a bad idea.” But that doesn’t change anything. We’re still going to walk the beam. He knows it. I know it.
Despite my confidence, we all have reservations. Fifty’s digging a rut with his foot the way baseball players do when they step into the batter’s box. Mash is a new shade of puking green.
Gerry and Thom park themselves at a table to watch. Like a row of monkeys, Mash, Fifty, Janie Lee, Davey, and I follow Woods to the loft ladder. I’m between the two least experienced walkers—Janie Lee and Davey. No problem. Rung by rung, higher and higher, we climb.
We are almost to the top. I touch Janie Lee’s ankle. She stops, and I climb the side of the ladder, hanging out over the barn. “Are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just checking,” I say.
But she is not okay, and I don’t know whether to call her on it and make a scene or let her push through. She nearly steps on my fingers to keep climbing. I swing back around and continue ascending the ladder. When I arrive at the top, I position myself under the eaves so Davey has room to join us. Thomas and Gerry are a million miles away. Our line begins inching across the beam like kindergartners walking to the playground, Woods at the lead. Everything on point.