There have been many cheers already tonight. None as loud as the one that follows this announcement. I feel like Cindy-Lou Who from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I found a way to live with the festival being gone, but now it’s all come back better than ever because we had to fight for it.
I locate Woods. He gives me an innocent shrug, which I disbelieve. He knows something. Woods didn’t donate five thousand dollars, but he’s too damn smug to not be involved. He wanted to have fun with a church microwave. He did. He wanted me to win the Corn Dolly. I sort of did. He wanted to save the Harvest Festival. And, uh, yeah, he did. His expression tells me that he’s going to spend the next year of his life turning Judith at the Lamplighter or some unsuspecting individual into next year’s candidate. He’ll be mayor before he can legally drink.
I’ll vote for him.
Mom is next to me now. She kisses my cheek and I pretend to wipe it away. We both laugh, and I suppose she’s about to say something cheesy when Dad looks at Janie Lee and asks, “May I cut in?”
Janie Lee puts my hands in my father’s, and he spins me away from Mom and my friends. I brace myself. What was I thinking? Have I heard nothing he said? Do I care about my family at all? How do I feel about Florida?
I have all his angry expressions on file, but this isn’t one of them. In its place, something imperceptible. Wide eyes, closed mouth, whole head sitting crooked on his neck like he’s watching an alien land a ship in the church parking lot. He says a curious thing. “I’m proud of you, Billie.” From his pocket he takes one of my Book Dollies. “This is why they love you, but what you just did—following your gut, your heart—when you know it’s not popular, that’s why I love you. Don’t forget that. Even when I do.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I say, and I realize it has been a very long time since I thanked him. For anything.
“No, thank you,” he says, and kisses my forehead.
Gratitude: it’s a good starting place for us. No matter where we end up. Everyone dances with everyone. But I won’t forget this dance with my father. The one that makes the dance with Janie Lee even more special.
I am with Davey now, promenading, and suddenly I’m very relieved and very tired. I’ve been sprinting a marathon for a month and a half, and it has settled in my bones.
“Want to get out of here, Corn Dolly Queen?” he asks.
I’ve swallowed bite after bite of town all day, and I am as full as I would be after Thanksgiving dinner. “Yes,” I tell him.
I look around, but the rest of the Hexagon has scattered themselves throughout the festival. We walk to the Camaro. I text Janie Lee and the Hexagon; he texts Gerry and Thom. We tell them to bring themselves to the garage after they’re done dancing. Davey drives to my house, where we collapse on the Daily Sit.
Shadows fold over us. Guinevere nods her approval. The remnants of Belle and Beast lie like discarded snakeskins in the corner. Davey spots a package wrapped in brown craft paper with his name on it, like the one he brought me after the funeral. “What’s this?” he asks.
“A gift to make up for knocking you off a beam.”
I help him rip the paper.
He lifts a Batman mask circa Halloween 2007. The mask has not fared well in the summer heat—the stick-straight nose is melted against the cheek plate. It is the one I was wearing the first day we met. When I sucked at Wiffle ball and he thought I was a boy. He laughs and I say, “I found it in the garage this week when I was cleaning out drawers. “Just in case you need a reminder—”
“That girls can do anything?”
“Well, something like that,” I say. “It was you, wasn’t it? The money.”
“Where would I get five thousand dollars?”
I take the Batman mask from his lap and toss it playfully at his face. “Five years of costume winnings?”
His answer: “I never expected to love this place again.”
I am silent then. Eyes searching around my garage at all the unfinished things that I love. Because that’s this town too: unfinished, imperfect. My things have all surprised me in some way. They are like Tawny Jacobs, who danced with me tonight and told me about her best friend, Rachel Morgan. “Don’t count people out,” she told me. And I promised her I never would again.
I look everywhere but directly at Davey, because if our eyes snap to attention—blue on brown—this night will become something else, and I don’t want that right now. I want to enjoy the low-grade hum of something left on in the corner—maybe a Bluetooth speaker from early this morning and the smell of epoxy from a spot in the floor and hayfields drifting in off the wind.
The garage door is up, and there’s a full view of my driveway and the fields that lie beyond. It is vaguely light; the sky is a deep ocean blue, the moon a white rising ball. There’s a dead tree along our fencerow. When I look directly through those branches, I see the very tip of Molly the Corn Dolly’s illuminated yellow head.
“I never expected to love that thing,” I say.
And Davey sees what I see. He says, “No one does,” and we both laugh.
I take off my boots. He removes his high tops.
And then we get out the glue and newspapers and make a couch until the others arrive with an entire pumpkin pie and eight forks.
THE SHORT PART
after
PART THREE
No legacy is so rich as honesty.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
I rap three times on the youth room door.
Mash ushers us inside, peeling Twizzlers apart. Dad lied. He swore we’d never get a lock-in again, but he has folded, buying us pizza and mint chocolate chip ice cream. There’s a Happy Graduation, Class of 2017 banner hanging in the hallway.
We’ve been threatened and warned within an inch of our lives. Threats and warnings we ignore with marvelous gusto. This time, we have better intentions. And this time, there are no microwaves. Dad made sure of it.
Janie Lee and I sneak out the moment the coast is clear, this time with her leading the way. I tell her with moves like that, I’ll give her a tombstone inscription. Janie Lee Miller, born 2000—d.? IN LOVING MEMORY: Acquired Balls Along the Way.
She shoves me in the butt with her UGG.
I take up residence on the floor below Janie Lee’s papasan—Davey has saved me a pillow stack—and we all wait for Woods to set Einstein in its cradle. He has promised this night will be our favorite Einstein the Whiteboard Meeting of all time. I kick things off with the same old joke. “Let’s start with glads, sads, and sorries, and then a prayer.”
“Ha, ha, ha.” Fifty launches another pillow at my head. He quickly adds, “I’m not going out for vodka. And you”—he slaps Mash on the back—“aren’t throwing up. Gag-free night, you hear me?”
“Evolution is possible,” Davey whispers in my ear.
Fifty’s not the only one sporting a change. Woods offers the marker to Janie Lee and says, “Gather round, children, the lady has something to say.”
Janie Lee flips the board around for our viewing pleasure. At the top, in her handwriting, are these words: WAYS TO GET FIFTY A CORN DOLLY.
Davey chuckles. Mash outright loses his cool.