Эд Горман - Moonchasers and Other Stories

And it was all for a lie, a damnable lie.

For the next half hour, people came to the square. They came from in town and the small villages surrounding the town and they came from the farms and they came from places as distant as Des Moines. The Dixieland band was already whooping it up and a guy with a torpedo-like tank of oxygen sold red and yellow and green balloons and Harvey at his little white popcorn shack didn’t have enough arms to keep up with all the business and up on the bandstand itself the mayor was showing off his familiar pot belly and his brand-new Panama hat. It was just like the county fair only there wasn’t any cow-shit smell floating on the breeze from the livestock barns.

I’d gotten there early enough to get a front row seat. I wanted to get a real good view of the governor opening that envelope, reading the letter and then announcing to everybody that he would have to call off the ceremonies — “And why?” he’d thunder. “Because this man—” And here he’d point like God with a lightning bolt shooting from his finger — “Because this man Cushing is a liar and a thief and a murderer!” And the crowd would ooooo and aaaaa and the chief would take out his gun and arrest Cushing and—

“You belong on the stage, son.”

An older, male voice brought me out of my fantasy.

It was the mayor. “You hear me, Tom?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

The mayor led me up the steps to the stage of the bandstand. The Dixieland band — “The Hellcats” was what they called themselves though in the newspaper letters column one day, Mrs. J. D. Bing, who was always writing letters, suggested for the sake of propriety that they rename themselves the “Heckcats” — the band was rolling out on “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The noise was deafening. And I’m a guy who plays “Summertime Blues” by Eddie Cochran so loud even our cats go down to the basement to hide.

Cushing and Barney sat to the right of the podium. The governor, who looked vaguely like the mayor with his big belly and his Panama hat, stood on the edge of the steps shaking hands and waggling his pudgy fingers at little babies and saying over and over and over what a fine lovely day it was for a festivity like this. That’s what he called it. A “festivity.”

The mayor led me to the front row. Cushing and Barney sat in folding chairs near the podium. Cushing was talking. Barney was laughing. The best of buddies. Didn’t Barney remember Roy at all?

The mayor had me sit next to Barney. I started to object — but what was the use?

I could feel Barney and Cushing staring at me as I sat down. They’d quit talking and laughing. They just sat there now.

People came over and shook our hands and clapped us on the shoulders. A newspaper guy snapped several pictures. Aunts, uncles and cousins in the crowd out there would spot me and wave and I’d wave back, feeling self-conscious and awkward but not wanting them to think that being a “hero” had gone to my head, the way it had to my second cousin Larry’s head the time he saved that dog from a burning building, and then had his friend in a country western band write a song about him. Larry had that damned thing recorded and pressed and four years later was still handing out copies of “Larry Baines, A Roy Rogers Kinda Guy.” And his wife, at every single family gathering I’d attended ever since, always talked about Larry’s “political plans” which he’d be announcing any day she always breathlessly confided. Larry pumped gas out at the Clark station on Highway 2.

Then the mayor brought the governor over to meet the three of us. The governor seemed like a real nice guy but shaking hands with him was like picking up a real fatty, greasy patty of sausage.

“This is a real thrill for me,” he said to the three of us. “Our country needs more people like you.”

I glared over at Cushing. Yeah, he was just what the country needed more of, all right.

And then I saw Debbie, half hidden behind this huge vase of yellow and blue and amber summer flowers. She brought them right up to the podium, setting them down on the railing of the bandstand.

Then she looked over at me and gave a little nod and then leaned up and set the white envelope down on the podium itself.

And then she was gone, half running, back down the steps and into the crowd.

I was starting to sit down again — you had to stand up to meet a governor, I guess — and that’s when I saw him watching me... Cushing.

His eyes strayed over to the podium and then back to me.

He’d obviously seen me watching Debbie and had gotten curious... and now he wanted to know about the envelope.

Just then the band, which had given us all a blessed break, sailed into the “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” and then there was just the confusion that results from nobody being able to hear anything. The band guys were puffing their cheeks out and bugging their eyes and spitting all over the place and making everybody on the bandstand silently plead for mercy.

Barney still wouldn’t look at me but I saw him frown as soon as the music exploded. He hated Dixieland even more than I did.

Then the mayor stepped over to the center of the bandstand.

And then I saw Cushing get up and kind of edge over to the podium and I knew right away what he was going to do.

He was going to snatch the letter I’d written the governor and make sure that the governor never got to see it.

I got up, too. I had to stop him.

Cushing did it the right way. He didn’t make any bold play for the podium, he just eased his way over by shaking a few hands, patting a few backs, grinning a few grins. Even before becoming a “hero,” he’d been a popular guy with many of the townspeople. War heroes never went out of fashion.

I got as close to him as I could without stepping on the backs of his shoes.

I knew now that I was going to have to take the envelope myself. I’d just hold on to it till I had the chance to slip it back up there.

Cushing was now maybe a foot from the podium. He was trying to inch his hand behind the broad back of the mayor, who was waving his hands at the band to wrap things up — inch it behind the mayor’s back and pick off the white envelope Debbie had just set on the podium.

That was when I moved, moved so fast that I bumped into Cushing.

He looked down at me and scowled. He knew what I was trying to do. The same thing he was trying to do.

His eyes raised and settled on the envelope.

The bandstand was crowded. It was hard to move past all the bodies.

But he took a final step forward, put his hand out, his fingers started to close on the edge of the envelope.

I lunged — and snapped the letter from his fingers. I’d moved quickly enough that he hadn’t been able to stop me.

But just as I turned to go back to my seat, he reached down and locked his hand around my wrist.

The odd thing was, the stage was so packed with people standing around gabbing that nobody could see how he was twisting my wrist. We stood in the middle of maybe twenty people. It was like smothering to death inside this tiny hot sweaty box.

Nobody had ever twisted my wrist like that.

“You little bastard,” he whispered in my ear. I could hear him even above the band. “Give that to me.”

His face was pure rage — but controlled rage — he couldn’t afford to lose his poise in front of everybody.

He twisted my wrist harder.

And then the band stopped abruptly.

And the sweaty, important dignitaries made for their seats again.

And there we were, suddenly exposed so everybody could see us.

And Cushing let go immediately. What choice did he have? Here was this supposed hero and he was twisting the hell out of some poor kid’s arm.