Chapter 12 – GLENNA #2
I shake the wool out of my head and focus on the mirror. It’s the ass crack of dawn, Saturday morning. Harvest Day. First there’s the parade, then the fair, and in the afternoon before all the bonfires and field parties begin, there’s pumpkin’ chuckin’ across from the elementary school.
It’s gonna be a long day. I’m the only photographer, and I have to shoot the winners of the parade, the bake-off, and the funny produce contests. I also need shots of the booths, rides, karaoke at the beer garden, local bigwigs, and the pumpkins.
I French braid my hair, and I pull on jeans, boots, and a faded black hoodie.
Nothing special. I want to blend in, but the jitters tell me that’s unlikely, and I know it.
The whole town turns out for Harvest Day, and most folks between twenty-one and married-with-kids spend the day getting wasted off Stonecut microbrews and Anvil Mountain wines.
In the morning, it’s a friendly, wholesome crowd, but towards late afternoon, folks get sloppy.
Dad’s still getting nasty calls. The newspaper got egged on Wednesday.
There’s no way everyone’s going to be civil and pretend like everything’s fine.
Not when Del Willis is always head judge of the parade.
Cash will be there.
He sent me more pictures last night, but early, around eight o’clock in the evening.
He must be back from his hunting trip. He didn’t text.
I’d think he was giving up except for the pictures.
He took the long way down the mountain, crossed the river, and went all the way up Lower Peak.
Then he snapped shots of the meadow where I was shot.
The trail we took down. The log I squatted behind to pee.
That must’ve been a four-hour detour. From the gear in his selfies, he and his client were humping their camping equipment, too.
I bet he didn’t let on to his client that they were taking a detour.
I take a last look at myself in the mirror, grab my camera, and head to the square.
The parade has already started, so I have to navigate the lawn chairs crowded on the sidewalks.
The route begins at the historical society, goes up Bell Street to Town Hall, across Fourth Street, and comes down Main to Bank.
It ends in front of the Wall-Price Arts Center where the floats are judged and the performers do their thing one last time for a rating.
Dad is a judge this year. They asked him before the article came out, and I guess the ladies’ auxiliary thought it’d be too gauche to rescind the invitation.
When I get to the bleachers in front of the arts center, the spectators are still getting settled.
I take a candid shot of the mayor and the Walls in their usual spot on the top row.
Mr. and Mrs. Wall are in their Sunday best, waving with country-flavored noblesse oblige to the upstanding citizens filling the stands.
You have to have a ticket for the rickety bleachers. They went for two hundred dollars a pop this year. The proceeds go to charity, so it’s fine, but it cracks me up that as soon as the last act performs, the pig races set up, and then the seats are free and first come, first served.
The Walls don’t wave at me. I sit in the corner of the first row marked “Press” and stick my hands in my pockets to warm them. Greg Paxton of the Westsylvania Times collapses beside me with a grunt of acknowledgement. I give him a nod.
Mr. Paxton has never arrived for a Harvest Day not sweating out the previous night’s whiskey and reeking of stale cigarettes, not since I officially started taking photos for the Gazette when I was fifteen. He gets friendlier after he spends a few hours in the beer garden.
The day is bright and cold. I can already hear the high school marching band heading down Main Street.
Dad is talking to Mr. Henry, the drugstore owner. Mr. Henry would never ice Dad out like it seems everyone else is doing; he’d never give up a willing ear for his complaints about the Achesons riding their bikes on the sidewalks and “those damn kids” pissing in his flower urns.
Usually, everyone ambles over to Dad at some point, shakes his hand, and chats him up about Stonecut High football or the hunting season. They pass on hot tips and argue with him about his latest column.
Not this year. Except for Mr. Henry, no one is venturing near him. It hurts my heart, but Dad doesn’t seem bothered in the least.
He still thinks this will blow over. He says I don’t give people enough credit.
The whole town is acting like they can’t see him standing right in front of them when a few months ago, it was all handshakes and back claps. People suck. I give them the accurate amount of credit.
I take a few shots of Dad and Mr. Henry to test the light. Mr. Paxton notices what I’m doing, and he groggily takes a few shots, too, in case I’m onto something interesting.
As the band turns onto Bank Street, the drums and horns growing louder, a black town car creeps up along the blocked-off access road where the acts will perform. It rolls to a stop right in front of the bleachers. The passenger door opens, and a woman slowly eases herself out. It’s Lil Willis.
She’s wearing a cream wool coat that drapes off her thin shoulders. She’s wrapped in a thick knit scarf and her head is entirely covered by a cloche hat with a flower on the side. The top half of her pale face is obscured by round sunglasses.
She’s really sick.
The town car rolls off before I can see who was driving, and she starts carefully toward the bleachers.
There’s a murmuring in the stands. I glance over my shoulder.
Mrs. Wall jumps to her feet and makes her way past the row of other grandees toward the aisle kept clear as a stair.
It doesn’t look like she was expecting Lil, either.
Del and Lil Willis always sit next to the Walls, but there aren’t any open seats.
Lil reaches the bleachers before Mrs. Wall can squeeze past the Fanetti family. Lil eyes the step, so slight in her baggy coat and loose trousers. I stand. So does a man closer.
But my dad makes it to her side first. He says something to her, much too low to hear, and he offers her his elbow.
It feels like the moment stretches—or that it should—but in reality, Lil Willis smiles at my dad without hesitation and grips his upper arm with her gnarled fingers.
Dad takes a step first, and he waits while she follows, patient, ready to catch her if she falters. It’s a slow ascent, row by row. Mrs. Wall stands in the aisle at the very top, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand, her face fierce and hard, heartbreak in her eyes.
Lil Willis is dying. Her husband is in jail awaiting bond. He might not get it. She’s alone, and she must be terrified. Angry. Devastated.
But she’s not missing the damn parade. And she’s going to sit up top next to her best friend.
Lil Willis is like a kindly nursery school teacher. She’s a listener by nature. An approver. The kind of person who is delighted to see you, who remembers your name and your last conversation, who notices your new shoes. I like her. The whole town does.
But now, I think I love her. When she finally makes it to the top of the bleachers, and my dad turns to go back down, she won’t let go of his arm. The Fanettis squish together, and Lil nods for my father to lead her to the space open next to the Walls.
Dad helps her sit, and Lil entwines arms with Mrs. Wall’s, their heads going together like schoolgirls gossiping. With her other hand, Lil urges Dad down to sit on her other side. She winds her arm through his, too.
Everyone’s watching, not even trying to hide it.
As the marching band rounds the corner and drums make the stands shake, Lil calmly gazes down as if she hasn’t just declared herself in opposition to the sentiments of the entire town.
I bet if Del Willis is granted bail, he’s going to find his stuff on his front lawn.
I snap a series of shots—Mrs. Wall whispering furiously in Lil’s ear, Mr. Wall stoic, my dad’s mild smile tweaking his gray-white beard at the corners.
The band lines up, the drum major blows his whistle, and I get to work, kneeling to get the low angle shots, and then hustling up the aisle to get the high angle. My thighs always burn after a Harvest Day.
It’s a whirlwind after that. There are floats—a cornucopia made of flowers sponsored by Tansy’s Florist, a papier-maché Phat Thom made by the high school art club, another Phat Thom built on a golf cart and driven by Grace who handles our insurance.
Between the floats, there are performances.
Irish dancers and little girls from the Stonecut Ballet Academy and senior ballroom dancers.
There are bagpipes and barbershop quartets and the County Masterpiece Chorale.
One by one, every sports team in the county—rec and travel—traipses into the cordoned-off area, gets herded together by the team moms for photos, and then races off to the fair set up in the square. The Ferris wheel starts to turn, and the wind begins to carry the scent of pit beef.
I loved Harvest Day as a kid. Cotton candy, carnival rides, and pumpkin chuckin’. It didn’t get better.
It still stirs a little excitement in me, even if it’s the same old, same old, and I’ve outgrown all the rides– except maybe the Scrambler.
There’s a larger excitement, though, as the crowd grows thicker. Cash is here. He has to be. Everyone’s here.
He’s gonna search me out. I have no doubt.
It makes my chest pound and my stomach flip. It’s only been a week since the night at his cabin, but it feels like a year. How do I act when I see him?
And why am I so hot? I push up my sleeves, but it doesn’t help much. The hot is inside, squishing and squirming, confusing the hell out of me.
I peer through my camera, setting up shots, taking in the scene, but not looking for him. Not exactly. Not much.