A Long Way From Chicago (18 page)

I hadn’t seen hide nor hoof mark of Mary Alice all day. That evening Grandma and I had a quiet supper at the kitchen table, under the ceiling light and the flypaper strips. This was the night of the talent show. I knew we were going, even after she poured a second cup of coffee and stifled a yawn like she was thinking of bed.

“Well, I guess you’ll want to look in on the show,” she remarked.

But I was fifteen now, and wise to her. I stifled a yawn. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

“We don’t have to stay to the end.” She was on her feet now, making short work of the dishes.

The stage was the bandstand in the park, lit with headlights running off car batteries. We chose a back bench because nobody wanted to sit behind Grandma. And we could see everybody from here. The audience was mostly town people because the farmers had all gone home to do their chores. But there was a good turnout. Mr. and Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach were up in the front row.

On a table by the bandstand waited the loving cup for first prize and the scrolls for second, third, and honorable mention. Just as the crowd was getting restless, the first act began, a man playing a musical saw. Grandma sat through that with both hands clamped on her knees. Afterward she remarked that it had been “more saw than music.”

Then we had a barbershop quartet. Though they called themselves “The Sons of the Prairie Pioneers” and all wore beards, they were Mr. Earl T. Askew and three more of the sheriff’s deputies. Practice had improved them some, and they didn’t sing “The Night That Paddy Murphy Died” in mixed company. They did a medley that included “Just a Song at Twilight” and after a round of applause, came back for “Sweet Adeline.”

Grandma wasn’t about to clap for deputies. She began to fidget.

The vocal part of the program continued with the choir from Mrs. Effie Wilcox’s church. They did “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” “The Old Rugged Cross,” and “I Come to the Garden
Alone While the Dew Is Still on the Roses.” These got no response from United Brethren members. But the choir returned for an encore anyway, with tambourines, to sing:

If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought Grandma was ready to leave. She was fidgeting all over the bench. Then a boy clumped on the stage. He was about fifth grade or an overgrown fourth. His hair was parted in the middle, and he’d painted artificial freckles all over his moon face. His costume was high-topped shoes and old-time britches held up by one suspender. “That’s my nephew, everybody!” Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach called out from the front row.

He cleared his throat and began to recite:

The boy planted his fists on his pudgy hips and looked out over the audience.

He took his bow to a spatter of applause that grew. All of Mrs. Weidenbach’s friends stood to clap, and they were joined by everybody who owed the bank money. The boy kept bowing.

“That made me about half-sick,” Grandma remarked.

At this point we could have used an intermission. But Mrs. Merle Stubbs of the Ladies’ Committee mounted the stage, carrying a portable Victrola. She threw wide its doors and wound it.

“Crank it up, Lula,” somebody called out, and the crowd tittered. Mrs. Stubbs dropped a record on the turntable and withdrew. They’d have dimmed the lights now, but the car batteries were weakening anyway. Music from a full orchestra welled out of the Victrola. It was a waltz, “When I Grow Too Old to Dream, I’ll Have You to Remember.”

From nowhere a couple glided onto the bandstand stage. He was tall, dark, and handsome, and seemed to be wearing a tuxedo. In his big hands he held a girl. The vision of a girl. Headlights caught the glimmer of her white gown as he twirled her in easy circles. Her graceful hand held up her flowing skirts.

The crowd caught its breath. It was like a movie coming to life. The seed pearls on the girl’s dress flashed pale fire. I looked again, and behind the careful makeup,
below the swooped-up hair—it was Mary Alice. As she turned in the waltz, a bustle came into view.

I nudged Grandma hard. But she was completely caught up in the sight of Mary Alice sweeping around the stage in Grandma’s own wedding gown.

But who was her partner? He was dipping her almost to the floor now, though you couldn’t tell who was leading who. I squinted and saw it was Ray Veech.

Ray Veech, of Veech’s Gas and Oil, and wearing Grandpa Dowdel’s wedding suit with the cuffs let all the way down. Ray Veech, a man’s man, who spent his life under cars with grease up to his elbows. Ray Veech and Mary Alice. My world tilted.

Now the waltz was winding down. Ray and Mary Alice came out even with it. Still clinging to one of his big hands, she collapsed to the floor in an elegant curtsey. Her skirts fanned out in every direction.

After a moment of stunned silence the crowd was on its feet. They were getting up on their benches and clapping over their heads in applause like summer thunder.

Grandma stood. Patting her back hair in a satisfied way, she said, “We don’t need to stay to the end.”

We were up way before daybreak on Saturday. While the dew was still on the roses, the road outside Grandma’s house was thronged with people coming in from as far away now as Argenta and Farmer City for the parade. But we were working right up to the last minute on our float.

At the stroke of eleven the parade stepped off with the high-school bands of the three nearest towns with high
schools. Next in the order of procession were five tractor-drawn hayframes jammed with members of the Piatt County Democratic Party. They were followed by Mr. L. J. Weidenbach in a decorated Hupmobile carrying all four Republicans.

The Odd Fellows’ drum and bugle corps followed. On their heels, mounted, trotted the Anti-Horse-Thief Society members done up as old-time bounty hunters in big hats and drooping mustaches.

Then came the first float. Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach had outdone herself, aided by a club she belonged to, the Order of the Eastern Star. Their float was a flatbed International Harvester truck banked in flowers. In a kitchen chair sat Mrs. Weidenbach’s old daddy in full Civil War blue and his decoration from the Grand Army of the Republic. He seemed to have no idea where he was. Surrounding him on the flatbed were Eastern Star ladies garbed in Grecian drapings. Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach was there too, in a vast hoopskirt, holding her daddy upright.

Above him a sign, roped in rambler roses, read:

OLDEST SETTLER IN THE COMMUNITY

BORN 1845

DECORATED VETERAN OF THE CIVIL WAR

By rights, this float should have been followed by a marching platoon from the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union carrying their sign:

STRONG DRINK IS A MOCKER

But somehow, our float cut in. It was another hayframe, this one from Cowgills’ Dairy Farm. Flanking it on foot were the Cowgill brothers, who had all grown up to be good Christian men, except for Ernie, who was in jail. The horse that pulled our hayframe was the one that usually pulled the Cowgills’ milk wagon. It had its work cut out for it because there was a lot happening on our float.

At the front was a sweating yellow mound that had been a cow carved out of butter before the sun got to it. Nearby stood Mary Alice in her ball gown, bowing to the crowd and holding up the loving cup for first prize in the talent show. I rode up there with her, wearing Grandpa Dowdel’s wedding suit because Ray wouldn’t ride on a float. Behind us sat Mrs. Effie Wilcox on a three-legged stool. She was demonstrating the use of a pioneer butter churn, and her eyes roamed all over the crowds beside the street.

At the back of the float was a throne, though it was only the platform rocker from Grandma’s front room. On a pile of pillows to give him stature sat Uncle Grady Griswold in full uniform. The sun sparkled off the tip of the sword he held aloft. He could no more raise a beard than I could, so he looked like a beaming boy.

To lend him support, Grandma stood beside him, her feet planted wide. She was another Grandma, one we’d never seen before. Her costume was an enormous and complicated old-fashioned gown made out of cut-velvet and fringe. Its bustle overhung the rear of the hayframe, and the front of it scooped breathtakingly low on her bosom. She’d topped herself with Idella Eubanks’s
sunbonnet. Loose in her hand hung Grandpa Dowdel’s twelve-gauge Winchester. After all, it was an antique.

Above them hung a sign, a sheet stretched between clothesline poles. It had taken me half the night to letter it:

UNCLE GRADY GRISWOLD

BORN 1832

AND WINGED IN THE MEXICAN WAR

BY FAR THE OLDEST SETTLER IN THE COMMUNITY

Just the sight of Grandma herself silenced the crowds. But by the time we were trundling past The Coffee Pot Cafe and Uncle Grady was brandishing his sword, the applause began.

Into Mary Alice’s ear I muttered, “But why Ray Veech?”

“I saw possibilities in him,” she said coolly, showing off her loving cup to the crowds.

“I didn’t know he could dance.”

“Dance?” Mary Alice sniffed. “He can barely
walk.
What do you think I’ve been doing all week? I’ve been giving him ballroom dancing lessons. And the big clodhopper tramped all over my feet. I’m crippled for life.”

The route of the parade crossed the Wabash tracks at the depot, to give the other side of town a look. But the Blue Bird train pulled in from Chicago, right on schedule. It blocked the way and separated the parade just ahead of the Weidenbach float, which drew up short.