The Night Watchman(60)
Grace Pipestone, in a cowboy hat, fringed circle skirt, and tooled leather cowboy boots, rode the new filly, Teacher’s Pet. The horse was a dramatically pretty blue roan. Her eyes were outlined in midnight swoops and her dark socks made her quick trot look sharp and precise. There were others riding horses in the parade, but none were dressed as flashily as Superintendent Tosk, who wore a real fringed buckskin jacket and an eagle-feather headdress. This headdress always came out for special events and photos. Magnificently, it bristled off his head and trailed down his back. He rode one of Louie’s most valuable horses, Gringo, who’d lost his formidable racing edge to love, and been set to stud. Gringo was a pale roan, almost a cremello, with gentle rabbity ears and a pinkish pie face. His mane, laboriously combed out, wetted, and braided the night before, had been unbraided and now rippled whitely along the curve of his neck. Grace had treated his tail the same way and its gleaming crinkles nearly brushed the gravel road. He was a glamorous horse who really deserved a better name. Wood Mountain had often said so. He was driving Juggie’s green and white DeSoto, hauling a little trailer with bales of hay where Juggie and Deanna sat, dressed like hoboes. Juggie carried a sign that said Busted by Termination. Mr. Vold drove a large brown station wagon, draped with gold crepe paper, held at intervals by painted cardboard jewels. Fixed to the top of the car were a large watch and a rocket constructed by Betty Pye.
The other car representing the jewel plant was Doris Lauder’s family car. Painted signs hung out the windows. Valentine rode in the front seat, of course. She chatted away with Doris about how to match plaids cut on the bias for a circle skirt. Patrice rode in the backseat with Betty Pye. The two held small sacks of homemade toffee, each square wrapped in waxed paper. Every so often they tossed a few toffees to the avid children who stood watching the parade. Two years before, Patrice had been in the parade with Valentine, both in the Homecoming court. They had made popcorn balls to throw, but too many had lost their waxed paper flying through the air, or shattered in the road.
Halfway along the route, Vernon and Elnath stood awkwardly beside the road. They had been strangers wearing black suits, now black overcoats as well, but now everybody knew they were the Mormons.
Patrice tossed a couple of pieces of candy toward them. Vernon bent over, picked them up, and popped one into his mouth. Elnath folded his arms and scowled, his eyes outraged and glittering.
“Did you see those two fellows?” Patrice asked Betty.
Betty turned. “Oh, they’re the missionaries. But Grace Pipestone is converting one.”
“What?”
“Louie let them sleep in his barn. And that one with his mouth full, he’s sweet on Grace. But she said she won’t look at him unless he turns Catholic. He’s praying on it.”
“I wouldn’t bet on Grace,” said Valentine, suddenly, from the front seat. “She’s got bigger fish to fry. I happen to know Wood Mountain’s got his eye on her.”
“She’s not even sixteen,” said Patrice, indignant.
“Green eyes show, green eyes glow,” said Valentine in a smug voice.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Valentine turned to Doris Lauder and they both began to laugh.
The parade moved slowly but then was over quickly. The vehicles, walkers, and dancers arrived in the high school parking lot. The Homecoming royalty climbed out of the cars and walked up the front steps to arrange themselves on the wide concrete landing before the double doors. Thomas had already parked his Nash close by, so Biboon could get out, sit on the hood, and watch the crowning of the king and queen. Now the frail old man sat expectantly in the weak sunlight, wrapped in an army blanket and enjoying the excitement. The crowd gradually fell silent.
To one side of the nervous royals, Mrs. Edges, the home economics teacher, stood with Mr. Jarvis. Each held a crown made of wire, tin, and silver sparkle paint. Other teachers held the red capes and scepters that would be presented to each monarch. First Mr. Jarvis paced forward and quickly crowned Calbert St. Pierre, one of Barnes’s most tentative boxers. There was applause and a bit of cheering or good-hearted jeering when the cape was put on Calbert. Then the crowd quieted again. The horses cropping shoots of grass at the edge of the road nickered and huffed. Mrs. Edges walked forward, held the crown over each of the girls’ heads, teasingly, before she finally lowered it onto Sharlo’s brown pin curls, which were brushed into a fluffy halo all around her gleaming face. The crowd gasped. Sharlo’s eyes widened in surprise, then her features twisted, raw with sudden emotion. Before she recovered and began to smile, some of the people in the audience were startled by memory.
Thomas saw his daughter at four years old, calling from a high haystack before she launched herself into the air. He whirled in the nick of time and lunged for her. The pitchfork he’d carelessly abandoned on the stack fell as she fell. It struck into the ground alongside her as they tumbled to one side. As he looked at it, quivering there, his chest expanded in a sob of horror. Sharlo patted his face. She was wearing the same mysterious expression of arrested flight that she wore, now, as she was crowned.
Rose saw her gleaming iron standing proudly on the dresser.
Patrice was jolted back to the time she was crowned Homecoming queen on the very same steps. How, wearing the red cape and holding the fake scepter, she looked down into the crowd and they seemed so far away. Her heart swelled, a stone in her chest. And she remembered. How every single one of them had made fun of her when she was little, when she had been so poor she came to school in shoes cut so her toes could poke out, coatless until the teacher scrounged one up, underwear sewed from a flour sack, hair in long traditional braids. They had called her squaw. Even the other girls. They had called her dirty. But then once Vera was old enough to scavenge or make their clothing, and once Patrice had her breasts, and once her face changed from ravenous and elfin to enchanting, they saw her differently. Now she was queen. But she had not forgotten. She would never forget. And suddenly, yes, as she felt the weight of the crown, suddenly she wanted them, all of them, to bow to her. She wanted the boys who’d called her squaw, especially them, to go down on their knees as in church. As if before the statue of the perfect shining blessed smirking virgin. Yes, kneel! Oh, she wanted them to bow their heads in fear, as if her little tin scepter were a sword. She wanted to see the teachers bow, and then maybe glance up at her in awe. She wanted their heads to press down quickly, afraid she’d see that they dared to take a peek.