They sat down again and the announcer said, Now will somebody shut off these field lights for us? They waited. Will somebody shut off these lights so we can start? Folks, we can’t get started till the lights are turned off. After a while someone pulled the switch and they all sat in the faint light of the evening, the afterglow of sunset still showing to the west but everything dark now in the east. They waited and then suddenly the first rocket shot up and it broke overhead.
There was a loud explosion and strings of light spurted out and dripped down and winked out and white smoke drifted slowly away. Then another rocket exploded. The young boys in front of them named each one as it went off. Come on, bust, they said, and then the rocket burst and they said, Comet. Chandelier. Pixie Dust. Parachute. Silver rain. Carnation. Chinese Night.
After a while, Lorraine lay back on the blanket. Then Alice did too, and presently the Johnson women stretched out on the blanket next to them and the fireworks fired up into the cool summer night and the ghostlike trails of smoke drifted away in the sky, the pure blue stars far over them, all shining, above the football field on the high plains. The boys went on with their running account. Alice slid over closer to Lorraine.
Are you doing all right, honey? Lorraine said.
The girl nodded.
Are you cold?
A little.
Lorraine pulled her closer.
I wish my mother could have seen this, Alice said.
Yes. Raise your head for a second, honey.
Lorraine laid her arm down on the blanket and Alice lay back and Lorraine pulled the loose end of the blanket up over them both. Alene looked over and watched Alice for a moment. A rocket went off and she could see the girl’s face in the shimmering light. Her eyes clear and serious. Her smooth soft girl’s cheeks. Alene’s eyes welled up with tears, looking at the girl, but immediately she wiped the tears away. Next to her, her mother went on watching the fireworks.
At the end there was a long chain of explosions with a final cannon boom that echoed across the town out into the country. Then it was dark, the smoke drifting away above them, and then the high field lights came on again. Everything seemed brighter than ever.
The announcer came on again. That’s it for tonight, folks. Take care going home now. Mind your step now.
On the field they stood up and folded the blankets and people came down out of the grandstands and they all went out slowly in a crowd, not talking much, tired now and satisfied, moving out through the gate.
Good night, dear, Alene said, and without prompting Alice went to her and hugged her and then she hugged Willa. Afterward she walked home with Lorraine, back on the west side of town along the gravel street under the corner streetlights past the quiet houses, a few of them with lamps on inside, and once they saw an elderly woman let a little white dog out and then she called it back in and shut the door.
18
IT WASN’T THE IMAGE of her naked beneath the thin raincoat standing in front of him in the back office of the hardware store that Dad Lewis remembered. It was the look on her face before she slapped him. And the pitch and the desperation of her voice on the phone three months later in the spring when she called, screaming that Clayton had killed himself in Denver.
When he had not stopped thinking about her a year later, he decided he had to find her. He drove to the town a hundred miles south of Holt where she had moved with Clayton and the two children to live with her parents. But she was not there now. The parents did not even live there anymore. A man with a beard was renting the house. I don’t know, he said. I just moved in. I don’t know anything about them. They left some stuff in the basement if you want that.
He drove to the post office and the police station and talked to people at both places. They didn’t know anything either. He returned to the street where the house was located and knocked on the neighbors’ doors, but it had begun to snow now and the few people who were home didn’t want to stand there talking to him with the snow blowing in. On the opposite side of the street he finally found an old woman who told him the parents had moved back to a town in Nebraska and that their daughter had gone off to Denver with the two children. He thanked her and started driving back to Holt in the gathering storm. The wind was blowing the snow across the two-lane blacktop so hard that he had to squint to be sure that he was still on the road and he was forced to stop every five or six miles to scrape off the windshield.
Two weeks later he drove to Denver. It was on a Sunday and he told Mary that he had to pick up a special order. He didn’t tell her then and he never did tell her nor anyone else what he was doing. The wind was blowing again but there wasn’t any snow this time. He arrived in Denver in the middle of the afternoon.
From there it was almost too easy. Her name was listed in the phone book. She and the two children were living in a one-bedroom apartment in a run-down house in the middle of the city. He climbed the stairs and went back into the dark hallway and knocked. There was noise inside, a TV going. Then the door opened and she stood before him. She looked bad now. She had let herself go. She was barefoot and still wearing a bathrobe in the afternoon, made of some thick fuzzy material, dirty at the front and frayed at the cuffs. Her blond hair had grown out unevenly and she hadn’t yet combed it for the day. She stood in the doorway staring at him.
You, she said. What are you doing here? Didn’t you do enough already?
I wanted to talk to you, he said.
How’d you find me?
You’re in the phone book.
Oh. Well, I don’t have a phone no more. They shut it off. I can’t afford it. What do you want?
I come to see how you are.
I’m here, look at me. Can’t you see? What’d you think would happen?
Dad looked at her and looked away. He said, I’m sorry this happened. I’m sorry it turned out this way.
You’re sorry.
I didn’t mean for it to turn out like this.
Jesus Christ, she said.
Can I talk to you a minute?
What do you want to talk about? You want to take me up on my offer? Is that it? You changed your mind?
Your offer. What offer?
To let you fuck me. Pay off what he stole.
What? No. For hell’s sake. That’s not what I come for.
Well, I can’t blame you. She pulled the robe tighter. The way I look now.
It’s not that. Is that what you think? It’s not about that. I come to help you if I can. Can I talk to you?
You just want to talk.
That’s right.
You mean you want to come in.
Yes, so we can talk a little.
Come in then. It’s a mess. But I’m not going to apologize to you. Why should I?
He followed her back through the dark living room, past the two children sprawled on the floor like some kind of little animals in front of the television, watching some animated movie.
Come out here, she said.
In the kitchen she removed dirty dishes from the table and put them into the sink which was already full of dirty dishes, and swiped at the table with a washrag. Sit down, she said. Don’t be so polite. You don’t have to wait for me.
He sat down. She dropped the washrag in the sink and sat across from him and lit a cigarette. He looked at her and watched her smoke. Then he removed the wallet from his back pocket and took out all the bills and stacked them on the table. He had five hundred dollars to give her. She stared at him.