'The whole town's excited about you being here, Dick,' Seaton said and beamed at him. 'I should say the entire county. We're going to get folks from as far away as Galesburg today.'
'I'm looking forward to meeting them,' said Baedecker. He toyed with his hash browns. Next to him, Ackroyd was mopping up runny eggs with a piece of toast. The waitress, a small, bleak-faced woman named Minnie, returned every other moment to refill their coffee cups as if she had distilled the entire definition of hostess down to the dogged completion of that single act.
'Do you have an agenda . . . a schedule?' asked Baedecker. 'Some sort of outline for the day?'
'Oh, yeah,' said a thin man in a green polyester suit. He had been introduced as Kyle Gibbons or Gibson. 'Here you go.' He pulled out a folded sheet of mimeograph paper and smoothed it down in front of Baedecker.
'Thanks.'
9:00 — COUNCIL MTG. — Pksd. (Astronaut?)
10:00 — HDBL. TNMT. — (AM. LEG. BALL)
11:30 — PARADE FORMS UP (W. 5)
12:00 — OLD SETTLERS PARADE
1:00 — J.G.C. WEENIE ROAST AND SHOOTOFF (Sh. Meehan)
1:30 — SFTBL. TNMT.
2:30 — VLT. FIRE DPT. WATERFIGHTS
5:00 — OPTIMISTS' BARBECUE
6:00 — UP WITH PEOPLE HOUR (Camp. Cr. Singers)
7:00 — RAFFLE DRAWING (M. Seaton — H. Sch. Gym)
7:30 — STARS OF TOMORROW (H. Sch. Gym)
8:00 — ASTRONAUT'S SPEECH (H. Sch. Gym)
10:00 — J.G.C. FIREWORKS
Baedecker looked up. 'Speech?'
Marge Seaton sipped coffee and smiled at him. 'Anything you say'd be just fine, Dick. Don't go to any trouble about it. We'd all like to hear you talk about space or what it was like to walk on the moon or something. Just keep it to twenty minutes or so, okay?' Baedecker nodded and listened through the open windows as a listless morning breeze moved a few leaves against each other. Some children entered and loudly demanded soft drinks at the counter. Minnie ignored them and hurried over to refill everyone's coffee cups.
The discussion at the table turned to city council matters and Baedecker excused himself. Outside, the midmorning heat was already reflecting up from the sidewalks and beginning to soften the asphalt of the highway. Baedecker blinked and tugged his aviator sunglasses out of his shirt pocket. He was wearing the white linen safari shirt, tan cotton slacks, and desert boots he had worn in Calcutta a few weeks earlier. He found it hard to believe that this world of scalded blue sky, flat white storefronts, and empty highway could coexist with the monsoon mud, endless slums, and crowded insanity of India.
The city park was much smaller than he remembered. In Baedecker's mind the bandstand had been an elaborate Victorian gazebo, but all that stood there now was a flat-topped slab of concrete raised on cinder blocks. He doubted if the gazebo had ever existed.
On Saturday evenings during Baedecker's two summers there, some rich resident of Glen Oak — he had no idea who it had been — had shown free movies in this park, projecting them onto three sheets nailed high on the side of the Parkside Café. Baedecker remembered watching the Movietone Newsreels, cartoons where no lesser personages than Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck sold war bonds, and such film classics as Fly by Night, Saps at Sea, Broadway Limited, and Once Upon a Honeymoon. Baedecker could close his eyes and almost recapture the flickering images, the faces of the farm families sitting on benches, blankets, and new-mown grass, the sounds of children running through the bushes near the bandstand and climbing trees, and at least once, memorably, the silent flashes of heat lightning rippling above trees and storefronts, coming closer, the heavy branches of the elms dancing to the breeze fleeing before the coming storm. Baedecker could remember the sweetness of that breeze, coming as it did across so many miles of ripening fields. Baedecker could remember the first real crash of lightning, which, in an uncanny instant of suspended time before everyone ran for shelter, froze people, cars, benches, grass, buildings, and Baedecker himself in a stroboscopic flash of light that briefly made all the world a single frozen frame in an unwatched film.
Baedecker cleared his throat, spit, and walked over to a small boulder on a stone pedestal. Three bronze plaques listed the names of men from Glen Oak who had fought in conflicts ranging from the War with Mexico through Vietnam. Stars designated those who had died during their service. Eight had died during the Civil War, three in World War II, and none in Vietnam. Baedecker glanced at fourteen names listed under Korea, but his name was not among them. He recognized none of the others even though he must have gone to school with some of them. The Vietnam plaque was hardly weathered and only a third filled in. There was room for more wars.
Across the street a farm family had poured out of a pickup truck and were staring into the window of Helmann's Variety Store. Baedecker remembered the place as Jensen's Dry Goods, a long, dark building where fans turned slowly fifteen feet above dusty wood floors. The family was excited, pointing and laughing. More people began filling the sidewalks. Somewhere nearby but out of sight, a band started playing, stopped abruptly, and began again only to halt in mid-cymbal crash.
Baedecker sat down on a park bench. His shoulders ached with the weight of things. He closed his eyes again and tried to summon the often-retrieved sensation of bouncing across a glaring, pockmarked plain, the light throwing a corona around Dave's white suit and PLS pack, gravity a lessened foe, each movement as fluid and effortless as moving tiptoe across the bottom of a sunlit lagoon.
The lightness did not come. Baedecker opened his eyes and squinted at the polarized clarity of things.
The Old Settlers Parade moved out fifteen minutes behind schedule. The consolidated high school's marching band led the way, followed by several rows of unidentified horsemen, then came five homemade floats representing chapters of the FFA, 4-H, Boy Scouts (Creve Coeur Council), the county historical society, and the Jubilee Gun Club. Following the floats came the junior high school band consisting of nine youngsters, then an American Legion contingent on foot, and then Baedecker. He rode in a twenty-year-old white Mustang convertible. Mayor Seaton sat to his right, Mr. Gibbons or Gibson to his left, and Bill Ackroyd rode up front next to the teenaged driver. Ackroyd insisted that the three in back sit up on the trunk with their feet on the red vinyl upholstery. Banners on the sides of the Mustang proclaimed
RICHARD M. BAEDECKER — GLEN OAK'S ENVOY TO THE MOON. Beneath the lettering there were Magic-Markered representations of his crew's mission patch. The sun behind the symbolic command-module-with-sails looked like one of the egg yolks Ackroyd had mopped up with such vigor that morning.
The parade flowed out of west Fifth Street by the park and marched proudly down Main Street. Sheriff Meehan's green-and-white Plymouth cleared the way. People lined the high, three-leveled sidewalks that seemed designed for viewing parades. Small American flags were in evidence and Baedecker noticed that a banner had been hung between two light poles above the street: GLEN OAK CELEBRATES RICHARD M. BAEDECKER DAY — OLD SETTLERS PARADE — JUBILEE GUN CLUB SHOOTOFF SAT., AUG. 8.
The high school band turned left on Second Street and took another left by the schoolyard just a block east. Children playing on the wooden gallows-structure waved and shouted. One boy made a pistol of his hand and began firing. Without hesitation, Baedecker pointed his finger and fired back. The boy clutched at his chest, rolled his eyes back in his head, and did a complete somersault off a beam to land on his back in the sandbox six feet below.