They turned right on Fifth Street only a block from where they had started and went east. Baedecker noticed a small white building to his right, which he was sure had once been the library. He remembered the hot attic-smell of the little room on a summer day and the slight frown on the lady-librarian's face when he would check out John Carter, Mars for the eighth or tenth or fifteenth time.
Fifth Street was wide enough to carry the parade and still allow two lanes of traffic to move by on their left. There was no traffic. Baedecker again felt the absence of the great elms, especially now that the sun was beating down on the crowned expanse of pavement. Small Chinese elms grew near the grassy drainage ditches, but they seemed out of scale in comparison to the absurdly wide street, long lawns, and large homes. People sat on porches and lawn chairs and waved. Children and dogs ran alongside the horses and dodged back and forth ahead of the band's color guard. Behind Baedecker's Mustang, an informal procession of bicycles, children pulling wagons, and a few gaily bedecked riding lawn mowers added another fifty feet of tail to the parade.
The sheriff's car turned right on Catton Street. They passed the school-yard again. In front of Baedecker's old home a shirtless man with his belly hanging down over his shorts was mowing the yard. He glanced up as the parade went by and flicked a two-fingered salute at Baedecker's Mustang. Three very old people sat on the shaded porch where Baedecker had once played pirate or held off wave after wave of Japanese banzai attacks.
Two blocks past Baedecker's old home the parade passed the high school and confronted a wall of corn. The band wheeled left onto a county road and led the procession around the high school to acres of open field where the Old Settlers fairground had been erected. Beyond the parking lot were half a dozen large tents, twice that many booths, and a spattering of carnival rides sitting motionless in the midday sun. The high, brown grass of the field had been trampled and littered by the crowds of the night before. Farther north were the baseball diamonds, already occupied by brightly uniformed players and surrounded by cheering crowds. Even farther north, almost back to where the backyard of Baedecker's house had abutted the fields, clusters of fire engines created red-and-green angles on the grass.
The bands stopped playing and the parade dissolved. The fairground area was almost deserted and few people watched as band members and horses milled around in confusion. Baedecker remained seated for a moment.
'Well,' said Mayor Seaton, 'that was a lot of fun, wasn't it?'
Baedecker nodded and glanced up. The car metal and upholstery were very hot. The sun was almost at its zenith. Near the horizon and just visible in the cloudless sky was the faint disk of a three-quarters moon.
'Dickie!'
Baedecker looked up from the table where he was drinking beer with the others. The woman who stood there was heavy and middle-aged with short blond hair. She wore a print blouse and stretch pants that were approaching the designer's maximum expansion limits. Baedecker did not recognize her. The light in the American Legion tent was dim, softened to a buttered sepia. The warm air smelled of canvas. Baedecker stood up.
'Dickie!' repeated the woman and stepped forward to take his free hand in both of hers. 'How are you?'
'Fine,' said Baedecker. 'How are you?'
'Oh, just great, just great. You look wonderful, Dickie, but what happened to all of your hair? I remember when you had this big head of red hair.' Baedecker smiled and unconsciously ran a hand over his scalp. The men he had been talking with turned back to their beers.
The woman brought her hands up to her mouth and tittered. 'Oh, my, you don't remember me, do you?'
'I'm terrible with names,' confessed Baedecker.
'I thought you'd remember Sandy,' said the woman and aimed a playful slap at Baedecker's wrist. 'Sandy Serrel. We used to be best friends. Remember, Donna Lou Hewford and I used to hang around you and Mickey Farrell and Kevin Gordon and Jimmy Haines all the time during fourth and fifth grades.'
'Of course,' said Baedecker and shook her hand again. He had no recollection of her whatsoever. 'How are you, Sandy?'
'Dickie, this here is my husband, Arthur. Arthur, this here is my old boyfriend who went to the moon.' Baedecker shook hands with a rail-thin man in a Taylor Funeral Home softball uniform. The man was covered with a film of dirt through which red wrinkles were visible at the neck, face, and wrists.
'Bet you never thought I'd get married,' said Sandy Serrel. 'At least to anyone else, huh?' Baedecker returned the woman's smile. One of her front teeth was broken.
'C'mon. Next game's starting,' said her husband.
The big woman grabbed Baedecker's hand and arm again in a tight grip. 'We have to go, Dickie. It was real good seein' you again. You gotta come over later tonight and I'll show you off to Shirley and the twins. Just remember, I was praying to Jesus all during that moonwalk thing of yours. If it wasn't for all us folks prayin', Jesus never woulda let you boys all come home safe.'
'I'll remember,' said Baedecker. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Then she was leaving with her thin husband and Baedecker was left with a scraped sensation on his cheek and a lingering odor of dirty towels.
He sat down and ordered another round of beers.
'Arthur does mostly odd jobs out to the cemetery,' said Phil Dixon, one of the council members.
'He's Stinky Serrel's third husband,' said Bill Ackroyd. 'Doesn't look to be the last one.'
'Stinky Serrel!' said Baedecker and brought his cup down on the table. 'Jesus.' His single memory of Stinky Serrel, other than of an unwanted presence following his buddies and him down the street, was of a time in fifth grade when she had walked up to him on the playground one lunchtime when someone had ridden by on a palomino.
'I don't know how you guys do that,' she had said and pointed at the stallion. 'Do what?' he'd asked.
'Walk around with a cock banging between your legs,' she had said softly into his ear. Baedecker remembered his shock at that, stepping back, blushing, being angry that he had blushed.
'Stinky Serrel,' said Baedecker. 'Good God.' He drank down the rest of his beer and waved at the man in the legion cap for more.
There were no flowers but the two graves were well tended. Baedecker shifted his weight and removed his sunglasses. The gray granite headstones were identical except for the inscriptions:
CHARLES S. BAEDECKER 1893–1956,
KATHLEEN E. BAEDECKER 1900–1957.
The cemetery was quiet. It was shielded by tall cornfields to the north and by woods on the other three sides. Ravines dropped away to unseen creeks to the east and west. Baedecker remembered hunting in the wooded hills to the south during one of his father's furloughs in the rainy spring of ‘43 or ‘44. Baedecker had carried the loaded over-and-under shotgun and .22 for hours but had refused to shoot at a squirrel. It had been during his brief pacifist phase. Baedecker's father had been disgusted but had said nothing, merely handing over the stained canvas sack half-filled with dead squirrels for the boy to carry.
Baedecker dropped to one knee and pulled tendrils of grass away from the sides of his mother's headstone. He put his sunglasses back on. He thought of the body that lay a few feet beneath the rich, black Illinois soil — the arms that had enfolded him when he came, crying, home from kindergarten after the fights, the hands that had held his during nights of terror when he had awakened not knowing where or who he was, crying out, then hearing the soft tread of his mother's slippers in the hallway, the soft touch of her hands in the terrifying dark. Salvation. Sanity.