The Nottingham’s new dog leaped out at them. The old one had died in the spring. Now they had a puppy who, chained in the place of his predecessor, inherited and modified his habits. So he whined instead of roaring, and slapped his big paws in the grass instead of beating the air with them. When Jemma bent down next to him he turned on his back and offered her his belly. She scratched it.
“Come on,” said Calvin. “We’ll be late.”
“Now who’s hurrying?” Jemma asked him, but she rose and followed. They wound around the fifth and seventh holes, around the sheriff’s house and past the staircase that led to the deep hidden playground, Jemma now looking in on Mr. Peepers and now smelling her fingers, savoring the lingering odor of maple syrup. Their father had made pancakes for breakfast decorated with strawberry mouths, blueberry eyes, and great masses of whipped cream hair. Standing at the stove in his red-white-and-blue-striped trousers, he’d flipped the cakes halfway to the ceiling, whistling “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and cursing mildly when a bit of hot batter struck his bare chest or belly. Jemma’s mother, dressed in a blue bathing suit, came in and out of the kitchen, stealing bites from her pancakes, more and more green every time she made an appearance, until she was patina’d from her ears to her fingers.
Cars passed them, some open-topped and some not, all full of parents and children dressed in red, white, and blue, all decorated with flags and dragging some sort of red-white-and-blue noisemaker, a few decked out as floats for the parade. Jemma waved with her whole free arm every time someone passed. Calvin, his gaze fixed on his shoes, just kept walking, not looking up until, as they were passing along an empty stretch of road in front of the clubhouse, they were both startled by an explosion in the grass.
Jemma jumped, dropping her box but catching it again before it could hit the ground. She heard a funny whistle before the next explosion. It seemed smaller than the first, just firecracker-sized, but she jumped just as high. Calvin was already looking at the clubhouse roof when the laughter broke out. There were two older boys up there, armed with bottle rockets. Jemma recognized them, but didn’t know their names. Each of them wore a single lacrosse glove to protect their hand while they aimed and launched their rockets.
“Got to pay the toll,” said the one on the left.
“One box of stuff,” said the one on the right, pointing at Mr. Peepers’ box. Jemma held it to her chest.
“You all are morons,” said Calvin, and started walking again. A rocket exploded in front of him before he’d taken five steps. He stopped again and Jemma ran up behind him.
“Got to pay the toll, kiddo,” the two boys said. Calvin just stared at them, even while they lit and leveled another rocket. As far away as they were, Jemma still thought she could see the fuse burning down. She had time to run away, but she just stood there tugging on Calvin’s shirt. They had wonderful aim. Jemma was sure the rocket would have flown just inside the space Calvin made with his arm by putting his hand on his hip, and slide precisely through one of the holes in Mr. Peepers’ box. She imagined the flare of light, the box leaping in her hands and the lid leaping off the box, the turtle parts scattering toward every corner of the ninth tee. In a flash of useless, stupid prescience she knew what would happen, and yet she did nothing, did not move, did not shield innocent Mr. Peepers with her own body, did not even cry out until something happened that she did not expect. Calvin moved his arm, releasing his hand from his hip and waving it in a circle, a gesture of utter dismissal that knocked the rocket out of her path. It fell on the ground and slid through grass still wet with dew to explode some twenty feet from where they stood. My own concern flexes at this same moment in a useless spasm, but it is only your brother’s arm that saves you. In this moment it would not surprise you if he cleared the space from the ground to the roof in one leap and knocked both boys, with two short simultaneous punches to the chest, clear down to the river, or if from that place on the roof he reached up and, tearing the sky from its moorings, wadded it up like so much blue tissue paper to throw at your feet.
“Morons,” Calvin said, and walked away. Jemma followed so close behind him she gave him two flats, which he did not comment on, but just kept walking with his heels outside his sneakers like they were sandals, and her head bumped repeatedly into his shoulder while she talked. “You saved Mr. Peepers’s life!” she said. “They were going to kill him, or kidnap him, or torture him, or eat him!”
“They were morons,” he said quietly, but he was trembling, and he made her swear by the red heart of Mr. Peepers not to tell their parents what had happened. Jemma swore, but she kept thinking about that gesture all day long. In the odd still moment it would come back to her, and she would make that circle herself, over and over until her brother saw it and made a shushing motion at her.
After they passed the clubhouse and the general store the golf course opened up on their left and the first through fourth tees, where they rolled all the way down to the river, were full of tents and people, and the parade was already well advanced along the road that wound down to the beach. Beneficent strangers pushed them forward when they stood at the back of the crowd lining the road, and they emerged among other children just as the first float was passing by, and the first portion of candy and fireworks went flying over their heads. Jemma leaped awkwardly, grabbing in the air with one hand and managed to nab a single bottle rocket. She cast it on the ground.
The floats passed: Betsy Ross working on the flag in the back of a festooned pickup truck; Ben Franklin flying a kite on a stiff wire with one hand and scattering roman candles with the other; a Liberty Bell made all of daisies and violets; the local Young Republicans beating on dead-donkey piñatas; delegations from each of the summer-camp classes, Nit through Gold Senior, riding high on the floats upon which they’d labored all through the summer, riding by in crepe-paper splendor, alternating Roman and Spartan, so insults were hurled from the stern of one float to the bow of the next, and candy flung hard enough to sting. Last of all came the Chairman and his Lady, both honorary but elected offices, whom Jemma had been awaiting with breathless anticipation. They rode on the finest float of all, constructed by labor contributed by every camp class: they sat on white thrones above a papier-mâché model of DC. Jemma longed to see them rise and stomp like monsters among the stiff paper capitol and monuments, but they only sat, their father in his blue waistcoat and red-white-and-blue pants; their mother in her green toga and spectacular tinfoil crown. Their bags contained the best candy, and the fanciest explosives, and both parents threw more than a fair share at Jemma and Calvin as soon as they saw them.
When their float stopped in front of the clubhouse they climbed up on the stage set up on the lawn and together rang the daisy and violet liberty bell with careful strikes pantomimed in time to a recording of the actual bell sounding. Then they set off a single rocket, an explosion lost in the glare of the sun, and declared the games open. These were the midsummer games, not to be confused by anyone with the end-of-summer annual Olympiad, but still quite important in the competition between the two summer-camp teams. Points could be gathered on this day such that the opposing team would never catch up, even if they won the decathlon or had both the boy and girl of the year chosen from within their ranks to receive the Field Medal. Every child, even Jemma understood the seriousness of the day and schooled their turtles accordingly.