"You got something against parades?" said Homer.
He had changed his tie. This one was patriotic with red, white and blue ballerinas.
*13*
What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? —Henry Thoreau
Preliminary report of the Committee on Public Ceremonies and Celebrations...
19 April, 10 a.m.: Main ceremony at North Bridge. Prayer. Music by General Radio Glee Club. Address by His Excellency, the Governor.
10:30 a.m.: On appropriate bugle signal, Boy Scout contingent from Acton will march across the field to the west to the tune of "The White Cockade" played by the Acton High School Band. Arrival of Dr. Samuel Prescott, impersonated by Charles Goss. Laying of wreaths. "The Star-Spangled Banner," Concord Band. Salute by Concord Independent Battery.
The amplified voices of the General Radio Glee Club sounded tinny, singing Emerson's hymn—
By the rude bridge that arched the flood.
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
It didn't matter much that the Governor forgot half of his poem. The instant he said, "Listen my children," everybody stopped listening, and smiled around and visited. Grandmaw couldn't hear, but she guessed. "It's not Longfellow again?"
"I'm afraid so," said Mary.
It was pleasant to stop one's ears and just watch. Around the speaker's platform the parade-marchers in their contrasting uniforms stood in orderly radiating clusters. Beyond them the disorderly citizens came in all shapes and sizes and moved here and there at will, pushing baby carriages over the bumpy ground, carrying infants on their shoulders. There were boys in the trees, there was the smell of spring, there were grandmothers sitting on the trampled grass, and somebody's dog that shouldn't have been let out nosing around and barking. There were jets going over, and now and then, thin occasional fragments of the Governor's proclamation. "Whereas ... and ... whereas ... do hereby proclaim this Patriot's Day..." Below the Governor the color and confusion of the massed marchers reminded Mary of two paintings rolled into one, some grandiose Napoleonic battle scene and a picnic in the grass. There were the fringed flags lying at every angle, the dazzle of sunshine on a sousaphone, the glittering splendor of the glockenspiel rising out of the high school band like the standard of a Roman legion, and under the crossed flags the reclining figure of the dying general replaced by the tired pimply second trombonist eating a sandwich.
The Governor finished and sat down, to a splatter of applause. Then a long straggling line of Scouts from Acton arrived, with more flags, and there were mutual felicitations. At last it was time for Charley. Mary craned her neck. There he was, right on time, accompanied by a shout that gathered momentum along Monument Street and echoed around through the field, "Here he comes!" Charley's outfit had been scrounged from here and there, but he looked reasonably like an eighteenth century general practitioner arousing the countryside. His hair was hidden under an orange wig that was tied back with a ribbon, and he wore a skimpy purple tricorn, with cheap gold braid around the edges. He urged Dolly as fast as was safe through the parted crowd, giving an impression of speed, leaning forward, waving one arm, crying, "The Regulars are out!" Then he reined in and tipped his hat to the Governor. "In case you don't know it, Your Excellency," he said, handing him a scroll, "the British are coming."
Mary felt the old movie music grinding. It was queer the way a real event was apt to become lost in the pageantry that grew up around it. But there had been a real Dr. Sam, and for a moment Mary reveled in knowing it. "Put on," he had said to Paul Revere, there on the Battle Road where the British had stopped them, and his horse had jumped over a stone wall and carried him and his burden of news to Concord, and on to Acton and Carlisle. It was Prescott's ride that had helped to bring not only a few hundred Minutemen to the bridge but three or four thousand to the stone walls and hill slopes by the end of the day, ambushing the British retreat, turning it into a rout. A hero he had been, for sure, and a martyr before the war was over, dying in a British prison, so that he never got to marry the girl he had gone to Lexington to see in the first place.
The Governor was reading the scroll out loud. It began with a "Whereas," and went on with a rather tedious statement of general approval of the whole thing by the mayor of Boston. Mentally the Governor resolved to suggest to the Mayor that next year he include a few appropriate lines from some traditional verse. Then he shook hands with Charley, calling him Paul Revere, and congratulated him on the successful completion of his famous ride. Suddenly he remembered some of the lines he had forgotten, and hanging onto Charley's hand, he pumped it up and down and declaimed them into the microphone.
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
He sat down smugly, feeling that he had positively outdone himself. The military units stared stonily ahead, there was a flutter of polite clapping, and one loyal Prescott supporter said Boo. "Not Revere, you ass," hissed the Governor's wife. "That's not Paul Revere."
The Governor was thoroughly disgruntled. "Well, for Chris'sake, who in hell is it?" Then he nearly jumped out of his skin. KABOOM. The Concord Independent Battery was firing again. B-B-B-BOOM went the echoes running around. Babies set up a howl all over the field, and small galvanized hands let go of gas balloons. The Concord Band started to play "The Star-Spangled Banner," the Governor and his wife left to open a supermarket in Needham, and everyone began trying to find lost members of his family. A few well-disciplined men and women veterans stood and saluted, or just stood at attention. Mary didn't, but she felt vaguely guilty, walking to the car with Mrs. Hand. April 19th always curiously stirred her. She wanted to fire a musket or pitch a box of tea in the harbor or somehow shout her defiance of colonial power. Down with the King anyhow.
*14*
Dying is a wild Night and a new Road. —Emily Dickinson
Preliminary report of the Committee on Public Ceremonies and Celebrations...
19 April, 8:30 a.m.: Acton Boy Scouts' Flag raising ceremonies at Isaac Davis farmhouse preceding hike down the original trail to the North Bridge.
10:30 a.m.: On appropriate bugle signal the group will march down to and across the bridge to the tune of "The White Cockade."
Honor scout Arthur (Tubby) Furry puffed along the Isaac Davis trail in deep distress of mind. It was terrible, it was really terrible. Angry tears overflowed his eyes and ran down his cheeks. He brushed his sleeve, stiff with merit badges, across his runny nose. If nobody could see you it was okay to cry. He half-trotted, sobbing and puffing. He'd never catch up now. The ceremony would be all over, and the presentations. He looked it his watch, and sniffled in despair. Twelve forty-five! He was over two hours late! What would Mr. Palmer say? How could he possibly explain to Mr. Palmer? He couldn't say he was just a natural-born heavy sleeper and had slept right through his alarm, and then his darned old mother had made him clean up his stupid room, could he? Just because he'd more or less forgotten to clean it up yesterday, for crumb's sake. Here it was, the most important day in his life, and his mother had made him clean up his room. It was his duty to be there with the others. He'd tried to explain to his mother, but she wouldn't listen. Here he was, Arthur Furry, the one who had the honor to present the flag to the Governor of Massachusetts, the Governor, for crumb's sake. And then his mother had said something awful. I don't care if it's Almighty God, she had said, you're going to clean up this ghastly mess right now, from top to bottom. That wasn't even a nice thing to say, for crumb's sake. Most of the time his mother was nice, but sometimes she could be awful, like now.