When I take Olivia’s car to the filling station to put air in the tires it’s obvious that the morning rain hasn’t diminished the level of holiday excitement in town, which also happens to be celebrating it’s bicentennial. A bandstand has been erected in front of the courthouse and festooned with red, white, and blue bunting, along with four enormous American flags, just in case any visitors from the Far East are confused about what country they’re in.
Later this afternoon the lantern-jawed Edwin Kunckle will dress up as Uncle Sam, like he does every year, and on this occasion he’ll be wearing a top hat. Though it probably has fishing weights sewn inside for ballast atop that Marie Antoinette hair situation. Kunckle will also make certain that he’s standing right next to the mayor when she gives her usual speech about how a strong community equals prosperity. Not only that, he’ll leap from his seat and clap obnoxiously when his daughter, Edwinna, finishes singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Everyone else claps, too, but because it’s over. Edwinna chases some of those notes far and wide, and still only comes about as near to them as I’ve gotten to winning the Miss Universe Pageant. Meantime, at the back of the crowd a few of the boys will imitate the struggling (and monumentally busty) soloist to one another’s great amusement, until a parent gives them an angry glance accompanied by a swift kick.
Following that the veterans stand and fire off their rifle salute. A rush of birds comes crashing out of the surrounding trees and usually a woman screams after one of them craps on her head.
Barring a torrential downpour, there will be a modest fireworks display over at the town park after sunset. My parents always stake out a picnic table and barbecue pit by noon, or as soon as they’ve finished watching the parade go down Main Street. My ultraconservative dad whistles along to “America the Beautiful,” completely unaware that the lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates, who, at least according to Bernard, was a lesbian.
Meantime, singles and couples wander over to the bandstand to hear music, visit the beer tent, and maybe take a turn on the small wooden dance floor. Adolescents escape from parental surveillance at the park and sneak down to the bandstand as well. The girls do it to prove that they’re too old for three-legged races and tug-of-wars. And the teenage boys go to cadge beer and light firecrackers.
It’s the day of the year that Officer Rich says he dreads the most. Because no matter how many safety lectures he gives, there’s always going to be a kid who blows his fingers off with an M-80 and another one who lands a rocket on a roof and almost burns down a house or garage.
By evening the sky has cleared and so I dig my old bike out of the garage and ride over to the town park to join my family. Olivia and Ottavio may want to take a drive later so I don’t want to ask to borrow their car.
My brother Teddy has run out of sparklers and smoke bombs so he’s pinching and poking the twins while anxiously awaiting the fireworks. The medium-sized siblings are cranky and tired from overeating and running around, playing endless games of tag with no discernible rules. And the little ones are asleep in or near Mom’s lap, fingers still sticky and crusty dribbles of ketchup clinging to their shirtfronts. Mom is also exhausted, a result of making sure the potato salad and other perishables didn’t get left out in the sun all day and from being pregnant. Dad gathers up all the bats and balls. To him the words national holiday are synonymous with “sports camp.”
However, when the fireworks finally begin, everyone settles down, either lying back on the grass or leaning up against a tree, oohing and ahhing as the rockets explode in the sky overhead and bright showers of green, blue, red, white, and pink gently cascade back down to earth. Bernard claims that if there is such a thing as reincarnation, then Olivia is going to come back as a firework. (And that he’ll return as Regency furniture.)
My mind briefly drifts to Auggie, as it’s been doing a lot the past four days, and I wonder what he’s doing at this very moment—perhaps working in Cappy’s office, struggling to crunch a pile of numbers, or better yet, maybe writing one of his stories about death.
Eventually the grand finale lights up the sky, accompanied by lots of whistles, booms, and bangs. Afterward there’s a big round of applause, followed by a rush to the parking lot in order to avoid being caught in the town’s one traffic jam a year.
Chapter Thirty-three
THIS TIME IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT WHEN THE SOUND OF crashing and banging awakens me. And now the noise seems to be coming from the shed. My first thought is that the lawn mower I repaired yesterday afternoon has started itself up like in a Stephen King novel and is headed directly for the summerhouse. My second and more rational theory is that a burglar is searching for some of Bernard’s antiques. But then I decide it’s more likely one of Olivia’s late-night contraceptive customers who has taken a wrong turn. Though at the Stocktons’ it could be almost anything. In fact, it was fast becoming impossible to get any sleep around here during the day or night.
I yank on my jeans and search for the flashlight I used to keep hidden in the drawer of one of the end tables. When I finally open the door I see a figure clad all in black and waving a shovel above his head while rushing toward me.
Back to the Stephen King train of thought. I scream and slam the door to the summerhouse. Then I glance around the room for a piece of furniture to use as a blockade, since the door only has a latch to keep it closed.
However, I already feel someone pushing his way in, quickly followed by Bernard’s voice. “Oh, Hallie, I’m glad you’re still awake!” He doesn’t even take a second to apologize for scaring me half to death. “I can’t find the cutters.”
Breathing a huge sigh of relief I inform him, “That’s because they’re wherever you left them inside the house after making that huge arrangement of proteas.”
“Oh yes, of course,” he says.
Bernard has been doing at least one fabulous floral arrangement every other day in the hopes that the person from the adoption agency will unexpectedly arrive and see it.
“Why are you wearing a black turtleneck?” I ask. “And what are you doing out here? I thought you were a murderer! It must be three o’clock in the morning.”
“Three-thirty,” he corrects me, as if this is a perfectly normal time to be gardening. “I’m going to rescue a lily from the evil clutches of my horticultural nemesis, Mrs. Hortense Graham.”
I’m aware that Bernard occasionally pulls a late-night “lily liberation,” but I usually only find out after the fact, when I see the illicit booty in the yard the next morning. Gil was always his wheel-man.
“I’ve pleaded with Hortense for years to sell me one of her Devil Star lilies,” Bernard attempts to justify his foray into floral crime. “They’re twelve feet high with white shooting stars and pointed crimson seedpods surrounding emerald green centers. And they bloom right into November! I’ve even offered to trade for one of my stupendous Casablanca lilies, or else give her an item from the shop.” He becomes annoyed all over again just recounting his frustration over the matter. “It’s not as if I’m going to enter them into a show or try to sell them—it’s only for the glorification of our own private inspirational jardin, like Katharine Hepburn’s jungle garden in Suddenly Last Summer.” Bernard could justify raiding an Egyptian tomb by convincing people how much better off the mummies would be with some fresh air and sunshine.
I follow Bernard into the house in order to locate the cutters for him. Olivia appears at the top of the stairwell in a satiny purple kimono-style robe, with her hair hanging loosely over her shoulders.
“On the way in or out?” she casually inquires.
“Out,” whispers Bernard.
“Off to pilfer petunias?”
“Devil Star lilies,” says Bernard.
“We’ve always depended on the bulbs of strangers,” says Olivia.
“Can I go with you to steal flowers?” I ask, by now fully awake.
“May I go with you to steal flowers,” Olivia corrects
me.
“No, you mayn’t,” says Bernard. “And I much prefer the term previously owned flowers, if it’s all the same to the both of you.”
“But why not?” I ask.
“You’re the one who insisted that you were going straight this summer,” Bernard reminds me. “What if we’re apprehended?”
“I won’t be eighteen for another eight weeks, so I can’t be tried as an adult.”
Bernard capitulates. “All right, then you may be the driver.”
“The wheelwoman,” I correct him.
Olivia promises to send us lots of blues albums and Berlitz language tapes in prison before heading back to bed.
After fishing a black face-mask out from underneath the scarves and gloves in the front hall closet Bernard pretends to be Gloria Swanson in the movie Sunset Boulevard and barks, “Max! Get the car!”
As soon as I pull Olivia’s Buick up to the door he jumps in and places a heavy-duty flashlight and two cell phones on the front seat, along with a trowel and several plastic bags. Bernard continues to impersonate Gloria Swanson and in his best stage voice announces, “This is my life. It always will be. There’s nothing else. Just us and the cameras and those wonderful people out there in the dark.”
“Are you ready for your close-up?” I ask.
“Almost.” He takes the ski mask out of his pocket and pulls it on over his head. “Drop me at the corner of Sparrow and Thrush. If I don’t need the stepladder from the trunk I’ll flash the light twice and you’ll drive back to the main road and wait for me to ring you on the cell phone for a pickup.”
“How do you know where the lilies are?” I ask.
“I cased the place last week,” explains Bernard. “I pretended to be soliciting for a theater donation at the house directly behind the Grahams’ and persuaded the owner to show me her garden. The two yards are back to back.”
“But you’ll be the prime suspect when she realizes the lily is gone,” I say. “Mrs. Graham is well aware that you want it.”
“No one will know it’s gone,” insists Bernard. “There are almost a dozen Devil Stars back there and the selfish old biddy can’t even see well enough to get her wig on straight anymore.”
With the headlights turned off I watch the Lily Pirate hastily make his way across the Graham yard. Bernard disappears over the top of the fence, a smudge against the darkness, and then the light flashes twice.
I drive slowly back to the main road, park on the shoulder, and check to make sure my cell phone is turned on. A car coming from the opposite direction passes me and I say a silent prayer that it won’t stop because the driver is concerned I have a flat tire or ran out of gas. This is one of the drawbacks of living in the heartland and having neighbors who view helpfulness as their full-time job. Whenever you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing, especially at four-thirty in the morning, there’s an excellent chance that a Good Samaritan will assume you’re in distress and pull over to offer assistance.
Finally the phone rings.
“Hurry up!” Bernard pants into the phone. “Part of the fence caved in and the alarm went off. I’m heading for the corner.”
Sure enough, a loud bell jangles crazily from the direction of the Graham house.
I speed back to the corner as the lights inside the house are going on one by one. Bernard dives into the car and pulls the door closed behind him. My heart is racing and I’m not sure I remember to breathe until we’re safely around the corner. Though my life hasn’t been all that long, I nonetheless experience a detailed review of it.
“Just turn the headlights back on, not the brights, and drive normally,” Bernard instructs me between gasps, chest still heaving after his mad dash. The puffed-up plastic bag in his hand indicates he met with success. The alarm must have been tripped on the way out. “If we’re stopped I’ll simply say that we’re getting an early start for an antiques show in Pittsburgh.”
“We’re driving away from Pittsburgh,” I point out.
“Oh, yes, you’re right. Then Philadelphia. I should have brought a normal shirt to change into. This black turtleneck is a dead give-away. Gil always joked that we looked like the Bowery Boys.”
Despite the tense situation, I can’t help but register that it’s the first time Bernard has made a reference to Gil without some sort of drama. In the distance a squad car with gumballs flashing and sirens blaring races directly toward us. “Should I pull over?” I ask.
“No,” says Bernard. “They’re probably heading for the house.”
Even so, we’re the only other car on the road in the middle of the night, and so I imagine we’ll automatically attract suspicion. Just then a huge delivery truck comes around the bend on the main road at breakneck speed and rumbles past us. I hurriedly turn and get directly behind it. Miraculously, another Mack truck appears right in back of me. They must be traveling in a convoy.
“Perfect cover,” I say. “We’re in the rocking chair.”
“What rocking chair?” Bernard quickly scans the side of the road for a discarded antique rocker that he might be able to resell.
“It means we’re between these two trucks. We’ll just go wherever they’re going for ten minutes or so, and no one will see us.”
Like a proud magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Bernard holds up a perfect red-and-green Devil Star lily, complete with bulb attached to the bottom. He turns on the map light so we can have a better look and I must admit that it’s truly gorgeous and exotic-looking.
“Wonder of wonders,” sings Bernard, quoting from Fiddler on the Roof.
“Miracle of miracles,” I supply him with the next line.
Bernard continues to sing in a robust though not entirely tuneful voice. And he changes the words, as he often does, to fit the situation at hand: “Bernard took a lily once again, snuck it out of Mrs. Graham’s private garden. I was afraid that God would frown, but like he did so long ago in Jericho, God just made a fence fall down!”
After about ten miles of traveling seventy on the unlit narrow road on which you’re only supposed to do forty-five in the daylight, the truck in front signals a turn into the acre-wide parking lot of Valueland. I continue on and in my mirror watch the other truck follow it into the lot. Floodlights are on alongside the massive store and a team of workers waits by the loading dock.
Another mile down the road I pull into an empty church parking lot and turn around. Before getting back on the main road, I look carefully in both directions to make sure no cop cars are around. Though I wish we had a police scanner to be sure.
“Looks as if we’re in the clear,” I say, and start in the direction of home. The predawn darkness gives way to a quick flush of pink in the east and the waking of the breeze in the tops of the trees.
“I can just see the staff at the adoption agency reading the newspaper headline,” I joke. “Future father foiled filching flowers.”
“This isn’t just a flower.” He pats the bag as if it holds a diamond necklace. “It’s a Devil Star lily!”
“I needed the alliteration,” I say the way Bernard always does. “How about bulb bust? Having one of those grainy black-and-white lineup photos could save me money when it comes to submitting a picture for the yearbook.”
“You’re well on your way to tremendous riches,” Bernard says confidently.
“Oh, really? And why is that?”
“Balzac said that every great fortune starts with a great crime.” He nods at the bag and winks.
The evaporating dew makes a fine white mist that blurs the edges of houses and turns the landscape into an enchanted dream. The rolling lawns appear to be freshly laid green carpets and chirping birds rise above us into the pearl-colored air.
“So if Balzac is right, then where is your great fortune?” I ask. Bernard has been in the previously-owned-flower business for quite some time.
Bernard picks up his song from Fiddler on the Roof. “But of all God’s miracles, large and small, the most miraculous one o
f all, is that one I thought could never be. God has given you to me.”
And I understand what he means—the boyfriends might continue to come and go, for us both, but we’d always have each other. Right then and there I decide that if miracles really do exist and they’re only one per customer then ours is definitely a keeper.
Chapter Thirty-four
FRIDAY EVENING BERNARD ARRIVES HOME FROM WORK IN HIGH spirits after having made another big sale to his diner chain. While singing “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly” from Annie Get Your Gun, he hands me ten crisp new hundred-dollar bills.
“What’s this for?” I interrupt just before the bridge.
“Seven hundred for services rendered.” He wags his head approvingly toward the backyard. “And a little bonus for coordinating transportation the other night.”
Still short about twelve thousand for continuing education, I’m in no position to decline his generosity. “Thanks.”
Bernard picks up his song again as he heads toward the stairs. “Folks like us could never fuss, with schools and books and learnin’, still we’ve gone from A to Z, doin’ what comes natur’lly.”
The words, along with the sudden influx of cash, serve to nurture an idea I’ve only been toying with up until now. I have a little over two thousand dollars saved from working in the yard, enough to buy the new engine for my car, which Mr. Shultze’s friend has offered to sell me for two grand even. Or enough to stake myself at Cappy’s poker game tonight. With its unlimited upside potential, the second option is infinitely more attractive. And if I blow my entire stake, which is how it often goes in Texas Hold ’Em, I won’t need the car anymore because I’ll be too broke to go back to school in the fall.
WHEN I ARRIVE AT THE POOL HALL THERE ARE MOSTLY BEATER CARS and rusty pickup trucks parked out front. However, around the back of the building I spot a brand-new gold Lexus SUV and a black Mercedes—not your typical choice of conveyance for local pool players.
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