Kevin had been born and raised in Mapleton, and he couldnt help thinking about Fourth of July parades back when everything still made sense, half the town lined up along Main Street while the other halfLittle Leaguers, scouts of both genders, gimpy Veterans of Foreign Wars trailed by the Ladies Auxiliarystrode down the middle of the road, waving to the spectators as if surprised to see them there, as if this were some kind of kooky coincidence rather than a national holiday. It was half an hour before showtime, the floats lined up and ready to roll, the marching band girding itself for battle, peppering the air with a discordant overture of bleats and toots and halfhearted drumrolls.
It seemed almost funny in retrospect, all that energy wasted fretting about something so remote and uncertain, an ecological disaster that might or might not come to pass somewhere way off in the distant future, long after you and your children and your childrens children had lived out your allotted time on earth and gone to wherever it was you went when it was all over.ĭespite the anxiety that had dogged him all morning, Mayor Kevin Garvey found himself gripped by an unexpected mood of nostalgia as he walked down Washington Boulevard toward the high school parking lot, where the marchers had been told to assemble.
Not too long ago, people would have felt the need to make a nervous crack about weather like this Hey, theyd say, maybe this global warming isnt such a bad thing after all!but these days no one bothered much about the hole in the ozone layer or the pathos of a world without polar bears. IT WAS A GOOD DAY for a parade, sunny and unseasonably warm, the sky a Sunday school cartoon of heaven.
0 kommentar(er)
