The52nd ANNUAL
JUMP INTO SUMMER FESTIVAL MAY19, 2012
MUSIC~FOOD~CRAFTS~GAMES LOCAL BAND THE WAYWARD BOYS AT 6PM! PREPARE TO JUMP INTO SUMMER!!!
The morning of the festival dawns cloudy and gray, with a promise of rain later in
the afternoon that could put a damper on the festivities. A buzz spreads through town, like it does every festival, but it’s muted compared to years past. What if it rains? some in the town are asking. What are we going to do if it rains? They try to think back to other festivals, if there was a time when a spring rainstorm had fallen on the day of. No one can seem to remember any rainouts. Mid-May is usually a drier time, full of sunshine and blossoming flowers and bees buzzing lazily.
Of course, weather contingencies have been in place for years, just in case. Mayor Walken goes on the local AM radio station morning show (Terry In The Mornings!) to reassure Roselandians that the show will go on regardless. Why, he spoke to Pastor Thomas Landeros of Our Mother of Sorrows just this morning, and the pastor assured him the church would be opened up and the pews cleared out of the way so people could set up their tables for the food and crafts. As planned, the festival will take place at the end of Poplar Street opposite the gas station, in front of said church, as it has for the past twenty years. It will be just like God is there with us, he says in that politician’s voice of his, earnest and soothing. And the Shriner’s Grange is only a short walk down a stone path from the church. Any overflow can be set up in there, and The Wayward Boys will be able to play their brand of bluegrass folksy twang inside as well. It’ll be fine, he says. We’ll pray that the rain stays away, at least until Sunday. If it doesn’t, the emergency plan has always been to gather at the church anyway, as it’s set up on a hill, higher than the rest of the town. Surely safe from any flood waters, should they come.
And should they come, he says, Roseland will be ready. Heavy bags filled with sand have already been pulled from the town’s storage in case they’re needed to block the river. He knows, he says with certainty in his voice, that everyone will be willing to lend a hand, should it come down to it. After all, Roseland is the greatest little town in the world, and its people always want to help out their neighbors. It’s times like these that we remember just how wonderful Roseland really is. With that, he signs off and Terry In The Morning switches over to sports and weren’t the Trail Blazers just so close to getting into the NBA Finals this year? Interim Coach Canales certainly rocked this season out!
Abe turns off the tiny radio I’d pulled out from the back office. “The greatest little town in the world?” he says. “Walken sure knows how to spin it, doesn’t he?”
I shrug as I look out the front of the store. The gray clouds are thick, looking as if they’re stacked on top of each other, growing darker as they rise in the sky. The wind is starting to pick up, and an errant festival flyer blows down the center of Poplar Street. Peals of thunder echo down the mountains, but the sound is faint and doesn’t seem to be getting any closer or louder. Not yet. We’ll be closing the store at noon (as is tradition—Big Eddie was a big fan of the festival and often sat on the planning committee) and then heading over to help my mom finish setting up her table and bring in all her pies and cakes. She and the Trio are still up at Big House, churning out last-minute cookies and cupcakes in a furious cloud of flour and panic.
It seems oddly domestic and normal, especially given what we now know about the way the world works. It’s been just under a week since Michael knocked on the door and Griggs stopped by for one of his unannounced-threats-disguised-as-aconcerned-visit. I’ve been watching for Michael’s sign, but nothing out of the ordinary has happened since he disappeared in a burst of feathers and a flash of light. I glossed over Michael’s warning when Cal asked what he told me, only because I think I’m protecting him, at least in the best way I know how. I’m no closer to solving anything, whether it be Big Eddie’s death, what exactly Griggs, Walken, and Traynor are doing (or even who their boss supposedly is), or where they’re doing it.
A few days ago, I left a grumbling Cal at the store with Abe under the pretense of needing to run over to the next town to visit a friend of mine. I’d really headed past mile marker seventy-seven and crossed the bridge further down the highway and then doubled back, returning to the spot where he’d crashed from On High. It hit me that what I’d heard that night at Griggs’s house, through the anger in their words, had an undercurrent to it. Not quite fear, but nervousness, especially Traynor. This whole thing has bad mojo written all over it. First the guy dying in the river. Then that fucking meteor thing falling right near there. Jesus, Griggs! It’s like the universe is telling you to get the fuck out, and you’re saying we need to wait?
I parked and hiked through the woods, making sure to keep an eye out on the time. Cal would be expecting me back shortly. He was pissed I’d left without him, and if I was late, I was sure he’d come looking for me. I still didn?
?t understand how I could block him from seeing the pulse of my thread, but it seemed it was possible. I’d prayed for him to come that night with the Strange Men, and he said my thread had lit up like the sun in the sky. I’d prayed for him not to see it, to stay away, when Traynor had come into the station, and he hadn’t seen my thread.
So with simple thoughts such as stay away, Cal and I am okay, Cal and (ridiculously) I am invisible, I returned to where he’d fallen. The blowback was still evident, burnt trees lying on their sides, the crater in the middle of the clearing still blackened.
If you knew what you were looking for, you could see the outline of wings in the crater, only instead of charred earth, they were made up of different types of blue flowers, ones that I had never seen before in all my years growing up in the woods. They stretched out along the crater, their design a bit fuzzy but obvious to me. I stared, dumbfounded, before plucking one, and heard the stem snap with a moist crack. I brought it to my nose, and it smelled of earth.
Stay away, Cal. Stay away.
I left the crater and went up the hill, deeper into the forest, looking for any signs of a structure, anything that would potentially show some kind of drug lab operating in the trees around Roseland. The air smelled fresh, not acrid. No trash littered the forest. No conveniently high hippie wandered toward me, telling me he’d just bought the most righteous shit from a sheriff, a mayor, and a scary-looking man who smoked.
Michael. You said you’d give me a sign, so… give me a sign.
The only response was the birds in the trees.
So I left.
Cal noticed nothing out of the ordinary when I returned.
I look at him now and find him watching me, like he’s asked me a question I didn’t hear. “Sorry?” I say with a smile that feels fake. All I can seem to focus on is how much more pale I think he looks. I don’t know if it’s my eyes playing tricks on me, if I’m overreacting, but all I can hear in my head is that he’s dying, that staying here is killing him, that God thinks this is just some test, some goddamn game. It’s up to him, Michael had said. Only God can change his fate.
And you better, I think as Cal returns the smile, showing teeth. You just better change his fate or I’ll hunt you down and find you myself. I don’t care if you’re his Father or if you are God. You take him from me and I will do my best to take everything from you.
They seem empty, these thoughts. I’m sure God is used to being threatened.
“What’d you say?” I ask him, trying to keep my voice even.
He walks toward me slowly, as if he’s stalking me. He might very well be doing just that. I want to look away, sure he can see right inside my head and know what I’m thinking, but I don’t. Even if he is becoming more like the rest of us, there is still something unfathomable about his eyes, something not quite human, a certain awareness, almost alien in its intensity. I know if he asks me to tell him everything I am thinking right at this moment, I’ll tell him. I’ll give him all my secrets and ask for nothing in return. I’ll do anything for him because I lo—
Oh.
Oh shit.
“You okay?” he asks me as he stands in front of me. I look up at him, and for a moment I allow myself to imagine his wings behind him, blue and beautiful, the feathers like silk, whispering as they rustle against each other. Blue lights shoot everywhere and the feathers (like the one in my desk at home that is mine) rise as he stretches his wings. The feathers (like the one in my father’s dead, floating hand, because that one is his) rise to block out the overhead lights. But that’s not real, because they aren’t there, they aren’t in front of me. I don’t know if he can even pull out his wings anymore. No further threads have called for him, and where once that might have made him restless, nervous that he hadn’t been called, now he seems almost at peace. There is still strength there, exuding from him, a reservoir I don’t think has even been tapped, but it’s not the same as when he first arrived.
For some reason, he’s happy.