Dress Codes for Small Towns

by Courtney Stevens

  My family lives nearly half a mile away, but the three of us walk over.

  Mom whistles. “A great turnout, baby.”

  “Your mural is amazing,” I say. She has spent the last week making her own special addition to the elementary school brick wall. Sixty-five years of Harvest Festivals are represented in various ways. The scene is amazing. Norman Rockwell meets Shepard Fairey. I would like to examine all the small details, but as we near the field, Janie Lee begins to play the national anthem on her violin, reminding me we are a little late to the pregame festivities. I pivot toward the flagpole, hand over my heart until the last note.

  The kickball teams are divided up, each side wearing cheap mesh pullovers from the middle school gym. The teams are multigenerational. Woods made sure of it. The youngest member is the mayor’s grandson, Caleb, who is seven and a real ballbuster. He’s turning cartwheels by home plate. The oldest is Ada May Adcock. No less than four sports bras attempt to contain her abundant chest. Heaven help us, and her back, if she runs the bases. No cartwheels for her. Normally, Mash and I would play, but Woods says we shouldn’t.

  Mash being Tyson’s hometown grandson, me being the Corn Dolly nominee.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” Mom says about Ada May, and we both laugh.

  “Be kind,” Dad reminds us.

  The waistband of Janie Lee’s short shorts is flipped over and she’s wearing tall multicolored socks with purple otters on them. If this were olden times—two weeks ago—I would walk up and tell her she has an ass cheek hanging out. But now, I don’t know. Can I still do that when we are what we are?

  “Are you going to wish her luck?” Mom asks.

  I say, “Yes,” and start her way, wondering where my dad is and if he’s watching. This was Dad and me this morning:

  Him: “Tawny will be there.”

  Me: “I know.”

  He didn’t have to say anything else.

  I don’t make it all the way to Janie Lee because Mash yells my name out the driver’s window of his truck. He beats the door, whooping with excitement. “Make way for the man in the truck,” Woods says to several families in the truck’s path. Mash drives past Fifty’s directional flag and parks between Mrs. Johnson’s electric fence and the bleachers. He’s out, using the tire as a step, and hopping into the bed before I can jog over and lend a hand. He hefts a Radio Flyer wagon into my arms.

  I yawn. He yawns back and then stuffs some Big League Chew into his cheek. We toss the trash bags filled with last night’s crafting spoils into the wagon.

  “How do you want to do this?” he asks.

  “They go to everyone,” I tell him.

  “Even the dudes?”

  We made two thousand Book Dollies. I’m not taking them home.

  “Even the dudes,” I say.

  He likes this idea, and says, “You know Big T’s smiling right now.”

  Gerry and Thom, who have driven in for the day, offer to help, but we put them in jerseys and send them to separate teams. Mash and I set about the crowd, doling out Book Dollies—folded and tucked pieces of torn classics that were headed for the dump. Small origami gifts patterned after Molly.

  I know basically how they will be received because at six a.m., Mom descended the steps into the garage in search of the newspaper. Mash had fallen asleep on the floor, and I had taken the couch. Everyone else had gone home around one. We were drowning in Dollies.

  If Mom were a crier, she would have cried. She’s not, so she smiled instead.

  “I am not going soft,” I said wearily, and put my head back down for five more minutes of sleep.

  “I didn’t say you were,” she said.

  Now, as I press Book Dollies into the hands of men and women alike, I think: maybe I am going a little soft. And maybe that’s exactly the way I’m supposed to be.

  With only one winner every year, the odds of earning a Dolly aren’t high. I picture all the women like me—the ones who will never win—putting their Book Dolly in a special place when they get home. The mantel. The curio cabinet. Maybe a hope chest. There is more than one way to add color to the world. More than one way to crown a queen.

  I develop a little rhythm with greeting people. “In case it’s the last Harvest Festival, everyone should get something to remember it by.”

  This works well and good until I get to the Spandex Junkwagons. They’ve seen me gifting hundreds of dollies at this point. I can’t conceivably skip them, and Mash is clear on the other side of the field, so there’s no delegating.

  The game is raging like the Super Bowl. Tied seven-seven. Davey has just kicked a home run. His second in three innings. I’d like to celebrate him. But no. I’m offering Margaret Lesley a Book Dolly and repeating my mantra.

  She brings herself to give me a proper thank-you.

  I’ve heaped some sugar on her sourness. That’s satisfying in its own way.

  Mash and I have only a limited number of Dollies left by the time we reach the front row. Mr. Nix sits there, Otis in his lap, and Kevin the home health aide by his side. He’s eating a Little Debbie cake as if it is the only pleasure in the world. To his right, Grandy and Tawny Jacobs are talking fencerows. “The painting rates these days are ungodly.” “I had three posts reset and it cost one hundred and fifty dollars. Can you believe it?” “I can.”

  One could not call this a friendly conversation because it is not happening between friends, but one could call it congenial.

  This seating placement rings of Woods. Their bony tushes are atop two UK bleacher chair backs owned by the Carringtons. I get his attention.

  “Einstein rules the world,” he yells back to me, because KickFall is doing more than raising money.

  Janie Lee is beside him. One of her otter socks has fallen to her ankle. She’s leaning over, tugging it back to her knee. I have a memory of the tall tube socks she wore in elementary school. No one at her house did much more than make sure she had boxed macaroni and cheese for dinner back then, so she always came to school dressed pell-mell. Tube socks as knee socks. Extra-large men’s T-shirts as dresses. Knowing someone from first grade on, watching them turn from that to this, well, it’s a piece of life art.

  Hands empty, I walk to the backstop and wave her over. She laces her fingers through fencing. I lace mine on top of hers, intending to say, Sorry I was late this morning, but she jerks back as if I’ve slapped her.

  “Not here,” she whispers, eyes drifting toward Tawny. “Your dad.”

  I back away, embarrassed, and busy myself taking the wagon to Mash’s truck. Will it always be this way? Will we always care about what everyone thinks?

  Not long ago we swore that nothing would ever change us. Was that naïve? Can you put everything on the line and have it change nothing? Maybe. Woods and I are the same. Maybe even better. Easier. Because now every touch and look that passes between us isn’t going somewhere. I don’t hold my breath and wonder about our future. I just live. I want to be in that space with Janie Lee whether we are together or apart.

  I wiggle into a seat beside Mr. Nix, praying he changes the sudden sullenness of my mood. Mr. Nix giddily cheers for Davey, who laps up the praise like gravy. Every trip to the plate, he phantom high-fives Mr. Nix. “Gloria would like our boy all grown up,” he tells Kevin. Kevin doesn’t correct Mr. Nix, and I’m glad for it.

  Flowers line the kickball field. Transplanted mums trim the freshly painted playground. All from Mr. Nix. A group of kiddos are on the merry-go-round where I used to make myself dizzy; they’re using a bag of leftover potting soil to drive Matchbox cars through. In the spring, the tulip bulbs will bloom, and I will bring Mr. Nix here and show him Gloria’s garden. Her legacy of seeds and bulbs. The color she has added to the world.

  “How are you liking my coat?” Mr. Nix asks. He remembers the coat but has forgotten Davey’s name. With a wink and a grin, I tell him, “That coat is worth one thousand dollars.”

  Mr. Nix says, “A thousand-dollar coat for a thousand-dollar girl.”r />
  I’m drenched from running around with Mash. My hair’s in a million hairpins. The bags under my eyes should be labeled cargo. The town got my makeover. I wouldn’t change that. Women press Book Dollies against hearts and make them dance for gleeful daughters. They tell one another, “This is so nice,” and point at Mash and me because we made the deliveries. Men have Dollies peeking out of breast pockets. Davey has his threaded through his bandanna.

  KickFall and Book Dollies have done CPR on the dying heart of my town. The mayor and Woods shake, and he announces to the crowd through a jankety karaoke speaker system, “Ladies and gentlemen, today’s efforts raised two thousand two hundred and ten dollars toward saving the Harvest Festival! Bravo!”

  “Go up there.” Woods knocks me off balance with a hand on the small of my back. I see that he duplicated the large cardboard check Davey and I were given at LaserCon. When I cannot find it in myself to move up the stairs to the stage, he trots up to the mayor himself and whispers something.

  The mayor cups his hand over the microphone and listens. Then he says, “Well, this young man tells me that one of the Corn Dolly nominees won a costume party this week, and she’s donating all the proceeds to the fund. Come on up here, Billie McCaffrey.”

  No one cares that I am a hot mess today. I hand over the cardboard check. Taking the microphone from his hand, I say, “It wasn’t just me. That crew over there did it with me. Go on, stand up, Hexagon.”

  And they do. And everyone claps just as loudly for them.

  “Save the Harvest Festival!” Woods yells like a cheerleader.

  And again, because Woods has spoken, everyone in the stands echoes, “Save the Harvest Festival!” The mayor reins in the crowd with final instructions. “Now, if you can all make your way inside and cast your ballots. Thank you for coming out.”

  The field evacuates. Woods nudges my shoulder. “You’ll win,” he says.

  I want to believe him. But this is the one place my imagination cannot stretch. If the Corn Dolly could be bought, nearly all the winners would have been different.

  Politely, eyebrows inching toward his cap, eyes bouncing between Janie Lee and Davey, he says, “You’d better decide which of those two you’ll be dancing with.”

  Every year, the winner of the Corn Dolly dances the first dance of the harvest. For unmarried candidates, the town uses this dance to start wedding registries at the Mercantile on Main. For the happily hitched, it’s a barometer of health. Occasionally, it is used to predict divorce. Though only rarely, and the women are sympathetic, unless it’s the woman stepping out.

  My heart suddenly thuds in my ears. I have not thought of who I would dance with.

  But it will not matter, because I won’t win. We have saved the festival, not me.

  “I see you over there, McCaffrey.” Woods rocks all the way up on his toes with nervous energy. “And here’s the problem with what you’re thinking. We can’t always be right, so you’d better have a plan if you’re wrong. Especially if the town is watching.”

  “I’ll figure it out if I have to,” I say, feeling very positive that I’ve finally found the thing that Woods Carrington is wrong about.

  “Well, either way, you realize we have to walk that damn beam now. You know Fifty’s about to have a heyday and a half.”

  We trudge toward the group, where the weariness of several hard weeks of manual labor strikes Fifty first. He throws himself in the middle of the pitcher’s mound and yells, “Two thousand two hundred and ten dollars! Hot damn!” Even though it’s too late to matter, he lifts his head and checks for small children.

  “You’re insufferable, Fifty,” Mash says, which only serves to make Fifty happier.

  He taunts us, repeating the number in victory. “Guess what that means, bitches?”

  Woods lies beside Fifty and then Mash and Davey do the same. They are laid out like spokes on a wheel, letting the sun punish them. Janie Lee and I fall between them. We are a heap of dirt and limbs. “Do we really have to?”

  Woods says, “Indeed, we must, or the stakes lose their power.”

  Everyone sighs a great big sigh except Fifty, who says, “Hell yeah,” with several more syllables than are required.

  32

  Vilmer’s Barn has large cross-beam sliding doors, a high loft window, and a half-hexagon-shaped metal roof. Once upon a time it had a vibrant paint job, but the weather has worn the bright-red colors into a lovely gray-and-maroon smudge. It’s well built, sturdy considering its age. There’s a narrow rafter stretching from loft door to loft door, nearly thirty feet in the air: Vilmer’s Beam.

  Unfortunately for us, the barn isn’t full of straw and hay as it was the last time we walked Vilmer’s Beam. The Harvest Festival’s tables, chairs, and vendor booths are stacked and stored in neat rows beneath the beam, and it would take too long to move everything. Everyone cusses. Gerry, who trails Thom, who trails Davey, suggests that we’re all off our nut. I’m inclined to agree.

  I am tugged backward by my sweatshirt. The rest of the group files wearily by, Fifty in the lead, leaving me with Davey. His arms are folded over his chest. He is dubious. “Why?” he asks.

  I give a very Billie answer. “Because we said we would.”

  “Do you do everything you say you will?” he asks the way someone might ask, And if Woods jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?

  A million comebacks are on my lips. “Yes” comes out first.

  “I’m not worried about you.” He nods toward Janie Lee. Then, in the same fortuneteller voice in which he’d said, You’ll burn down the church, he comments, “This is a bad idea.” But that doesn’t change anything. We’re still going to walk the beam. He knows it. I know it.

  Despite my confidence, we all have reservations. Fifty’s digging a rut with his foot the way baseball players do when they step into the batter’s box. Mash is a new shade of puking green.

  Gerry and Thom park themselves at a table to watch. Like a row of monkeys, Mash, Fifty, Janie Lee, Davey, and I follow Woods to the loft ladder. I’m between the two least experienced walkers—Janie Lee and Davey. No problem. Rung by rung, higher and higher, we climb.

  We are almost to the top. I touch Janie Lee’s ankle. She stops, and I climb the side of the ladder, hanging out over the barn. “Are you okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Just checking,” I say.

  But she is not okay, and I don’t know whether to call her on it and make a scene or let her push through. She nearly steps on my fingers to keep climbing. I swing back around and continue ascending the ladder. When I arrive at the top, I position myself under the eaves so Davey has room to join us. Thomas and Gerry are a million miles away. Our line begins inching across the beam like kindergartners walking to the playground, Woods at the lead. Everything on point.

  “One foot in front of the other,” Janie Lee says to no one in particular. Certainly not to me.

  The looming beam stretches out yard on yard. Her fear is so palpable that no amount of internal chanting releases my anxiety that she will fall. Woods is nearly to the middle. With one hand solidly on the rafter that divides the barn, he throws a decadent come-and-get-me smile.

  Janie Lee, in the way of all Lost Boys, chooses that moment to step forward. One step. Arms at her sides. Two steps. Arms outstretched. I follow slowly, checking on her to the front and on Davey behind. He is sure-footed and lithe. I focus on Janie Lee.

  The timber beneath our feet is old, several inches wider than a railroad tie, and uneven. Janie Lee must feel the slight give in the lumber, especially with all of us up here. She hits the quarter mark. Fifty’s taking a breather in the middle, where Woods stood only moments before.

  Everyone moves quickly, wanting this over with.

  Fifty’s on the other side of the support as she’s grabbing on when I hear her say, “I can’t believe you got me into this,” and he says, with a low laugh, “You got yourself into this the moment you and the other two pieces of th
e trinity got Billie on the ballot.”

  I realize instantly that I was not supposed to hear this. I would not have heard this if I had been spaced apart from Janie Lee the way everyone else was spaced. But Fifty didn’t see that I sneaked in close, worried, ready to steady her if I needed to.

  “Fifty, shut up,” Davey says from behind me.

  My arm hair is on high alert. “What are y’all talking about?”

  Janie Lee turns carefully to me, lips quivering. “It was nothing.”

  “We’ll tell you when we’re on the ground,” Davey says.

  “Yeah,” Janie Lee agrees.

  “No.” I am emphatic. “You’ll tell me now.”

  This is not the place to have an argument, particularly this argument. There is so much dead air between me and the tables below. Janie Lee has her arms snaked around the center post, but I’m standing on an eight-inch-wide death trap.

  In my peripheral vision, Gerry and Thom stretch their necks with concern. “You all right?” Thom calls up.

  I yell back that we are fine. Cool sweat slides by my ear. Woods and Mash are reaching the other side and hooting, unaware. I am silently imploding.

  “I want an answer,” I say.

  Her mouth is a gun, firing very quiet, very painful bullets. “It wasn’t anything,” Janie Lee says.

  But Davey, sliding closer, disputes her claim, firing his own weapon. “Woods, Janie Lee, and I talked to the committee about you. We thought it would help. After the fire.”

  “So they didn’t pick me?”

  “Well, of course they did,” Janie Lee says.

  “You three manipulated them.” My eyes ping from Janie Lee to Davey. His arms jut out to his sides like frozen propellers. All that drumming, all that pent-up energy, and he has the nerve to be still now.

  She gives the reason. “We all felt bad about the Hexagon of Love thing. We were trying to make it up to you.”

  “By pitying me?” Tremors attack my knees, work their way into my voice. “But I guess poor Elizabeth McCaffrey could never be a girl on her own terms. I should have known.” And that’s the real source of my shame. I am ridiculously stupid for not seeing that my nomination had Woods Carrington’s name written all over it.