Fatal Light Read Free

sparkle of the instruments wobbled up, the drum major turned and blew his whistle and marked time, the fat majorette dropped her baton.
    The parade went on forever: Middle-aged men in fezzes riding motor scooters in figure-eights, sad clowns with gigantic red feet and smiling cars that tipped suddenly to their back wheels to turn frantic circles in the street. Sprays of hard candies thrown from floats, the mayor and his polished family in the backseat of a Chrysler Imperial convertible. The Nashville singers on a
flatbed truck, stair-step children dressed like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, sequined silk cowboy shirts with scallops of piping, ranges of fringe and tight pants tucked into boots tooled with intertwined lariats. Waving to the crowd, the eldest son wearing a sombrero, the youngest daughter doing curtseys.
    The festival queen and her court rode into view on a float garlanded with tissue flowers, gliding across the horizon of Main Street like a mirage, small-town madonnas sliding past waving their downy arms dreamily, their eyes the eyes of soft animals turned heavenward from thrones of blossoms and crepe, their faces all a magnificent promise, the romance at the end of the world passing so slowly in those long moments of perfect quiet, like the air over the river, the light and stillness inside the world at daybreak, like a held breath.
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    After the parade my grandfather led me through the crowd, down the hill and west to Juliana Street and Whitlow’s Bar and Grill.
    Inside the dark bar I climbed onto a stool, everywhere mahogany and sepia and the soft glitter of glassware arrayed under the mirror in front of us. My grandfather pushed his hat back on his head but left it on, a Panama with a black band, and I watched his face in the mirror as he ordered a beer for himself and Coca-Cola for me, talking baseball with the bartender. At the end of the bar a blind man tilted his face to the ceiling, half-finished beer in front of him. The far side of the blind man’s body was lit by sunlight from the back door that stood open, his sleeves rolled to where I could see purple tattoos losing their clarity on both forearms. Well, he ain’t the slugger you were in your prime the bartender was saying as our drinks came with glasses turned upside down over the bottle necks, mine the same as my grandfather’s. I poured my Coca-Cola and watched the foam rise; the bartender leaned on the bar in front of us as my grandfather spoke quietly and poured his beer. Traffic sounds filtered from an imaginary distance, time passing in the artificial
twilight with no other customers coming in and the bartender and my grandfather talking, now about politics, about Eisenhower. I was finally introduced and the bartender asked my age and how I was liking my visit and by then our drinks were finished. I jumped down from the bar stool to follow my grandfather, and looked back to see the blind man was already gone. An empty beer bottle and an empty glass stood together at the end of the bar. My grandfather touched my shoulder and we were outside, walking toward the bridge and its sudden arch into the sun, disappearing into points west.

4
    Mary Meade always said we fell in love in front of Bippo’s Pizzeria in Ocean City, Maryland. I had known her for years—elementary school, junior high school—she was the first cousin of Ricky Bayner, who I played football with until he graduated a year ahead of me and went to Yale. I was with Ricky at Bippo’s as she wandered the boardwalk with her girlfriends. Hey, Ricky had said, you remember my cousin Mary don’t you? Yeah, I said, sure, we’re neighbors after all. Ricky and I bought pizza for the girls and we clustered in the back of Bippo’s, laughing and playing pinball, and spent that weekend together on the beach, cruising the carnival attractions, Tilt-A-Whirl, The Zodiac, The Scrambler, nervous glances at obscene novelties in the tourist shops, swimming