Resurrection Dreams Read Free Page B

town’s frequent events like the Antique Show, the Gun Show, and the Handicrafts Show that seemed to exist mostly for the sake of giving the residents of Ellsworth something unique to do on their weekends.
    Most of the other shows brought in merchants and visitors from out of town, which was good for the motels and restaurants. But not the Science Fair. It was a showcase for the efforts of the local kids, who had to attend and demonstrate their creations if they wanted a passing mark in their school science classes. The kids and teachers got in free. It was $2.00 a head for everyone else, and it seemed that nobody in the entire town could bear to miss it.
    Not only because most of the kids participating had a whole slew of relations, but because things never failed to go wrong and provide the folks with gossip—which seemed to be their chief recreation.
    “Just think,” Dad said, “this is your last Science Fair.”
    “And not a moment too soon.”
    It would be her twelfth—one a year since first grade. In the early years, she’d enjoyed the fair and looked forward to it almost gleefully. Her first project had been a chicken egg and a 100 watt lightbulb to warm it up. Later on, she’d made an electro-magnet with a nail and a dry-cell battery.
    “Remember your volcano?” Dad asked. He, too, was apparently remembering the good old days.
    “God, that was a disaster.”
    When Vicki was in sixth grade, she’d made a terrific-looking volcano out of plaster of Paris and stood it on a platform concealing a dry chemical fire extinguisher. Every now and then, she gave the extinguisher a honk, shooting a white cloud out of the volcano’s crater. The volcano actually trembled each time she triggered an eruption. But when the judges showed up, she wanted to give them an eruption to remember so she kept the lever down. The horn blared. All around, people cringed and covered their ears—then vanished behind the wall of white cast out by the extinguisher. The volcano shuddered. It all looked just great—what Vicki could see of it through the fog—until her hand slipped and the horn lost its perfect positioning beneath the crater and the powerful discharge blasted out the front of her volcano throwing plaster at the judges like shrapnel.
    “You were the hit of the show,” Dad said.
    “At least I didn’t kill anyone.”
    “I’d like to have seen a reprise of that. You could’ve resurrected the volcano for your final project.”
    “Now that I’m a big girl,” Vicki told him, “I don’t get quite the same joy out of humiliating myself.”
    Joy. She remembered the way she had cried afterward. Everyone for godsake clapping hadn’t made it any better.
    “Displaying the parts of a dismantled rat,” Dad said, “doesn’t have half the flair of blowing up a volcano. Though it does have a certain gross-out potential.”
    “I figured I might as well do something useful this year.”
    “Just give you a few more years, you’ll be cutting up cadavers.”
    “Don’t remind me.”
    “Maybe you should go into law.”
    “I’d rather heal people than screw them.”
    Laughing, Dad swung the car into the parking lot of the Community Center. Though it was still early, most of the parking spaces near the open doors of the arena were already taken. Parents and kids were busy unloading tables and projects from cars, vans and pickup trucks. Dad drove as close to the door as he could get, which was a good distance away, and parked.
    They went around to the trunk. When Dad opened it, the pungent aroma of formaldehyde swelled out. Vicki reached in. She picked up the dissection tray. The surgical gloves and implements she planned to use for her procedure were inside the tray. She handed it to her father, and lifted out the bottle containing the rat she would be dissecting during the course of the Fair. With that securely clamped under one arm, she took out the wooden display case in which the parts of a previously “dismantled”