Everyone stood for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” During the opening ceremony two years earlier, a skydiver’s parachute failed to deploy, and the man hit the arena dead center at a hundred miles an hour. Polly braced herself but tonight the men and women floated down like quieter fireworks. In other ways, the world frayed: A couple argued behind them and an old lady fell and split her face on the metal steps of the stands while nearby children stared with naked, exhausted fascination. Maude looked smug. A bull rider’s rib-cage muscles ripped free from his spine as he was flung against a fence. When the rodeo queen and her court finished circling the arena, there was a minute of silence for Ariel, the riders’ pastel hats held over their breasts, most of the out-of-town crowd not understanding because of the announcer’s garbled voice.

When Helen fell asleep on Jane’s lap, Polly took Sam behind the stock pens to the clearing at the golf course where the fireworks were launched by a ragtag, mostly sober group of pillars of the community, which included Harry and Ned. The fireworks started while they were passing the stock, steers and broncs milling in fear and dust in the light of every explosion. Polly could see lather on their mouths, the old stains of the saddles.

It was louder, colder, stranger right next to the launchpad. Polly clutched Sam with one hand and covered her eyes with the other, walloped by the way the fireworks seemed to run like water. Ned pulled her away, closer to the river, and she thought about how the water near the osprey nest would be changing color with every explosion. Maybe she could find Ariel this way, watch until the girl was revealed by colors, ashes and spent paper falling toward her face.

Polly and Jane lugged the sticky, exhausted children back to the car, while Merle half carried Maude. When Polly finally fell asleep, she saw Ariel rolling slowly, gently, onto her back, to face the falling lights. And it was true: Ariel was counting stars, upright and just below the surface, toes skimming the cobble. She twirled gracefully through a deep, gentle channel, with nothing to bounce against, nothing to cause more bruises, and that evening rose again until her face reached the cool air, startling a heron whose chicks were squabbling over the flayed corpse of a garter snake. Ariel moved down the center of the river like a swan, sometimes regal, sometimes spinning like a toy, but even though she passed the wedding party with Polly’s round objects, nobody but the heron noticed her.

9. Wednesday, July 3, 2002

9

Wednesday, July 3, 2002