unacknowledged. His hope that such an event might invigorate the town had already been dashed: the parade had started, and the center of town still didn't seem ready for it. So many bare patches along the sidewalks that families should have been filling. But then the Cub Scouts came marching, with their troop flag and their den mothers, and all Pinty could do was smile.
The other two selectmen followed: Parker Harris, the elementary school principal, pulling a boom box in a red Radio Flyer wagon, playing a Sousa march; and Bobby Loom, known as Big Bobby, proprietor of the Gas-Gulp-'N-Go, the minimart filling station a half mile west on Main. Big Bobby was scattering wrapped bubble gum and Dum Dums to the children. Pinty would have been out there with them as the third town selectman, were it not for his hips. He tap-tapped his cane nub on the sidewalk as they marched past.
Pinty saw Donny Maddox coming toward him along the sidewalk and felt a lift similar to the one he'd experienced looking up at the flag. Hope, mainly. But Pinty had learned in life not to hope too hard.
Donny stopped next to him, facing the parade. 'Not up to it today?'
'Today's a good day,' said Pinty, patting his hip. 'Not a bad day.'
'How about a chair?'
'Never would get up out of it.'
'I'd have built a float for you, if I'd known. Sit you up there on a throne.'
'I would like that. That's about my style.'
'This town should throw you a parade. They will, someday.' Donny crossed his arms, implacable behind his sunglasses. 'They better.'
Pinty smiled, not at Donny's words, but at his respect. 'Two hundred fifty years,' he said, gesturing at the parade like a symphony conductor demanding more out of an orchestra. 'Older than the country itself. A hell of a long time.'
'Maybe too long,' said Maddox.
'Think of what all this land looked like to the colonists and trappers who first walked down from the hills.'
Maddox said, 'Think of what the colonists and trappers must have looked like to the Pequoigs already settled here.'
That was Donny's habit, his role, the town contrarian. Pinty never took it seriously, this rebelliousness Donny had held on to since his teens. Donny always thought he was too big for Black Falls. And when he was younger, he was right. He'd won the college scholarship, and everybody expected big things. Now, fifteen years later, he was back, and nobody knew what to make of him.
The town plow sander came rumbling along, sputtering its diesel exhaust. Black Falls' two major municipal purchases in the past decade were: the new flag and pole, after 9/11; and the fork-bladed plow. No town in the Cold River Valley could survive winter without one of these immense road clearers.
Above the BLACK FALLS HIGHWAY DEPT. stenciled into the driver's side door sat Kane Ripsbaugh, his bare, sun-chapped elbow jutting through the open window as he kept the angry-looking plow at an even five miles an hour. The word 'highway' used to be defined as any public way, and showed that the department and its facilities?the garage farther east on Main, the salt and sand sheds, the town dump?dated back to the early days of the automobile.
Ripsbaugh was the one-man highway department, a position he had held for the last three decades. Some, such as Donny, would say that Ripsbaugh's longevity was due to the job offering hard, physical work for little pay and zero prestige. But Pinty viewed Ripsbaugh's role as an honorable one, and knew that Ripsbaugh did too. A town like Black Falls could not get by without a Kane Ripsbaugh. He was as day-to-day instrumental in its upkeep as was Pinty, though the two men could not have been more different. It was funny, to Pinty, how withdrawn Ripsbaugh was, that a man so devoted to his community could be so indifferent to his neighbors at the same time.
So it was indeed possible to love a place and not necessarily adore its people. This was something Pinty needed to communicate more successfully to Donny.
Donny said, 'You notice who's missing this morning?'
Pinty turned right away, looking down to the end of the parade route, the junction of Main and Number 8 Road. The house on the corner there was divided into twin apartments upstairs and down, with the upstairs tenant, who was also the owner, having the advantage of a large balcony built above the front door.
That was where Dillon Sinclair usually stood, leaning against the iron rail, dressed all in black like an undertaker, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and watching the town pass below him.
Pinty noted the look of concern on Donny's face. Pinty said, 'It's not like him to miss a parade.'
Black Falls was currently home to nine registered sex offenders, four Level 2s and five of the more dangerous Level 3s. This was a regional concern. Publicity generated by the sex offender registry was effectively chasing offenders from more populated, organized, and affluent towns into smaller, remote communities. Nine out of the top ten Massachusetts communities in sex offenders per resident were rural towns far west of Boston. Out of 351 total cities and towns statewide, tiny Black Falls ranked eighth.
Dell Stoddard went rolling past in his prized 1969 yellow Mustang convertible sponsored by Stoddard's Auto Body, playing loud surfing music that in no way jibed with the mood of the moment or of the town. Two women in sun hats made their way along the sidewalk toward Pinty, Paula Mithers under a wide, curled brim of straw, followed by her grown daughter, Tracy, sporting a beat-to-hell cowgirl-style number. The mother wore a gardening shirt, Bermuda shorts, and muck boots fresh from the barn. The daughter wore an oversized T-shirt knotted at the waist and cutoff jean shorts, her knees and elbows grayed with dry mud.
The Mithers women raised llamas on a little farm over on Sam Lake. Middle-aged Paula had a face most would describe as handsome, etched with deep lines by sun and divorce, while twenty-two-year-old Tracy was sun-freckled and slim, petite yet somehow leggy, blond hair washing out of the back brim of her cowgirl hat.
'Hi, Chief Pinty,' said Tracy.
'Not 'Chief,' Tracy,' said Pinty, correcting her gently. 'Just Pinty.'
She nodded and turned to smile at Donny. 'Hi.'
Pinty said, 'You know Donny, right?'
'I know Donny,' she said, and they shook hands, a loose-gripped, formal up-and-down. Donny was the first to let go, but Tracy was the first to look away.
Paula waved for Pinty's attention. A deaf woman, she signed angrily, hands picking apart the air as though arranging her words letter by letter on an invisible board.
Pinty turned to Tracy, who looked sheepish and almost teenager- disappointed in her mother. She translated flatly: ''Aren't you going to do something about this?''
Pinty looked back at Paula. 'About what?'
Then he heard the Indian cry. It was the Black Falls Police Department come marching. Bucky Pail led the way, showing off an antique musket to the crowd and exhorting their cheers, while brother Eddie and the three others followed in tow, each gripping one handle on a rescue stretcher bearing a cigar store Indian. It was the wooden statue that greeted customers at Big Bobby's Gas-Gulp-'N-Go, adorned now with a headdress of turkey feathers and bandaged in ketchup-stained gauze.
Some spectators joined in the jeering salute, though most, like Pinty, watched in stunned silence. He felt Donny stiffen next to him and reached out to hook his arm just as Donny started to move, holding him back.
'Don't,' Pinty said.
Maddox held still, watched them pass. Pinty released his arm and returned both hands to the grip of his walking stick. He absorbed the ridiculous display because he had to, using it to feed his inner resolve, as he knew it was feeding Donny's.
How had things gone so wrong since his retirement? The police department's troubles began in earnest with the passing of Pinty's successor, Cecil Pail, who looked like Johnny Cash but died like Elvis Presley, of a massive coronary inside the station john three years ago. Pail was by and large a good man, but foolish and half blind when it came to his sons, Bucky and Eddie, whom he indulged. He had elevated his boys to the only remaining full-time positions on the shrinking force, in part to keep a closer eye on them. Pinty and the other selectmen refused to promote from within, yet were unable to attract a suitable replacement at the salary offered, to a town with no budget for police uniforms. So the chief 's position remained vacant, and into this vacuum of power had risen Bucky Pail, with his brother at his right hand.
They stopped to rest in the middle of the intersection of Main and Mill, standing the bloodied Indian right out in front of the station, below the flag. Stokes swapped his ball cap and sunglasses for the headdress of turkey feathers, and the rest of them amused themselves posing for pictures like jackasses.
Pinty saw parents turning their kids away from the vulgar effigy.
'Pinty,' said Donny.
Pinty squeezed the handle of his walking stick and shook his head. 'If I can take it,' he said, 'you can too.'
Tracy Mithers looked at them, confused. Her mother signed something, her daughter refusing to translate it until Paula Mithers clapped and pointed angrily at Pinty and Donny.
Tracy could not look at either of them. 'My mother says to say that? you are both a disgrace.'
Pinty watched Donny's eyes go dead. Pinty tried to
