Stuart Lethbridge, of Red Lake, who heads the Fifty Lakes Gay and Lesbian Coalition, promises a tasteful display. “There’ll be a good crowd of people in the parade, carrying the Rainbow Flag, plus we’ll be displaying the number for our counseling line, which, as you can imagine in a community like Braynor, gets a lot of calls from gays and lesbians looking for a sympathetic ear.” Lethbridge said the coalition would not back out of the parade, even if that’s the only way it can be saved.
The Braynor council is divided on what to do. Most members are united in wanting to avoid a lawsuit, but a number are in favor of scrapping the parade altogether, even though it is a tradition.
But even if the parade is canceled, all other fall fair activities, including the pie-eating contest, the lawn tractor races, chainsaw competition, and cow-pie-tossing contest, will go ahead as planned.
“What’s a cow pie?” I asked.
“Shit,” Dad said.
I nodded. “And this chainsaw competition. What do they do? Juggle them?”
“You’re starting to annoy me.”
“And I see the lawn tractor races are still on. Too bad I won’t be able to help you there. I have a predisposition to whiplash.”
“I might be well enough by then,” Dad said. “I was putting some weight on my ankle today, and it didn’t seem that bad.”
“You think the mayor’s a lesbian?” I asked. “There’s no picture of her here.”
Dad started to answer, then could tell by the look on my face that I was still working at being annoying.
“But seriously,” I said. “Have you met her? She a nice lady?”
“Yes, and yes. She’s a bit too reasonable for this crowd up here. She moved up here from the city a few years ago, and she’s still a bit too sophisticated for her own good.”
“I wonder if she’d be worth talking to,” I said quietly, almost to myself. “Are you okay with gays in the parade?”
“I don’t give a shit,” Dad said. “You think we could look any more foolish when we’ve already got a marked-up cow in it?”
“How about Lana?” I asked. “Her business is on Main Street, right by Henry’s Grocery. She signed the petition yet?”
“Lana, and I, are a lot more tolerant, and forgiving, than you’ll ever know,” Dad said.
There was something in the way he’d said that that stayed with me for the rest of the afternoon, which I spent doing more chores around the camp. I felt we were in a holding pattern, waiting for Orville Thorne to show up, and, with any luck, Lawrence the next morning.
I was down by the docks, replacing a board that looked like it was about to break through, when Bob Spooner returned from an afternoon out on the lake. Once he’d killed the motor, I said, “Get anything?”
Bob lifted up the stringer from the bottom of the boat, revealing two good-sized pickerel and a large-mouth bass.
“Not bad,” I said. Beyond Dad’s cabin, I could hear a car approaching. I looked back and saw that it was a police car.
“The law,” Bob said ominously.
“I got an idea,” I said to Bob. “Let me get your picture with your catch.”
“Oh, I’ve done better than this.”
“No, come on. I want to get some pictures with Dad’s digital camera, send a couple snaps back to my wife, Sarah.”
Bob shrugged and secured the boat to the dock while I ran back for the camera. Orville was out of his car and walking toward the cabin. “Two seconds!” I shouted to him, burst into the cabin, grabbed Dad’s camera from the study, and ran back out the front door for the shoreline.
Chief Thorne, curious about what was going on, which seemed so unlike him, followed. Dad, on crutches, was coming down as well.
The commotion was attracting others. Leonard Colebert had been inside making himself some dinner, and Betty and Hank Wrigley were sitting on their porch, reading, but as is generally the case at a fishing camp, when someone comes in with a good catch, everyone wants to pass judgment.
Bob, his arm in a muscle-making position that kept the stringerful of fish from dragging on the ground, smiled proudly as I held up the camera.
“Nice!” said Leonard.
“Where’d you get ’em?” Betty wanted to know.
“What were ya using?” Orville asked.
I took a couple of shots, then said, “Hey, let’s get some other people in here.” I moved Betty into the frame on one side of Bob, then Hank on the other, and took a picture. Leonard took no persuading at all to have his picture taken with Bob.
“Tomorrow morning, early, we go on our hike, right?” Leonard said. Bob nodded resignedly.
“Hey, Chief, how about you?” I said, bringing Orville forward.
“No no, that’s okay.”
“No, come on, come on.” I had my hand around his back and was moving him up next to Bob.
“Hey, Orville, think you could lose the hat for a second?” I said. “The way the sun is, your whole face is in shadow.”
Orville obediently removed his hat. I fired off a series of shots. For a couple, I used the zoom lens, cropping out Bob and his fish and coming in tight on Orville Thorne’s face.
“Hey. That’s great,” I said. “Thanks, everyone. Don’t forget to leave me your e-mail addresses before you go home so I can send you all-”
The sound of something being knocked over caught us all by surprise. Over at the fish-cleaning table, the bucket of guts underneath, which couldn’t have had much in it since I’d emptied it only a few hours earlier, had been tipped over.
The Wickenses’ two pit bulls, Gristle and Bone, had their heads jammed into it, and their maniacal snarls and growls echoed within the metal chamber.
I turned to Bob, standing there with his fish. “Get inside as fast as you can,” I said. But he was already making a beeline for his cabin, and just as he had his hand on the porch door, the two dogs withdrew their heads from the bucket, their fish-finding sonar evidently beeping in their thick skulls.
Gristle and Bone both looked about for a second, slobber and fish innards dripping from their massive jaws, and then, in a shot, they were on the move, their legs like pistons. Even though they barely came up above my knee, I could feel their charge through the ground, like a pair of horses running past.
Betty screamed. Leonard, figuring the dogs wouldn’t go after him in the lake, ran off the end of a dock. Hank put himself in front of Betty. And Orville was unholstering his weapon.
The dogs didn’t care about us, however. They were after Bob Spooner, who was inside now and putting his weight against the flimsy wooden screen door. The dogs hit it like a pair of battering rams, growling, trying to bite at the wood.
“Help!” Bob shouted. “Get back, you fucking monsters!”
“Shoot them,” I said to Orville.
He had his gun out and was running toward Bob’s cabin when we heard someone shout: “Bone! Gristle! Stop!”
The dogs were making such a racket they didn’t hear the command. Timmy Wickens’ stepson Wendell came around the corner of the cabin and shouted at them again, louder this time, and the dogs suddenly stopped barking, panting heavily, their tongues hanging over their jagged teeth.
Two leather leashes dangled from Wendell’s hand.
He hooked them back up to the dogs and grinned stupidly at the rest of us.
“They kind of got away from me there,” he said, and laughed.
