A Morning Like This (27 page)

David Treasure sat on the back row of the reviewing stand, which was really nothing more than a set of choir risers from Jackson
Hole High School lined with a dozen of the Elk’s Club folding chairs. Even if he didn’t still feel such nearness and such
reproach from Abby, even if he didn’t feel more helpless now than he’d felt when Susan Roche first met with him, he would
be sitting in this exact same stance, with his chin raised and his shoulders set as square and firm as a rampart. He used
his own body as a fortress against the world, against what seemed like absurd mirth on this day.

You know I wanted to save her, Lord. I made the sacrifice, and it’s come to nothing
.

Abby would never have even needed to know.

He’d always liked July Fourth and the way folks celebrated it here, in his hometown. After the breakfast and the parade would
come the music-festival orchestra concert on the middle school lawn, its appreciative, sunburned audience laden with blankets
and sunhats and watermelon and picnic coolers. Then tonight, as soon as the sky above Snow King darkened to its perfect, infinite
depths of navy blue, without announcement, a torchlight would come alive in the center of the ski run. Thousands on every
corner in town would wait with their hopes in their throats. A ghost of a hiss, a small smoke projection into the air and,
with a heavy, single sound that echoed from Rendezvous Mountain to Blacktail Butte, the first rocket would explode, red, green,
gold, or blue, a chrysanthemum burst of sparkles that tinted the mountains and the groves of aspen and the faces of everybody
watching. The torch on the mountain would glow more and more often. Another boom. Another echo. Occasionally a flurry on the
hill while someone put out a small spot of fire.

And all over town, on every corner, people would applaud or laugh or sigh and wait for more.

The annual Jackson Fire-In-The-Hole would have begun.

But for now David was trapped in the celebration, his chest yearning and his nerves tingling with sorrow, head swimming while
he baked in his best clothes.

“Here are your ballots.” A parade official handed him a thick sheathe of papers.

“Ballots?”

“For voting on the floats.”

I should be out looking. I should be out doing something to find Samantha. Not this
.

He glanced west toward the Wort Hotel, where three sheriff’s Jeeps proceeded slowly, their lights flashing, leading off the
march.

How can I be still? How can I just
sit
here?

He sat and watched a parade go by, the way he’d sat and watched his life go by. Sat and watched, while God pried everything
he held dear out of his fingers.

He’d fought so hard for so long, to atone for what he’d done. He’d fought so hard for so long, to deserve everything he’d
been given.

He’d fought, and lost. He’d lost more than he’d ever known he had.

Down the street came the groomed mule team from Grand Targhee National Forest, brown beasts of burden with velvet, off-white
muzzles, tied tail to nose with panniers and twisted yellow ropes. Identical forest-service mulepacks jolted with each step.
In front of the reviewing stand, the muleteer shouted
Yah
and snapped a quirt over the lead mule’s hindquarters. The team moved in synchronized formation, their hooves clattering
on the pavement, their ears loose and listening for the next command.

Miss Rodeo Wyoming passed on her black Arabian barrel-racing horse, wearing a rhinestone tiara and a sash with glitter edges.
Old Murphy, the red truck with its massive Spud Drive-In papier-mâché potato, rumbled by. A canvas-covered wagon with spoke
wooden wheels carried guests from the Heart-Six Dude Ranch while they perched proudly on bales of hay.

Is this how You are, God? Leaving me helpless? Setting this up to fail?

A 1932 Ford Tudor Sedan, with pearl ghost flames on its side and wide rodder wheels, revved its engine as it approached the
reviewing stand. Behind it came a shiny black 1966 El Camino and a gleaming 1949 Mercury, chopped and shaved, with a Desoto
grill. But David didn’t notice any of the polished front ends or the engineered chassis or the Flowmaster exhausts.

The parade marched past him in a jumble of hazy color, and all he could see was his pain.

Samantha Roche lowered her backpack to the ground with an exhausted sigh. She dropped it on the grass and stared at it. It
wasn’t all that heavy, but carrying it exhausted her. She got tired all the time now, for the smallest of things, and she
knew it was because of the leukemia. It made her mad. One minute she’d be fine, and the next she’d feel like she couldn’t
stand up.

All she wanted to do this moment was sleep.

A man walked by with a bouquet of tiny American flags in his hand, and extracted one for her. “Here, little lady. You look
like you could use something to wave.”

“Oh.” She took it from him. “Okay. Thanks.”

Its fabric was thin as parchment; she could see light through from the other side. She held it in front of her face, a limp,
gauzy curl that she ought to have been pleased to have.

Only, she wasn’t pleased.

She was too tired and too uncertain and too alone to be pleased.

Sam thought of her mother, sixteen hours away and not knowing where she was. She wondered if anybody besides her mom might
be looking for her. She thought of Camp Plentycoos where her counselor, Katherine Tibay, had said every morning, “Make it
a great day or not. The choice is yours.”

She leaned her head against the tree trunk, closed her eyes, and felt with her fingers for the precious letter she carried
there, from David Treasure.

She loved even the sound of his name.

Beside her on the grass, a father rocked backward with his baby in both hands, holding it aloft while he laid flat on the
grass. He tickled the baby’s belly with the top of his fuzzy hat, the baby’s arms and legs flailing in midair with joy.

Over by the fence, a boy had just dropped chili dog down the front of his Jackson Hole T-shirt, and his dad was spit-shining
his chin with a hanky.

Across the way, a dad and daughter opened the packaging on a plastic quiver of arrows and aligned one on a little plastic
bow. Samantha watched as the dad showed the daughter how to cock her elbow and draw back the bow, shutting one eye and squinting
down her nose to sight it.

Her whole life, as long as she’d been old enough to understand, Sam had never thought anything like that could happen to her.
Having a dad to tickle her or to sight an arrow with her or to help fix things when she made a mistake.

All she wanted to do was to find him.

All she wanted was to say, “I’m glad you wanted to see me because I wanted to see you, too.”

Samantha felt a little better now, after stopping to rest. She decided she’d better get up and walk more, because walking
helped her think.

She didn’t know what to do, being eight years old, when you needed to sleep over for the night and you didn’t have a place
to stay.

She wandered. And looked at faces, to see if anybody looked like somebody she knew. But nobody did, and everybody was busy
with their own families, as they skittered around or stepped in front of her and made her jog sideways to get out of the way.

Just when she thought she needed to sit down again, she came to a huge crowd lining a road. Just as she stood on tiptoe to
see what was happening, a stranger approached, two huge hands extended toward her. She looked behind her, because she didn’t
think he’d be talking to her.

There wasn’t anybody behind her.

“Just who I’m looking for,” the man said.

“I… what? Me?”

“Yeah. A pretty little girl with a flag.”

Her hopes skyrocketed. “Are you Mr. Treasure?” she asked, because her mom had taught her never to call grownups by their first
names.

“No. That isn’t me.”

“Oh. I was just hoping—” She decided she ought not say any more.

“Are your parents here watching the parade?”

“Yes.” Well, it wasn’t
exactly
a lie because her dad
could
be around. “They’re here.” She pointed into the crowd at nobody. “Right over there.”

“I’m out scouting for extra kids. We’ve got a big float coming up and we’ll score better from the judges if we have a whole
passel of people hanging from the sides, waving at everybody.”

“Really?”

“How’d you like to take a ride in a parade?”

“I don’t—”

He eyed the hoard of people where she’d gestured, maybe trying to figure out to which parents she belonged. “C’mon. We need
you. If they’ll give you permission, there’s barbecue at the end of the run. Good food, too. Catered by Bubba’s.”

“I don’t know what they’d say.”

“Well, ask them. Tell them I’m Lester Howard, director of the community band, and they can pick you up at the rodeo grounds
in an hour. That’s when we’ll be done.”

Five other kids came jumping up and raising their hands to volunteer. Because he wasn’t watching, she had her chance. She
waited the right amount of time, disappeared into the milling people for three seconds, and came back to touch his wristwatch.

“They said it’s okay,” she lied to him, her voice gone soft and careful. “They said they’d pick me up later, where you said.”

“Good. That’s settled. What’s your name?”

“Sam.”

With no further ado, his huge hands wrapped around her. He lofted Samantha so high over the side of the wagon, she felt like
she was flying. Next thing she knew, she was sitting on a bale of hay with a man playing a tuba right beside her head.

“Thanks for helping us out!” Lester Howard waved them off. “Oh, wait.” Out of his pockets he pulled fistfuls of hard candy
and piled it into her hands. “Throw lots of candy when you see other kids! That’s the way to be the most popular float in
the parade.”

“You aren’t marking your score sheet.” Edna Clements, who was sitting next to David on the grandstand, elbowed him and directed
his attention to the papers in his lap. “How can you pick a winner if you aren’t giving them any points?” The muscles of Edna’s
mouth were stiff with reproach.

“I don’t need to mark them,” David said, feeling ashamed. “I can remember it in my head.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you think that float from the Jackson Hole Playhouse was best? Don’t you think it should be given the award?”

“Which one?”

“The one with the player piano on it.”

“Oh. I don’t remember that one.”

Edna settled back in her seat, her face gone slack now that she’d proven her point. “That’s exactly what I thought.” She crossed
her arms with pride in her lap.

David struggled to focus on the task at hand. Directly in front of them this moment paraded Deanna Banana the clown, with
her big painted grin, her beautiful dark eyes and her rainbow striped hair. She walked along in long, slappy shoes, tying
balloon animals without even having to watch her own hands. Whenever she finished one, she handed it out. Behind her a dog-sled
team, made up of eight yipping huskies with red felt stockings on their paws, mushed against their harnesses and yanked a
Volkswagen along.