and the greeting remained unreadable. The face of the little figure in the basket was no more discernible at arm‘s length than it was if the boy ran across the lawn and held it in the shadows of the trees, or if she squinted at it from behind reading glasses. Confusion spread. A captain grabbed a gardener‘s shovel and started furiously to dig in the grass. Was there dirt below this dirt that his polished riding boots stood so proudly upon? Only the laced wrist showed against the shocked husband‘s red uniform as his wife‘s hand searched to see if her desire was real. A rider dismounted and shoved his white gloves into fresh horse droppings, then threw them down in disgust. A servant retrieved the soiled gloves and placed them on a tray. The brass-buttoned conductor could make out no more now with the card in his hands than when he first launched his tumbling baton up into the sky. He handed the card back to the boy, who took off running after a monkey stealing a cream puff from a serving plate. He dropped the paper balloon to climb a palmyra tree, leaving the arm to wave once more as it struck the ground. The card caught the wind and blew into a dense clump of bushes by the road, where it remained elusive and far away as ever. The conductor returned to the bandstand, reached into his pocket for the sapphire stick-pin that had grown larger in the conflation of the afternoon‘s events. He stood in front of his music stand, motioning for the band to begin. Once again left alone, framed by a flawless sky, the audience returned to their folding chairs. The tubas plodded through an elephantine beat as the arm in the bushes snapped its fingers.
Walter Bargen ∙ 135