Leslie Ann

I wasn’t ready for the parade. I was sick to my stomach with the cheering, and the gratitude, and the worship, and the pandering.

I was sitting on top of the back seat of a big old blue convertible Buick. It was just me and the driver. I didn’t know the driver.

They waved flags and jumped up and down and showed me they loved me. They were going to buy me drinks and breakfasts and lunches and dinners and get me jobs and they were awful glad to see me.

It was the declaration of love that got on my nerves.

These people didn’t know what they loved. They were heady from fumes of Hope and Ideals. They yelled, “Welcome home, Tommy!” at the top of their lungs. There were balloons and banners.

I waved, like I was supposed to do.

It’s hard to explain my take on these screaming, loving, flag waving strangers. I was being cheered by neighbors I knew only yesterday-- a thousand years ago. I didn't recognize these people! I was lost in the very town I grew up in, and came back to, the town that now was standing shoulder to shoulder waving at someone they didn’t know they didn't know.

“Good to see you, Tommy-boy!” a bald man roared out of the crowd.

“Good to see you, too!” I called back.

These were good people. You had to believe that! God fearing people. People that had at one time, a long time ago, learned life at their father’s knee, and were now teaching their own babies the lessons they had learned. I couldn’t help thinking, as I was watching them all with their apple pie cheeks and their hot dogs in hand--how little they were. How minute. They hadn’t seen what I saw. They would never, ever, ever, ever see what I saw.

As we came along side Ulysses S. Grant Square the fireworks began going off over head; you should have seen me sitting up there waving back. They wanted so much to love me, to trust me, to pat me on the back and to bask with me in a glory I could never share because it was never mine.

These people were hicks from the word go. They come from a place I once knew; a swimming hole place, where old tires dangle from old trees over water you can no longer drink.

And they’re awful glad to see me.

I see my sister standing next to my dad. I call to them to join me in the back seat of the Buick. They shake their head, no.

“It’s your day, son,” my fathers says to me.

My little sister blows me a kiss.

Then I see Mack Thomas, and he isn’t standing with Leslie Ann and I had heard that they were now engaged. I look for Leslie Ann in the crowd and don’t see her anywhere. I nod my head at Mack Thomas going by, and he nods his head back and looks at his feet and I know then and there I’m going to beat the crap out of Mack Thomas if ever this parade will end.

Which it doesn’t. It doesn’t end. It goes on and on and on and—

And there she is. She’s not standing with Mack and she’s not standing with anyone and she comes forward out the crowd, looks me in the eye. When she smiles, I smile back.

She walks beside the car looking at me as the people cheer, and the marching band starts up with God Bless America. And the parade continues and Leslie Ann can’t stop smiling and I start thinking, maybe this doesn't have to end.

Maybe it will never end...


624 Words--