The Fancy Dancer

in the air.
    In the big exhibits building, so many families had entered their canned fruit, vegetables and baked goods in the competitions that the fair board hadn’t known where to put everybody. One of the booths was Clare Faux’s, and we stopped a few minutes to chat with her and the kids. It made me smile to think that even Vidal didn’t know she was probably a sister. The booth was decked with blue ribbons for their handcrafts, and the crocheting boy’s afghan had gotten a grand championship.
    Clare took my hand and patted it. She looked a little flushed and tired from all the excitement.
    “Thank you, Father, for my new life,” she said.
    “Thank God, Mrs. Faux,” I said. “He’s the great quiltmaker. He takes the bits and pieces of our lives and stitches them together for His design.”
    “Hm, that gives me an idea for a new quilt,” said Clare.
    Vidal and I hung around the rodeo and the races, and watched. At any minute, a contestant or a jockey might be fatally injured, and I’d have to grab the kit of holy oils out of my car parked by the arena. A couple of Protestant clergymen were hanging around too, in case their services were called for instead of mine.
    We sat on the arena fence. The dust from the bucking horses and bulls drifted into our noses and nearly choked us. We could hear the explosion of hoofs up close, as calf and rider burst from the chute in the roping event. I thought how many of the rodeo events were just the everyday work done in the old days— those times that had made us all.
    Every half hour, the rodeo stopped to make way for a horse race. One of the band trumpeters played “Boots and Saddles,” and the skinny thoroughbreds filed out onto the track, just as they’d done for seventy-five years. They jumped from the starting gate, flashed around the half-mile oval, and the crowd screamed as they crossed the finish line in a big cloud of dust. In another two minutes, the rodeo was under way again.
    Vidal, still a gambler at heart, put twenty dollars on a horse that he had a hunch about, named Gay Reveler, and lost.
    People kept coming up to me. “Father, remember christening my baby in May? See how big he’s gotten.” “Father, my wife and I are sure glad we came to talk to you. We’re getting along a little better these days.” ‘Thanks for coming to see me that time, Father. I was depressed about losing my job, but now I’m working at...”
    If Doric was right, every person who came up to me wore the face of Christ the Lover.
    But I noticed, however, that not everybody was so friendly. A number of people, some of them parishioners, some of them just townspeople, either studiously ignored me or actually gave me an unkind look. It had taken only a few days, but Mrs. Shoup’s gossip was already getting around town. I wondered if the people who spoke nicely to me were doing it to demonstrate their sympathy in the most subtle way they could think of.
    Now and then, as I picked up these hostile looks, the terror of being unmasked in a place like Cottonwood really got through to me. But mostly I managed to block the feeling out. In a few days, I was going to say good-bye to it all, and leave the state.
    Just as the horses in the third race were going to the post, the announcer said: “Ladies and gentlemen, the first endurance horses are just a mile out of town now. And they’re coming fast.”
    Vidal and I looked at each other, and our blood leaped with excitement. The announcer up in his high tower above the arena, in his big hat, was looking out toward the highway and saying, “In just a few minutes here, we’re going to have the very exciting finish of the first Helena-Cottonwood Endurance race."
    “Let’s get on over to the finish line,” said Vidal.
    The announcer’s voice ricocheted around the fairgrounds. “I can’t give you any information at this time about which horses they are. But I can see two in the lead from here, ladies and gentlemen. It’s going to be a close finish. You people up there at the top of the grandstand can probably see ’em coming, out there along the old highway ...”
    A rustle went through the grandstand as people craned their necks and half-rose to look north.
    Vidal and I pushed through the crowd to the finish line. Larry was already there, looking sunburned and nervous.
    “I parked your bike over by our trailer,” he said to Vidal. “Hope nobody steals it.”
    “How’s he doing?” I asked.
    Larry shook his head.