Tribute

chances on the ugliest, most useless prize.”
    They settled, after considerable debate, on a plastic rooster wall clock in vibrant red. Target selected, Ford moved to ticket sales. “Hi, Mrs. Morrow. Raking it in?”
    “We’re doing well this year. I smell record breaker. Hello, Cilla. Don’t you look gorgeous? Enjoying yourself?”
    “Very much.”
    “I’m glad to hear it. I imagine it’s a little tame and countrified compared to the way you usually spend your holiday, but I think we put on a nice event. Now, how much can I squeeze you for? I mean . . .” Cathy gave an exaggerated flutter of lashes. “How many tickets would you like?”
    “Going for twenty.”
    “Each,” Cilla said and pulled out a bill of her own.
    “That’s what I like to hear!” Cathy counted them off, tore off their stubs. “Good luck. And just in time. We’ll start announcing prizewinners over the loudspeaker starting in about twenty minutes. Ford, if you see your mama, tell her to hunt me up. I want to talk to her about . . .”
    Cilla tuned out the conversation when she saw Hennessy staring at her from the other side of the pavilion. The bitter points of his hate scraped over her skin. Beside him stood a small woman, with tired eyes in a tired face. She tugged at his arm, but he remained rigid.
    The heat went out of the day, the light, the color. Hate, Cilla thought, strips away joy. But she wouldn’t turn away from it, refused to allow herself to turn away.
    So it was he who turned, who finally bent to his wife’s pleas to stride away from the pavilion across the summer green grass.
    She said nothing to Ford. The day would not be spoiled. She soothed the throat the silent encounter had dried to burning with lemonade, wandered through the crowd as the sun began to dip toward the western peaks.
    She talked, laughed. She won the rooster wall clock. And the tension drained away. As the sky darkened, Sam climbed up into Ford’s lap to hold a strange, excited conversation.
    “How do you know what he’s saying?” Cilla demanded.
    “It’s similar to Klingon.”
    They announced “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the crowd rose. Beside her, Ford hitched the boy on his hip. Around her, under an indigo sky, with the flicker of glow tubes and fireflies in the dark, mixed voices swelled. On impulse, out of sudden need, she took Ford’s hand, holding on until the last note died away.
    Moments after they took their seats again, the first boom exploded. On the sound Sam leaped out of Ford’s lap and into his father’s. And Spock leaped off the ground and into Ford’s.
    Safe, Cilla thought, while lights shattered indigo. Where they knew they’d always be safe.
    “GOOD?” Ford asked as they drove down the quiet roads toward home.
    “Very good.” Amazingly good, she realized. “Beginning, middle and end.”
    “What are you going to do with that thing?” He glanced down at the clock.
    “Thing?” Cilla cradled the rooster in her arms. “Is that any way to speak about our child?” She patted it gently. “I’m thinking the barn. I could use a clock out there, and this is pretty appropriate. And I like having a memento from my first annual Fourth. It’ll be way too late in the year for a cookout when my place is done. But after today, I think I’m going to plan a party. A big, sprawling, open-house-type thing. Fire in the hearth, platters of food, flowers and candles. I’d like to see what it’s like to have the house filled with people who aren’t working on it.”
    She stretched out her legs. “But tonight, I’m partied and festived out. It’ll be nice to get home to the quiet.”
    “Almost there.”
    “Want to share the quiet with me?”
    “I had that in mind.”
    They glanced at each other as he turned into her drive. When he looked back, the headlights flashed over the red maple. “What’s that hanging—”
    “My truck!” She reared forward, gripping the dash. “Oh, goddamn it, son of a bitch. Stop! Stop!”
    She was already yanking off her seat belt, shoving at the door before he’d come to a complete stop behind her truck.
    Loose clumps of broken safety glass hung in the back window. More sparkled in the gravel, crunching under her feet as she ran.
    Ford had his phone out, punching in nine-one-one. “Wait. Cilla, just wait.”
    “Every window. He smashed every window.”
    Cannonball holes gaped in the windshield, erupted into mad spiderwebs of shattered glass. As the cold rage choked her, she