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Julie (Ron & Julie) Saturday, 12:30 p.m.
The excuse I invented for my interviews worked like a dream until it turned into a nightmare. I didn’t get iron-clad proof of anyone’s guilt or innocence, but I had the sense the men I’d talked to were okay. They answered my question. They chuckled. If they were a little patronizing about my going to such lengths to prove my husband wrong, that was okay with me.
Then I approached Ty Shaw. Spotting him in the food line at the kielbasa luncheon, helping himself to sauerkraut and beans, I hurried to the end of the line. Once he had his hands full with his plate and his beverage cup, I offered to carry his dessert of choice to his table. On the way, I asked my question. Ty’s wife Nan, who’d skipped the dessert table entirely, came up behind us and overheard my story, and before I knew it, I wasn’t in control of the situation any more. Struck with the idea of where Fate puts us at any given time, Nan had one of her big ideas. When that happens, she’s unstoppable, like a high school cheerleader with a plan for the next pep rally.
“What a great way to bring people in the park together,” Nan said, clasping her hands. “You should get everybody to tell where they were on that date. We could make a big map that shows all the locations. I bet we’d find out that some of us were connected long before we ended up here.” She stopped to think. “What day were you asking about?”
“Um, July 7, 1967.”
“Huh.” Her pretty face scrunched for a second. “There are better choices, like the moon landing or JFK’s assassination, but we can work with that one, since you already started. We’ll call it ‘Park Crossings.’” Her gesture suggested a banner that covered a wide swathe of space.
My heart sank. Knowing Nan well, I realized that “we” was actually me. Nan sees herself as an “idea person.” Others are expected to turn her suggestions into reality, at which point she steps in to share the credit.
The sparkle in Nan’s eyes said she was already envisioning the completed project. “People will love it.”
I stood there with my mouth open. Without saying a word, much less the word yes, my excuse for talking to less than twenty men had turned into a park-wide undertaking, with Nan as cheerleader and me as drudge.
She wasn’t wrong. The finished product would be popular, since we love discovering connections within our group of apparent strangers. You talk to someone from Ohio and learn you went to school with his nephew. You mention your hometown, and someone says they used to vacation near there. Once Tommy mentioned a classic car he used to own, and one of the men in the group had bought that same car from the person Tommy sold it to. We’re hundreds of miles from home, yet we keep finding little hooks to each other in our past.
The problem was that I didn’t want to interview everyone in the park. I tried to worm my way out of it. “I’ve got a busy few weeks coming up, Nan. Lots of...letters to write.”
She waved a hand. “I can get you a ton of volunteers. B-Birders are always looking for interesting things to do.” Putting a hand on my arm she ordered, “You come up with a plan, tell us what you need done, and we’ll get it done.”
The idea of asking everyone’s whereabouts on a random date fifty-plus years ago apparently appealed to a lot of people. Volunteers began showing up at our door that very afternoon, and I was approached in the library, in the mailroom, and as Ron and I walked that evening. “I can cover my whole street,” Glenda from Brooklyn offered, and Carrie Burns chimed in, “I’ll do Gull Street, no problem.”
But there was a problem. I had specific suspects to interview. I needed to see their reactions when they were asked about the date. I told them, as I’d told everyone else, “I’ll get back to you.”
Glenda and Carrie went off, their heads inclined toward each other as they no doubt wondered aloud why I hadn’t thanked them all over the place. Alice and Tommy had spent the day at Busch Gardens, but when I told her what had happened, she laughed in delight. “Your mistake was making it sound like fun, Julie. Ask for help weeding the picnic area, and they’ll run the other way.”
“I think I’m really going to have to do this,” I said ruefully. “Who’d have guessed everyone would get so excited about a chart?”
“‘No good deed goes unpunished.’” Alice nudged me with an elbow. “Next time you talk to O’Connor, tell him you’re going to need compensation for poster board and push pins.”
I suspected Ron found my predicament funny too, though he was careful not to say it aloud. While I got the humor at least a little, it wasn’t easy to come up with a way to refuse help I didn’t want and still complete the work I’d started.
Things got worse Saturday evening, when there came a knock at my door. Peeking out the window to see who it was, I let out a little moan. Known as a tireless worker, Jessica LaTran is also a difficult person to deal with. She has her own ideas about everything, and she doesn’t take no for an answer. Jessica (never Jessie or Jess) is statuesque, with small, ice-blue eyes that seem to bore right into your soul. I get nervous when I talk to her, even if it’s a completely innocuous conversation. Under that gaze I feel like every word I say is being weighed and applied to a list of my faults. With a sigh, I went out to greet her.
“I heard about this display thing you plan to make,” she said, waving a hand to indicate she didn’t need to come inside. “I’m willing to do all the interviews.” I opened my mouth to give a firm “No, thank you," but she went right on. “You’re going to be busy collating the information and making the chart. I figure if I visit thirty trailers a day, it will take me about a week and a half to get the job done. I’ll bring my results by every evening, so you can enter the data in small batches.”
“That’s nice of you, Jessica, but several others have volunteered to help. It will be faster—”
She made a dismissive sound. “You can’t let just anybody do this, Julie. You’ll get people who do a little bit and then lose interest.” She made a final, unrelenting statement. “You need one responsible person who’ll do it right and stay on it till the job’s done.”
“That’s nice of you but—”
“I was thinking you could go to that printing place in Spring Hill and have them make a large map of the U.S. When I give you the locations each day, you can put a pushpin in and connect it to the name of the resident with yarn.”
“It’s more than the U.S. We’ve got the Canadians, and people who were overseas back then, soldiers and nurses in Vietnam, Peace Corps workers, and missionaries. We need the whole world.”
She nodded. “Okay. Get a world map.”
“But it would have to be huge to fit all the U.S. residents in.”
“Huh,” she said, frowning. “It will definitely have to be big.” Leaning toward me like a stern teacher, she asked, “Where are you going to put the display?”
“In the meeting hall, Nan says, on the long wall.”
“Best place for everyone to see it.” She shifted her feet. “I’ll start tomorrow morning on the interviews.”
“Let me get back to you on that. As I mentioned, others—”
“And as I told you, I prefer to do it all myself,” she interrupted. “That way the results will be standardized.”
“Look, I appreciate the offer, but I’m the one who has to figure out how this will be done. A lot of people want to help, and since the whole park is involved, I’m not willing to tell them no.” Her face turned stony, and I tried to ignore it as I finished, “I’ll contact you as soon as I have a plan.” I had to raise my voice at the last, because Jessica was already stalking away like an offended ostrich.
