Mercy loves parades. She loves to see the tractors pulling the floats, the beauty queens, the horses, the marching girls in their uniforms sending their batons whirling into the air. The spray of candy flying off the backs of trailers, kids scrambling along the side of the road, filling their pockets. It is Old Home Week in Preston Mills. This means several things. It means boring things like tractor pulls and church lunches that take forever, where Mercy will dutifully eat soft carrots and green beans and sit still for hours without complaining. But it also means the fair, fireworks, and, tomorrow, a parade.
Old Home Week also means the end of summer. It means that soon she will get to go to school.
“Grandma Claire, can I go on the Tilt-a-Whirl?” Mercy and Claire are walking along the packed-dirt path of the midway, picking at giant puffs of gauzy pink cotton candy. Speckles shuffles along beside them, the leash hanging slack from Claire’s wrist. Trudy has gone off to find Jules, who is doing a rocket car “demonstration” somewhere on the edge of the fairground.
“Maybe later, hon. How about the Merry-Go-Round?”
“That’s for babies!”
“Ferris wheel?”
“OK. But later maybe we can go on the Tilt-a-Whirl?”
“Maybe.”