Family Blessings

  He watched the flag.

  She watched him.

  He stood erect and respectful, raising such a turmoil within her that it felt as if the drums were beating deep in her breast.

  The color guard passed and Christopher replaced his hat, leaned over to say something to a small child in the crowd. He laughed, touched the child’s head, then straightened, glancing down the street while the band came on, their brass blaring.

  As if he sensed himself being studied, he turned and looked over his left shoulder in Lee’s direction. Their gazes collided. Neither of them smiled, but he began coming toward her with the same unruffled pace at which he’d approached the boys who’d thrown the pumpkin.

  Flustered, she turned her attention to the band, watched their ranks passing by as even as cornrows. The march ended and the drum section took up a street beat— throom, thr-thr throom! —tenors and bass drums answering the snares with such booming vigor it battered the eardrums.

  Then Christopher was before her and she could no longer keep herself from looking up at his smooth-shaven face. His mouth moved. He must have said hello, though the drums covered it up. She said the word, too, though it was lost in the reverberations around them. Their attraction for each other and denial of it were in the forefront of their encounter, coloring it with polite distancing while the entire city of Anoka and her sister looked on. Finally he realized how long he’d focused on Lee, and touched his hatbrim in a polite hello to Sylvia and Pat Galsworthy. A boy on a BMX bike was doing wheelies, threatening to wipe out the rear corner of the band. “Gotta go,” he said, and escaped under the guise of duty.

  Against her will, Lee’s eyes followed him as he motioned the boy over closer to the curb, then answered a greeting from someone in the crowd with whom he stood talking, Christopher with one foot on the street, one on the curb.

  Further contingents of the parade passed by—the grand marshal, kids in costume, the Shriners on their purring Harleys, more kids in cost