Free Piper by John E. Keegan Page A

plate for dessert and she held it under the light, stirring it with her little finger. When I asked her what she was doing, she said she was looking for the jewelry. Can you beat that? I couldn’t afford bus fare and she was looking for diamonds.” Tears of lost joy welled in the corners of his eyes, but I was stung by the insensitivity of the woman who’d turned out to be the love of his life.
    â€œI never really knew Grandma Carol.”
    â€œShe was a real fussbudget. But I finally came through. Proposed to her in a hot springs under the moonlight and you know what her first question was?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œWhere’s the ring?”
    Now tears were welling in my eyes. Willard was obviously blinded by his love for this woman. Rather than turn bitter though, he’d taken her uppityness as a challenge, proof of her good breeding.

5
    I was the first one to arrive at the double-sided billboard on Horse Heaven Highway. Nothing of importance in Stampede was beyond walking distance, even though most people drove everywhere as a matter of course. While waiting for Dirk, I checked out the latest advertisements, which were illuminated by spotlights. One side featured a larger-than-life blonde in high heels on an ottoman with a bent knee cupped between her hands, revealing two perfect legs in pantyhose. The board that faced motorists on their way into town had an inscription in a formation of cumulus clouds that read: “If there’s a heaven, you’ve just found it!” It was signed by the Greater Stampede Chamber of Commerce.
    Mom used to say Stampede was a time capsule people had buried under a corner of the state. “Civil rights is still a debatable issue here,” she said. “And they haven’t dared crack the lid on women’s issues.” Even though I knew what she said might be true, it always hurt because I knew that, like it or not, Stampede was always going to be part of me. If Stampede was impaired, I was impaired.
    I hitched myself up between the braces to the running boards and looked back down towards the highway. The billboards were about fifty yards beyond the four-way stop that represented the city limits. Dirk and I had discovered years ago that the police turned their cars around at the intersection and, unless they went beyond the city limits and shone their spotlights directly into the crossbeams, there was no way they could see us. Dirk used to fill his pockets with pea gravel and fire his slingshot at passing trucks. There was little risk of injury. He had trouble hitting the ones standing still at the truck stop.
    The billboards were a perch from which we could play God—hand the stone tablets to Moses, or make soldiers in the plaza march goose steps. I used the billboards to practice my Mark Antony speech before the freshmen elocution contest and the enclosure did for my oratory what the shower did for my Janis Joplin. Of course, when the real thing came, the gymnasium soaked up the drama in my voice like a thirsty desert.
    â€œHey, give me a hand.” It was Dirk, with one foot braced against the diagonal below me.
    â€œWhere you been?”
    He was puffing and reaching up for me. “I had to … do the beds.”
    â€œThe beds?”
    His hand was sweaty and I slid mine down so I had him by the wrist. “You know … Thursdays … change the sheets … ouch, you’re pinching me!”
    The slingshots and Cokes Dirk used to cop from the cooler at Ned’s and stick in the pockets of his Army fatigues eventually gave way to filter cigarettes we’d sneak out of our parents’ packs, one at a time so they wouldn’t be missed. I hadn’t felt that good about stealing Mom’s cigarettes, but I figured she’d live longer if we smoked some for her. She later gave up on her own when she started doing yoga. Dirk was the first one to bring a “brewskie,” a Lucky Lager that tasted like elk