Free Hothouse by Chris Lynch

nod. Just.
    The band—four floating mustaches behind guitar, accordion, drums and upright bass—plays on for an hour of Cajun, country toe-tap, hillbilly ballroom niceness that makes the people sway, and sing, and even swing some. Even the upbeat numbers are tearjerkers, but it all still manages to be more or less encouraging, even when God noses his way in with the spirituals near the end. Their big finish is when they get almost hopping on a bluesish dad-rock thing called “Time Loves a Hero.” Going by the title, and the band’s relative mastery of the song, I’m guessing it is their signature tune.
    Time loves a hero
    but only time will tell …
    Signature or not, the song is the perfect storm that sends the gathering into a kind of madness, brutal sing-alonging, passionate shouting of more mostly true testaments to my dad and DJ’s, and an emptying of pockets into those tin buckets.
    Exhaustion.
    â€œEveryone loves your dads.”
    The man who says that to us, as DJ and I sit on those empty chairs in the middle of the empty stage at the head of the emptying grounds, is pushing a gigantic broom. The broom is just about the width of an average car, and I think if the guy could just attach it to one he could clean up this mess in about two days. He doesn’t seem to mind, though.
    He is a firefighter. All that’s left is us and firefighters. You could tell, even if you didn’t know them, which of the people here today were in the service because they all made a point to wear something from the gear. Famous fire helmets, many of them. The big black boots and suspenders. The badge. One guy even marched around all afternoon shirtless, but with his badge somehow secured to an inhumanly hairy chest. Velcro is possibly the answer there. This firefighter here, though, never seemed like he loved my dad, and my dad felt much the same. His face and eyes are now the same strawberry color with crying, though.
    â€œThank you,” DJ says wearily to the guy. He plucks at my father’s fiddle strings. Now my fiddle strings.
    â€œYa,” I add, “we kind of got that impression.” I plink at the banjo.
    I’m gladdened a little by the way he mentioned our dads in the present. That they are still loved right here now by other people as well as us.
    Gladdened is not the word to use for DJ.
    â€œThey don’t know anything about it, do they?” he asks the only person who probably exactly does. “They say all these things and remember so much, and put up empty chairs for show....”
    â€œYou’re hurting that,” I say carefully as I ease the fiddle out of DJ’s harsh fingers. I give him the banjo. “They don’t know. They can’t know, exactly—”
    â€œNo, they can’t,” he snaps, “so they should probably stop commemorating and sharing now, and get on with their own little lives.”
    I feel myself physically pulling back from the force of him.
    â€œI’m sorry, guys.”
    As soon as I hear the kind velvet voice behind us I want to slither right inside the curly carved holes in the fiddle’s body. I can’t manage it so I panic and scrape the bow all over the strings instead.
    â€œCome on now,” Jim Clerk says, “your father played better than that .”
    I am thrilled to hear the joke at this moment. “I am sorry, Mr. Clerk—”
    DJ is on his feet. He’s hopped up and lurched in Jim’s direction like to babble apologies and hug and beg....
    But actually, he doesn’t do anything.
    â€œWe tried our best,” Jim says. “We didn’t mean to upset anybody or to intrude. Maybe it was too much. But please understand, what you saw today was love. It was real. And believe it or not, all those people here today needed this. People need their heroes, DJ. They need their legends and their greats. And that was your dads.”
    DJ does not look like he is about to say