The boy got down from the table and waddled to him. He took his hand and led him to
the picnic table while a reporter for the Journal-World with his digital camera snapped picture
after picture. Charles led him to the cake with four candles on it, which the grandmother was
lighting.
Forbes stood in the center of the community. He felt the eyes of the people scaling back
his skin. He scratched the crust of salt on the back of his neck. It was hard to breathe.
“Ready, everyone….” said the mother. And she led the whole community in singing
happy birthday to Charles while the cameraman took pictures.
While they sang, Forbes noted how their hope was brimming up and impossible to
conceal with the victory which Charles represented to them.
The wind picked up and blew under a dress of one of the elderly women. She caught
the hem before it flipped up. The adults laughed. Then a stronger wind followed and blew over
the stack of paper plates waiting to be used to dole out the slices. It was a warm wind and it
meant things were stirring.
“Can you make a wish, Charles?” said his grandmother.
Charles shut tight his almond eyes. “I wish it would rain!”
Forbes felt his heart thumping. He brought the punch over the cake. He poured the
punch over the four candles, extinguishing them.
Charles opened his eyes. When he saw that his candles had been extinguished, and that
the frosting was covered with punch, he looked at his mother, dumbfounded.
The mother in horror glared at Forbes. This appalling, godless scheming. The
communit y didn’t know what to think, too numb to make sense of the soaking cake and the
extinguished candles and the stinking farmer.
54
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