Plenty

My skirt was violet. It was procured for me by one of the St. Fire girls from a vintage store near the Cave. The St. Fire girls prefer to travel in packs of four. Each group has a girl who can shoot, a girl who can speak several languages, a girl who climbs trees, and a girl who laughs at jokes that aren’t funny. I was working at the cemetery when one such group approached me. In this group, the girl who laughs at unfunny jokes was named Eddie, and she was the one who held out the skirt for me.

“To wear,” she said, “At Won’t It All Be Fine?”

Won’t It All Be Fine? is the annual party the Four Towns hold in the Cave on the shortest day of the year. That’s the day most of us become depressed, and so, we hold a party that reminds us that things will be okay. Except--we call it “Won’t It All Be Fine?” because we’re not entirely sure it will all be fine. It’s a kind of faith. There is no religion in the Four Towns, but St. Fire has a rock shaped like a whale’s tale that they gather around every week and sing to.

It’s rude to refuse a skirt, but violet is not my favorite color. I accepted it with a polite nod, and the St. Fire girls ran off towards the petting zoo to the west of the cave. I assumed they wanted to try petting the new gopher even though one of the McNearney kids had already lost the tip of his ring finger just yesterday. I rubbed the fabric of the skirt. The material felt like a kind of polyester, but polyester had been outlawed years ago. Everything these days was a facsimile. I went back to digging the latest grave. It was for Young Man Matthew. He’d been attacked on his way home from Screaming Practice by three elderly well-first women carrying pocketbooks covered in nails. The Morning Police found him the next day, and now all the well-first people were back hiding in the Slightly Smaller Caves that are tucked behind the Cave, which is, as you can imagine, quite large.

My only co-worker for digging is Angus Nine. He said we should have called out of work today and joined the Accountability Crew that was searching through the Slightly Smaller Caves now looking to round up and jail as many well-first’s as possible. There’d be no finding the elderly women, because the well-first assassins always walk into the lake after an attack. They choose the older members of their community, because most of them don’t have many good years left, and, this way, their legacy will be one of violence, which is the only honorable kind of legacy to have.

“We should be hunting down every last one of them,” Angus griped in the break room in between sips of balsamic vinegar, “Not putting on skirts and dancing like children at parties.”

“It’s a tradition,” I reminded him, snacking on cod fries and keeping an eye on the clock so we wouldn’t be docked if we went over our break time.

“A tradition created by a dead Queen,” he countered, “Who’s been dead for over a hundred years. If it weren’t for women like the St. Fire girls being tickled to see all of us dressed up like them, we would have stopped having this party decades ago.”

I shrugged. The cod fries were too soggy today. I was going to have to try another lunch spot. The trouble is, there were only two, and the second one was rumored to be sympathetic to the cause of the well-first members.

“I like a party,” I said, and that seemed to satisfy Angus. He didn’t say much else other than--

“So what color is your skirt?”

I’m always one of the first to arrive at Won’t It All Be Fine? Some of the other men like to put off showing up until the last minute, but that just means they have to dance last, and by then, the crowd has had quite a few drinks, and they’ve been known to throw things if you get the steps wrong. I’d rather go right at the beginning when there aren’t as many people there and the ones that are only half-watch the dancing, because it’s competing with the goose race. Angus got in right after me, and we both started working on our painting together.

Part of the Won’t It All Be Fine? party was the continued effort to cover the Cave in paintings. Everyone who showed up was expected to create a painting on one of the many walls. We were also allowed to go in the cave and paint at other times of the year, but nobody ever did, because the cave was dark and smelled of rotten grass. The floor of the cave was littered with holes that dropped down as far as a hundred feet into who knows where. There were both nocturnal and diurnal bats. We held the party in the one small section that was easy to secure, but even painting all the walls of that part of the Cave would take centuries.

“You painting something crude again, Angus,” I asked, noticing that he was already creating what looked like a mushroom.

“I’ll paint what I like.”

“You’ll be cited again.”

“Who cares, Shaver,” he asked me, making two parallel lines down each side of the mushroom, “None of this means anything anyway. This is all just customs and crap. You take it seriously if you want to, but I’m going to do my little dance and then go join AC to snatch up some well-firsts before they get one of us-first.”

With that, he punctuated his drawing with his initials and walked over to the dance floor. I was still going to take my time on my own art. I had an idea for a portrait of a gopher swallowing a group of four girls. There were prizes for the best painting, and one of the categories was “Current Events.” My contribution wouldn’t exactly fall under that category, but it would be a homage to a current event, and I believed that applying some imagination to real life tragedy would entrance the judges. First place prize was a gift certificate to the Cod Shack.

Angus rushed through his dance. I could tell, because he was done before I had put the finishing touches on my gopher. The small crowd watching him politely applauded, and then I made my way into the chalk trapezoid that would need to be redrawn several times that night. The girl who had given me my skirt and her friends were standing off to my left holding balsamic churros. They cheered when I struck my starting pose and waited for the music to begin.

We only had two songs to choose from as all other music was considered to be inflammatory. One was a dirge that we also played at funerals. The other was the children’s nursery rhyme the St. Fire folks sing to their whale tale. Despite loving the dirge, I thought I would dance to the rhyme in honor of the St. Fire girls. As soon as they heard the opening notes, they began to scream as though I had just taken off my burlap cardigan. There was a feral catch in their throats that frightened me, but I wouldn’t allow myself to mess up the dance. Angus Nine could sneer at it all he liked, but some of us in town still believe that we are made stronger by our history.

At the conclusion of the dance, the St. Fire girls ran over to me and nearly carried me out of the trapezoid. The one who shoots told me that I might win Best Dancer and Most Disturbing Cave Painting--a category I had completely forgotten about until she mentioned it. I walked over to the snack table, but there were no churros left. Angus Nine had not left. He was standing in a small alcove necking with a girl from St. Lookahere. I watched as more men entered and the crowd around the dance floor swelled. Soon, the air inside the cave became too potent with sweat and teeth wax. I made my way outside where the sun was toying with the idea of an early set.

From the south, I could hear the sound of small explosions. It was rare for the Accountability Crew to resort to dynamite, but Young Man Matt was beloved and very tall, and they were sure to want to send a message this time around. I felt as though I should have an opinion about what was going on, but tomorrow I would be expected to dig five more graves, and the upcoming stress on my back weighed on me more than the weariness of the world.

A small bat flew a few feet above my head. Soon, the sky would be covered in them. Once they were all out hunting, the party would be wrapped up, and we would all return to our homes. I’d go back to my cottage, make myself a cup of balsamic tea, and pop a tape into my VCR. The cooler months of the year always feel like the time to watch Darby Spy or A Queen’s Legacy, but both those tapes were beginning to be worn down to almost nothing. Maybe I’d just watch Laugh at the Moon again.

There was certainly plenty to laugh at.