October The Harvest Wagon
October in Wheatland is the month the harvest finishes and the month the town admits it is a different town than it was in June, shorter on daylight and longer on gratitude, and in the second Saturday the elementary school and the 4H together put on the fall parade down Main Street, which is a modest parade, four floats and a tractor and the high school marching band, and at the end of it the harvest wagon, which is a flatbed that Gene Tolleson pulls behind his old red International, piled with straw bales, on which the 4H kids ride and wave.
Before the parade,
Main Street was closed off
with two orange barrels
and a sawhorse
and a piece of rope,
and the merchants
put out little bowls of candy
on card tables
in front of their doors,
and the flag
on the pole
at the post office
hung in the still air
the way a flag hangs
on an October morning
when nothing has decided
yet
what it wants to do.
The widow stood in front of the feed store
with a plastic pumpkin
full of Tootsie Rolls
and a handful
already in her pocket
to give Delores
when Delores came by.
The coach stood in front of the barbershop
in his Antelopes cap
with his son
and his son's girlfriend
whose name he had finally learned
on purpose,
because it was October
and she was going to be around
a while.
Hollis stood alone
at the corner
by the old bank building
in his long wool coat
because he wears the coat
in October
whether