The Last Cool Person at the Summer Festival

By eleven o'clock in the morning, the annual Summer Street Festival had already become a test of faith and character.

The sun hung over the town square with the focused hostility of someone using a magnifying glass on an ant. Heat shimmered above the pavement in visible waves. The metal folding chairs were hot enough to fry an egg. Somewhere near the funnel cake stand, a toddler was crying because his snow cone had evaporated before he could eat it.

My friends and I had arrived with confidence.

This was our first mistake.

"There's going to be live music," Marcy said.

"There are food trucks," Ben had added.

"They're giving away free handheld fans," Tasha said.

We had interpreted these statements as evidence of civilization.

We were wrong.

The free handheld fans were made of thin cardboard and attached to wooden sticks. They did not move air.

Ben waved his furiously in front of his face.

"This is not a fan," he said. "This is a tiny protest sign."

Marcy had dressed for what she called "effortless summer elegance," which involved a long linen dress, leather sandals, and enough silver to conduct lightning. Within ten minutes, the linen had attached itself to her body like wet newspaper.

"I can feel my organs sweating," she announced.

Tasha had brought a giant insulated cup filled with ice water. It was the most valuable object at the festival. People stared at it as she passed. One man near the pottery booth watched the condensation slide down the side and whispered, "Beautiful."

We should have left then.

Instead, we continued deeper into the festival.

The town square had been divided into zones. There was a children's activity zone, a craft zone, a local business zone, a stage, a petting zoo, and one white tend labeled Cooling Station.

The cooling station became the promised land.

We pushed through the crowd toward it, moving with the desperate unity of people fleeing a natural disaster. Inside, however, we discovered one oscillating fan, three folding chairs and a volunteer named Gloria who was misting people with a pink spray bottle for houseplants.

"Take a number," Gloria said.

"What number are you on?" I asked.

"Fourteen."

I looked at the paper ticket in my hand.

It said eighty-seven.

Behind us, someone fainted theatrically into a display of handmade soaps.

We abandoned the cooling station.

By noon, small failures began to feel personal.

The lemonade stand ran out of ice.

The shaved ice machine broke.

The public fountain had been turned off for maintenance.

A vendor selling decorative wool scarves remained hauntingly open and cheerful.

The mayor appeared onstage in a dark blue suit and began welcoming everyone to "another beautiful summer celebration."

The crowd turned toward him with the silence of villagers offering up a sacrifice.

"Beautiful?" Ben asked. "That man has a fan blowing up his pant leg behind his podium!"

The band started playing.

The lead singer shouted, "Everybody dance!"

Nobody moved.

The drummer lifted one stick, thought better of it, and lowered it again.

We found shade beneath a small tree already occupied by twelve strangers, two dogs, a stroller and a woman guarding a watermelon as if it contained classified secrets. We squeezed ourselves beneath one branch.

For approximately forty-five seconds, peace returned.

Then the sun shifted.

The shade moved three feet to the left.

The entire group moved with it.

This happened again two minutes later.

Soon, twenty adults were silently migrating around the tree in a slow circle, following a patch of shadow the size of a bathmat.

"This is how sundials were invented," Marcy said.

Tasha took a careful sip from her insulated cup.

The ice rattled.

Every head turned.

A stranger stepped forward.

"How much for one cube?"

"It is not for sale," Tasha said.

"I have cash."

"No."

"I have festival tickets."

"No."

"I can get you a coupon for ten percent off handmade goat lotion."

Tasha hugged the cup to her chest.

The situation changed after the petting zoo goats escaped.

According to witnesses, one goat pushed open the gate while the handler was drinking warm lemonade. The others followed their way to freedom.

They moved through the festival with purpose.

One ate a ribbon from the prize-winning quilt display.

Another entered the yoga demonstration and stood on a mat.

A third jumped onto the mayor's stage during his speech and got tangled up in the fan chord and pulled down the light fixture.

The crowd cheered for the goat.

The mayor attempted to continue.

The goat ate his note cards. This was the best thing that happened all day.

Then someone announced that the dunk tank was open.

The dunk tank had been intended as a charity fundraiser. For five dollars, people could throw a ball at a target and drop a local celebrity into a tank of water.

Within seconds, the crowd surged toward it.

Nobody cared who was sitting above the tank. They wanted the water.

The first person to break through the barrier was Ben. His lanky frame and tall stature moved up the ladder as he shouted, "I'll donate directly!"

A volunteer tried to stop him.

There was no stopping him. Ben jumped into the tank.

The crowd roared.

Marcy followed. Then two teenagers. Then a man dressed as a colonial blacksmith.

Within moments, the dunk tank became a public bath house. People were removing shoes, emptying pockets and forming a line. Someone tossed in an inflatable flamingo from a nearby booth. The local celebrity, who had been scheduled to sit above the tank, stood beside it looking offended.

"There are rules!" He shouted.

Nobody heard him. If they did, they didn't care.

The band abandoned their performance and joined the tank.

One of the escaped goats arrived and drank from it.

That should have been the peak of the chaos.

It was not.

The festival organizers shut down the dunk tank. This caused what the local newspaper later described as "a brief period of unrest."

The crowd began searching for an alternative water source. Someone remembered the fire department demonstration scheduled for two o'clock. At one fifty-eight, hundreds of people gathered around the fire truck.

The firefighters were smiling. They thought everyone was enthusiastic about their performance. A firefighter stepped forward and began explaining hose pressure.

The crowd leaned closer.

He opened the valve. The hose jerked. A wall of water blasted across the public square.

People squealed with joy.

Children ran through it. Adults raised their arms like Pentecostals in church. Marcy spun in circles. Ben lay face down on the pavement. Tasha finally opened her insulated cup and poured the remaining ice over her own head.

The mayor lost a shoe.

The goat found it.

But, for thirty glorious seconds, the entire festival became an authorized flood zone.

Then the water stopped. Steam rose from the pavement. Everyone stood dripping in stunned silence.

The lead singer climbed back onto the stage.

"Everybody dance!" He shouted again.

This time, we did.

Not because we were happy. We danced because the asphalt was burning our feet.

By sunset the festival was over.

The vendors packed up. The goats were captured. The mayor's shoe was found inside the pottery tent. Gloria remained at the cooling station, still misting ticket number twenty-three.

My friends and I walked back to the car. Soaked. Sunburned. Carrying a stolen inflatable pink flamingo.

The car had been parked in direct sunlight. All day.

When Ben opened the door, a wave of heat rolled out. We stared into the glowing interior.

Nobody moved.

Finally, Marcy spoke. "Guess we're camping here."

For the next twenty minutes, until the steering wheel stopped being a weapon, we sat on the curb beside the car and watched the last cool person in town drive past us in an air-conditioned hearse.

"I guess it could be worse." Ben muttered.

.