The boy at the jam stall touched my elbow.
“Lady, did this fall out of your husband?”
In his palm was Bill’s hearing aid. Five yards ahead of me, Bill’s brown cap was moving away through the crowd.
“Bill!”
He kept going. Of course he did. A brass band was warming up on his good side, and the other ear was sitting in my hand.
I tried to hurry with my walker. Its front wheel caught a paper lemonade cup. By the time I freed it, all I could see was somebody’s shoulder.
A woman at the motorcycle club’s food tent stepped around the counter. “Who am I looking for?”
“Brown cap. Green shirt. He thinks I’m behind him.”
She climbed onto the empty wooden pallet beside the tent and found him. He’d reached the bandstand steps and was scanning the crowd below, looking more frightened every time his eyes passed over us.
That scared me more than losing sight of him. Bill had spent the last six months worrying that my walker made me unsafe in crowds. I’d spent those same months watching him pretend he could hear announcements in grocery stores.
“Brown cap by the steps,” the woman called down the line. “Get his attention, please.”
Her club had fourteen riders at the fair selling pulled pork for the volunteer fire department. Half were still wearing stained aprons. One moved a menu board aside. Two asked people in the food line to step back. Another rider got to Bill, touched his shoulder and pointed.
A narrow lane opened. I went forward. Bill came back.
“I kept calling you,” he said.
“I was coming as fast as I could.”
Then I opened my hand.
His face folded in a way I’d never seen. “That makes three times, Grace.”
I knew about once at the pharmacy. He told me about the other time right there between the kettle corn and the pig races. He’d lost it in our driveway and spent forty minutes looking before he found it beneath the car. He hadn’t told me because he was afraid I’d stop wanting to go places with him.
Meanwhile I’d been going to bed early before outings because it took so much out of me to match his pace.
We stood in the middle of the aisle discovering how hard each of us had worked to make the other think we were having a wonderful summer.
“Can we sit somewhere?” I asked.
A biker in a mustard-streaked apron turned over two clean buckets behind the food tent. Somebody found the boy who’d picked up the aid. His name was Ben. Bill bought him a sandwich. Ben wanted to know how the little thing stayed in your ear.
“Recent evidence suggests it doesn’t,” Bill said.
We laughed so hard the woman on the pallet leaned down to see if we were okay.
Our grandchild was showing a rabbit at four. We had time. Bill asked if I wanted to leave.
“I want to see the rabbit. I want you to walk beside me. And I want to stop pretending a bucket isn’t the nicest seat I’ve had all afternoon.”
We missed the judging by two minutes. Our granddaughter saw us coming and ran back into the barn for a private introduction to Pickle, who’d placed third and eaten part of his ribbon.
These days Bill wears a little clip on his hearing aid. At a crowded place we pick a spot to meet if we get separated. He lets me set the pace.
The next year we went back to the fair. Behind the motorcycle club’s food tent were two folding chairs. A woman in a mustard-streaked apron saw us looking.
“I upgraded your buckets,” she said.
For more stories of loved ones slipping out of sight in a crowd, follow a grandfather and his dog through a parade, then meet a daughter and a veteran sharing a diner moment. And for another tense family rescue, see what a forester discovers in the back of a car.
