It was the Fourth of July, and I was making my way home from Rathbun Lake.  It was nearly dark, and I was hoping to make an hour and a half drive without introducing a deer to my Galaxie.  I was alone, and there was one more party I was headed to.

Rathbun sits just across from the southern border of Monroe County.  Monroe was first known as Kishkekosh, named after an prominent Indian of either the Saux or Fox tribe.  Frank Hickenlooper, who wrote the history of the county in 1894, said translated the name meant “a savage biter.”  Perhaps someday it will resurface for a new species of mosquito.  Others say it meant “man with one leg.”  Perhaps someday it will resurface for a new, one-legged species of mosquito.

The county seat is Albia, and I was coming through the town, snaking around it’s beautiful square in what was now darkness.  Sitting at a stop light I couldn’t get over that on the Fourth of July there was absolutely nothing going on.  Out my driver’s window was a concrete soldier atop the Civil War monument in front of the courthouse.  The butt of the gun rested on the ground, both his hands held the barrel, and he gazed off serenely in the direction I was headed.  He seemed to have no intention of doing anything either.

In the darkness on the edge of town, I came upon a cluster of cars I took for a used car dealership.  That is until I noticed the silhouettes of those seated in lawn chairs, on tailgates and trunk lids, and standing with old friends.  Block after block was lined with them and their cars, and everyone was looking over the open field to the east, waiting.

The old veteran was looking in the right direction after all.  I thought of him and my neighbor who did three tours in Iraq as the shelling of Albia commenced in the rear view of my ’64.  Pandora was finally getting my tastes down, a deer was nowhere in sight, the cool evening air was rushing in my windows, and I couldn’t help but think how it all felt perfect.

Off in the west sat Jupiter and Venus on the level, not unlike Christ’s mother would have seen all those years ago, minus the haze of a Canadian forest fire.  In that haze I could see the bombardment had began in Knoxville.

There we were on Independence Day, all of us in it together in the darkness on the edge of town.