At the edge of town, in a large field, a crowd had gathered to watch the man erect his tent. There was no barrier preventing them from watching up close. Still, they kept their distance, because where there was previously nothing now there was something, and they were afraid of losing it. Tom was afraid of losing it.
The town wasn’t entirely without entertainment, but the variety was scant; there was Cole’s Theater, Scooby’s Malt Shoppe, and occasionally a basement party with pop and deviled eggs. But this man and his truck, this tent—this was a spectacle. It was the promise of something new, and this made it more than entertainment. It was an event. To Tom, it was freedom and—if only for a moment—a look into another world, one of magic and unpredictability.
The war was over, the Nazi vanquished. The factory, once tasked with the manufacturing of munitions, now produced toasters, and the overall mundaneness of daily life in Beatrice had become oppressive. So, when that bright red truc…
