Marshfield fills its shade cloth
By Thursday afternoon the Webster County Fairgrounds had the particular smell of an event that is one sleep away: diesel, pine shavings, and a soap crate that had already been opened “just to check.” A roll of shade cloth lay across two sawhorses like a sleeping barn cat. Somebody had written on the tape in marker: FRIDAY. DO NOT MOVE. THIS IS THE SERMON.
The official program promised more than forty sessions and a marketplace fat enough to fill a pickup twice. Unofficially, the town had already divided itself into three camps. Camp One wanted to be first in line for the cheesemaking seat. Camp Two wanted the plucker drawing and would stand in the sun to get it. Camp Three — the correct camp, according to every Nigerian Dwarf who has ever summered within fifteen miles of the square — wanted to know whether the water buffalo of human traffic would still leave room for a goat to think.
Inkhorn took notes at The Bath Parlor because a man who writes features is helpless in the presence of labeled bars. Marshfield makes soap two days a week from milk that started as grass on twenty-one acres outside of town. The bars do not care about Labor Day. They care about lye math and whether the essential oil of the week smells like a promise or a mistake. A tourist asked if the Expo would sell the same soap. The counter said the honest thing: come to town either way. The square will still be here on Sunday.
Scoop walked the fairgrounds fence and counted shade the way some people count folding chairs. Early September in these hills can still run like July. The public weather shop is calling the start of this month the hottest since 2011. That is not a metaphor. That is a reason to put the second tub where the first tub can see it.
Tomorrow the gates open on hog processing and dairy cows and mushroom walks and a hundred other ways to keep a household standing. The goats of Arkatype Farms will not be on the bill. They sent a correspondent instead. The correspondent’s instructions were simple: if you see a kid panting, find the organizer before you find the quote.
Forty sessions will teach a person how to live closer to the ground. One roll of shade cloth will decide whether the ground is livable until five o’clock.
We will file again after the opening ceremony, provided the grease pencil has not melted. Until then, Marshfield, fill the cloth. The hills are watching. So is every wether who has ever been asked to pose beside a vendor tent for “just one picture.”