sitting at the fundraising table with the resourceful majorette

        “Yes . . . exactly.”  Brigid watched as the old station wagon turned onto Martin Luther King Boulevard.  Now she looked at the box of toothpicks.  “Thank you much, Rod.”  She opened the box and fumbled to get a toothpick out.  Rod noticed that her fingers were stiff and red.  He glanced down and noticed that her toes were red too.  In fact her body was flushed all over.  White people, you could tell so much about them from their skin.  Brigid tried to hide it but she was feeling the cold.

        “Here,” Rod said, putting the bottle of water in front of her.  “Thanks.”  Then he could have kicked himself.  Just what she needs -- a drink of cold water.  He could have gotten her a hot tea.  Then again . . . they didn’t have any hot drinks in the store.

        Resourcefulness was an important asset for a Tunemasters majorette.  Brigid had it in abundance.  She expertly formed two toothpicks into a cross, then tied them onto the bottom of the flip-flop.  Once again she slipped it on and took a few steps.  This time it worked.  “Thank goodness!” she breathed with a sigh of relief as she sat down again.  Rod tried not to watch as her breasts rose and fell with her sigh.  It seemed like the circlets were sticking out more.  Underneath, her nipples were probably hardening with the cold.

        Brigid’s next comment was instructive.  “Let’s play.”  Rod knew what that meant.  He picked up his trombone, moved the slide in and out, stopping when realized it reminded him of jerking off, then read from the loose leaf the first line of “American Patrol”.  Brigid limbered up her stiff muscles and, stepping out past the sidewalk, did some expert throws.  The first few were low and safe, but then she got into her “zone” and threw way, way up, past the roof of the supermarket.  Rod, inspired, went on to “Washington Post” and “Manhattan Beach”.  He knew these well enough so that he could glance at the majorette’s circlets whirling round and round, as Brigid twirled her breasts along with the baton.  Somehow she kept those backless flip-flops on her feet as she high-stepped and pivoted.  The crossed toothpicks did not fail.

        As it was meant to do, the display attracted a little crowd.  People stopped on their way and soon Brigid was being appreciated from every angle.  She and Rod finished together, with Rod giving one final fanfare, extra loud.  With the applause Brigid said, “Thank you -- step up and support our preschool!”  This shamed enough people to come forward that for the next ten minutes she and Rod were busy taking donations and giving out shirts.  They brought in two hundred dollars.

        They both caught their breaths as the rush subsided.  “That was good, Brigid,” he said.

        “Yeah,” Brigid said, gulping down cold water, checking her hands like before.

        After this burst of activity there was a lull.  Rod looked down at the box.  There was only one T-shirt left.  Then looked up at the sky.  It was getting darker, though he couldn’t tell if it was oncoming rain, or just this time of year.  Daylight savings time had ended last week and it was now getting dark way early.

        It was getting near the end of the shift.  Brigid exhaled.  Her arms were blotchy and goose-pimply.  Now she exhaled again, trying to suppress a shiver.  She rubbed her upper arms with her hands.  Rod decided he had to say something.  “Brigid . . . you must be freezing.  Why don’t you put on that last shirt?”  They were the long kind.  If she put it on it would probably reach down to cover her tight bare butt cheeks, or almost.  He imagined it would be hard to slip over those protruding circlets.  They then would cause the shirt to stick way out, practically poking through it.

        “N - no . . . it’s for the p - preschool . . .”

        “C’mon, Brigid!”

        “Don’t worry about me, Rod . . . It’s p - part of bein’ a majorette.  Anyway . . . I’m thinkin’ of snuggling under the covers w - with a hot chocolate when I get home . . . That is after I show B - Bern how to make that f - fried chicken for dinner.”  Rod remembered that Bernadette was the second oldest in Brigid’s family, about ten years old.

        “No need to shiver until then!  Put the shirt on!”  Strong-minded as Brigid was, Rod did not mind being insistent at a time like this.

        At that moment who should show up but Mrs. Melinda McPherson, their high school principal, dressed up nattily in her fake-fur coat, flowered dress, boots, velvet gloves, and large church-style hat.  “Good afternoon, Mr. Sykes, Miss O’Dierna . . . how are we doing?”

        “Total take so far, five hundred twenty dollars,” Brigid reported promptly, checking the sheet.  “Eight gold sponsors.”

        “Very good,” Mrs. McPherson said, without surprise.  “That’s five hundred twenty dollars the preschool didn’t have before.  Oh hello, Mr. Lemrick.”  Rod’s friend Lorenzo, another trombone player, had showed up for the last shift.  He waved and bent down to open his case.

        Mrs. McPherson took out her purse.  “I will have to be a gold sponsor too, you know!”  She had two moods: A) wicked old witch, and B) kindly grandma.  At the moment she was B.  She handed Brigid forty dollars.

        “Wow, thanks, Mrs. McPherson!” the nearly naked majorette said.  Rod could not detect her thoughts as she picked the last T-shirt out of the box and gave it to her heavily clothed school principal.  They watched her fold the shirt and put it into one of her coat pockets, then walk into the store.