We said, this many Mexicans can't be wrong. We changed two lanes and pulled over, found a place to sit on Bank of America's manicured lawn. An ice cream cart circled. A group of kids walked up from McDonald's holding dripping cokes. Some of them spoke Spanish. We sat with our feet to the highway, as if it were a riverbank, and debated going on to Fair Park because we doubted how the view would be from where we were. Would the fireworks be small and distant, we said, would the lights of I-30 drown them, would the trees be in the way? But when the fireworks began they filled out the blank spot in the skyline, between the overpass and the stand of trees, as if they had been matted and framed for us, with just enough black margin. They were the Fair Park lights after all. Children squealed, eighteen-wheelers roared down thirty, honking, and in the distance we could just see the crests of fireworks launched in cities miles to the south.
Halfway through the show the sprinklers sputtered up through the grass. Everyone laughed and screamed and scrambled, dragging blankets and camp chairs, while children escaped their parents and got wet. The lights grew bigger and louder, and the ice cream man turned off 'pop goes the weasel,' and the mothers clapped, and everything became faster and brighter and more patriotic each second. When it was over they all walked home through puddles of yellowed streetlight on cracked sidewalks scattered with broken glass, home to the neighborhoods bordering the interstate, happy with what could be seen without going anywhere.
Yes, I could tell you what's on my mind. It's mostly ideological. I could tell you about the research, the ideals, the frustration. We could discuss the dangers of monoculture and the need for small local farms, and I could tell you how they grow our food on irrigated strips of desert in California: even the water comes from somewhere else. I could tell you that your spinach has been across more states than you have. We could talk about towns whose squares are shuttered while the people shop online, or I could tell you how we swallow supplements full of dandelion while cursing the weeds in our own yards. I might mention how I try not to leave a 10 mile radius around my house for any errand, though this city goes on forever. I could tell you how, in the end, most of us want to be anywhere else than where we are.
I could tell you a lot of things I think about, and I would probably sound pompous and opinionated, even though I didn't mean to. You would probably want me to stop talking, and I would probably hate myself later for offending you. So instead, I'll say that when the show was over, we drove the 10 minutes back up Garland Road to our own small house in our own small, quiet neighborhood, the one that's bordered by the train track and yet another highway. I'll tell you how good it was that night to have never been on the interstate, to have watched out over it with people who had walked there. I'll tell you how I relished what I felt, sitting on the roadbank with the brown-eyed children. I'll describe how all the way home through the dark sagging neighborhoods, we heard the pop and barely saw the flicker of small illegal firecrackers, sparkling in the yards beneath the live oak trees.
