Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr Page A

drive up to Wausau or all the way to Steven’s Point to find a community of other black congregants? Because they couldn’t have worshipped in Deerhorn, of course. No local church would have had them.)
    I stood and watched them as he poked her like a teenage boy trying to get a girl’s attention—and it was hard to believe that these two people, this playful man and his dignified wife, had thrown the town into such frenzy. I didn’t think they would notice me—I was so used to people ignoring me that I’d almost come to believe I was invisible—but as Mrs. Garrett turned back toward the freezer, she stopped in mid-movement.
    “What?” her husband asked.
    She nodded in my direction and he turned. When he saw me, his face broke into a smile.
    “That’s just Michelle,” he said to his wife, and I was both scared and thrilled to realize he knew who I was.
    “Oh, right,” his wife said, and the guardedness that had started to come into her manner was gone again, and she smiled too.
    “Hello, Michelle,” he said gently, in a tone of voice he might use to coax a cat out from under a bed. He was looking right at me—they both were—and suddenly I felt exposed, painfully aware that there was no corner I could easily slip around, no crowd of people into which I could blend. I knew I should answer but all I could manage was a nod and half a smile.
    “Are you here with your family?” Mrs. Garrett asked. Her tone was friendly, but there was something about her that made me want to stand up straighter, a self-assurance I wasn’t used to seeing in a woman. “What are you looking for?”
    I couldn’t get anything out of my mouth—it was like the muscles in my throat had cramped up—so I gestured toward the ice cream. I took a few steps forward, opened the freezer door, and pulled out a frost-covered carton. It was strawberry, just like theirs.
    “That’s good stuff,” Mr. Garrett said. “My wife and I got some, too. Well, I’ll see you at school tomorrow, Michelle. You have a good day, now.”
    I looked from them to the carton of ice cream and back again, wanting to speak, unsure of what to say. But finally I got so nervous that I just waved goodbye. Then I ran past them down the aisle, feeling their eyes still on me, and hurried to the counter to pay. My heart was beating a hundred miles an hour as I handed over the money and waited for Gloria to bag my item. After receiving my usual Peppermint Pattie, I biked home as fast as I could. I was so flustered that it wasn’t until I mounted the stairs that I realized I’d forgotten the milk. But this I could handle—at the end of the block was the Cloverdale Dairy, and so I walked up and bought half a gallon.
    After I’d given my grandmother the ice cream and milk, I took the dog up to the attic, to my father’s old room, and thought about what had happened. I’d seen the Garretts, both of them. And they’d been nice to me. And they’d excused or overlooked my inability to speak, my awkwardness in their presence. I felt like I’d been let in on a secret, and I knew instinctively that I couldn’t tell my grandparents about it, or anyone at school. But something important had happened; I felt like part of something. For the next hour and a half, before my grandmother called up for supper, I sat there smiling, thinking about my chance meeting in the store, holding it, turning it over like a jewel.
    No one paid much attention when the following item appeared in the paper two days later:
    Free Satellite Clinic to Open; Will Serve Outlying Areas
As part of its planned expansion, the Deerhorn/Central Wisconsin Clinic will provide free care once a week at a satellite location serving the outlying areas of Deerhorn, a clinic official said today. The clinic will be open on Wednesdays, and will operate out of the old Carver Package Store building that is currently managed by Henderson Realty. “We want to be able to serve people who don’t normally come into town