People Park

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LL WE UNDERSTOOD: at nine o’clock that morning, the illustrationist would be arriving by helicopter.

In the pre-dawn gloom Helpers from the New Fraternal League of Men, mostly middle-aged guys in matching khakis and windbreakers, busied themselves with preparations. The streets surrounding People Park were closed to traffic and down on the common a landing area was marked off with pylons. From these a red carpet cut woundlike across the muddy lawn, up the steps of the gazebo, to a pressboard podium. Affixed to lampposts banners proclaiming the park’s Silver Jubilee hung limp as dead sails in the cold still air. At just after six a.m., with everything readied, the NFLM assumed their positions, walkie-talkies crackling, breath puffing in clouds, and waited for the crowds to come.

The towerclock of the old cathedral, now the Grand Saloon Hotel, had barely marked six-thirty when the first people began to appear: families and lovers hand in hand, businessfolk swinging briefcases, Institute undergrads with their knapsacks and hangovers, teens walking bikes, the elderly in pastels, the tall, the short, the fat, the thin, the hirsute and bald, citizens of every shape and creed and trouser, many in Islandwear jackets — Unique! silkscreened into a skyline silhouette.

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