“You think that was funny? You think I don’t know you did that on purpose? Well, I’ve got your number, shorty, so let me tell you something. Paybacks are murder.”

Paybacks? Murder? Shorty! Hugging my purse against me, I gaped at the bad-tempered buffoon as he gathered his cucumbers, climbed onto his unicycle, and rode off to join his troupe. You wouldn’t expect that kind of behavior from a clown named Snuggles.

Was it my fault he ran over my purse and fell off his tall perch? No, it was the bozo’s behind me – pardon the clown pun – who was too busy stuffing his face with a bratwurst on a bun oozing pickle relish and mustard to notice the short redhead with an even shorter fuse standing in front of him. This was a small parade. He was a big guy. Did he have to be in the front row? And who eats brats at ten o’clock in the morning?

I turned my attention back to Snuggles, who was once again juggling cukes from his seat-in-the-sky as he pedaled up the street. My policy was to stand up to bullies -- and that snarled threat was certainly bullying behavior -- but before I could give him a piece of my mind ( I was thinking along the lines of recommending a place to store those cucumbers) I was yanked back onto the sidewalk by my best friend/roommate Nikki Hiduke, an x-ray tech at the county hospital, who had shared many childhood adventures with me and lived to tell about it.

“Abby, are you all right? You look dazed.”

“Nikki, that clown threatened me! As if I elbowed myself off the sidewalk.” I cast a glare over my shoulder at Mr. Oblivious, who had finished his bratwurst and was slurping mustard off his fingers. I was amazed he wasn’t also talking on a mobile phone. Oh, wait. Yes, he was. He had on an ear piece.

“Snuggles the Clown threatened you?” Nikki stared after the troupe -- three acrobats, two uni-cyclists, one stilt-walker, and the last (my favorite because of the huge purple lily atop a long green stem waving from her bonnet) a baby-doll clown peddling a giant purple tricycle. “But he looks so harmless.”

“Don’t let that goofy smile deceive you.” I scrubbed the black tread mark off the tan leather purse that I’d almost gone into hock for. “Beneath that grease paint is a nasty temper and a voice that would make a polar bear shiver.”

“Abby, you have mustard on your shoulder.”

Wonderful. I took a tissue from my tire-engraved purse and blotted the yellow stain on my white shirt. Why had I even bothered to come? It was a sunny Saturday morning and although my flower shop, Bloomers, was open on Saturdays, this was my one weekend a month to sleep in. But no. Attending the Annual Pickle Fest Parade was a family tradition, and to break that tradition was to incur the wrath of my mom, Maureen “Mad Mo” Knight.

Speaking of whom, where was she? I’d never known her to miss the start of the parade, when Peter Piper led his merry band of Pickled Peppers up Lincoln Avenue to the strains of a John Phillip Sousa march.

I scanned the crowd lining both sides of the street. Today was the start of New Chapel, Indiana’s fall Pickle Festival -- a week-long celebration of brine-soaked vegetables attended by thousands of people from all over the state, some from as far away as Chicago, giving the local newspaper, The New Chapel News, fodder for headlines such as, “Visitors Relish the Pickle Fest.” I had a hunch it wasn’t so much the pickled produce as it was getting pickled that was the actual draw.

All four streets around the courthouse square had been blocked off to accommodate the huge crowds. Restaurant owners set up tables in front of their establishments to sell beer, hot dogs, bratwurst, dills, pickled beets, pickled tomatoes, pickled watermelon, and, yes, pickled peppers, to the hungry visitors. For the truly desperate, pickled herring and pickled pig’s feet were also available. Shoe shops, gift boutiques, and clothing stores put out their wares, and even Bloomers had a display of mums, roses, asters, and greenery for sale.

Then there were the ever-popular arts and crafts booths that dotted the huge lawn around the big, limestone courthouse in the middle of the square. Beneath the shady maples and elms, brightly colored canvas tents housed ceramic ware, watercolors, oils, clay sculpture, silver jewelry, quilts, pottery, toys, metal sculpture, and even marble bird baths.

My mother would have her work on display somewhere in that mix. In addition to being a kindergarten teacher, Mom now fancied herself an artist, having received a pottery wheel for Christmas last year. Before she grew bored with clay, she had produced a variety of weird sculptures such as the infamous “dancing male monkeys table,” or the “human footstool.” She had since moved on to mirrored tiles, with which she’d covered nearly every object in her house, making a washroom visit a truly frightening experience. I didn’t know what craft she was into this week, as she often changed on a whim. My father would only say, “It’s a tickler.”

“Do you see my family?” I asked Nikki. Being a head taller (even more if you added in her cute, spiky blonde hair) she had a height advantage. She also had a body advantage  – slender, long-legged, and small-breasted, something I had aspired to from the age of thirteen. My brothers, both doctors, insisted that people stopped growing when they reached puberty, but they were only half right; I had never gone beyond my five-foot-two inch frame, but I had gone way beyond my training bra.

“I don’t see any of them,” Nikki said, holding up her hand to shield her eyes.

Normally, they weren’t hard to pick out, since Jonathan and Jordan had the same flame red hair and freckled skin that my dad and I had. My mother’s hair was a soft brown, lucky woman, and my sisters-in-law – Portia and Kathy -- had also escaped the curse of the red.

“There’s Marco,” Nikki shouted in my ear, as the New Chapel High School marching band passed by. She pointed between green-coated band members to the opposite side of the street, but I had already spotted him. How could anyone miss a dark-haired, virile-bodied, extremely hot hunk like Marco Salvare, a former Army Ranger/ex-cop, who now owned the Down the Hatch Bar and Grill -- as well as my heart?

“Who’s that woman talking to him?” Nikki asked.

I eyed the attractive girl beside him. “I don’t know. She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

“Pffft. No way. Ew. And would you look at those split ends?”

“Nikki, you can’t see split ends from here, and besides, it’s okay to agree with me. I don’t feel threatened by the woman. I’m not the jealous type.”

She burst out laughing.      

Ignoring her, I narrowed my eyes at the pair, watching as Marco tilted his head toward the woman to catch something she said. She couldn’t have been a day over twenty-five, and had an oval face with delicate features framed by long, thick black hair and a perfectly-proportioned body. She was talking animatedly and pointing to something or someone up the street. The Pickled Peppers? The clown troupe? Someone in the marching band?

“Abigail, there you are!” my mother called. I turned to find her parting the crowd so the humongous feathered hat on her head could fit through. Normally, she wasn’t one to wear hats, let alone feathers, but she did have a way of surprising me. “We’ve been looking all over for you. Why aren’t you in front of Bloomers?”

“Because we always meet here, by the Clothes Loft. Where are Dad and the gang?”

“By your shop, which is where I thought you’d be.”

“It’s hard to see the parade from Bloomers, Mom. You know it doesn’t go down Franklin. Besides, we always meet here. If you wanted to meet elsewhere, you should have told me.”

“I would have told you if I thought there was a need to tell you. But since you’re a shop owner now, I really didn’t see the need.”

I started to argue that my being a shop owner had nothing to do with it, but Nikki nudged me and coughed. That was the signal we used when one of us was expecting a family member to be rational.

“Shall we go get everyone and bring them back here?” Mom gazed at me from under the wide, feathered brim of her hat even as her eyes scoured me for signs of illness or distress. Like a hawk, she instantly homed in on the yellow splotch on my shoulder. “How did you spill mustard on your shirt?”