18:15 · sundown
The path lights from the far end back, stretch by stretch, coming down the lane towards the gate. Sparkly stands on the gatepost with Beamy's envelope and names whose bit each stretch is as it comes on — the orchard is Jelly's, the bridge is Truly's, the tunnel is Cloudy's, the rope is Yetty's. The lane cheers each one. Jelly cheers loudest of anybody at the orchard.
5 fluffs tell this minute. None of them saw the same one.
Then I stood at the gate and touched the twig to the wick and it caught, and the cheer went all the way back up the lane, lantern by lantern, to the orchard.
Sunny lit it with me. Two of us, in the end, which I found out afterwards was the thing Sunny had asked for at half past seven that morning and had not got.
"Weren't you scared it'd go out?" Sunny asked.
"It nearly did, twice."
The path lit from the far end back, stretch by stretch, coming down the lane towards the gate. Sparkly was up on the gatepost with Beamy's envelope shouting whose bit each one was as it came on.
"THE ORCHARD," Sparkly shouted, "IS JELLY'S. FORTY OF THEM. ON HIS OWN. ALL AFTERNOON."
And forty hooks came alight all at once, up on the hill, and the whole lane went up.
I cheered louder than anybody. Not for mine. I mean I cheered for mine, obviously, but then Sparkly did the bridge, which was Truly's, done twice because Truly went back and redid them, and I shouted for that too. And the hedge tunnel, which was Cloudy's. And the rope, which was Yetty's, and took an hour, in the sun, on a crate.
My party started before the party, at the gate, when the path came alight from the far end back.
Sparkly stood on the gatepost naming whose bit each stretch was as it came on, and the lane cheered each one, and I stood at the back and watched.
Nobody shouted "and the ladder queue". Obviously nobody shouted that. There is nothing to point at. You cannot light up the arguments that did not occur.
The lit path was the thing I wanted to look at, and I did, for a long while, from the gate, before I went in.
Because I have the other one. I have the night it went wrong, whole, still, with the wrongness of it — and now I have this one on top, and they are both in there, and they will both still be there in ten years when most of this land has forgotten what they were doing today.
That is my job, as far as I can tell. Somebody has to keep the evenings.
The lighting went from the far end back, so the path came on in stretches, one at a time, coming down the lane towards us.
I stood up on the gatepost with Beamy's envelope in one paw, paws on hips, not feeling one single bit as certain as I looked, which is the standard arrangement.
"THE ORCHARD," I shouted, as forty hooks came alight all at once up on the hill, "IS JELLY'S. FORTY OF THEM. ON HIS OWN. ALL AFTERNOON."
The lane went up. Somewhere up the hill Jelly cheered louder than anybody.
