So it was June and her mother. And Linh, if Linh's father would let her come up on the Greyhound for the weekends. And forty pounds of lemons a day. And a sign that promised something none of them knew how to do.
"Mom," June said. "What do we say if they ask?"
"Ask what?"
June pointed her chin at the sign.
Her mother stopped paddling. For a second she looked up at the yellow letters as if she had never seen them before. "We say the floating's on vacation," she said. "We say Dot's getting better. People love your grandma. They'll understand."
"Do you know how she did it?"
"No," her mother said. "She never told anybody. Not your grandpa, not me. She used to say a trick you explain is just a lie with the lights on." She went back to her sugar. "Squeeze."
June squeezed.
* * *
The gates opened at eight, and by nine the concourse was a river. Farm families in seed caps, teenagers with Walkman headphones around their necks, little kids already sticky with something. The loudspeakers played the Oak Ridge Boys and then a man announcing the hog-calling contest and then the Oak Ridge Boys again.
They sold lemonade. Not as much as Dot sold, June suspected, but some. Seventy-five cents a cup, a dollar for the big one, the cups waxed paper with a lemon printed on the side. June took the money and made change from the cigar box and said thank you, and her mother poured, and the line was never long but it never quite went away.
But they asked. Of course they asked.
"Where's Dot?" said a woman in a Hawkeyes visor. "Where's the floating?"
"She's sick," June said. "She's getting better."