—Here we go, he said. Here we go.
A minute later he was there.
Pulling to the curb, he opened his door and it was nearly taken off by a passing sedan.
—Whoops!
Closing the door, Woolly skootched over the seat, climbed out the passenger side, waited for a break in traffic, and dashed across the street.
In the park, it was a bright and sunny day. The trees were in leaf, the bushes in bloom, and the daisies sprouting up on both sides of the path.
—Here we go, he said again as he went zipping along.
But suddenly the daisy-lined path was intersected by another path, presenting Woolly with three different options: go left, go right, or go straight ahead. Wishing he’d thought to bring the place-mat map, Woolly looked in each direction. To his left were trees and shrubs and dark-green benches. To his right were more trees, shrubs, and benches, as well as a man in a baggy suit and floppy hat who looked vaguely familiar. But straight ahead, if Woolly squinted, he could just make out a fountain.
—Aha! he shouted.
For in Woolly’s experience, statues were often found in the vicinity of fountains. Like the statue of Garibaldi that was near the fountain in Washington Square Park, or the statue of the angel on top of that big fountain in Central Park.
With heightened confidence, Woolly ran to the lip of the fountain and paused in the refreshing mist to get his bearings. What he discovered from a quick survey was that the fountain was an epicenter from which eight different paths emanated （if you included the one that he’d just come zipping along）。 Fending off discouragement, Woolly slowly began working his way clockwise around the fountain’s circumference, peering down each of the individual paths with a hand over his eyes like a captain at sea. And there, at the end of the sixth path, was Honest Abe himself.
Rather than zip down this path, out of respect for the statue Woolly walked in long Lincolnian strides until he came to a stop a few feet away.
What a wonderful likeness, thought Woolly. Not only did it capture the president’s stature, it seemed to suggest his moral courage. While for the most part, this Lincoln was depicted as one might expect, with his Shenandoah beard and his long black coat, the sculptor had made one unusual choice: In his right hand, the president was holding his hat lightly by the brim, as if he had just removed it upon meeting an acquaintance in the street.
Taking a seat on a bench in front of the statue, Woolly turned his thoughts to the day before, when Billy was explaining the history of the Lincoln Highway in the back of Emmett’s car. Billy had mentioned that when it was first being constructed （in nineteen something-something）， enthusiasts had painted red, white, and blue stripes on barns and fenceposts all along the route. Woolly could picture this perfectly, because it reminded him of how on the Fourth of July his family would hang red, white, and blue streamers from the rafters of the great room and the rails of the porch.
Oh, how his great-grandfather had loved the Fourth of July.
On Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, Woolly’s great-grandfather hadn’t cared whether his children chose to celebrate the holiday with him or went off to celebrate with somebody else. But when it came to Independence Day, he did not abide absenteeism. He made it perfectly clear that every child, grandchild, and great-grandchild was expected in the Adirondacks no matter how far they had to travel.
And gather they did!
On the first of July, family members would start to pull up in the driveway, or arrive at the train station, or land at the little airstrip that was twenty miles away. By the afternoon of the second, every sleeping spot in the house was taken—with the grandparents, uncles, and aunts in the bedrooms, the younger cousins on the sleeping porch, and all the cousins who were lucky enough to be older than twelve in the tents among the pines.
When the Fourth arrived, there was a picnic lunch on the lawn, followed by canoe races, swim races, the riflery and archery contests, and a great big game of capture the flag. At six o’clock on the dot there were cocktails on the porch. At half past seven the bell would be rung and everyone would make their way inside for a supper of fried chicken, corn on the cob, and Dorothy’s famous blueberry muffins. Then at ten, Uncle Bob and Uncle Randy would row out to the raft in the middle of the lake in order to launch the fireworks that they had bought in Pennsylvania.
How Billy would have loved it, thought Woolly with a smile. He would have loved the streamers on the fence rail and the tents among the trees and the baskets of blueberry muffins. But most of all, he would have loved the fireworks, which always started with whistles and pops, but would grow bigger and bigger until they seemed to fill the sky.