Fiction Fix Seventeen

It happens only once a year. Millions of fireflies gather
along the Little River in the Smoky Mountains to flash
in perfect synchronization, each little winged body in
search of its mate, each tiny note a part of this grand
opus of affection. If Nature exists in a state of entropy, the
fireflies defy the very structure of the universe, demanding a
reversal of what most of us know to be true. People understand
this on some innate level, and so they come in the thousands
to see it. They want to believe in it. They board shuttle buses
with their blankets and coolers in tow, and they search out a
soft place in the grass where they can peer unhindered into
the glimmering woods. They sit like that, sometimes utterly
still, for hours.
This family of four—Gail and Norwood, and their teenage
son Connor and daughter Hallie—sits on a faded quilt that is
like a banner left over from last year’s parade, its seams split
in several places and the once-scarlet stitched roses now the
color of rust. They are sandwiched between a much larger
2