“Today we build the brand,” Devin announced.
Simone sighed. “Today we eat lunch.”
Bryce took his championship belt off the counter, hesitated, and put it into the bag. He was not going to wear it. He was only going to have it available.
At Riverside Park, the noon crowd was already thick. Brass music floated from a temporary stage. Smoke rose over the cookout pits. Families laid blankets across the grass. Bryce moved through them in a tight black compression shirt and white sneakers he had cleaned that morning. The gym logo stretched across the leg of his shorts.
People looked. Some recognized him from the clips Devin had posted after the tournament. Others looked because he made no effort to move around them. He cut in front of a young couple at the lemonade cart and smiled at their irritation as if it were a sign that he was important.
“Come on,” Simone said quietly. “That wasn’t necessary.”
“They didn’t care.”
“They stepped back because you shoved between them.”
“Same thing.”
But it was not the same thing. Simone knew that, and somewhere beneath the noise of his own confidence, Bryce probably did too.
Devin raised his phone and called, “Champion, give me a shot walking toward the river.”
Bryce adjusted his shoulders, put on the grin he used in promotional videos, and moved into the crowd.
A few yards ahead, an older man in faded cargo shorts was buying a snow cone for a small boy. Bryce barely noticed him. The boy was explaining something about dinosaurs. The older man was listening as if the explanation mattered.
Neither of them knew that, within half an hour, a yellow cup of mustard would change several lives.
Chapter 3 — Two Corn Dogs
Riverside Park was the kind of place that belonged to everybody on a holiday and nobody on the following morning. Its trees leaned toward a slow brown river. A stone pavilion looked as if it had survived every wedding reception and municipal argument in the county. Along the footpath, vendors sold kettle corn, lemonade, flags, fried dough, and corn dogs under canvas awnings faded by the sun.
Owen liked the park before noon, when there was still room to move and a person could hear the birds along the water. By twelve thirty the gravel paths had become crowded. He had already decided they would leave after lunch.
Caleb had other ideas.
“Grandpa, the historical society tent has a model cannon.”
“Does it work?”
“Not with real cannonballs.”
“Then I approve.”
They spent twenty minutes looking at old photographs of the county. Caleb asked why almost every man in the pictures wore a hat. Owen said men used to care more about hats. Caleb announced that modern society had obviously improved in that respect.
