Tanya made the sign-up sheets for the second cookout, as she had for the first, with the same neat hand, the same allergy stars, the same list of items needed, burgers, hot dogs, buns, drinks, cups, napkins, ice, charcoal, and she added, at the bottom, a line she had not added before, a line that said, "Permit on file with the parks office, copy on the table," because a sign-up sheet, like a folder, can carry reassurance, and because families who had witnessed an arrest deserved to know, in writing, that this time the paper would be on the table from the start. Jordan, hearing about the second cookout, volunteered to run the grill, and Desmond, who had always run the grill, agreed, with a father's mix of pride and reluctance, because a coach who lets his son run the grill is a coach who is letting his son grow up, and growing up, Desmond knew, happens in small handovers, a grill, a scorebook, a logbook, a responsibility. Nia volunteered to hand out drinks again, as she had before, and to write thank-you notes afterward, as she had before, because Nia liked jobs with a clear beginning and end, and because she had learned, from the first cookout, that handing out drinks is a way of taking care of people, and taking care of people is a job that matters even when it looks small. Leon Branson and Pearl Branson volunteered to bring extra tables, and other parents volunteered to bring sides and desserts, and Hattie volunteered to bring a pie, as she always did, and the team, which had been quiet about the first cookout for months, began to talk about the second cookout with excitement, as if excitement itself were a kind of healing, a return to ordinary joy after a long detour through paper and hearings.
The week before the second cookout, Desmond cleaned the new grill, checked the propane, bought burgers and hot dogs, and laid out his Falcons logbook on the kitchen table, open to a fresh page, ready for a new entry. He wrote the date at the top, in ink, and he wrote the words "Second cookout, Oakwood Park pavilion," and he left the rest of the page blank, for the day itself to fill. Tanya laid out the permit, the sign-up sheets, and the folder from the first cookout, not to bring the old folder to the new cookout, but to remind herself that the new cookout stood on the old one's paper, and that the paper, kept true, had made the new day possible. Jordan charged his phone, not to film an arrest, but to take photographs of the team, of burgers on the grill, of children playing, photographs that would show a cookout and not a disturbance, because photographs, like logs, become history, and Desmond wanted this cookout's history to be a happy one. Nia packed the cups and napkins, and counted them twice, and put a small notebook in her pocket for thank-you notes, and Hattie, across the street, baked her pie the night before, covering it in foil, as she always did, and setting it on her kitchen counter to cool, while the evening air came through her porch screens and the park across the street grew quiet for the night. The pavilion, empty in the evening, waited under its roof, its tables clean, its concrete pad swept, its pillars casting long shadows in the setting sun, a place ready for people, as places are ready when they have been cared for, and when the people who care for them have decided, together, to return.
The morning of the second cookout dawned clear and warm, with a breeze that moved the trees at Oakwood Park and carried the smell of cut grass across the ballfields, and Desmond arrived at eight thirty, as he had before, with the new grill in the back of his pickup, two coolers, a folding table, and the fresh folder with the new permit in it. He laid the permit flat on the picnic table nearest the grill, weighted down at one corner by a roll of paper towels, exactly as he had before, because some habits, once learned, should not be changed, and because a permit on a table, where anyone can see it, is a habit worth keeping. Tanya arrived with the sign-up sheets and the drinks, Jordan arrived with the coolers and the speaker, Nia arrived with the cups and napkins and ice, and together they set up the pavilion the way a team sets up a field before a game, with each person knowing his job and doing it without being told twice. The new grill, clean and sturdy, stood on the concrete pad where the old grill had stood, and Desmond lit it carefully, and watched the flame catch, and thought about how a grill, like a season, begins with a small flame and grows, if tended, into steady heat. By ten o'clock, the pavilion was filling again, with families carrying lawn chairs and paper plates, with boys in shorts and T-shirts chasing each other around the pillars, with younger children drawing with chalk on the concrete, with parents talking about school and work and the price of cleats and whether the rain would hold off until evening. It looked, Desmond thought, like the first cookout, and unlike it, because this time the families arrived with a knowledge they had not had before, a knowledge that a cookout is not just a cookout, but a gathering that a city must protect, and that protecting it requires paper and people willing to keep paper true. That knowledge did not make the cookout less joyful. It made it more joyful, because joy, after trouble, tastes sweeter, like lemonade after a hot practice.