“Keep your panties on,” Cecil told Alice, smirking.

She grinned. “Fair enough, but these guys are amazing.”

The banner on the side of the flatbed read EVERVALE GYMNASTICS AND ACROBATICS SCHOOL. Under that: SPONSORED BY THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF EVERVALE. And under that: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESUS! It was a bit too silly-religious for Fred, but he couldn’t argue Alice’s statement.

And just as the float was directly in front of the judges’ stand, five of the acrobats lined up on their knees, and four more did front flips to land on the backs of the first five. Three more, with running starts, did the same thing to land on the backs of the four. Two more had to climb up—the stack was pretty high—but the last one brought out a small trampoline and lined it up. The crowd oohed and aahed, but watched in amazement as he ran, leaped, bounced, flipped, and laded atop the pyramid. The crowd went wild.

“All while the truck was MOVING!” Alice shrieked.

Fred nodded and wrote that one down. He was about to make another snide comment about Alice going all ga-ga over the hot bodies tumbling around when he froze—not from the cold, but from the sight of the float right behind the acrobats.

They were women. They were all dancing, in three sets of three—some kind of fast, furious, square-dance-like bit, where they trios would routinely swap group members with other trios. It was an impressive ballet where none of them bumped into each other, although it seemed like they were about to at every moment.

But the best part—to Fred and, he assumed, Cecil—was that the women were all wearing high heels, green Santa caps, and elf ears. And nothing else—except the tiniest red bikinis.

“Keep it in your pants, guys,” Alice growled.

“What astounding dancing skills!” Cecil cried out in faux incredulity.

“Agreed!” Fred said, although the women’s dancing skills were quite astounding. “I’m adding this one to our list!”

“I’m not sure how they can do that in this cold in just bikinis,” Cecil said, “but bless them for doing so.”

“If they’re not careful, they’ll be putting lots of eyes out with those nipples,” Fred said.

Alice rolled her eyes and laughed as the float full of dancing bikinis rolled past.

A few local school bands marched by, and a few antique autos and a fire truck followed them, and once again a couple of unimaginative floats. And then came the next one.

“What the hell?” Cecil said.

The first thing Fred saw was the big propane tank up near the tractor. Lines coming out of it fed to eight elegant stoves in various styles, four on either side of the length of the float, with roaring, gas-powered fires blazing away within them. The banner on the side made it obvious: MAINE: THE WAY LIFE SHOULD BE; under that, SPONSORED BY THE GREAT MAINE STOVE COMPANY.

But the attraction wasn’t the stove display; it was the eight high-school-age kids dressed as... the state of Maine. They wore giant foam-rubber suits shaped like Maine—the kind of costumes you’d see someone stuffed into on the sidewalk in front of a store going out of business. Each one had something different to reflect Maine: lobster on one, potatoes on another, blueberries, pine trees, clams, and Mt. Katahdin, a fisherman, and even Stephen King. The students’ faces stuck out around Piscataquis County; their arms came out of the New Hampshire border and Washington County; their legs jutted out from Sagadahoc and Hancock Counties. They were waving to the crowd, clearly taking care to avoid getting to close to the hot stoves.

“Is that a hazard?” Alice asked, clearly worried.

“There aren’t open flames,” Fred said, pointing, “but I think their foam rubber is getting hot.”

Sure enough, Southern Maine on all eight of them seemed to be sagging a bit.

“They’re melting a bit,” Cecil said. “Quick, nominate these kids before there’s nothing left.”

Even as Fred wrote it down, Alice said, “Oh, the next one is funny.”

SPONSORED BY EVERVALE HOT TUBS, read the sign, promoting the EVERVALE HINDU CENTER. On the float was a row of seven models of hot tubs—some with wood sides, others with synthetic shells of various colors. All were steaming and bubbling away, and when the three judges saw who was in the tubs, they burst out laughing.

“Is that Swami Muktananda?” Fred asked.

“And the other swamis from the Hindu Center,” Alice said. “Look, they’re doing yoga poses!”

Indeed they were, much to the delight of the crowd. They all did different things: standing and posing, diving back into the hot water to kick legs in the air, coming up for air to sit in the lotus position.

“They get nominated just for the amusement factor,” Alice said, and Fred scrawled it down as the float rolled by.

The next float was from the EVERVALE CHEESE COMPANY. A half-dozen big wheels of cheese were jutting upright from the back seats of six sleighs—sans horses or reindeer to pull them. Adults and children who waved and threw out small wrapped cheese samples to the crowd occupied the sleighs’ front seats.

“I like this one,” Alice said.

“It makes no sense,” Cecil said. “I mean, if they marched in the parade and ROLLED wheels of cheese, it might make sense. But... cheese in sleighs?”

“Two to one,” Fred said, writing it down. “I’m with Alice.”

Cecil shrugged in surrender. “All right, let’s spend our time trying to figure out what this next one is all about.”

Fred stared in disbelief. He looked briefly to Alice, whose mouth was agape and her brow furrowed in confusion. The flatbed had no people on it—just a line of objects. There was a refrigerator towards the front. Next there was a transparent plastic bin full of ice cubes. After that was an ice-fishing shack. Beyond it sat a model of the planet Pluto that must have been five feet across. And bringing up the rear was a snowman, complete with corncob pipe, a carrot for a nose, coal for his eyes, a scarf, and a top hat. The items all had placards at their bases on either side, facing the crowd: REFRIGERATOR, ICE CUBES, ICE-FISHING SHACK, PLUTO, and SNOWMAN.

“I don’t get it,” Fred said.

“Look at the marquee sign,” Cecil said.

Near the end of the trailer, and small enough that it wasn’t obvious at first, was an LED sign with words scrolling by. Fred focused on it and read them aloud as the words flowed past.

“’These things are supposed to be cold,’” he read. “’People aren’t ... End homelessness.’” And then he saw the last of the text, and it dawned on him. “’Greater Evervale Homeless Shelter.’ Nice.”

“Wow,” Alice said, but Fred was already writing down the float with things that are supposed to be cold. He shuddered at the message behind it.

A few more boring floats rolled by before the next one confused everyone. On it, four local high-school boys representing EVERVALE HIGH SCHOOL CHESS CLUB were throwing snowballs at each other. This was easy, because the entire float was piled high with snow. But the amusing part was that the four students were in costume as various science-fiction characters. One was Mr. Spock in the TV uniform with the blue shirt and a tricorder hanging off his shoulder. Another was Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor, complete with floppy fedora and ridiculously long scarf. The third was some sort of Merlinesque fantasy wizard. And the fourth was Captain America, comic-book superhero, who was making out well defending himself from the onslaught of snowballs with his shield.

“I heard about this,” Alice said. “They were going to dress up like sci-fi nerds and play chess on a giant chessboard, but someone stole the giant chess pieces last weekend. So they left the snow that had piled up on the flatbed and improvised. They get my vote for fun and creativity. Plus, I’m a sci-fi nerd at heart anyway.”

“Sounds good,” Fred said, writing it down. “Let’s just hope the nerds don’t hit anyone in the crowd with those snowballs.”

“Hey, three floats left, and from here they all look like candidates,” Alice said, her face brightening.

The first was just a pickup truck from Pelletier Hardware. But angled into the bed of the truck and protruding above its cab was a gigantic wrench. Clearly, it had been cut from sheet steel, and Fred could see weld lines, but it certainly was clear that it was a wrench. Cables held it in place but, just in case, three employees stood in the bed, decked out in Pelletier Hardware jackets and making sure the gigantic wrench stayed put.

“Simple and elegant, if you ask me,” Cecil said.

Fred couldn’t argue, so he added the hardware men with the wrench to the list.

The penultimate float was no contest: It was a straight truck with a short flatbed; on it, two people dressed as giant condoms were throwing handfuls of condoms to the crowd. The painted sign on the flatbed read NO GLOVE, NO LOVE.

“We have to nominate the love gloves on social principles,” Cecil said, and Alice snickered in agreement. Fred had already written it down as soon as he’d seen the thing anyway.

The final float of the day approached. This one was expected, given that the news of a celebrity appearing in the parade had been widespread. Penobscot Christmas Tree Farms had sponsored it: The flatbed was piled high with cut pine trees, all wrapped in plastic netting. In the middle of the flatbed, one big pine tree was erect, held in place by guide wires, and atop that sat the celebrity. He was belted safely in a wooden seat secured atop the flat stump of the sawn-off pine tree—appropriate, since Maine was the Pine Tree State—and he was waving to the crowd.

There he was, red-haired and freckle-faced: Danny Bonaduce, former child TV star, current radio deejay, and often bad boy, and Fred had to admit that the crowd loved seeing him.

“I have to say, I have no idea who this guy is,” Alice said.

Fred and Cecil laughed. She was a lot younger than they were—probably not even alive when the show was on the air.

“He was in a show way back in the Seventies,” Cecil said. “The Partridge Family. The family was a music act that toured all over. Huge nostalgia for anyone our age or older. Trust me, we want to nominate this one.”

And so the parade was over, with only the float bearing Santa Claus, and followed by a dozen or so fire trucks from surrounding communities to lay on their horns and sound their sirens. Fred, Cecil, and Alice moved to the back of the judges’ stand to confer.

“So what do we have?” Cecil asked.

“Okay, we have the Revolutionary War drummers, the Scottish bagpipe group, the acrobatic Jesuses, and the dancing bikini girls,” Fred said, reading off his handwritten list. “Then there were the kids in the Maine costumes that were melting, the Hindu swamis doing yoga in the hot tubs, and the cheese wheels in sleighs. The shelter’s float with the things that are supposed to be cold was next, followed by the chess-club nerds having a snowball fight, the three men with the giant wrench, and the two ‘no glove, no love’ condoms. And, of course, Danny Bonaduce perched on top of the tree.”

“So which one do we choose?” Alice asked, but Fred was staring at his list. He was missing something—like something just out of the corner of his eye, or that thing you can’t quite come up with but is on the tip of your tongue. He squinted at the list, read through it again, again, again.

“I say we rate them all on a scale of one to ten first,” Cecil said. “Then we narrow down those top choices.”

Something obvious... yet not...

“Sounds good,” she replied, but at that moment it hit Fred like a speeding parade float.

“They all win,” he said, bewildered, throwing up his hand as if to stop his comrades. “They all have to win.”

“But that isn’t in the rules,” Alice said.

“Then we change the rules. Don’t you realize what this list is? The numbers of people in the groups, and what they are? This is impossible, but... here it is, right before me.”

“What?” Cecil cried. “Spill it, man!”

Fred took a deep breath. “This is what we have,” he said. “We have... 12 drummers drumming; 11 pipers piping; 10 Lords a-leaping; 9 ladies dancing; 8 Maines a-melting; 7 swamis swimming; 6 cheese a-sleighing; 5 cold things; 4 snowballing nerds; 3 wrench men; 2 love gloves; and a Partridge in a pine tree!”

Needless to say, all twelve won. Fred, Cecil, and Alice, who refused to believe in the possibility of such outlandish coincidences, set off to find a way out of the fictional world they knew they had to be trapped in so that they could find its author and slap him around a bit.

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.