When red and blue divide a Memorial Day parade, only the cemetery remembers that some things used to belong to everyone.
Reading Time: 5 - 7 minutes
Nobody remembered exactly when the colors stopped being symbolic.
Maybe they had always been.
By the time Eli Mercer noticed it, the change had already settled into the country like humidity. Gradual enough that nobody could point to the day the air turned heavy.
It was Memorial Day.
The town square had been closed since sunrise. Vendors lined the sidewalks beneath canvas tents, some trimmed in red, others in blue. Nobody had organized it that way officially. At least that’s what everyone claimed. But year after year, people drifted toward their own colors naturally, like iron filings pulled across paper by magnets underneath.
Red shirts gathered near the courthouse steps.
Blue clustered closer to the park.
Families who once sat wherever they pleased now unfolded their lawn chairs in quiet formation.
Nobody talked about it.
That was the strange part.
No signs marked territory. No police barriers divided the crowds. No announcements instructed anyone where to stand. The separation happened with the same unconscious certainty people used to choose pews at church.
Eli carried his father’s folding chair beneath one arm as he crossed Main Street. The old aluminum frame bumped rhythmically against his leg.
A marching band warmed up somewhere nearby. Brass notes drifted through the humid morning air, tangled with the smell of charcoal smoke and fresh-cut grass.
Children ran between adults waving miniature flags.
His father noticed him staring.
“You see it, too,” Walter Mercer said quietly.
Eli glanced over. “See what?”
But the old man only adjusted the brim of his faded veteran’s cap and kept walking.
That was another thing Eli had begun noticing over the past few years.
The veterans rarely wore red or blue.
Most of them wore gray. Or olive. Or old denim faded soft with time.
Colors that belonged to memory instead of teams.
Ahead of them, two new vans sat parked on opposite corners of the square.
One wrapped almost entirely in red graphics.
The other blue.
Both covering the same parade.
A little girl stood near the curb holding her mother’s hand, watching the crews unload equipment.
“Mom,” she asked innocently, “which side are we on?”
The girl’s mother glanced briefly across the street before kneeling beside her daughter.
“We’re blue, sweetheart,” she said gently, smoothing the collar of the child’s shirt. “Remember?”
The little girl nodded seriously, as if being reminded of a family allergy.
Eli felt his father slow beside him.
Not stop. Just slow.
The marching band struck its first clean note. Snare drums cracked through the square in sharp, practiced rhythm as people rose from folding chairs almost instinctively. A few removed their caps. Others kept them on.
Walter removed his.
Always did.
Eli remembered being small enough to stand beneath the shadow of his father’s arm during parades like this. Back then the square had still looked mixed. Loud. Messy. Political, maybe. But shared.
Conversations dipped mid-sentence as the old men and women came slowly down Main Street beneath a canopy of flags and oak branches. Some walked alone. Others rode in the backs of restored military trucks polished to impossible shine. A few needed help stepping down from the curb at the intersections.
Most wore small pins instead of colors.
Gold stars.
Unit crests.
Service emblems dulled by time.
Walter stood without a word.
Eli rose behind him.
All around the square, people stood too. Red and blue lifting together in uneven motion like muscle memory overriding instinct.
For a moment, the division blurred.
An old Marine in a wheelchair rolled past carrying a folded flag across his lap. The crowd applauded warmly from both sides of the street. Someone near the courthouse shouted, “Thank you for your service,” and people echoed it naturally, without suspicion or calculation.
The Marine smiled faintly but looked tired.
Eli found himself watching the crowd instead of the procession. People leaned forward trying to read one another while pretending not to. Eyes drifted toward hat colors, wristbands, bumper stickers parked along the curb.
Searching.
Sorting.
The Marine reached the center of the square just as a gust of wind caught the small blanket draped across his knees.
The fabric slipped aside.
A red wristband circled his wrist.
Nothing dramatic happened.
No shouting.
No insults.
But Eli felt a shift move through the crowd anyway.
Applause weakened first near the park side of the square. A few people lowered their hands early. Others folded their arms. Conversations resumed before the veteran had fully passed.
Across the street, red hats clapped harder, louder now, compensating for something no one wanted to acknowledge.
The Marine himself seemed not to notice.
Or maybe he noticed and had simply grown used to it.
Walter’s jaw tightened almost invisibly beside him.
“That man buried friends,” he said quietly.
Eli glanced over.
His father kept his eyes on the parade route.
“Probably buried red ones. Blue ones, too.”
A marching drum snapped sharply somewhere ahead.
Walter slowly settled back into his folding chair.
“You know,” he said after a while, “when I was overseas, nobody ever asked who you voted for before dragging you out of the mud.”
The sun climbed higher over the square, heating the pavement until waves shimmered above the asphalt. The smell of barbecue drifted from the food tents near the courthouse lawn. Somewhere behind them, a child cried briefly before being distracted by music and sugar.
Normal sounds.
American sounds.
The parade continued.
Even the veterans seemed aware of it now.
Some drifted naturally toward one side after marching. Others deliberately stayed in the center of the square, lingering in neutral spaces like men refusing to surrender ground they still believed belonged to everyone.
Walter noticed Eli watching them.
The parade finally ended near noon.
People folded chairs and gathered coolers while the crowd loosened into moving streams of red and blue flowing through downtown without fully mixing. Families crossed paths politely, sometimes warmly.
The cemetery sat less than half a mile away beyond the old railroad tracks.
Every Memorial Day, a smaller ceremony was held there after the parade.
Eli had attended since childhood.
As a boy, he remembered thinking the cemetery felt enormous.
Now it seemed almost modest compared to the restless noise of the square.
Walter stood slowly, wincing as his knees straightened.
“You coming?” he asked.
Eli nodded.
Together they walked, away from the music and food stands, leaving behind the chatter and colored tents. The farther they moved from downtown, the quieter things became. The sounds of the celebration faded block by block until only distant drums remained beneath the rustle of wind through trees.
People still walked in small groups.
Mostly separated by color.
But the closer they came to the cemetery gates, the more subdued the distance became.
Voices lowered.
Hats came off.
Even the children seemed to sense something different there.
At the entrance stood rows of small American flags planted carefully beside white stones stretching across the hillside in measured lines.
No red sections.
No blue sections.
Only names.
Walter removed his cap before entering.
Eli did the same.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Walter looked out across the graves and said quietly:
“Funny thing about the dead.”
The wind stirred softly through the flags.
“The cemetery’s the only place left nobody picks sides.”
Eli looked out across the hillside.
Rows of white stones climbed the gentle slope beneath the afternoon sun, interrupted only by small American flags moving softly in the wind. Names from every war rested side by side without distinction.
Nearby, a young boy wandered carefully between the graves carrying two small bundles of flowers in his hands. One wrapped in red paper, the other blue.
He stopped in the middle of the row, looking uncertain.
“Dad?”
The boy’s father glanced up from a nearby headstone.
“Yeah?”
The child held up the flowers.
“Which one goes where?”
The question hung there quietly.
Walter closed his eyes.
Just for a second.
Then he stepped forward before the father could answer.
“Doesn’t matter here,” he said gently.
The wind moved through the cemetery again, carrying the sound of distant music from the square below.
Songs rising from opposite sides of town.
Copyright © 2026 W. N. Fort