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float had men
dressed as Revolutionary soldiers. The parade ended with a truck toting a big
sign that read DAS IST ALLES, Y'ALL.
    God, country, and German beer: the Fourth of July parade in
Fredericksburg, Texas, had been exactly as Beck had remembered. And he
thought how much Annie would have loved it. She had never lived in a small
town but had always thought it would be perfect. He had always told her it
wasn't. But standing here now in this Norman Rockwell painting, maybe it was.
    As soon as the parade had rolled out of sight, Main Street reopened
for business and traffic; it quickly became crowded with cars, pickups, and
eighteen-wheel rigs heading out to or in from West Texas. A semi pulling a
cattle trailer braked to a stop at the Lincoln Street light. The cows were
mooing woefully, as if begging for mercy.
    "Daddy, look!" Meggie cried. "Moo-cows!
That nice man is taking them for a ride."
    "He sure is."
    "Where are they going?"
    Beck figured a five-year-old didn't need to know about
slaughterhouses, so he said, "Well, they're—"
    "Hamburgers, little lady. You can eat 'em at
McDonald's next week."
    Beck turned. An old coot in a cowboy hat was standing there
with his thumbs in his pockets and a grin on his face.
    " Hamburgers? "
Meggie's face was stricken. "The moo-cows?"
    The old coot realized his error. "Uh, sorry about
that."
    Beck pulled
Meggie away from the cows and walked the children west down Main Street. They
passed sun-hardened locals wearing Wrangler jeans, cowboy boots, plaid shirts, and
caps with John Deere and Caterpillar on the front. Twenty-four
years later, Beck could still recognize the goat ranchers, turkey farmers, and
peach growers; they carried the smell of their trades with them.
    But he didn't recognize the other people walking down Main
Street, sleek women sporting tattoos, low-rise designer jeans, and high heels, holding
leashes connected to puffy French poodles and hairless Chihuahuas, and carrying
stuffed shopping bags … teenage girls wearing short-shorts with their lace thongs
showing in the back and tank tops stretched across their precocious chests up
front and texting on cell phones … long-haired boys wearing baggy shorts, tee
shirts, and headphones wrapped around their skulls … and pale-skinned, soft-bellied
men looking as if they longed for the office.
    Who are these people?
    They walked on
and something began bothering Beck in the back of his brain. Something wasn't
right. Something was missing. And then he realized: the people were
missing. The other people. He had become so accustomed to the
diversity of downtown Chicago—Latinos, African-Americans, Asians, Arabs in
burkas, Indians in turbans, Orthodox Jews, homeless people pushing grocery carts,
and cops, trash, and graffiti—and to hearing loud Tejano and rap music
pounding out from boom boxes carried by kids who dressed like gangsters and
spouted profanity like rappers, that it had all just become part of the
landscape that he no longer noticed, like elevator music.
    But when all of that is suddenly not there, you notice.
    He noticed. None of that was here in Fredericksburg, Texas. The people were white, the streets and sidewalks were clean and quiet, and the cops
were two guys in shorts riding bikes. This was not downtown Chicago. But it
wasn't his old hometown either.
    Fredericksburg had changed.
    The sounds had changed. " Guten Morgen "and
" Danke schön " had been as common on Main Street back then as
"howdy" and "hello." But not now. Not a German word was
heard that day.
    And the sights had changed. The same historic buildings still
lined Main Street— Hauptstrasse to the locals—but all the vacant,
dilapidated buildings that had lined the street when Beck had left town had
been restored and were now occupied, and the names on the buildings were all
different. Gone were the old German businesses like the Weidenfeller Gas
Station, Otto Kolmeier Hardware, Dorer Jewelers, Haas Custom