MISQUAH — Band camp’s closing concert returns to the school lawn Thursday at 7 p.m., three weeks after the smoke drove the whole enterprise into the gym and gave it what the trumpets have not stopped calling free reverb. The lawn does not have reverb. Director Moe has been reminding them of this daily.

The chair drive stands at one hundred forty-one pledged against a working target of two hundred, an improvement on the sixty-three reported a week ago and, per the school, “not yet the whole story.” Lawn chairs may be dropped at the school through Thursday noon with tape and a name on the underside. The casserole rules apply: marked chairs come home, unmarked chairs become the school’s problem and, eventually, the school’s chairs.

The program runs a little under an hour — “short on purpose,” Moe said. “They are twelve. The mosquitoes are not.” The order is the traditional one, the youngest players first, the full camp band closing. Mr. Brekke, retired these eleven years and borrowed back for one number in July, will conduct one number again Thursday, after which he will be thanked briefly, per terms negotiated between the two directors and honored strictly on both sides.

Then the sky takes over. The Perseids peak overnight Wednesday into Thursday and remain excellent Thursday night, with a new moon staying out of the way — the best conditions in years, per Sigrid Pelto, who has advised the town to allow twenty minutes for the eyes and to get away from the streetlight. Several families have announced plans to bring the marked chairs straight from the lawn to the landing and stay out. The band, informed of this, has asked whether that counts as an encore. It does not. It is nevertheless the plan.