When the firecrackers went off behind John’s screwy kid, Maynard II, he, whose wife had swooned during the preacher’s sermon, was just thinking about his cousin’s power and how, maybe, with old Barnaby’s help, he was about to trounce that contemptible cocksucker at last, so he was both startled (dropped his goddamned paper plate of barbecue right down the front of his pants) and at the same time felt somehow confirmed in his hopes, as though that sudden explosive racket was in celebration (a sympathetic glance at his pants from John’s wife, looking down upon him from the back deck, added to his feeling of triumph; although, ever the languishing fool for love, he wished for more, she did send one of the kitchen help out with a wet towel) of his ineluctable and unprecedented win. Yet another fucking illusion, as he was to find out soon enough, but at the time that summer it looked like a sure thing, so when wild applause followed the fireworks, Maynard embraced it as though it were for him, gave a whoop himself and winked across the lawn at his wife Veronica, who dropped her jaw and returned him a sneering hawk-nosed what-the-hell’s-the-matter-with-you-scumbag? look. A joy to be around, that girl. Should have sobered Maynard up, but it didn’t. He was feeling too damned cocky. Old Barnaby, pissed at the way his son-in-law had fucked him over and in a fit over the civic center outrage (and it was an outrage), had come to Maynard’s law firm with a sweet plan, well-funded, and Maynard had put the final touches to it, it was beautiful. John’s ass was grass, he was sure of it. Not that that would be the end of it. His cuz was tough in the clinches and could play mean and dirty. You could sometimes take a point off him, but it was hard to win the game, Maynard knew that. When they were kids, their families used to do Thanksgivings together, and in and around the ritual gut-stuffing they’d get up all-day Monopoly games, which John always won, even if in the end he had to use strong-arm tactics. Everyone cheated of course, but it was Maynard who always got caught. One day John spied him palming an extra house onto Marvin Gardens and decided to call a kangaroo court. It was one of Maynard’s earliest and most enduring lessons in the way the law worked. He was introduced into the dock as “greasy Mayo Nerd” and his defense was met with wet Bronx cheers, especially from the younger shits, getting back at him with John’s protection. He was found guilty of course and his fine was that he had to wear his clothes backward and make a loud vomiting noise every time someone mentioned mincemeat pie. Aunt Opal, John’s mother, had brought the mincemeat pie that year so he took a terrific cuffing from his old man the first time he made that noise, John always getting someone else to do the dirty work for him. Maynard’s dad was the mayor back then and quick with his law-and-order swats across the side of his head, Maynard was always scared of him. Now the rheumy-eyed old fart was his law partner and pretty much did as he was told.
The real reason that day for the burst of enthusiastic lawn-wide applause, which whooping Maynard in his willing self-delusion accepted as celebration of his own imminent victory, was the spectacular conclusion to little Mikey’s mimed performance, a bit of improvisational showmanship that even Lorraine, once a serious student of such matters and no fan of John’s youngest brat (the little weirdo clearly had a serious oedipal problem, for one thing), had to admire. Lorraine, whose dopey husband Waldo, he of the corked head and wayward prick, was one of those who did John’s dirty work nowadays in his grown-up Monopoly games, had, like the lawyer Maynard, been thinking other thoughts when the firecrackers went off: to wit, where have all the flowers gone? How had Sweet Lorraine, the fraternity world’s favorite party girl and teacher’s petted pet of the English department, got transformed into this shapeless old bag drinking beer from a can in the backyard of a hick town bullyboy, standing in crushed buns and dogshit and wondering what griefs the dolts she was living with had in store for her next? Her helpmeet Waldo was drunkenly hustling one of the local housewives while the bimbo’s husband snarled nearby, Lollie’s halfwit sons were getting dragged around by John’s boy like trained bears, and she herself, watching John’s wife temporarily distract attention from her own son’s popular dumb show (the kid’s act was easy, that crazy photographer was a clown, and like all clowns, no joke) simply by passing by, felt near to tears. Damn it, it wasn’t fair! They’d promised her a happy ending! Whereupon, Mikey’s bitchy big sister Clarissa snuck up behind him while he was concentrating on trying to balance his goofy apparatus on a tripod made of three golfclubs and lit a tin bucket full of firecrackers at his feet. Everyone jumped when they went off, even Lorraine who had seen it coming, everyone except Mikey, who merely pointed his “camera” in different directions and pushed the penlight button as though each pop were the taking of a shot. He dropped the contraption to his side when the explosions stopped, then slowly lifted it again as though guessing there must be more to come, or maybe he peeked. He pivoted, pointed the toilet-roll tube lens at his shocked sister, and—POP! POP! — snapped her turning on her heel in frustration and rage and stomping away. It was a sensation. Lorraine felt, just for a moment (much worse was to happen, she knew that), reconciled to the goddamned world once more, and even laughed and applauded with the others as the little photographer-clown took his waddling exit by chasing his mother up onto the deck and into the house again.
Beatrice’s perspective on this Pioneers Day barbecue in John’s backyard, not sharing Lorraine’s chronic vexation, was that smalltown life out here on the prairie was pretty crazy (a couple of years later it would be her turn back here, no hosts but the children — what curious times lay ahead! — to be, popping her own cracker, the star attraction), but what the heck, God was good and a generous know-it-all who cared for the little sparrow even, so, as her husband would say, chirp chirp, Trix, let it all happen. After the fireworks (where did John get those things? it was fun but was it legal? or did it, John being who he was, even matter? not to Trixie did it), Lenny was looking positively beatific, and that made Beatrice, who was cheerful by nature, even more cheerful, for in truth she worshiped her goofy husband, only wishing that he, like she, might have some notion of what worship might be. She would watch him in the pulpit on Sunday mornings, delivering his famous sermons, everybody talked about them, and she would know, even if no one else did, that he was just pretending, like with everything else. He pretended to be a preacher, a father, a friend, a lover, the cosmos as unreal to him as a B movie, but he was a good pretender, so what difference did it make? Well, one. Beatrice felt certain that Lenny’d never had, though he’d pretended to, a really great orgasm, and this made her feel somehow inadequate and caused her to wonder sometimes what it was they really shared. Beatrice believed, with all her heart, in the mystical power of the orgasm, it was what linked you to everything else in the whole universe, and she surrendered to it wherever and whenever it came upon her just as a saint would do when God called, for that was exactly how she saw it, and no matter what it might cost her, sometimes quite a lot. But saints suffered, too, didn’t they? Just look at Jesus: he had it about as rough as it could get, but in the end he ascended, an experience Beatrice herself had enjoyed, it was great. As a little girl, she got off all the time on Jesus, just thinking about him and his spacey life, so weird and beautiful, and she still could and did, though she no longer needed him or anybody else, she was directly wired now, she could turn ecstasy on like flipping a light switch, and maybe it was just as well that cool Lenny was there to switch it off when she’d been gone too long and lovingly bring her home again.