‘Just give one over and don’t be smart,’ she said. ‘I didn’t fall off a hayrick yesterday, and I don’t like the sound of that trumpet. I bet they don’t have any of these, because Pop don’t sell to flatlanders. He sees their license plates and claims he’s all out.’
I gave her one and lit it with my Bic. The fuse sparked and she threw it high in the air. It went with a flash bright enough to hurt our eyes, and the bang echoed all the way down the lake. I lit the other one and flung it like Roger Clemens. Bang!
‘There,’ Ma says. ‘Now they know who’s boss.’
But then Paul Massimo and his two oldest sons walked down to the end of their dock. One of em – big handsome young fella in a rugby shirt – had that goddam trumpet in a kind of holster thing on his belt. They waved to us, and then the old man handed each of the boys somethin. They held the somethins out so he could light the fuses. They flang em out over the lake, and … holy God! Not bang but boom! Two booms, loud as dynamite, and big white flashes.
‘Those ain’t cherry bombs,’ I said. ‘Them are M-80s.’
‘Where’d they get those?’ Ma asked. ‘Pop don’t sell those.’
We looked at each other, and didn’t even have to say it: Rhode Island. You could probably get anything in Rhode Island. At least if your name was Massimo, you could.
The old man handed each of them another, and lit them up. Then he lit one of his own. Three booms, loud enough to scare every fish in Abenaki up to the north end, I have no doubt. Then Paul waved to us, and the fella with the trumpet drew it out of its holster like a six-gun and blew three long blasts: Waaaah … waaaah … waaaah. As if to say, ‘Sorry about that, you poor-ass Yankees, better luck next year.’
Wasn’t nothin we could do about it, neither. We had another pack of Black Cats, but they would have sounded pretty lackluster after those M-80s. And over on the other side, that pack of dagos was applaudin and cheerin, the girls jumpin up n down in their bikini suits. Pretty soon they started singing ‘God Bless America.’
Ma looked at me, and I looked at Ma. She shook her head and I shook mine. Then she said, ‘Next year.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Next year.’
She held up her glass – we were drinking Bucket Lucks that night, as I recall – and I raised mine. We drank to victory in oh-thirteen. And that was how the Fourth of July Arms Race began. Mostly I think it was that fucking trumpet.
Pardon my francais.
The followin June, I went to Pop Anderson and explained my situation; told him how I felt the honor of us on the west side of the lake had to be upheld.
‘Well, Alden,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what shootin off a bunch of gunpowder has to do with honor, but business is business, and if you come back in a week or so, I might have somethin for you.’
I did just that. He took me into his office and put a box on his desk. Had a bunch of Chinese characters on it. ‘This is stuff I ordinarily don’t sell,’ he said, ‘but me and your ma goes all the way back to grammar school together, where she spelled me by the woodstove and helped me learn my times tables. I got you some big bangers they call M-120s, and there’s not much bigger in the loud noise department unless you want to start tossin sticks of dynamite. And then there’s a dozen of these.’ He brought out a cylinder sitting on top of a red stick.
‘That looks like a bottle rocket,’ I said, ‘only bigger.’
‘Ayuh, you could call this the deluxe model,’ he said. ‘They’re called Chinese Peonies. They shoot twice as high, then make a hell of a flash – some red, some purple, some yella. You stick em in a Coke or beer bottle, just like with ordinary bottle rockets, but you want to stand well back, because the fuses are going to fizz sparks all over the place when they lift off. Keep a towel handy so you don’t start any brushfires.’
‘Well that’s great,’ I said. ‘They won’t be blowin no trumpet when they see those.’
‘I’ll sell you the whole box for thirty bucks,’ Pop said. ‘I know that’s dear, but I’ve also thrown in some Black Cats and a few Twizzlers. You can stick those in chunks of wood and send them off floatin. Awful pretty, they are.’
‘Say nummore,’ I told him. ‘It’d be cheap at twice the price.’
‘Alden,’ he said, ‘you never want to talk that way to a fella in my line of work.’
I took em back to camp, and Ma was so excited she wanted to set off one of the M-120s and one of the Chinese Peonies right away. I didn’t often put my foot down with Ma – she was apt to bite it right off your ankle – but I did that time. ‘Give those Massimos half a chance and they’ll come up with something better,’ I said.
She thought it over, then kissed me on the cheek and said, ‘You know, for a boy who barely finished high school, you’ve got a head on your shoulders, Alden.’
So here come the Glorious Fourth of oh-thirteen. The whole Massimo clan was gathered over at Twelve Pines like usual, must’ve been two dozen or more, and me’n Ma was out on the end of our dock in our lawn chairs. We had our box of goodies set down between us, along with a good-size pitcher of Orange Driver.
Pretty soon Paul Massimo come out to the end of his dock with his own box of goodies, which was a bit bigger than ours, but that didn’t concern me. It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, you know, but the size of the fight in the dog. His two grown boys was with him. They waved, and we waved back. Dusk commenced, and me n Ma started shooting off Black Cats, not one by one this time but by the pack. The little kids did the same over on their side, and when they got tired of that, they lit up their big sparklers and waved em around. The son with the trumpet blew a couple of times, kind of tunin up.
A bunch of the younger ones heard it and come out on the Twelve Pines dock, and after some talk, Paul and his grown boys handed each of em a big gray ball that I recognized as M-80s. Sound carries across the lake real well, especially when there’s no breeze, and I could hear Paul tellin the little ones to be careful and demonstratin how they was to chuck em out into the lake. Then Massimo lit em up.
Three of the kids threw high, wide, n handsome like they were s’posed to, but the youngest – couldn’t have been more than seven – wound up like Nolan-friggin-Ryan and chucked his right onto the dock between his feet. It bounced and would’ve blown his nose off if Paul hadn’t yanked him back. Some of the women screamed, but Massimo and his boys just about fell down laughin. I judge they might have had more than a few shots. Wine, most likely, because that’s what those dagos like to drink.
‘All right,’ Ma said, ‘enough friggin around. Let’s show em up before that tall one starts honkin his goddam horn.’
So I took out a couple of the M-120s, which were black and looked like the bombs you sometimes see in those old-time cartoons, the ones the villain uses to blow up railroad tracks and gold mines and such.
‘You be careful, Ma,’ I said. ‘Hold onto something like this too long and you’d lose more than just your fingers.’
‘Don’t you worry about me,’ she said. ‘Let’s show those spaghettieaters.’
So I lit em, and we threw em, and ka-pow! One after the other! Enough to rattle windows all the way to Waterford, I should judge. Mr Hornblower froze with his trumpet halfway to his lips. Some of the little kids started to cry. All the women ran down to the beach to see what was goin on, if it was terrorists or what.
‘That’s got em!’ Ma said, and she toasted to young Mr Hornblower, standin over there with his trumpet in his hand and his thumb up his ass. Not really, you know, but in a manner of speakin.
Paul Massimo and his two sons walked back to the end of the dock, and there they huddled like a bunch of baseball players when the bases are loaded. Then they all walked up to the house together. I thought they was finished, and Ma was sure of it. So we lit up our Twizzlers, just to celebrate. I’d cut squares of Styrofoam from some packin material I found in the swill bucket out back of the cabin, and we stuck em in those and pushed em out into the water. By then it was that deep purple time that comes just before full dark, awful gorgeous, with the wishin star up there in the sky and all the others ready to peep out. Neither day nor night, and always the prettiest time there is, that’s what I think. And them Twizzlers – they was a lot more than pretty. They was beautiful, floatin out there all red and green, waxin and wanin like candle flames, and reflectin on the water.