‘You think this stuff will shut down those dagos?’ I asked him.
‘You bet,’ Howard said. ‘Only as someone who prefers to be called a Native American rather than a redskin or a Tomahawk Tom, I don’t care much for such pejorative terms as dagos, bog-trotters, camel jockeys, and beaners. They are Americans, even as you and I, and there’s no need to denigrate them.’
‘I hear you,’ I said, ‘and I’ll take it to heart, but those Massimos still piss me off, and if that offends you, it’s a case of tough titty said the kitty.’
‘Understood, and I can fully identify with your emotional condition. But let me give you some advice, paleface: keep-um to speed limit going home. You don’t want to get caught with that shit in your trunk.’
When Ma saw what I’d bought, she shook her fists over her head and then poured us a couple of Dirty Hubcaps to celebrate. ‘When they experience these, they’re gonna shit nickels!’ she said. ‘Maybe even silver dollars! See if they don’t!’
Only it didn’t turn out that way. I guess you know that, don’t you?
Come the Fourth of July last year, Abenaki Lake was loaded to the gunwales. Word had got around, you see, that it was the McCausland Yankees against the Massimo Dagos for the fireworks blue ribbon. Must have been six hundred people on our side of the lake. Not so many over on their side, but there was a bunch, all right, more than ever before. Every Massimo east of the Mississippi must have shown up for the oh-fourteen showdown. We didn’t bother with piddling stuff like firecrackers and cherry bombs that time, just waited for deep dusk so we could shoot the big stuff. Ma n me had boxes with Chinese characters stacked on our dock, but so did they. The east shorefront was lined with little Massimos waving sparklers; looked like stars that had fallen to earth, they did. I sometimes think sparklers are enough, and this morning I sure wish we’d stuck to em.
Paul Massimo waved to us and we waved back. The idiot with the trumpet blew a long blast: Waaaaaah! Paul pointed to me, as if to say you first, monsewer, so I shot off a Pyro Monkey. It lit up the sky and everyone went aahhhh. Then one of Massimo’s sons lit off something similar, except it was brighter and lasted a little longer. The crowd went ooooh, and off went the fuckin trumpet.
‘Never mind the Funky Monkeys, or whatever they are,’ Ma said. ‘Give em the Declaration of Independence. That’ll show em.’
I did, and it was some gorgeous, but those goddam Massimos topped that one too. They topped everything we shot off, and every time theirs went brighter n louder, that asshole blew his trumpet. It pissed off Ma n me no end; hell, it was enough to piss off the pope. The crowd got one hell of a fireworks show that night, probably as good as the one they have in Portland, and I’m sure they went home happy, but there was no joy on the dock of the Mosquito Bowl, I can tell you that. Ma usually gets happy when she’s in the bag, but she wasn’t that night. It was full dark by then, all the stars out, and a haze of gunpowder driftin across the lake. We was down to our last and biggest item.
‘Shoot it,’ Ma said, ‘and see if they can beat it. Might as well. But if he blows that friggin trumpet one more time, my head’s gonna explode right off my shoulders.’
Our last one – the extra-special – was called the Ghost of Fury, and Howard Gamache swore by it. ‘A beautiful thing,’ he told me, ‘and totally illegal. Stand back after you light it, Mr McCausland, because it goes a gusher.’
Goddam fuse was thick as your wrist. I lit it and stood back. For a few seconds after it burned down there was nothin, and I thought it was a dud.
‘Well, don’t that just impregnate the family dog,’ Ma said. ‘Now he’ll blow that bastardly trumpet.’
But before he could, the Ghost of Fury went off. First it was just a fountain of white sparks, but then it shot up higher and turned rose-pink. It started blowin off rockets that exploded in starbursts. By then the fountain of sparks on the end of our dock was at least twelve feet high and bright red. It shot off even more rockets, straight up into the sky, and they boomed as loud as a squadron of jets breakin the sound barrier. Ma covered her ears, but she was laughin fit to split. The fountain went down, then spurted up one last time – like an old man in a whorehouse, Ma said – and shot off this gorgeous red n yella flower into the sky.
There was a moment of silence – awed, don’t you know – and then everybody on the lake started applaudin like crazy. Some people who was in their campers tooted their horns, which sounded mighty thin after all those bangs. The Massimos was applaudin too, which showed they was good sports, which impressed me, because you know folks who have to win at everything usually ain’t. The one with the trumpet never took the damn thing out of its holster.
‘We did it!’ Ma shouted. ‘Alden, give your Ma a kiss!’
I did, and when I looked across the lake, I seen Paul Massimo standin at the end of his dock, in the light of those electric torches they had. He put up one finger, as if to say, ‘Wait and watch.’ It gave me a bad feelin in the pit of my stomach.
The son without the trumpet – the one I judged might have a lick of sense – put down a launcher cradle, slow and reverent, like an altar boy puttin out the Holy Communion. Settin in it was the biggest fuckin rocket I ever seen that wasn’t on TV at Cape Canaveral. Paul dropped down on one knee and put his lighter to the fuse. As soon as it started to spark, he grabbed both his boys and ran em right off the dock.
There was no pause, like with our Ghost of Fury. Fucker took off like Apollo 19, trailin a streak of blue fire that turned purple, then red. A second later the stars was blotted out by a giant flamin bird that covered the lake almost from one side to the other. It blazed up there, then exploded. And I’ll be damned if little birds didn’t come out of the explosion, shootin off in every direction.
The crowd went nuts. Them grown boys was huggin their father and poundin him on the back and laughin.
‘Let’s go in, Alden,’ Ma said, and she never sounded so sad since Daddy died. ‘We’re beat.’
‘We’ll get em next year,’ I said, pattin her shoulder.
‘No,’ she said, ‘them Massimos will always be a step ahead. That’s the kind of people they are – people with CONNECTIONS. We’re just a couple of poor folks livin on a lucky fortune, and I guess that’ll have to be enough.’
As we went up the steps of our shitty little cabin, there come one final trumpet blast from the fine big house across the lake: Waaaaaaaah! Made my head ache, it did.
Howard Gamache told me that last firework was called the Rooster of Destiny. He said he’d seen videos of em on YouTube, but always with people talkin Chinese in the background.
‘How this Massimo gentleman got it into this country is a mystery to me,’ Howard said. This was about a month later, toward the end of last summer, when I finally got up enough ambition to make the drive up to his two-story wigwam on Indian Island and tell him what happened – how we give em a good battle but still come off on the short end when all was said and told.
‘It’s no mystery to me,’ I said. ‘His friends in China prob’ly threw it in as an extra with his last load of opium. You know, a little gift to say thanks for doin business with us. Have you got anything that’ll top it? Ma’s awful depressed, Mr Gamache. She don’t want to compete next year, but I was thinkin if there was anything … you know, the topper to top all toppers … I’d pay as much as a thousand dollars. It’d be worth it just to see my ma smilin on Fourth of July night.’