I looked around and seen the lake was lined with more folks than ever before. Must have been at least a thousand. They’d come expectin a show, and those Massimos was dressed to give em one, while Ma was in her usual housedress and I was in a pair of old jeans and a tee-shirt that said KISS ME WHERE IT STINKS, MEET ME IN MILLINOCKET.
‘He ain’t got no boxes, Alden,’ Ma said. ‘Why is that?’
I just shook my head, because I didn’t know. Our single firework was already at the end of our dock, covered with an old quilt. Had been there all day.
Massimo held out his hand to us, polite as always, tellin us we should start. I shook my head and held out mine right back, as if to say nope, after you this time, monsewer. He shrugged and made a twirlin gesture in the air, sort of like when the ump is sayin it’s a home run. About four seconds later, the night was filled with uprushin trails of sparks, and fireworks started to explode over the lake in starbursts and sprays and multiple canister blasts that shot out flowers and fountains and I don’t know what-all.
Ma gasped. ‘Why, that dirty dog! He went and hired a whole fireworks crew! Professionals!’
And yes, that’s just what he done. He must’ve spent ten or fifteen thousand dollars on that twenty-minute sky-show, what with the Double Excalibur and the Wolfpack that come near the end. The crowd on the lake was whoopin and hollerin to beat the band, bammin on their car horns and cheerin and screamin. The Ben Afflict-lookin one was blowin his trumpet hard enough to give him a brain hemorrhage, but you couldn’t even hear him over the gunnery practice goin on in the sky, which was lit up bright as day, and in every color. Sheets of smoke rose from where the fireworks crew was settin off their goods down on the beach, but none of it blew across the lake. It blew toward the house instead. Toward Twelve Pines. You could say I should have noticed that, but I didn’t. Ma didn’t, either. Nobody did. We was too gobsmacked. Massimo was sendin us a message, you see: It’s over. Don’t even think about it next year, you poor-ass Yankees.
There was a pause, and I was just decidin he’d shot his load when up goes a double gusher of sparks, and the sky filled with a great big burnin boat, sails n all! I knew from Howard Gamache what that one was too: an Excellent Junk. That’s a Chinese boat. When it finally went out and the crowd around the lake stopped goin bananas, Massimo signaled to his fireworks boys one last time and they sparked up an American flag on the beach. It burned red white n blue and threw off fireballs while someone played ‘America the Beautiful’ through the sound system.
Finally, the flag burned out to nothin but orange cinders. Massimo was still at the end of his dock, and he held his hand out to us again, smiling. As if to say, Go on n shoot whatever paltry shit you got over there, McCausland, and we’ll be done with it. Not just this year but for good.
I looked at Ma. She looked at me. Then she slatted whatever was left of her drink – we was drinkin Moonquakes last night – into the water and said, ‘Go on. It probably won’t amount to a pisshole in the snow, but we bought the damn thing, might as well set her off.’
I remember how quiet it was. The frogs hadn’t started up again yet, and the poor old loons had packed it in for the night, maybe for the rest of the summer. There was still plenty of people standin at the water’s edge to see what we had, but a lot more was goin back to town, like fans will when their team is gettin blown out and has no chance of comin back. I could see a chain of lights all the way down Lake Road, that hooks up with Highway 119, and to Pretty Bitch, the one that eventually takes you to TR-90 and Chester’s Mill.
I decided if I was gonna do it, I ought to make a fair show of it; if it misfired, the ones that were left could laugh as much as they wanted. I could even put up with the goddam trumpet, knowin I wouldn’t have to listen to it blowed at me next year, because I was done, and I could see from her face that Ma felt the same. Even her boobs seemed to be hangin their heads, but maybe that was just because she left off her bra last night. She says it pinches her terrible.
I whipped off that piece of quilt like a magician doin a trick, and there was the square thing I’d bought for two thousand dollars – prob’ly half what Massimo paid for just his Excellent Junk alone – all wrapped in its heavy canvasy paper, with the short thick fuse stickin out the end.
I pointed to it, then pointed to the sky. Them three dressed-up Massimos standin at the end of their dock laughed, and the trumpet blew: Waaaa-aaaaah!
I lit the fuse and it started to spark. I grabbed Ma and pulled her back, in case the friggin thing should explode on the launchin pad. The fuse burned down to the box, then disappeared. Fuckin box just sat there. The Massimo with the trumpet raised it to his lips, but before he could blow it, fire kind of squashed out from under the box and up she rose, slow at first, then faster as more jets – I guess they was jets – caught fire.
Up n up. Ten feet, then twenty, then forty. I could just make out the square shape against the stars. It made fifty, everyone cranin their necks to look, and then it exploded, just like the one in the YouTube video Johnny Shining Path Parker showed me. Me n Ma cheered. Everyone cheered. The Massimos only looked perplexed, and maybe – hard to tell from our side of the lake – a little contemptuous. It was like they was thinkin, an exploding box, what the fuck is that?
Only the CE4 wasn’t done. When people’s eyes adjusted, they gasped in wonder, for the paper stuff was unfoldin and spreadin even as it began to burn every color you ever saw and some you never did. It was turnin into a goddam flyin saucer. It spread and spread, like God was openin his own holy umbrella, and as it opened it began shootin off fireballs every whichway. Each one exploded and shot off more, makin a kind of rainbow over that saucer. I know you two have seen cell phone video of it, probably everybody who had a phone was makin movies of it which I don’t doubt will be evidence at my trial, but I’m tellin you you had to be there to fully appreciate the wonder of it.
Ma was clutchin my arm. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, ‘but I thought it was only eight feet across. Isn’t that what your Indian friend said?’
It was, but the thing I’d unleashed was twenty feet across and still growin when it popped a dozen or more little parachutes to keep it elevated while it shot off more colors and sparklers and fountains and flash bombs. It was maybe not so grand as Massimo’s fireworks show in the altogether, but grander than his Excellent Junk. And, accourse, it came last. That’s what people always remember, don’t you think, what they see last?
Ma seen the Massimos starin up at the sky, their jaws hung down like doors on busted hinges, lookin like the purest goddam ijits that ever walked the earth, and she started to dance. The trumpet was danglin down Ben Afflict’s hand, like he’d forgotten he had it.
‘We beat em!’ Ma screamed at me, shakin her fists. ‘We finally did it, Alden! Look at em! They’re beat and it was worth every fuckin penny!’
She wanted me to dance with her, but I seen something I didn’t much care for. The wind was pushin that flyin saucer east’rds across the lake, toward Twelve Pines.
Paul Massimo seen the same thing and pointed at me, as if to say, You put it up there, you bring it down while it’s still over the water.
Only I couldn’t, accourse, and meanwhile the goddam thing was still blowin its wad, shootin off rockets and cannonades and swirly fountains like it would never stop. Then – I had no idea it was gonna happen, because the video Johnny Shining Path showed me was silent – it started to play music. Just five notes over and over: doo-dee-doo-dum-dee. It was the music the spaceship makes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So it’s toodlee-dooin and toodlee-deein, and that’s when the goddam saucer caught afire. I don’t know if that was an accident or if it was s’posed to be the final effect. The parachutes holdin it up, they caught, too, and the whoremaster started to sink. At first I thought it’d go down before it ran out of lake to land in, maybe even on the Massimos’ swimmin float, which would’ve been bad, but not the worst. Only just then a stronger gust of wind blew up, as if Mother Nature herself was tired of the Massimos. Or maybe it was just that fuckin trumpet the old girl was tired of.