The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

The dago with the trumpet blew – wah-wah – as if to say, ‘This is what real sparklers look like.’

‘That’s okay,’ Ma said. ‘Their sparklers may be bigger, but let’s shoot some firecrackers and see how they like that.’

We lit em one by one and then tossed em so they’d bang and flash before they hit the lake. The kids over there at Twelve Pines seen that, and started clamorin again. So some of the Massimo men went in the house and come back with a carton. It was full of firecrackers. Pretty soon the bigger kids was lightin em off a pack at a time. They must have had a couple hundred packs in all, and they went off like machine-gun fire, which made ours seem pretty tame.

Waah-waah, went the trumpet, as if to say, ‘Try again.’

‘Well, sugar-tit,’ Ma said. ‘Give me one of those cherry bumpers you been holdin back, Alden.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘but you be careful, Ma. You’ve had a few, and you might still like to see all your fingers tomorrow morning.’

‘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.’