The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

It was quiet again, too, so quiet you could hear the thumps of the fireworks show gettin started over Bridgeton way, plus frogs startin to croak again along the shoreline. The frogs thought all the noise n ruckus was over for the night. Little did they know, because just then Paul and his two grown boys come back down to their dock and looked across at us. Paul had somethin in his hand almost as big as a softball, and the grown boy without the trumpet – which made him the smarter of the two, in my opinion – lit him up. Massimo didn’t waste time but slang it underhand, high above the water, and before I could tell Ma to cover her ears, it went off. Holy Jesus, the flash seemed to blot out the whole sky, and the blast was as loud as an artillery shell. This time it wasn’t just the Massimo women and girls who came to see, but damn near everybody on the lake. And although half of em probably pissed their pants when that fucker went off, they were applaudin! Do you believe that?

Ma n me looked at each other because we knew what was comin next, and it surely did: Captain Hornblower raised his fuckin trumpet and blew it at us, one long blast: Waaaaah!

All the Massimos laughed and applauded some more, and so did everybody else on both sides of the water. It was humiliatin. You can understand that, can’t you, Andy? Ardelle? We’d been outexploded by a bunch of Eye-Tie flatlanders from Rhode Island. Not that I don’t like a plate of spaghetti myself from time to time, but every day? Get out!

‘All right, fine,’ Ma said, squarin her shoulders. ‘Maybe they can outbang us, but we got those Chinese Peonies. Let’s see how they like those.’ But I could see on her face that she felt they might best us there, too.

I set up a dozen beer n soda cans on the end of our dock, and slipped one of the Peonies into each one. The Massimo menfolk over on the other side stood watchin us, then the one who didn’t think he could play the trumpet run back to the house for fresh ammunition.

Meanwhile I ran my lighter along the fuses, neat as you please, and the Chinese Peonies took off one after the other, with nary a malfunction. Awful pretty they were, even though they didn’t last long. All the colors of the rainbow, just like Pop promised. There were oohs and ahhs – some from the Massimos, I’ll give em that – and then the young man who ran away come back from his errand with another box.

Turned out it was full of fireworks that were like our Chinese Peonies, only bigger. Each one had its own little cardboard launchin pad. We could see, because by then there was lights on at the end of the Massimo dock, kind of shaped like torches, only electric. Paul lit those rockets and up they went, makin golden starbursts in the sky that was twice as big and bright as ours. They twinkled and made cracklin machine-gun noises when they came down. Everybody applauded even more, and accourse me n Ma had to do the same, or we’d be thought of as poor sports. And the trumpet blew: waaaaaaah-waaaaaaah-waaaaaaah.

Later on, after we’d shot off all our shit, Ma went stompin around the kitchen in her nightgown and tartan slippers, steam practically shootin out of her ears. ‘Where’d they get armaments like that?’ she asked, but it was what you call a retropical question, and she didn’t give me time to answer. ‘From his hoodlum friends back in Rhode Island, that’s where. Because he’s CONNECTED. And he’s one of those people who’s got to win at everything! You can tell just lookin at him!’

Sorta like you, Ma, I thought, but did not say. Sometimes silence really is golden, and never more than when your Ma’s loaded on Allen’s coffee brandy and madder than a wet hen.

‘And I hate that friggin trumpet. Hate it with a purple passion.’

I could agree with her there, and did.

She grabbed me by the arm, sloppin her last drink of the night all down the front of my shirt. ‘Next year!’ she said. ‘We’re going to show them who’s boss next year! Promise me we’ll shut up that trumpet in fourteen, Alden.’

I promised to try – that was the best I could do. Paul Massimo had all his resources in Rhode Island, and what did I have? Pop Anderson, owner of a side o’ the road flea market next to the discount sneaker store.

Still, I went to him the next day, and explained what had happened. He listened, and did me the courtesy of not laughin, although his mouth twitched a few times. I’m willin to sniculate that it did have its funny side – at least until last night it did – but not s’much when you had Hallie McCausland breathin down your neck.

‘Yes, I can see how that would get your ma’s goat,’ Pop said. ‘She was always a heller when someone tried to get the best of her. But for Christ’s sake, Alden, it’s only fireworks. When she sobers up she’ll see that.’