THIRTY
A whistling Pete screamed into the night and the six of us made our way to a spot on the curb in front of Cory’s house. In the middle of the cul-de-sac, Andrew Moore, our resident volunteer firefighter, stood watching the screeching, flaming inferno as its wail slowly faded and then died. He picked up the still smoldering tube and tossed it in a five-gallon bucket of water and then lit a fountain.
As the pyramid shaped fountain began to vomit up beautiful red and blue and green and white sparks, Andrew went back to the bucket and retrieved the now saturated whistling Pete and threw it in a trash can. That was his routine for the night: lighting fireworks, soaking them in water and throwing them away, keeping the crowd of neighbors entertained the whole time.
We sat shoulder to shoulder in a boy, boy, girl, boy, girl, boy formation and I was in the middle with Jackie on one side and Christy on the other. Off to our left, Mark Payne still sat with the Maherrin’s, watching the show. But for a moment he seemed to be watching us. I was the only one to notice him staring in our direction and decided to wave to him. When I did, he quickly looked away and took a long pull from his beer. He crushed the can in his hand and got up to get a fresh one from the foam cooler on the blanket. He never looked back at us after sitting back down and I remember feeling a little confused, like he might not have liked us after all. He seemed like a nice enough guy a few days earlier when we had met up with him after being chased out of Dead Grove by Ben. Thinking of that reminded me of how he had taken Steve’s BB gun and shot the beer can one-handed. So cool.
It also reminded me of being in Dead Grove, before Ben had snuck up on us, scaring us shitless. Steve had just been talking about the first newspaper article that he had read to us earlier and the girl that had been found dead by the railroad tracks.
Amy Garret.
The shoelace.
Steve’s sister, Jackie, had been in girl scouts with Amy and had actually been a part of her life, even if only briefly. I looked at Jackie, sitting to my right, wondering if she had any clue that that little girl was now gone from this world. Jackie was smiling and clapping as Andrew lit more fireworks, showing no awareness of Amy’s passing.
Steve, and the police, had also suggested the possibility that another girl, Melissa Brown, had also been killed by the same person. Just that morning, he and Cory had come to our house with the newspaper. When he had read that article to us at the Tree, it confirmed the theory that indeed Melissa was dead and at the hands of the same killer.
And although this holiday was a happy occasion and a time for celebration, I suddenly felt sad just then. The two girls that had been murdered in our city of Corona had been our ages. I wondered how their parents must feel at that moment. Their most precious gifts in life ripped away from them, never to return.
Who was it that had come into our city and committed those heinous acts? Or was it someone who already lived there? Had they snapped and decided to take their frustrations out on the children in our community? As the fireworks popped and hissed and whistled, and as the people clapped and cheered and hooted, these questions went through my head.
I also began thinking about my sleep and the dreams I had been having.
The Dark Dreams.
What happened to me when I went to sleep at night? Was it normal for a kid my age to have dreams like those? It didn’t seem normal to me to be experiencing such night terrors. Not to mention the sleepwalking and the night I had woken up, paralyzed, seeing that dark form in the corner of my room. The black shadow with dreadlocks that had crept onto my bed, limbs snapping and popping as it moved, me petrified with fear.
Andrew Moore, drenched more of the fireworks in his bucket and after tossing them into the trashcan, moved on to a pinwheel that he had nailed to the Smith’s Mimosa tree at their parkway. He lit it and it took off doing quick, crazy circles, spitting out sparks of different colors in a beautiful display, buzzing as it went round and round.
“Oh, that’s so pretty,” Jackie said to me or to all of us or maybe just to herself.
When I looked over at her, I saw an angel. She was so young and so cute. Her hair was dark, like her mothers, her skin, a creamy butter tan. The pinwheel reflected in her perfect brown eyes and I knew at that moment that I wanted to marry her, someday. I would have given anything to kiss her perfect lips at that moment, not caring who saw.
Instead, I grabbed her hand. She turned to me, a look of surprise on her face that slowly melted into a soft smile. She squeezed my hand back and then patted the top of it as if she was an older sister instead of a love interest and that was just fine. I could have sat there with her, hand in hand, forever.
Just then, Andrew lit a flower and threw it into the middle of the street where it spun and hopped and buzzed and when it finally slowed down and only a small tongue of flame licked out form the side, he yelled out to all of the children that had shown up to the party.
“Alright, who wants a sparkler?”
The six of us and about twelve other kids from the neighborhood jumped up and ran to him, holding out hands, begging to be first to receive one of the metal sticks.
As it turned out every kid ended up with two sparklers instead of just the one we’d hoped for. Andrew held out a blue Bic lighter, and in turn, lit each child’s stick. Once they came to life in small golden explosions we began running around the cul-de-sac twirling and jumping and shaking our sparklers, having the grandest time of our lives.
Some kids made big looping circles with theirs as others wrote their names in mid-air. If you were quick enough to close your eyes after they did this, you could see the names of the children in a red after image on the back of your eyelids.
JASON. STEVE. RUDY. CORY. BOBBY. CHRISTY. JIMMY. All lighting their names in the night. But the most beautiful name, the one that had burned itself into the back my eyelids and remains to this day was; JACKIE.
And as the adults talked on and drank beer, the children played in the street, running with sparklers. And Andrew saved the best of the fireworks for last.
Although it wasn’t a huge grand finale like you’d see at Disneyland or at an Angel’s game, it was still pretty neat. Earlier in the day he had connected fountains and whistling Petes and smoke bombs with store bought fuse. He tied them off at the end so when lit each one followed the other and he threw more buzzing flowers out in between each display. It lasted about three minutes and at the end the whole block party erupted in applause. Andrew Moore took his bows to the cheering crowd.
It was the best Fourth of July ever. None after would even compare to it. It wasn’t the firework show or the good food that we had gotten to enjoy that made it special. It wasn’t even that I had got to hold Jackie’s hand, although that was a plus. It was the fact that everyone actually came together that night and sat down as friends instead of just neighbors. That the grown-ups had been able to talk to one another and connect, instead of just being the guy from down the street that didn’t water his lawn. Or the lady that let her kids run around with no shirt and shoes on. Everyone was friends that night.
Even the kids.
Instead of the older kids picking on the younger ones, they ran around with each other, twirling sparklers, laughing. It wouldn’t stay that way long but we had that night. And that was good enough.
Around eleven (a time when no child would have normally been out in the neighborhood), folks began cleaning up, the women covering the food with foil and plastic wrap, the men folding chairs and tables and picking up their beer cans that had been discarded on lawns. The kids helped Andrew Moore pick up the burnt out fireworks, dipping them first in water and then putting them in the trash can.
And once the street had been cleaned back up, people waved their good-byes to one another, shouted their ‘See ya tomorrows.’
And at the top of Cottonwood, red and white light exploded, flashing off and on all the way down to our end of the street. At first we thought maybe someone had lit off more fireworks, but as everyone turned we he
ard the siren of an ambulance.
And everyone looked on, silently. Then some started in the direction of the flashing vehicle. Jason, Steve, Cory and I walked to the end of our neighbor’s house before our father gave us a stern ‘Stay!’
The four of us froze and stared, wondering whose house the ambulance had stopped at and why it was even there.
From behind us we heard Mrs. Dayborne speak as if the wind had been knocked from her. “Oh, God, they’ve stopped at the Miller’s.”
And as the parents finished rounding up their children and herded them into their homes, a small body that looked like a tiny, old man was set on a stretcher and put into the back of the ambulance.
Frisbee Page 37
