The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Drunken Fireworks

Statement given by Mr Alden McCausland

Castle County Police Department

Statement taken by Police Chief Andrew Clutterbuck

Arresting Officer Ardelle Benoit also present

11:15 AM–1:20 PM

July 5, 2015

Yes, you could say Ma n me did a good deal of drinking and lounging around out to camp after Daddy died. No law against it, is there? If you don’t get behind the wheel, that is, and we never did. We could afford it, too, because by then we were what you might call the idle rich. Never would have expected that, Dad being a carpenter all his life. Called himself a ‘skilled carpenter,’ and Ma always added, ‘Barely skilled n mostly distilled.’ That was her little joke.

Ma worked down to Royce Flowers over on Castle Street, but only full-time in November and December – a dab hand at those Christmas wreaths, she was, and not bad when it came to funeral arrangements, either. She did Dad’s, you know. Had a nice yellow ribbon on it that said HOW WE LOVED THEE. Almost biblical, don’t you think? People cried when they saw it, even ones Dad owed money to.

When I got out of high school I went to work at Sonny’s Garage, balancing wheels, doing oil changes, and fixing flats. Back in the old days I also used to pump gas, but accourse now that’s all DIY. I also sold some pot, might as well admit it. Haven’t done it for years, so I guess you can’t charge me on that, but in the eighties that was a pretty good cash-and-carry business, especially in these parts. Always had enough jingle to go out steppin on Friday or Saturday night. I enjoy the company of women, but have stayed away from the altar, at least so far. I guess if I have any ambitions, one would be to see the Grand Canyon, and another would be to stay what they call a lifelong bachelor. Less problems that way. Besides, I got to keep an eye on Ma. You know what they say, a boy’s best friend is his—

I will get to the point, Ardelle, but if you want it, you have to let me tell it my own way. If anyone should have a little sympathy for tellin the whole story, it’s you. When we was in school together, you wouldn’t shut up. Tongue hung in the middle and running at both ends, Mrs Fitch used to say. Remember her? Fourth grade. What a card she was! Remember the time you put gum in the toe of her shoe? Ha!

Where was I? Camp, right? Out on Lake Abenaki.

Ain’t nothing but a three-room cabin with a lick of beach and a old dock. Daddy bought it in ninety-one, I think it was, when he run into a little dividend from some job. That wasn’t enough for the down payment, but when I added in the income from my herbal remedies, we was able to swing it. The place is pretty skeevy, though, I’m willing to admit that. Ma called it the Mosquito Bowl, and we never fixed it up worth a tin shit, but Daddy kep to the payments pretty regular. When he missed, Ma n me chipped in. She bitched about giving away her flower money, but never too hard; she liked going out there from the first, bugs and leaky roof and all. We’d sit out on the deck and have a picnic lunch and watch the world go by. Even then she wouldn’t say no to a six-pack or bottle of coffee brandy, although in those days she kep her drinking mostly to the weekends.

The place was all paid off around the turn of the century, and why not? It was on the town side of the lake – the west side – and you both know what it’s like over there, all reedy and shallow, with plenty of puckerbrush. The east side is nicer, with them big houses the summer people have to have, and I imagine they looked acrost at the slums on our side, all shacks and cabins and trailer homes, and told themselves it was a shame how the locals had to live, without so much as a tennis court to their names. They could think whatever they wanted. Far as we were concerned, we were as good as anybody. Daddy’d fish a little off the end of our dock, and Ma would cook what he caught on the woodstove, and after oh-one (maybe it was oh-two), we had the runnin water and no longer had to trot to the outhouse in the middle of the night. Good as anybody.

We thought there’d be a little more money for fixin up once the place was paid off, but there never seemed to be; the way it disappeared was a mystery, because back then there was plenty of bank loans for people who wanted to build and Daddy was workin regular. When he died of a heart attack while on a job in Harlow, in oh-two that was, Ma n me thought we was pretty well skint. ‘We’ll get by, though,’ she said, ‘and if it was whores he was spendin the extra on, I don’t want to know.’ But she said we’d have to sell the place on Abenaki, if we could find someone crazy enough to buy it.

‘We’ll get showing it next spring,’ she said, ‘before the blackflies hatch out. That okay with you, Alden?’

I said it was, and even went to work sprucin it up. Got as far as new shingles and replacing the worst of the rotted boards on the dock, and that was when we had our first stroke of luck.

Ma got a call from an insurance company down in Portland, and found out why there never seemed to be any extra money even after the cabin and the two acres it stood on was paid off. It wasn’t whores; Dad’d been putting the extra into life insurance. Maybe he had what you call a premonition. Stranger things happen in the world every day, like rains of frogs or the two-headed cat I seen at the Castle County Fair – gave me nightmares, it did – or that Loch Ness Monster. Whatever it was, we had seventy-five thousand dollars that we never expected just drop out of the sky and into our Key Bank account.

That was Stroke of Luck Number One. Two years after that call, two years almost to the day, here come Stroke of Luck Number Two. Ma was in the habit of buying a five-dollar scratch-off ticket once a week after she got her groceries at Normie’s SuperShop. For years she’d been doin that and never won more than twenty dollars. Then one day in oh-four she matched 27 below to 27 above on a Big Maine Millions scratcher, and holy Christ on a bike, she seen that match was worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. ‘I thought I was going to pee my pants,’ she said. They put her pitcher in the window of the SuperShop. You might remember that, it was there for two months, at least.

A cool quarter million! More like a hundred and twenty thousand after all the taxes was paid, but still. We invested it in Sunny Oil, because Ma said oil was always gonna be a good investment, at least until it was gone, and we’d be gone by the time it was. I had to agree with that, and it turned out fine. Those were go-go years in the stock market, as you may remember, and that’s when we commenced our life of leisure.

It’s also when we got down to serious drinking. Some of it we done at the house in town, but not that much. You know how neighbors love to gossip. It wasn’t until we were mostly shifted out to the Mosquito Bowl that we really went to work on it. Ma quit the flower shop for good in oh-nine, and I said toodleoo to patchin tires and replacin mufflers a year or so later. After that we didn’t have much reason to live in town, at least until cold weather; no furnace out to the lake, you know. By twenty-twelve, when our trouble with those dagos across the lake started, we’d roll on out there a week or two before Memorial Day and stay until Thanksgiving or so.

Ma put on some weight – a hundred and fifty pounds, give or take – and I guess a lot of that was down to the coffee brandy, they don’t call it fat ass in a glass for nothin. But she said she was never the Miss America type to begin with, or even Miss Maine. ‘I’m a cuddly kind of gal,’ she liked to say. What Doc Stone liked to say, at least until she stopped goin to him, was that she was going to be a dying-young kind of gal if she didn’t quit drinkin the Allen’s.

‘You’re a heart attack waiting to happen, Hallie,’ he said. ‘Or cirrhosis. You’ve already got Type Two diabetes, isn’t that enough for you? I can give it to you in words of one syllable. You need to dry out, and then you need AA.’

‘Whew!’ Ma said when she got back. ‘After a scoldin like that, I need a drink. What about you, Alden?’

I said I could use one, so we took our lawn chairs out to the end of the dock, as we most often did, and got royally schnockered while we watched the sun go down. Good as anyone, and better than many. And look here: somethin’s gonna kill everyone, am I not right? Doctors have a way of forgettin that, but Ma knew.

‘The macrobiotic sonofabitch is probably right,’ she said as we tottered back to the cabin – along about ten, this was, and both of us bit to shit in spite of the DEET we’d slathered ourselves with. ‘But at least when I go, I’ll know I lived. And I don’t smoke, everybody knows that’s the worst. Not smoking should keep me going for awhile, but what about you, Alden? What are you going to do after I die and the money runs out?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but I sure would like to see the Grand Canyon.’

She laughed and tossed an elbow in my ribs and said, ‘That’s my boy. You’ll never get a stomach ulcer with that attitude. Now let’s get some sleep.’ Which we did, waking up around ten the next day and starting to medicate our hangovers along about noon with Muddy Rudders. I didn’t worry as much about Ma as the doc did; I figured she was havin too much fun to die. As it happened, she outlived Doc Stone, who got killed one night by a drunk driver on Pigeon Bridge. You could call that irony or tragedy or just the way life goes. Me, I ain’t no philosopher. I was just glad the doc didn’t have his family with him. And I hope his insurance was paid up.

All right, that’s the background. Here’s where we get down to business.

The Massimos. And that fuckin trumpet, pardon my francais.

I call it the Fourth of July Arms Race, and although it didn’t really get up and runnin until twenty-thirteen, it really started the year before. The Massimos had the place directly across from us, a big white house with pillars and a lawn runnin down to their beach, which was pure white sand instead of gravel like ours. That place must have had a dozen rooms. Twenty or more if you count in the guest cottage. They called it Twelve Pines Camp, on account of the fir trees that was around the main house and kind of closed it in.

A camp! Sonny Jesus, that place was a mansion. And yes, they had a tennis court. Also badminton and a place on the side for throwin hoss-shoes. They’d come out near the end of June, and stay until Labor Day, and then close the sonofabitch up. A place that size, and they let it stand empty nine months out of every twelve. I couldn’t believe it. Ma could, though. She said we were ‘accident rich,’ but the Massimos were real rich.

‘Only those are ill-gotten gains, Alden,’ she said, ‘and I’m not talking about no quarter-acre pot patch, either. Everyone knows Paul Massimo is CONNECTED.’ She always said it just like that, in big capital letters.

Supposedly the money came from Massimo Construction. I looked it up on the Internet, and it appeared as legal as could be, but they were Italian, and Massimo Construction was based in Providence, Rhode Island, and you’re cops, you can connect the dots. As Ma always used to say, when you put two and two together, you never get five.

They used all of the rooms in the big white house when they were there, I’ll say that much. And the ones in the ‘guest cottage,’ as well. Ma used to look across the water and toast them with her Sombrero or Muddy Rudder and say Massimos came cheaper by the dozen.

They knew how to have fun, I’ll give em that. There were cookouts, and water tag, and teenage kids drivin those Jet Skis around – they must have had half a dozen of those babies, in colors so bright they’d burn your eyes if you looked at em too long. In the evenins they’d play touch football, usually enough Massimos to make two regulation teams of eleven each, and then, when it got too dark to see the ball, they’d sing. You could tell by the way they yelled out their songs, often in Italian, that they enjoyed a drink or three themselves.

One of em had a trumpet, and he’d blow it along with the songs, just wah-wah-wah, enough to make your eyes water. ‘Dizzy Gillespie he ain’t,’ Ma said. ‘Someone ought to dip that trumpet in olive oil and stick it up his ass. He could fart out “God Bless America.”’

Along about eleven, he’d blow ‘Taps,’ and that’d be it for the night. Not sure any of the neighbors would have complained even if the singing and that trumpet had gone on until three in the morning, not when most folks on our side of the lake believed he was the real-life Tony Soprano.

Come the Fourth of July that year – this is oh-twelve I’m talkin about – I had some sparklers, two or three packets of Black Cat firecrackers, and a couple of cherry bombs. I bought em from Pop Anderson at Anderson’s Cheery Flea Mart on the road to Oxford. That ain’t tattlin, neither. Not unless you’re bone-stupid, and I know neither of you is. Hell, everyone knew you could get firecrackers at the Cheery Flea. But little stuff was all Johnny’d sell, because back then fireworks was against the law.

Anyway, all those Massimos was runnin around across the lake, playin football and tennis and givin each other swimsuit wedgies, the little ones paddlin around the shore, the bigger ones divin off their float. Me n Ma was out at the end of the dock in our lawn chairs, feelin no pain, with our patriotic supplies laid out beside us. As dusk came down, I give her a sparkler, lit it, then lit mine off’n hers. We waved them around in the gloamin, and pretty soon the little ones over there on the other side seen em and started clamorin for their own. The two older Massimo boys handed em out, and they waved em back at us. Their sparklers was bigger n longer-lastin than ours, and the heads had been treated with some sort of chemical that made them go all different colors, while ours was only yellow-white.

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.’

‘I’ll sell you the whole box for thirty bucks,’ Pop said. ‘I know that’s dear, but I’ve also thrown in some Black Cats and a few Twizzlers. You can stick those in chunks of wood and send them off floatin. Awful pretty, they are.’

‘Say nummore,’ I told him. ‘It’d be cheap at twice the price.’

‘Alden,’ he said, ‘you never want to talk that way to a fella in my line of work.’

I took em back to camp, and Ma was so excited she wanted to set off one of the M-120s and one of the Chinese Peonies right away. I didn’t often put my foot down with Ma – she was apt to bite it right off your ankle – but I did that time. ‘Give those Massimos half a chance and they’ll come up with something better,’ I said.

She thought it over, then kissed me on the cheek and said, ‘You know, for a boy who barely finished high school, you’ve got a head on your shoulders, Alden.’

So here come the Glorious Fourth of oh-thirteen. The whole Massimo clan was gathered over at Twelve Pines like usual, must’ve been two dozen or more, and me’n Ma was out on the end of our dock in our lawn chairs. We had our box of goodies set down between us, along with a good-size pitcher of Orange Driver.

Pretty soon Paul Massimo come out to the end of his dock with his own box of goodies, which was a bit bigger than ours, but that didn’t concern me. It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, you know, but the size of the fight in the dog. His two grown boys was with him. They waved, and we waved back. Dusk commenced, and me n Ma started shooting off Black Cats, not one by one this time but by the pack. The little kids did the same over on their side, and when they got tired of that, they lit up their big sparklers and waved em around. The son with the trumpet blew a couple of times, kind of tunin up.

A bunch of the younger ones heard it and come out on the Twelve Pines dock, and after some talk, Paul and his grown boys handed each of em a big gray ball that I recognized as M-80s. Sound carries across the lake real well, especially when there’s no breeze, and I could hear Paul tellin the little ones to be careful and demonstratin how they was to chuck em out into the lake. Then Massimo lit em up.

Three of the kids threw high, wide, n handsome like they were s’posed to, but the youngest – couldn’t have been more than seven – wound up like Nolan-friggin-Ryan and chucked his right onto the dock between his feet. It bounced and would’ve blown his nose off if Paul hadn’t yanked him back. Some of the women screamed, but Massimo and his boys just about fell down laughin. I judge they might have had more than a few shots. Wine, most likely, because that’s what those dagos like to drink.

‘All right,’ Ma said, ‘enough friggin around. Let’s show em up before that tall one starts honkin his goddam horn.’

So I took out a couple of the M-120s, which were black and looked like the bombs you sometimes see in those old-time cartoons, the ones the villain uses to blow up railroad tracks and gold mines and such.

‘You be careful, Ma,’ I said. ‘Hold onto something like this too long and you’d lose more than just your fingers.’

‘Don’t you worry about me,’ she said. ‘Let’s show those spaghettieaters.’

So I lit em, and we threw em, and ka-pow! One after the other! Enough to rattle windows all the way to Waterford, I should judge. Mr Hornblower froze with his trumpet halfway to his lips. Some of the little kids started to cry. All the women ran down to the beach to see what was goin on, if it was terrorists or what.

‘That’s got em!’ Ma said, and she toasted to young Mr Hornblower, standin over there with his trumpet in his hand and his thumb up his ass. Not really, you know, but in a manner of speakin.

Paul Massimo and his two sons walked back to the end of the dock, and there they huddled like a bunch of baseball players when the bases are loaded. Then they all walked up to the house together. I thought they was finished, and Ma was sure of it. So we lit up our Twizzlers, just to celebrate. I’d cut squares of Styrofoam from some packin material I found in the swill bucket out back of the cabin, and we stuck em in those and pushed em out into the water. By then it was that deep purple time that comes just before full dark, awful gorgeous, with the wishin star up there in the sky and all the others ready to peep out. Neither day nor night, and always the prettiest time there is, that’s what I think. And them Twizzlers – they was a lot more than pretty. They was beautiful, floatin out there all red and green, waxin and wanin like candle flames, and reflectin on the water.

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.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said, not wantin to add that Ma never really sobered up anymore, just went from tiddly to crocked to asleep to hungover and then back to tiddly again. Not that I was much better. ‘It ain’t s’much the fireworks as it is that trumpet, you see. If she could shut up that fuckin trumpet on the Fourth of July, I think she’d be satisfied.’

‘Well, I can’t help you,’ Pop said. ‘There’s plenty of bigger fireworks out there for sale, but I won’t truck in them. I don’t want to lose my vendor’s license, for one thing. And I don’t want to see no one get hurt, that’s another. Drunks shootin explosives is always a recipe for disaster. But if you’re really determined, you ought to take a ride up to Indian Island and talk to a fella there. Great big Penobscot named Howard Gamache. Biggest goddam Indian in Maine, maybe in the whole world. Rides a Harley-Davidson and has feathers tattooed on his cheeks. He’s what you might call connected.’

Somebody connected! That’s exactly what we needed! I thanked Pop, and wrote the name Howard Gamache in my notebook, and next April I took a ride up to Penobscot County with five hundred dollars cash in the glovebox of my truck.

I found Mr Gamache sittin at the bar of the Harvest Hotel in Oldtown, and he was as big as advertised – six foot eight, I’d guess, and would weigh around three fifty. He listened to my tale of woe, and after I’d bought him a pitcher of Bud, which he drank down in less than ten minutes, he said, ‘Well, Mr McCausland, let’s you and me take a little jaunt up the road to my wigwam and discuss this in more detail.’

He was ridin a Harley Softail, which is a mighty big sled, but when he was on it, that thing looked like one of the little bikes the clowns ride in the circus. Butt cheeks hung right down to the saddlebags, they did. His wigwam turned out to be a nice little two-story ranch with a pool out back for the kiddies, of which he had a passel.

No, Ardelle, the bike and the pool ain’t particularly important to the story, but if you want it, you’ll have to take it my way. And I find it interestin. There was even a home theater set up in the basement. Jeezly Crow, I felt like movin in.

The fireworks was in his garage under a tarp, all stacked up in wooden crates, and there was some pretty awesome stuff. ‘If you get caught with it,’ he said, ‘you never heard of Howard Gamache. Isn’t that right?’

I said it was, and because he seemed like an honest enough fella who wouldn’t screw me – at least not too bad – I asked him what five hundred dollars would buy. I ended up gettin mostly cakes, which are blocks of rockets with a single fuse. You light it, and up they go by the dozen. There was three cakes called Pyro Monkey, another two called Declaration of Independence, one called Psycho-Delick that shoots off big bursts of light that look like flowers, and one that was extra-special. I’ll get to that.

‘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.’

Howard sat on his back steps with his knees stickin up around his ears like a couple of boulders – God, what a mighty man he was – and thought about it. Cogitated on it. Judged his way around it. At last he said, ‘I have heard rumors.’

‘Rumors about what?’

‘About a special something called Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind,’ he said. ‘From a fellow I correspond with on the subject of gunpowder amusements. His native name is Shining Path, but mostly he goes by Johnny Parker. He’s a Cayuga Indian, and he lives near Albany, New York. I could give you his email address, but he won’t reply unless I email him first, and tell him you’re safe.’

‘Will you do that?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘but first you must pay heap big wampum, paleface. Fifty bucks should do it.’

Money passed from my small hand to his big one, he emailed Johnny Shining Path Parker, and when I got back to the lake and sent him an email of my own, he answered right back. But he wouldn’t talk about what he called CE4 except in person, claimed the government read all Native American emails as a matter of course. I didn’t have no argument with that; I bet those suckers read everyone’s email. So we agreed to meet, and along about the first of October last year, I went up.

Accourse Ma wanted to know what sort of errand would take me all the way to upstate New York, and I didn’t bother tellin her no made-up story, because she always sees through em and has since I was knee-high to a collie. She just shook her head. ‘Go on, if it’ll make you happy,’ she said. ‘But you know they’ll come back with somethin even bigger, and we’ll be stuck listenin to that Eye-Tie cock-knocker blow his trumpet.’

‘Well, maybe,’ I said, ‘but Mr Shining Path says this is the firework to end all fireworks.’

As you now see, that turned out to be nothing but the truth.

I had a pretty drive, and Johnny Shining Path Parker turned out to be a nice fella. His wigwam was in Green Island, where the houses are almost as big as the Massimos’ Twelve Pines, and his wife made one hell of an enchilada. I ate three with that hot green sauce and got the shits on the way home, but since that ain’t part of the story and I can see Ardelle’s gettin impatient again, I’ll leave it out. All I can say is thank God for Handi-Wipes.

‘CE4 would be a special order,’ Johnny said. ‘The Chinese make only three or four a year, in Outer Mongolia or someplace like that, where there’s snow nine months of the year and the babies are purportedly raised with wolf cubs. Such explosive devices are usually shipped to Toronto. I guess I could order one and bring it in from Canada myself, although you’d have to pay for my gas and my time, and if I got caught, I’d probably end up in Leavenworth as a terrorist.’

‘Jesus, I don’t want to get you in no trouble like that,’ I said.

‘Well, I’m exaggerating a bit, maybe,’ he said, ‘but CE4’s one hell of a firework. Never been one like it. I couldn’t give you your money back if your pal across the lake happened to have something to beat it, but I’d give you back my profit on the deal. That’s how sure I am.’

‘Besides,’ Cindy Shining Path Parker said, ‘Johnny loves an adventure. Would you like another enchilada, Mr McCausland?’

I passed on that, which probably kep me from explodin somewhere in Vermont, and for awhile I almost forgot the whole thing. Then, just after New Year’s – we’re gettin close now, Ardelle, don’t that make you happy? – I got a call from Johnny.

‘If you want that item we were discussing last fall,’ he said, ‘I’ve got it, but it’ll cost you two thousand.’

I sucked in breath. ‘That’s pretty steep.’

‘I can’t argue with you there, but look at it this way – you white folks got Manhattan for twenty-four bucks, and we’ve been looking for payback ever since.’ He laughed, then said, ‘But speaking seriously now, and if you don’t want it, that’s fine. Maybe your buddy across the lake would be interested.’

‘Don’t you ever,’ I said.

He laughed harder at that. ‘I have to tell you, this thing is pretty awesome. I’ve sold a lot of fireworks over the years, and I’ve never seen anything remotely like this.’

‘Like what?’ I asked. ‘What is it?’

‘You have to see for yourself,’ he said. ‘I have no intention of sending you a pitcher over the Internet. Besides, it doesn’t look like much until it’s … uh … in use. If you want to roll on up here, I can show you a video.’

‘I’ll be there,’ I said, and two or three days later I was, sober and shaved and with my hair combed.

Now listen to me, you two. I ain’t gonna make excuses for what I done – and you c’n leave Ma out of it, I was the one that got the damn thing, and I was the one who set it off – but I am gonna tell you that the CE4 I saw in that video Johnny showed me and the one I set off last night wasn’t the same. The one in the video was a lot smaller. I even remarked on the size of the crate mine was in when Johnny and me put it in the back of the truck. ‘They sure must have put a lot of packing in there,’ I said.

‘I guess they wanted to make sure nothing would happen to it in shipping,’ Johnny said.

He didn’t know either, you see. Cindy Shining Path asked if I didn’t want to at least open the crate and have a look, make sure it was the right thing, but it was nailed up tight all over, and I wanted to get back before dark, on account of my eyes ain’t as good as they used to be. But because I come here today determined to make a clean breast of it, I have to tell you that wasn’t the truth. Evenin is my drinkin time, and I didn’t want to miss any of it. That’s the truth. I know that’s kind of a sad way to be, and I know I have to do somethin about it. I guess if they put me in jail, I’ll get a chance, won’t I?

Me n Ma unnailed the crate the next day and took a look at what we’d bought. This was at the house in town, you understand, because we’re talkin January, and colder than a witch’s tit. There was some packin material, all right, Chinese newspapers of some kind, but not nearly so much as I expected. The CE4 was probably seven feet on the square, and looked like a package done up in brown paper, only the paper was kind of oily, and so heavy it felt more like canvas. The fuse was stickin out the bottom.

‘Do you think it will really go up?’ Ma asked.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘if ours don’t, what’s the worst that can happen?’

‘We’ll be out two thousand bucks,’ Ma said, ‘but that ain’t the worst. The worst’d be it rises up two or three feet and then fizzles into the lake. Followed by that young Eye-talian who looks like Ben Afflict blowin his trumpet.’

We put it in the garage and there it stayed until Memorial Day, when we took it out to the lake. I didn’t buy nothing else of a firework nature this year, not from Pop Anderson and not from Howard Gamache, either. We was all in on the one thing. It was CE4 or bust.

All right; here we are at last night. Fourth of July of oh-fifteen, never been nothin like it on Abenaki Lake and I hope there never will be again. We knew it had been a goddam dry summer, accourse we knew, but that never crossed our minds. Why would it? We were shootin over the water, weren’t we? What could be safer?

All the Massimos was there and havin fun – playin their music and playin their games and cookin weenies on about five different grills and swimmin near the beach and divin off the float. Everyone else was there, too, on both sides of the lake. There was even some at the north and south ends, where it’s all swampy. They were there to see this year’s chapter of the Great Fourth of July Arms Race, Eye-Ties versus Yankees.

Dusk drew down and finally the wishin star come out, like she always does, and those electric torches at the end of the Massimo dock popped on like a couple of spotlights. Out onto it struts Paul Massimo, flanked by his two grown sons, and goddam if they weren’t dressed like for a fancy country club dance! Father in a tuxedo, sons in white dinner jackets with red flowers in the lapels, the Ben Afflict-lookin one wearin his trumpet down low on his hip, like a gunslinger.

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.

Well, you know how their place got its name, and them dozen pines was plenty dry. There was two of em on either side of the long front porch, and those were what our CE4 crashed into. Them trees went up right away, lookin sort of like the electric torches at the end of Massimo’s dock, only bigger. First the needles, then the branches, then the trunks. Massimos started runnin every whichway, like ants when someone kicks their hill. A burnin branch fell on the roof over the porch, and pretty soon that was burnin merry hell, too. And all the while that little tootlin tune went on, doo-dee-doo-dum-dee.

The spaceship tore in two pieces. Half of it fell on the lawn, which wasn’t s’bad, but the other half floated down on the main roof, still shootin off a few final rockets, one of which crashed through an upstairs window, lightin the curtains afire as it went.

Ma turned to me and said, ‘Well, that ain’t good.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘looks pretty poor, don’t it?’

She said, ‘I guess you better call the fire department, Alden. In fact, I guess you better call two or three of em, or there’s gonna be cooked woods from the lake to the Castle County line.’

I turned to run back to the cabin and get my phone, but she caught my arm. There was this funny little smile on her face. ‘Before you go,’ she said, ‘take a glance at that.’

She pointed across the lake. By then the whole house was afire, so there wasn’t no trouble seein what she was pointin at. There was no one on their dock anymore, but one thing got left behind: the goddam trumpet.

‘Tell em it was all my idea,’ Ma said. ‘I’ll go to jail for it, but I don’t give a shit. At least we shut that friggin thing up.’

Say, Ardelle, can I have a drink of water? I’m dry as an old chip.

Officer Benoit brought Alden a glass of water. She and Andy Clutterbuck watched him drink it down – a lanky man in chinos and a strap-style tee-shirt, his hair thin and graying, his face haggard from lack of sleep and the previous night’s ingestion of sixty-proof Moonquakes.

‘At least no one got hurt,’ Alden said. ‘I’m glad of that. And we didn’t burn the woods down. I’m glad of that, too.’

‘You’re lucky the wind died,’ Andy said.

‘You’re also lucky the fire trucks from all three towns were standing by,’ Ardelle added. ‘Of course they have to be on Fourth of July nights, because there are always a few fools setting off drunken fireworks.’

‘This is all on me,’ Alden said. ‘I just want you to understand that. I bought the goddam thing, and I was the one who fired it up. Ma had nothing to do with it.’ He paused. ‘I just hope Massimo understands that, and leaves my Ma alone. He’s CONNECTED, you know.’

Andy said, ‘That family has been summering on Abenaki Lake for twenty years or more, and according to everything I know, Paul Massimo is a legitimate businessman.’

‘Ayuh,’ Alden said. ‘Just like Al Capone.’

Officer Ellis knocked on the glass of the interview room, pointed at Andy, cocked his thumb and little finger in a telephone gesture, and beckoned. Andy sighed and left the room.

Ardelle Benoit stared at Alden. ‘I’ve seen some tall orders of shit flapjacks in my time,’ she said, ‘and even more since I got on the cops, but this takes the prize.’

‘I know,’ Alden said, hanging his head. ‘I ain’t makin any excuses.’ Then he brightened. ‘But it was one hell of a show while it lasted. People won’t never forget it.’

Ardelle made a rude noise. Somewhere in the distance, a siren howled.

Andy eventually came back and sat down. He said nothing at first, just looked off into space.

‘Was that about Ma?’ Alden asked.

‘It was your ma,’ Andy said. ‘She wanted to talk to you, and when I told her you were otherwise occupied, she asked if I would pass on a message. She was calling from Lucky’s Diner, where she just finished having a nice sit-down brunch with your neighbor from across the lake. She said to tell you he was still dressed in his tuxedo and it was his treat.’

‘Did he threaten her?’ Alden cried. ‘Did that sonofabitch—’

‘Sit down, Alden. Relax.’

Alden settled slowly from a half-risen crouch, but his hands were clenched into fists. They were big hands, and looked capable of doing damage, if their owner felt provoked.

‘Hallie also said to tell you that Mr Massimo isn’t going to press any charges. He said that two families got into a stupid competition, and consequently both families were at fault. Your mother says Mr Massimo wants to let bygones be bygones.’

Alden’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, reminding Ardelle of a monkey-on-a-stick toy she’d had as a child.

Andy leaned forward. He was smiling in the painful way folks do when they don’t really want to smile but just can’t help it. ‘She said Mr Massimo also wants you to know he was sorry about what happened with the rest of your fireworks.’

‘The rest of em? I told you we didn’t have nothing this year except for—’

‘Hush while I’m talking. I don’t want to forget any of the message.’

Alden hushed. Outside they could hear a second siren, and then a third.

‘The ones in the kitchen. Those fireworks. Your ma said you must have put the boxes too close to the woodstove. Do you remember doing that?’

‘Uh …’

‘I urge you to remember, Alden, because I have a deep desire to bring down the curtain on this particular shit-show.’

‘I guess … I sorta do,’ Alden said.

‘I won’t even ask why you had your stove going on a hot July night, because after thirty years in the policing business, I know drunks are apt to take any half-baked notion into their heads. Would you agree with that?’

‘Well … ayuh,’ Alden admitted. ‘Drunks are unpredictable. And those Moonquakes are deadly.’

‘Which is why your cabin out there on Lake Abenaki is now burning to the ground.’

‘Jesus Christ on a crutch!’

‘I don’t think we can blame this fire on the Son of God, Alden, crutch or no crutch. Were you insured?’

‘Gorry, yes,’ Alden said. ‘Insurance is a good idea. I learned that when Daddy passed away.’

‘Massimo was insured, as well. Your mother told me to tell you that too. She said the two of them agreed over bacon and eggs that it all evens out. Would you agree with that?’

‘Well … his house was a hell of a lot bigger than our cabin.’

‘Presumably his policy will reflect the difference.’ Andy stood up. ‘I suppose there’ll be some kind of hearing eventually, but right now you’re free to go.’

Alden said thank you. And left before they could change their minds.

Andy and Ardelle sat in the interview room, looking at each other. Eventually Ardelle said, ‘Where was Mrs McCausland when the fire broke out?’

‘Until Massimo came to treat her to lobster Benedict and homefries at Lucky’s, right here at the station,’ Andy said. ‘Waiting to see if her boy was going to court or county jail. Hoping for court so she could bail him out. Ellis said that when she and Massimo left, he had his arm around her waist. Which must have been quite a reach, considering her current girth.’

‘And who do you think set the fire at the McCausland cabin?’

‘We’ll never know for sure, but were I forced to guess, I’d say it was Massimo’s boys, before sunrise. Put some of their own unused fireworks next to the stove – or right on top of it – and then stuffed that Pearl full of kindling so it would burn nice and hot. Not much different from putting a bomb on a timer, when you think about it.’

‘Damn,’ Ardelle said.

‘What it comes down to is drunks with fireworks, which is bad, and one hand washing the other, which is good.’

Ardelle thought about that, then puckered her lips and whistled the five-note melody from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. She tried to do it again, but began to laugh and lost her pucker.

‘Not bad,’ Andy said. ‘But can you play it on the trumpet?’

Thinking of Marshall Dodge