‘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.