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 g
ot 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 Abenaki Lake 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
What better place to end a collection than with a story about the end of the world? I've done at least one sprawling book on this subject, The Stand, but here the focus is narrowed to little more than a pinprick. I don't have much to say about the st
ory itself, other than that I was thinking about my beloved 1986 Harley Softail, which I've now put away, and probably for good--my reflexes have slowed enough to make me a danger to myself and others when I'm on the road and doing 65. How I loved that bike. After I wrote Insomnia, I rode it from Maine to California and remember an evening somewhere in Kansas, watching the sun set in the west while the moon rose, huge and orange, in the east. I pulled over and just watched, thinking it was the finest sunset of my life. Maybe it was.
Oh, and "Summer Thunder" was written in a place much like the one where we find Robinson, his neighbor, and a certain stray dog named Gandalf.
Summer Thunder
Robinson was okay as long as Gandalf was. Not okay in the sense of everything is fine, but in the sense of getting along from one day to the next. He still woke up in the night, often with tears on his face from vivid dreams where Diana and Ellen were alive, but when he picked Gandalf up from the blanket in the corner where he slept and put him on the bed, he could more often than not go back to sleep again. As for Gandalf, he didn't care where he slept, and if Robinson pulled him close, that was okay, too. It was warm, dry, and safe. He had been rescued. That was all Gandalf cared about.
With another living being to take care of, things were better. Robinson drove to the country store five miles up Route 19 (Gandalf sitting in the pickup's passenger seat, ears cocked, eyes bright) and got dog food. The store was abandoned, and of course it had been looted, but no one had taken the Eukanuba. After June Sixth, pets had been the last thing on people's minds. So Robinson deduced.
Otherwise, the two of them stayed by the lake. There was plenty of food in the pantry, and boxes of stuff downstairs. He had often joked about how Diana expected the apocalypse, but the joke turned out to be on him. Both of them, actually, because Diana had surely never imagined that when the apocalypse finally arrived, she would be in Boston with their daughter, investigating the academic possibilities of Emerson College. Eating for one, the food would last longer than he did. Robinson had no doubt of that. Timlin said they were doomed.