FIREWORKS
by Jacques Rancourt
At night, the sky sprouts with fire. Jamie and his family sit on the dock and watch blazes of blue, red, purple and green light up Greenwood Pond and then disappear. Gunpowder echoes through the surrounding mountains after each pop like the sound of stacked bleachers when the school janitor pulls them down and they crash, crash, crash, crash down. Five more go off, all different colors. A spray of light, then smoldering sparks. In the reflection of the water, they meet and disappear into each other. A shriek, sharper than the shriek of Rosie when Jamie stepped on her tail, pierces the night with a flare of light and it fades and then there is nothing until the shell explodes into a fluorescent flower in the sky. For a moment, Jamie can see everything. He can see the pond’s basin mirror the fireworks and the men on the raft, he can see the silhouettes of pine trees hang over the pond, their sagging branches reaching down and their needles kissing the water, he can see faces light up green, yellow and red, he can even see the fingers of Jamie’s sister, Leah, and Joe, the boy next door, crawl towards each other across the wooden dock like blue spiders, but when they touch, the lights fade out.
In the darkness, everyone claps and a few whistle and holler and Jamie’s dad shouts comments to the men on the raft he doesn’t understand because he’s only ten. There are six of them. Some sit in the boat parked on the side of the dock, some on lawn chairs, and the kids on the edge of the dock, feet dangling in the water where small fish try and nibble at their toes. The men drink beer and the women twisted ice tea. Jamie can choose either coke or root beer, but sometimes when his mom isn’t looking, Dad will let him have a sip of his beer. They are spending the weekend at their Maine camp. Sam and Jeff from across the lake buy the fireworks every year and set them off and hope the game warden doesn’t find out.
It takes several minutes before Sam and Jeff can get the next set ready, and everyone chats in between until they hear the first whistle. They all are quiet while they watch the sky blow up.
In a moment of purple light, Jamie saw Joe’s hand on his sister’s chest.
He pretends a fish bites him: “Ow!” He walks away from them and sits on Mom’s lap. She wraps her arms around him, rests her chin on his shoulder, breathes on his chin. Everyone says he’s too old to sit on her lap, everyone but Mom who tells him not to listen.
Jamie leans towards her ear and whispers what he saw, but another firework silences him. From where he sits, it looks as if gold dust sparkles down over and around Joe and Leah, as if the fireworks fill the spaces between them and their touching causes the light to crackle.
A fluttering light rises, but halfway up, it begins to fall again. It pops close to the ground, the green light steams arrows into the water, and everyone gasps.
The next one doesn’t even make it into the air. It ignites on the raft and spits red pearls across the pond. Through the glowing smoke and between the parting faces of Joe and Leah, Jamie sees Sam and Jeff dive off the raft as the rest of the fireworks ignite. Wood and light splinter. The raft incinerates into the night.