Fireworks were an issue with my parents. My mother would have preferred that her sons have nothing to do with bottle rockets and firecrackers and Roman candles. She had a very real concern for our safety which she expressed to us and to our father in no uncertain terms. My father countered with the mild argument that fireworks were a part of the culture of the celebration and that as long as Jake and I set off our explosives under proper supervision our safety wasn’t terribly compromised. It was clear to us that my mother didn’t buy it but she understood that without my father’s full support she couldn’t stand against the uproar Jake and I would raise if she put her foot down absolutely. In the end she settled for a dour admonition directed at my father. “Nathan,” she said, “if anything happens to them, I’m holding you responsible.”
During the week preceding the Fourth of July my father was usually a wreck. The truth was that he hated fireworks even more than my mother did. As the Fourth approached and the occasional early report of a detonated cherry bomb or the rattle of a string of firecrackers broke the quiet in our neighborhood my father would become visibly upset. His face took on an expression that was tense and watchful, and if I was with him when a sudden pop of gunpowder occurred I saw his body go instantly rigid and his head jerk left or right as he sought desperately to locate the source. But he nonetheless defended his sons’ right to celebrate the holiday in the generally accepted manner.
Ten days before the Fourth, on Saturday when Jake and I had finished our yard work and received the two dollars each that was our due, we headed to Halderson’s Drugstore to slake our thirst with root beer. As we stepped into the shade of the awning above the front plate-glass window the door opened and Gus came out followed by Doyle. They were laughing and almost bumped into us and I could smell beer.
“We’re going to get some fireworks, boys,” Gus said. “Want to come along?”
My week of being grounded was over and I eagerly accepted the offer. But Jake looked at Doyle and shook his head. “No th-th-thanks.”
“Come on,” Gus said. “I’ll buy something for each of you.”
“No,” Jake said. He shoved his hands into his pockets and dropped his eyes to the sidewalk.
“Let him go,” I said.
Gus shrugged. “All right then. Come on, Frankie.” He turned and headed toward Doyle who was waiting behind the opened door on the driver’s side of a gray Studebaker parked at the curb.
Jake grabbed my arm. “Don’t g-g-go, Frank.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve got a b-b-bad feeling.”
“Forget it. It’ll be all right. You go on home.” I shook loose his hand and climbed into the backseat of the Studebaker.
Doyle pulled away from the curb and Jake watched us from the shadow of the drugstore awning. Up front Gus banged his fist against the dashboard and said, “Boys, we’re going to have us one hell of an afternoon.”
We stopped first at the Freedom Fourth Fireworks stand which was set up in a vacant lot across the street from the Texaco gas station. There were a lot of people at the stand and Doyle called out their names and shook hands all around and before he let go he said, “Hope you still got all your fingers come July fifth,” and he laughed. Gus and Doyle bought a bunch of fireworks which the people at the stand put into a couple of big brown paper bags. At the end Gus turned to me and said, “What do you want, Frankie?”
I looked at the box of M-80s which were firecrackers powerful enough to blow your fingers off and which my father would never have allowed me. I pointed and said, “One of those.”
Gus said, “I don’t think Nathan would like that.”
But Doyle said, “Hell, I’ll pay for it.” And he grabbed a handful of the explosives and laid down money on the plywood counter and we left. We made one more stop, this at a liquor store where Doyle bought beer in cans, then we drove to Sibley Park on the river just outside of town. It was a few hundred yards beyond the home of Emil Brandt and as we passed I saw Ariel sitting on the porch with Brandt. She had papers in her hands and I figured she was working on his memoir. Lise was watering the flowers along the fence with a hose. She had on dungarees and a sleeveless green top and wore a big straw hat and gardening gloves and looked almost pretty. None of them paid any attention as I sped past in Doyle’s Studebaker. At the park there was a ball field and a playground of ugly metal structures—a jungle gym and a long slide and three swings and a rusty merry-go-round—that on a hot summer day could burn you like a lit match. A few weathered picnic tables stood in grass that went unwatered and was always completely dead by late July. Doyle’s Studebaker when he pulled into the gravel lot was the only vehicle in sight and the park was empty. We piled out and I followed the two men across the field of unkempt grass. They headed toward the river, crossed the railroad tracks that ran alongside the park, took a path through the cottonwoods, and emerged on a long sandy flat where high school kids sometimes built bonfires and drank beer. The char from those fires spotted the sand like black lesions. In the shade of a cottonwood Doyle and Gus set down the paper bags full of fireworks and Doyle took a church key from his pocket and punched holes in a can of beer which he handed to Gus. Then he punched open a can for himself. They sat and drank and talked and I sat with them and wondered when the fun would begin.
They talked baseball. It was the first season for the Minnesota Twins who’d been the Washington Senators the year before. The names of Harmon Killebrew and Bob Allison and Jim Lemon were on everyone’s lips.
Doyle addressed me. “What do you think, Frankie? Think Minnesota’s got itself a good ball club?”
I was surprised at Doyle’s question because not many adults asked my opinion of things. I tried to speak knowledgeably. I said, “Yeah. Their bull pen’s a little weak but they’ve got strong hitters.”
“That they do,” Doyle said. “Gus tells me you’re a good ballplayer yourself.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m a pretty fair hitter.”
“Play on a team?”
“No. Just pickup games down on the Flats.”
“Want to be a ballplayer when you grow up?”
“Not really.”
“What? A preacher like your old man?”
He laughed when he said this as if being a minister was a joke of some kind.
Gus said, “His father’s a good man and a hell of a preacher.”
“Scared of fireworks though,” Doyle said.
I wondered how he knew but when I looked at Gus’s face I understood where the information had come from.
Gus said, “It was the war. Did that to a lot of men.”
“Not me or you,” Doyle said.
“Every man’s different.”
Doyle drank his beer and said, “Some men they just didn’t have the stomach.”
“That wasn’t the Captain,” Gus said and there was something angry in his voice.
Doyle caught the tone and grinned. “You still call him Captain. Why’s that?”
“That’s how I first knew him. A damn fine officer.”
“Yeah?” Doyle looked at Gus slyly. “I heard he cracked.”
Gus glanced at me and then said, “Doyle, you listen to too much gossip.”
Doyle laughed. “Maybe so, but I know things because of it, Gus. I know things.”
Gus turned the talk to politics and they discussed Kennedy and I lost interest and began thinking about all those fireworks in the paper bags and especially about that big M-80 with my name written all over it. Then I realized the talk had swung around to a subject that concerned me.
Gus was saying, “I’ve seen him down on the Flats a few times. Just wondered about him.”
“His name’s Warren Redstone,” Doyle said. “Soon as he showed up in town the chief told us to keep an eye on him. Troublemaker from way back. He tried to start some kind of Sioux uprising here in the valley a bunch of years ago. Got into trouble with the Feds and vamoosed. The chief’s in touch with the FBI, but I guess they got no interest
in him now. He’s got a rap sheet, but he’s never done serious time. He’s staying with his niece and her husband. The O’Keefes. When I’m on duty, I roll my cruiser down to the Flats pretty regular just to let him know I’m around.”
Gus said, “Is that why I see you in the neighborhood so much? I could’ve sworn it was because of Edna Sweeney.”
Doyle threw his head back and howled like a wolf. He crushed his beer can and threw it onto the sand. “Come on,” he said and reached for one of the paper bags. “Let’s have us some fun.”
Doyle set up some skyrockets and lit three punks and each of us touched a fuse at the same time and the rockets shot high and went off almost simultaneously in explosions of dark smoke that were like splatters of mud thrown against the blue wall of the sky. We set off strings of firecrackers and Doyle put a cherry bomb in Gus’s empty beer can and the can exploded and jumped as if it had been blasted by a shotgun. He pulled out three of the M-80s and handed one to each of us. He lit his and threw it into the air. The crack of the explosion so near to us was like a gun fired into our faces and I recoiled. But Gus and Doyle didn’t seem bothered at all. Gus lit and threw his M-80 and I squeezed my eyes in anticipation but nothing happened.
“Dud,” Doyle said. “The son of a bitch didn’t go off. Heard that’s a problem with you sometimes, Gus.” He laughed and I had no idea what he was talking about. “Go on, Frankie,” he said. “Your turn.”
I didn’t want to light the M-80 in my hand. Although fireworks excited a measure of recklessness in me I still carried a healthy regard for the strictures my father had laid down and holding a lit firecracker, especially one that could blow my fingers off, wasn’t something I was inclined to do. Instead I mounded some sand and stuck the M-80 in it like a candle on a birthday cake and lit the fuse and stepped back. A moment later the blast obliterated the mound peppering us with stinging grains of sand.
Doyle danced away and I thought maybe he’d been hurt by something flung at him in the explosion. He split off from us and ran across the sand flat toward the river dodging left and right and finally threw himself down with his arms stretched out ahead. He came up on his knees clutching his hands to his chest and rose to his feet and walked back to us with a big stupid grin on his lips. He held out his arms toward us with his hands cupped together and from the small hole ringed by his thumbs a big bullfrog peered out.
“Give me one of those M-80s,” he said to Gus.
Gus reached into one of the paper bags and brought out another of the big firecrackers. Doyle gripped the frog in one hand and with his other pried its lips apart.
“Stick it in there,” he said.
Gus said, “You’re going to blow up that frog?”
“Damn right I am.”
“I don’t think so,” Gus said.
I stood paralyzed and disbelieving as Doyle snatched the M-80 from Gus. He stuffed it into the frog’s mouth with the fuse extended and reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a cigarette lighter. He flipped the lid and thumbed the striker and touched the flame to the fuse and pushed the explosive deep into the frog’s throat. Then he threw the frog into the air. The poor creature exploded not five feet from our faces spattering us with its blood and entrails. Doyle bent backward laughing toward the sky and Gus said, “Damn it,” and I wiped at the viscera on my face and felt sick to my stomach.
“Whoo-eee,” Doyle cried out. With his index finger he wiped a piece of frog gut from his cheek. “That critter blowed up good.”
“You okay, Frank?” Gus reached out and put his hand on my shoulder and tried to look into my face but I turned away.
“I better be going,” I said.
“Come on,” Doyle said. “It was only a frog, for God’s sake.”
“I gotta get home anyway,” I said not looking back.
“We’ll give you a lift, Frank,” Gus said.
“No, I’ll walk,” I said. I headed away on the path that threaded through the cottonwoods and that led across the railroad tracks to the park.
“Frank,” Gus called.
“Hell, let the kid go,” I heard Doyle say. “And give me another beer.”
I stomped across the dry grass of Sibley Park. My shirt was spotted with frog gut and blood. It was in my hair and dripping along my jawline. I wiped at my face and looked down at my ruined clothing and I was angry with myself and with Doyle and, although he’d done nothing to deserve it, angry with Gus as well. I’d had a vision of what that afternoon could be and the vision had become ruined by mindless cruelty. Why hadn’t Gus stopped Doyle? Why hadn’t I? I was crying and for that weakness too I hated myself. I started up the road but realized that I’d have to pass the home of Emil Brandt and then walk the streets of town and I didn’t want anyone to see me looking like I did so I returned to the railroad tracks and followed them to the Flats.
I was cautious approaching the house. If my parents saw me covered in the drying darkened remains of a dead bullfrog, how could I explain this most recent trespass? I slipped through the back door and into the kitchen and listened. The house was cool and, I thought at first, silent. Then I heard the sound of crying soft and broken and I poked my head into the living room. Ariel sat on the bench of our old upright piano. Her arms were laid across the keyboard and her head was laid upon her hands. Her body shook and her breath between her sobs came in airy little gasps.
I said, “Ariel?”
She sat up quickly and straightened her back. Her head turned and she looked at me and for a moment it was not Ariel but a creature much afraid and I thought of that frog in the moment when the explosive was shoved down its throat. Then she saw my soiled shirt and the splatters of viscera dried on my cheeks and in my hair and her eyes went wide with horror.
“Frankie,” she cried leaping from the bench. “Oh, Frankie, are you all right?”
She forgot in an instant whatever was the source of her own suffering and she turned all her attention on me. And I, in my selfish innocence, allowed it.
I told her what had happened. She listened and shook her head sympathetically and in the end she said, “We’ve got to get you out of those clothes and wash them before Mom gets back. And you need to take a bath.”
And Ariel who was an unjudging angel set about saving me.
• • •
That evening after dinner I got together a pickup game of softball with some of the other kids in the neighborhood. We played until the evening light turned soft blue and we couldn’t see to hit or to field anymore and suggestions were made of other games we could play that would prolong our easy camaraderie. But some had to go and so our gathering dissolved and we drifted away each of us to our own home. Jake and I walked together. With every step he slapped his ball glove against his thigh as if beating time with a drum.
“You still got all your fingers,” he said.
“What?”
“I figured you’d blow yourself to kingdom come.”
I knew what he was talking about. I thought of telling him the story of the exploded frog but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he’d been right in believing I had no business going with Gus and Doyle.
I said, “We had a good time. I set off some M-80s.”
“M-80s?” Even in the dark I could see that the huge pools of his eyes reflected both envy and censure.
When we reached the house my father was standing on the porch smoking his pipe. The ember in the bowl glowed brightly as he drew on the stem and I smelled the sweet drift of Cherry Blend. Gus was with him. They were talking quietly as friends do.
My father called to us as we came up the walk. “How’d the game go, boys?”
“Fine,” I said.
Gus said, “You win?”
“We played workup,” I replied in a cold tone. “Nobody won.”
“Hey, Frankie,” Gus said. “Could we talk? I told your dad about this afternoon.”
I looked at my father for any sign of reproof but in the shadow of approachin
g night with the warm light through the windows at his back he looked unconcerned. He said, “It would be a good idea.”
“All right,” I said.
Jake had paused on the steps and his eyes skipped back and forth between Gus and our father and me, and his own face was clouded with confusion.
Gus said, “Let’s take a walk.”
My father said, “How about a game of checkers, Jake?”
Gus left the porch and I turned from the house and side by side we walked into the twilight beneath the limbs of the elms and maples that arched the unlit and empty street.
We walked for a while before Gus said anything. “I’m sorry, Frankie. I shouldn’t have let that happen today.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“No, it isn’t. Doyle, he’s a certain kind of man. Not a bad man really but an unthinking man. Hell, so am I for that matter. The difference between us is that I have some responsibility for you and I let you down today. That won’t happen again, I promise.”
The crickets and the tree frogs had started to clip at the silence that came with the evening and above us through the breaks in the canopy of leaves the sky had begun to salt with stars. The houses set back from the street were charcoal gray shapes with windows like uninterested yellow eyes observing our passing.
I said, “What did Doyle mean, Gus, that Dad cracked during the war?”
Gus stopped and eyed the sky then tilted his head as if listening to the growing chorus that accompanied the approach of night. He said, “You ever talk to your dad about the war?”
“I try sometimes. I keep asking him if he killed any Germans. All he ever says is that he shot at a lot of them.”
“Frank, it’s not my place to talk to you about what your father experienced in the war. But I’ll tell you about the war in general. You talk to a man like Doyle and he’ll tell you a lot of bullshit. You watch John Wayne and Audie Murphy in the movie house and it probably seems easy killing men. The truth is that when you kill a man it doesn’t matter if he’s your enemy and if he’s trying to kill you. That moment of his death will eat at you for the rest of your life. It’ll dig into bone so deep inside you that not even the hand of God is going to be able to pull it out, I don’t care how much you pray. And you multiply that feeling by several years and too many doomed engagements and more horror, Frankie, than you can possibly imagine. And the utter senselessness and the total hopelessness become your enemy as much as any man pointing a rifle at you. And because they were officers, some men like your father were forced to be the architects of that senselessness, and what they asked of themselves and of the men they commanded was a burden no human being should have to shoulder. Frankie, your father someday may tell you about the war or he may not. But whatever you hear from Doyle or from anyone else will never be your father’s truth.”