Fourth

My bed of steel and rags shook and woke me. Endless gray night surrounded me. A junkyard spaceship flew by, creaking and roaring, all odd angles and rust stains and random rattling objects. I was annoyed at the spaceship. I didn’t want to wake up. And then another one roared right at me, roared in my ear, and that woke me up even more. I opened my eyes and remembered I was in the bed of my pickup.

I looked out the window of the camper shell. Some chick with a long blonde ponytail was next to me gunning the engine of her Harley. A big truck had just passed and was swaying down the street. With one more roar she left the parking lot and disappeared into the night. It wasn’t really night. Towards the mountains the sky was a beautiful sort of early morning blue. But it was dark enough I could justify sleeping some more. I managed about another hour. No more dreams. I woke up again and it was almost six and time to go home.

My job had been to sleep in my truck from ten until six and guard the booth. My relief’s job was to sit in a chair from six until ten and guard the booth. The booth was open for business between ten and ten, selling fireworks. The booth can’t be left unattended. Most years some organization or other loses all their fundraising when they leave their booth unguarded and some fun-loving kids either set it on fire or break in and take everything.

I drove home debating whether to go to bed or not. Not: The day had begun, a beautiful Valley summer day, and it was nice and cool yet and I could theoretically get lots done. To: Someone special was still in it who was warm and smelled of sleep.

* * * * *

The Fourth of July is the perfect holiday. You can sit and drink, or you can set things on fire. What else is there? You can eat, too, and you don’t have to work, and it’s nice and warm all night long. We took a walk at dusk and kept going well past dark, looking at the fireworks displays of families and block parties and enjoying the night air. The night air was heavy with smoke some places and smelled of gunpowder. It was battlefield air, celebration air, heavy with the incense of an American ritual loved by girls and boys and by their grandkids alike.

Every block or so we found a lawn turned amphitheater full of folding chairs and content citizens who had eaten too much watching their husbands and brothers build dangerous displays out of ladders and sawhorses and set off countless Chinese-made fireworks while little kids with open-toed sandals ran around chasing sparks. Here and there some profligate soul had invested in illegal airborne fireworks brought up from Mexico that launched with a satisfying boom and exploded high overhead with a whistle and a bang. The law doesn’t allow these but the sheriff doesn’t seem to care, nor should he, because these are the kinds of neighborhoods sheriff’s deputies live in and if they weren’t on duty they’d be doing the same damn thing themselves.

It isn’t uniquely American to celebrate by blowing things up but I suspect our particular pyromaniac holiday is calmer than some. There is never any hurry in these driveway and streetfront gatherings. Men calmly hold a fused device in the same hand as their beer and light it, set it on the street or on a makeshift platform, stand back a few feet, watch the sparks, stand back a few more, take a drink, watch the kids to see that no one’s hair will catch fire, laugh at something stupid their brother in law says, take another drink, stare into the sparks lost in a pink and orange reverie, then reach into the box for another one. It is always the men. I have never seen a woman set off more than a handful of fireworks. I don’t think this is because women aren’t as prone as men to the pure joy of igniting things. I don’t why it is, actually. Maybe the chance to do nothing but drink your neighbor’s specialty margaritas and watch the grown-up boyfolk set themselves ablaze is too precious a thing to disturb with the relative work of joining in, I don’t know. All I know is these gatherings, as dangerous as they are, especially at the large block parties where someone is sending roman candles up into the night sky to rain hot ash down on everyone’s dry rooftops and drier weed-choked back yards, these gatherings are always extremely low-key. Everyone’s mildly drunk but no one’s pissed, as it were, and the only argument is between brothers fighting over who gets to use the propane lighter.