faint trail of sparking light behind the trees as a Roman candle climbed fifty feet into the air and then sailed back, defeated. Pitiful. They ought to have been able to get it to launch higher than that. He pictured the amateur pyrotechnicians who were probably standing around a cinder block at that moment, setting up the rockets and trying to get the angle right before lighting the fuses and shuffling backward. It was all in the angle. Get the bottle set up correctly, get the angle of the launch just right, and you could get those sons of bitches to sail eighty, sometimes a hundred feet or more. Beautiful. But he hadn’t set off a bottle rocket in years. Maybe decades.
When he was a kid he loved Fourth of July. Loved the recklessness, the noise and heat of it. Once he’d watched a fireworks display from the top of a mountain in western North Carolina. They’d been staying in a cabin near Cullowhee—all of them: Arla, Dean, Sofia, Carson, Will, himself. It was the first and only time he remembered a vacation with his family. Dean had scored the cabin as a bonus for working on a relief team servicing an exploded boiler in Asheville. The plant’s owner had put the techs up in vacation cabins to keep their minds off the fact that they were, in effect, rebuilding the deadly weapon that had killed seven men two weeks before, and though Dean had returned to the cabin each night looking pale and drained, the rest of them had had a fine time, an unexpectedly buoyant time, in fact. They’d been teenagers, all of them, Will maybe thirteen at best, and Frank had loved the mountains and the cabin so much, loved the soft cool grass under his feet every morning, the water so cold in the creeks it hurt the bones in his feet. He’d never imagined water so cold. He’d never felt it since.
The Cullowhee cabin was at the crest of a mountain, and on the Fourth of July Dean had the day off from the boiler repair. They all drove into the valley to eat breakfast and buy bait, and then they parked the Impala back at the cabin and hiked through a narrow path to a deep rushing creek, where the rhododendrons hung like lace curtains along the banks and the stones clicked like castanets in the licking current. On the hike they took turns walking with Arla, holding her cane and helping her maneuver the steeper descents. When they reached the creek they got the bait wet for a while but caught nothing, so finally Frank and his brothers whooped and belly flopped into the ice-cold creek, taunting and daring the others until all of them—Dean, Sofia, even Arla!—held their breath and dunked their heads under water so frigid Frank thought he’d have a heart attack. Then they sat on a huge flat rock in the sun, hearts pounding, close together, waiting for their bodies to warm again.
That night Arla barbecued chicken and corn and cut up a watermelon, and then they stood on the back deck and looked down through the trees into the valley below, where the little downtown was setting off a fireworks display. They watched, waited, heard the distant whistle of each shell’s launch far below the pine-covered mountain. But the fireworks couldn’t reach them. Again and again, the shells burst before they breached the cloud cover hovering in the valley, and Frank remembered how his entire family had been annoyed at first, disappointed, but had eventually grown silent, awed, as the clouds were lit from below with a shuddering, diffused arc of color. He felt they were privy to a private vision, an exquisite misfire. The skyrockets never did break through the clouds; instead, the colors spread out low and soft through the mountains, like fire behind gauze, like lightning through rain. The vantage was a gift, rare and unexpected. It was one of the most beautiful things Frank had ever seen. They remained silent for long moments that stretched into minutes as the clouds flickered again and again—red, blue, yellow, green, orange.
“We’re above it all,”
When he was a kid he loved Fourth of July. Loved the recklessness, the noise and heat of it. Once he’d watched a fireworks display from the top of a mountain in western North Carolina. They’d been staying in a cabin near Cullowhee—all of them: Arla, Dean, Sofia, Carson, Will, himself. It was the first and only time he remembered a vacation with his family. Dean had scored the cabin as a bonus for working on a relief team servicing an exploded boiler in Asheville. The plant’s owner had put the techs up in vacation cabins to keep their minds off the fact that they were, in effect, rebuilding the deadly weapon that had killed seven men two weeks before, and though Dean had returned to the cabin each night looking pale and drained, the rest of them had had a fine time, an unexpectedly buoyant time, in fact. They’d been teenagers, all of them, Will maybe thirteen at best, and Frank had loved the mountains and the cabin so much, loved the soft cool grass under his feet every morning, the water so cold in the creeks it hurt the bones in his feet. He’d never imagined water so cold. He’d never felt it since.
The Cullowhee cabin was at the crest of a mountain, and on the Fourth of July Dean had the day off from the boiler repair. They all drove into the valley to eat breakfast and buy bait, and then they parked the Impala back at the cabin and hiked through a narrow path to a deep rushing creek, where the rhododendrons hung like lace curtains along the banks and the stones clicked like castanets in the licking current. On the hike they took turns walking with Arla, holding her cane and helping her maneuver the steeper descents. When they reached the creek they got the bait wet for a while but caught nothing, so finally Frank and his brothers whooped and belly flopped into the ice-cold creek, taunting and daring the others until all of them—Dean, Sofia, even Arla!—held their breath and dunked their heads under water so frigid Frank thought he’d have a heart attack. Then they sat on a huge flat rock in the sun, hearts pounding, close together, waiting for their bodies to warm again.
That night Arla barbecued chicken and corn and cut up a watermelon, and then they stood on the back deck and looked down through the trees into the valley below, where the little downtown was setting off a fireworks display. They watched, waited, heard the distant whistle of each shell’s launch far below the pine-covered mountain. But the fireworks couldn’t reach them. Again and again, the shells burst before they breached the cloud cover hovering in the valley, and Frank remembered how his entire family had been annoyed at first, disappointed, but had eventually grown silent, awed, as the clouds were lit from below with a shuddering, diffused arc of color. He felt they were privy to a private vision, an exquisite misfire. The skyrockets never did break through the clouds; instead, the colors spread out low and soft through the mountains, like fire behind gauze, like lightning through rain. The vantage was a gift, rare and unexpected. It was one of the most beautiful things Frank had ever seen. They remained silent for long moments that stretched into minutes as the clouds flickered again and again—red, blue, yellow, green, orange.
“We’re above it all,”
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