Chapter 41

4th of July, time to celebrate America. No work today, and that also meant everyone else was home too.

Erin and I spent some time reading from the second volume of The Brothers Grimm. We grilled out having hot dogs and burgers, and as normal Randy started drinking early and often. It was a nice day until late afternoon when a sudden shower popped up, but it was gone in about 45 minutes.

It was about 9pm and I was watching the Cubs game when I remembered about the goodies in my truck. It was getting dark enough, so I walked into the upstairs common room where Erin was watching one of the Disney movies on the VCR, I didn’t really pay attention.

“You want to have some fun and see something cool?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on.”

She got up, followed me through the house and out to the driveway. Rolling down the back glass, I opened the tailgate and pulled out the box.

“What are we going to do?”

“Go ask Mom and Randall if they want to come out here.”

I set the mortars in line and then set the fuses so they would go off sequentially. Next, I put a bunch of bottle rockets in a metal bucket set to be lit off.

As Mom and Erin started walked out of the garage, I threw a string of lit Black Cats about 5ft from where they would come out. They went off just after they came out of the garage. Mom and Erin both jumped in surprise as they kept going off.

“Barnim, you’re an asshole.”

“Language Mom.”

“Do that again and I’ll tan your hide.” I was laughing my ass off.

We started setting off some bottle rockets, and I gave Erin 2 sparklers and lit them. She started running around and waving them in the air. Randall came creeping out of the garage trying to slide in and join the festivities. I just handed him some sparklers and lit them: he wasn’t quite as enthused as Erin.

Black Cats and bottle rockets were going off left and right when Erin came running over.

“Barnim, I need some more.”

“Would you two please speak English?”

“How about you learn Polish?”

“It’s hard.”

“Well, most things in life are, it’s not my problem.”

“Here you go.”

I handed her two more sparklers, lit them and she went running around again. Randy came out bitching, he hadn’t said it was OK to have fireworks. Just as I was going to say something when Mom hopped off the tailgate.

“Really? You’re going to be the fun police? Look, if you can’t join in on the fun, then just head back into the house.”

Wow, that was a shock. I wasn’t surprised when he slunk back into the house, probably back to the basement. Everyone got back to having fun, though Randall followed him into the house when his sparklers went out.

Looking into the box, I noticed that there were a few Roman Candles in the bottom that I didn’t remember buying. I lit off the rest of the bottle rockets to make room for them in the bucket. There were 3 of them which I lit about 10 secs apart so that one would always be going off. Erin was jumping up and down just as happy as could be.

I guess the new noise disturbed Randy and he appeared in the garage again. This time he was looking none too happy. This was typical of any holiday where he was drinking all day and needed to have something to bitch about.

Randy didn’t even look at Mom as he came out, heading right for me. “There will be hell to pay if the front yard catches on fire.”

“Well, it’s a good thing it rained earlier making everything wet. Seems nothing for you to rage about.” Randy huffed at me and turned to leave.

“Not going to stay for the grand finale?”

He was mumbling as he went back in the house, but I couldn’t hear what it was about. I gave it a few minutes so that Erin could finish off her sparklers.

I had figured out that there would be about 30 secs before the first mortar went off and about 50 secs for each subsequent launch. I lit the first one and scampered back to the tailgate. I had told the girl at the fireworks store that I wanted mortars that were as close to the big ones. Time to see if I got what I asked for.

The first one went off and you could follow the trail of the shell going skyward. When it burst, we all let out a gasp, as there was a bright white ball in the center, then a blue ring around it that transitioned to red with a multitude of blue dots streaking out in all directions. I didn’t hear the second one fire, but you could again see a yellow streak flying skyward before it burst with a large red ball in the middle and yellow streaks. As the red ball faded, the yellow streaks arced towards the ground like a meteor shower.

Erin was bouncing up and down, cheering and yelling for more as the third firework raced towards the sky. It popped and then white streaks went everywhere with a sound like crackling plastic. There wasn’t a streak for the last one, when out of nowhere it burst with a large mass of blue specks in a large circular ball that transitioned to red specks. As they were dying out, a bunch of small circular white pops flared out and died out.

“Barnim, I want more, why did it stop?”

“That’s it, there’s no more. Maybe next year there will be more.”

“I want more.”

“All I have left is sparklers. You can have 2 more.”

“OK.”

She ran around with the sparklers, waving them as I cleaned up all the trash in the driveway. Randy would blow a gasket if he woke up and the driveway was full of garbage from the fireworks.

We all went in and I headed to bed, seeing as I had a full day coming up.

The next morning, I knew Randy was going to be home for the day, so my goal was to get my run in and be gone before he noticed.

Walking into the kitchen after getting ready, I knew luck was not with me today. Randy was making coffee and as I went to go by, he stood in my way.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“Well, I’m about to leave so I can make it to summer school on time.”

“No, you’re not. You’ve got stuff to do before you can leave.”

“Excuse me?”

“You need to get out there and clean up the dog crap in the backyard.”

“Yeah, not going to happen.” They had bought Erin and Randall a dog for Christmas, and it was their job to take care of the dog. There was a sudden finger poking me in the chest.

Randy had a habit of poking me and my older brothers when he got mad. I took a step back, knowing it was either going to stop now or things would get worse.

“You’re going to get out there and clean all that crap up.”

I had tried to avoid any direct conflict with Randy, but I knew I had poked the bear, but not in any major way. I also knew that since a confrontation was an inevitability, might as well get it out of the way.

“If you poke me again, we are going to have a serious issue.”

“Oh, you’re a big tough guy now. You get a tattoo and think that makes you a big man.”

Wow, he was reading a whole lot into things.

“Look, this hasn’t a damn thing to do with my tattoo which is just a symbol. This is about you being a self-absorbed bully. Well, that shit is going to stop today.”

I could see he was probably weighing if I was serious.

“On top of it all, it’s not my job to pick up the dog crap. Why don’t you go wake up Randall or Erin seeing as it’s their job?”

“I told you to get out there and pick the shit up.”

He took a step forward to poke me again. I let him make contact, so he’d feel that things were going as they always did. When he pulled his finger back and went to poke again, I reached up and grabbed his index finger. With a quick pull and then push back, there was an audible pop.

Randy collapsed to the ground, clutching his hand and screaming. I leaned down and looked him square in the eyes.

“I guess the tattoo really did make me a tough guy. Try and poke me again, and I’ll rip off your dirty little digit.”

I grabbed my backpack and headed for the door. Randy was still moaning and whining about his finger. I looked back at him.

“Have a nice day.”

With that, I headed to summer school. I knew that there was going to be some major fallout from this, but it was unavoidable and had been building for some time. I needed to put this out of my mind for the time being, as I had a full day of things to do before I would have to face the consequences.

I made it to summer school with a minute to spare before class started. I turned in the grammar work sheets we’d been given and during class we were given a bunch more worksheets that were due the following week. This was more than twice the homework that I’d get during the normal school year.

I got on the road after class and headed towards Conyers. It was about a 30-minute drive to where the Recruiting station was.

I’d never really spent time in Conyers in either go around. It took me a lot longer than I thought to find it and didn’t help that the sign was obscured.