SALE
somewhere. He’ll be setting off his own miniature explosions.
That way he’ll be in control of the noise.”
“You’re sure he’s not going to be pissed?”
“He’s medicated now, so we don’t have to worry. Besides, he hasn’t killed anybody since that barroom brawl in Colorado last year.”
I stare at her, waiting for her to tell me that she’s joking, but she drives on for almost a mile before she looks at me and smiles.
“He’s living with you now?”
Cami turns down a dirt road. “Yeah. He’s been in and out of the VA hospital. He tried living on his own for a while, but it didn’t work out so well. He’s my dad’s little brother, so we’re helping him out. It’s going okay. We just have to keep an eye on him. He doesn’t always take his meds, and sometimes when he does take them, he takes them with beer. And occasionally he goes outside and smokes a joint and thinks that we can’t smell it when he comes back in. But he’s family, so . . .” She shrugs and smiles again.
We keep driving. Evening is falling fast, but I don’t want it to. I want the sun to hover a little longer, to dig its rays like claws into the approaching shades of night and stay a while. I want to be able to see Cami’s face, the strength in her brown eyes and her unwavering smile. She’s already been saddled with taking care of her little brother, and now she’s got her uncle to worry about too. And she’s babysitting me, distracting me from the countdown hanging over my head.
“This is the place,” Cami says, pulling the truck over onto 1 1 4
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
FOR REVIEWING PURPOSES ONLY--NOT FOR SALE
the side of Tornado Road. They call it that because of the 1999
tornado that took out half of the nearest town and a couple of farms. It’s creepy as hell. The tornado was an F4. The trees still haven’t recovered. In the winter, they look like deformed skeletons with various bones snapped and hanging. In the dark, with their branches clothed in thick leaves, they look like slumped, aging giants.
We start with the little stuff: firecrackers, fountains, and Roman candles. I love holding the Roman candles in my hand and seeing the baby fireballs fly out. Cami was so right. This is exactly the distraction I need. We light some rockets, lame ones that shoot out parachutes we can’t see in the dark and others that zoom away so fast we have no idea where the hell they’ve gone. We find a package of sparklers that he must have bought for Josh. We light them and run around in the dark like we’re five. We even try to write our names in light across the black air, but by the time the last letters form, the first letters are gone.
Eventually, we run out of the little stuff. We set up the hard paper tubes and start lighting fuses. Cami keeps yelling for me to run every time I light a fuse, as if she’s afraid I’m going to do something stupid like stick my head over the tube to make certain the fuse really lit. But I do what she wants. I light the fuse, then run, and together we wait for the initial heavy sound as the explosive ball rockets high into the sky. We hold our breath and wait for the second explosion, the one that sends showers of blue or red or silver cascading over the black canvas. And together, we gasp.
1 1 5
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
FOR REVIEWING PURPOSES ONLY--NOT FOR SALE
We save the best and the biggest for last. It’s slightly larger than a shoebox, and on top of it, there’s a picture of a blonde with big tits and tight red shorts. Her legs are straddling the fuse. I know this one will be amazing. It’s probably the biggest explosive a person can buy without being reported to the CIA as a possible terrorist. It will blast explosive ball after explosive ball into the air, and the force from the explosions will make our stomachs vibrate.
“Be careful,” Cami says again as I bend over to light the fuse. It’s a long fuse, to give the sucker lighting it plenty of time to back away.
The fuse ignites, and tiny, almost microscopic, sparks leap away from it. I run to the blanket Cami has spread out across the road and we lie down,