Teenaged boys in North Mississippi have nothing to do in July. The fish bite too early or too late, summer is no time for school, and the humidity eats away at their patience like an airborne cancer. The heat keeps them inside during the day, stirring up a southern homesickness cured only by leaving the house at night, when they gang up on a friend’s tilted truckbed and cut the air with upmanship and fire, waiting for 10:00, when Henry, the night guard at the fireworks tent, sets out a lawn-chair, radio, and mini-Igloo for his shift.
The fireworks tent shades roughly four acres of glass and clodded parking lot. For 10 months, this lot waits; it is of no use to anyone except those with dreams of rockets and stars. The tent itself is an old affair, canvas and stake, a temporary housing fit for fire and brimstone as much as roman candle. The tent-flaps are, in Mississippi, an appendix, a remnant—not even the nighttime cool-down offers enough relief to risk unfurling the flaps, sealing off the acre of gunpowder, and overheating the stock. The most important qualification for the job of fireworks tent manager: one part common sense, one part vigilance.
Because the manager must not leave his tent unmanned, he hires someone to keep watch at night while he tries to sleep, wrestling dust and cramp in his 5x8 U-Haul out back of the tent.
When Henry arrives for his night watch, I have his lawn-chair out and the radio set low on the AM dial. He asks how things’ve been going and offers me a cigarette. I say damn heat is killing me and lost 5 pounds today, I reckon, light up, and ask about his grandkids. Henry closes his eyes, drags on the night air, exhales, and says have a good night, son. I ask him to show me that photo of his grandkids one more time, tell me some stories, and we talk on and off, in hour-long shifts, until sunrise, when Henry goes to The Interstate Diner for one egg, one bacon, and coffee without end.
Henry doesn’t drink Coke anymore—that damn doctor tryin’ to kill him off quicker by suckin’ the light out of life. Henry says he has one month to live if you can believe it. Presumably, “it” is the official diagnosis: cancer, caught too late, itchin’ to send Henry’s soul to heaven. Henry told me this his first night at work after I turned off the radio and woke him from his sleep. If a man tells you he has one month to live, he has his reasons; doctor or not, he’s come to some diagnosis.
The graveyard shift is no respecter of man. The body is not easily fooled; it kicks against the night regardless of its interaction with the light of day. Man is not meant to see 4 AM. Either dead asleep or ridiculously, clownishly awake—there is no middle road, no room for drifting. People meet their deaths behind the wheels of cars less for an abundance of alcohol than for a lack of sleep.
The truck full of boys, tired of the daylight, are cocked and loaded, eager to live it up. They drive by between 10:30 and 11:00 and set their sights. They count down from three, and when the numbers are up, they light their bottle rockets and send them sizzling over Henry’s head and into the fireworks tent. Fingers crossed, they wait, hoping for a tent-sized explosion, the grand finale before its time. Henry doesn’t stir—as the AM plays, the sparks simply fall to the ground beside him as he dreams.
Jeremy, I like that fact that this story is just a story. Creative non-fiction, sometimes, seems to envy porcupine their points.
Posted by: daniel silliman at June 6, 2005 07:45 PMThat's why I love McPhee so much. I've apprenticed myself to him in order to learn the art of narrative and structure. And, man, it's so liberating to tell a story without talking about myself.
Posted by: jeremy at June 6, 2005 07:58 PM