YOU CALL THEM, I'LL SET THEM OFF

    YOU CALL THEM, I'LL SET THEM OFF



    I’m Eight years old, sitting in the drivers side seat of the broken down Winnebago on the side of my Aunt Judy’s house near the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by weeds and old tires. A picket fence that is being over taken by thorn vines and discarded fish nets. I call it my aunt’s house because my uncle was never there. Always on the road, driving a semi truck, his headlights aimed at oblivion. I am looking up at the dark sky and the few stars that are visible through the windshield and over the trees.
    Light pollution around here is pretty bad. Only the brightest of all the stars appear over the boardwalk which the Winnebago is aimed at in the empty lot.  A view of skyline lit up unnaturally by the neon and the spot lights, the Ferris wheel of Seaside Heights, New Jersey- population, you and me and everyone we love. The spot lights leveled on it from the great beyond. Jelly fish in the water pulsing and quivering, the dark beach and the idea of summer a thing in the hearts of all those who are eager enough to keep taking breaths.
    The inside of the Winnebago smells like Cinnamon the dog, who doesn’t smell anything like cinnamon, who smells like dog death. I smell like jelly fish and zeppolis (fried dough covered in confection sugar served hot, sucker). I lost all of my birthday money trying to win a Nintendo Game Boy, I used to smell like birthday money, now I just smell like dog death and tears.
    It’s the fourth of July and I’m looking up through the windshield over the tree line at the sky line because I’m afraid of fire works and I didn’t want to go to the beach with the rest of the family.
    It’s the fourth of July and Rebecca has drawn shortest straw. She has to stay with me at the house rather than going down to the beach with the family though she is down on vacation from New Hampshire and doesn’t get many opportunities to see fireworks over the Atlantic Ocean.
    I’m sunburnt from my days on the beach. My skin red and peeling, my hair cow licked and still full of sand. I spent most of the day with my younger brother, digging a massive hole on the beach with our mini folding army shovels, unfolded for full effect. The life guards came by and told my mother that we weren’t aloud to dig a hole that massive in the middle of the beach, she stood up from her beach towel and screamed at them until they retreated. Her kids can dig as big a hole as they want and if somebody falls into it and breaks every bone in their body, then oh well, they are obviously not locals and they deserve it.
    She’s lived here all her life.
    It’s her beach and as far as she’s concerned, our beach.
    We filled the hole in when we were done, the sun sinking and the air growing chilly. The tide was down there at the bottom of our hole, and it was obvious to both me and Willy that we could never have dug to China, even if we really wanted to. This was good having our mother close by, because usually she was not around, at least I don’t remember her around. She worked night shifts in an aerosol can factory and we were raised by wolves. In all my other memories besides this one, she is absent and the wolves are taking me to the park, the county fair and to township league basketball sign up.
    When I hit my home runs in little leagues, the wolves foamed at the mouth in pride. Sometimes swarmed the fans on the other bleachers, tore their throats out in celebration.
    Touch em all, lil, pup.
    The memories are delusional and warped by time, she was there, my mother and she gave me what I wanted, what I needed and what I seldom didn’t deserve out of only pure unwavering love. I recall puking as a child in the hallway of our house and my mother cleaning it up and then coming into my room, lying down in the top bunk with me, kissing  my eyelids as I shook. Telling me that everything was going to be alright.
    The passenger side of the Winnebago opens up, Rebecca climbs inside.
    She is sixteen and heavy set. She has curly hair as if it was an afro. She is my favorite cousin, she gave me all her tickets from the skeet ball and I got three spider rings, a yo-yo and a glow in the dark super ball.
    “Here you are, I’ve been looking all over for you.”
    “You have?”
    “Yeah I have, I was worried.”
    “About what?”
    “I don’t know, I didn’t know where you went.”
    “I was here.”
    “You ready to see the fireworks?”
    “I guess.”
    I’m afraid of fireworks, of horror movies, of my mom and dad getting a divorce, of thunder and lighting and of anybody finding out that I am deaf in my left ear and taking me to the doctor, who will cut my head open.
    Becca is a good person, she doesn’t rub it in that my little brother is at the beach, ready to watch the fireworks and is not afraid. None of them know that I’m afraid of fireworks because I had a baby sitter once who had company over and the company was shooting bottle rockets on the back deck while I was playing with my Thunder Cats sword and one of the bottle rockets came straight at my head, hitting the aluminum siding and causing me to piss my Osh Gosh ‘s.
    “It’s Ok, we’ll see them all from here, just me and you.”
    “Ok.”
    Then, the first of them appear, right on cue.
    “That one’s cool.” I say.
    “Not so bad from here, huh? It’s a Purple Popper.” My cousin calls them out like a baseball announcer, “And that one is a blue bell fizz.”
    “Woah.”
    “That one’s a red rocket.”   
    “It’s really cool.”
    “It’s wicked.” She says, cause she’s from New England.
    “I like that one, what’s it called?”
    “A green dragon fireball.” She says
    Etc. Etc. Etc.
    We watched the rest of them and she called them all out by name. I didn’t know that they were made up names and that she was bullshitting her way through them all just for me. I honestly thought that she knew the name of every single fire work that was exploding over the ocean. Thinking back on it now, I’m  very grateful for that line of bullshit.
    It made it easy to be inside that Winnebago. It made it feel good to be an outsider with an inside edge that none of the people on the beach knew anything about. It made me not afraid of fireworks, though I still sometimes go back to the Winnebago and watch them from the passenger seat instead of standing on the beach with the crowd.
    My heart is a collapsed picket fence with thorn vines climbing over it, discarded fish nets tangled within the lines of distorted truths and memories. Always there, in that vacant lot, there are the ghosts of my youth, calling out the names of all the starts that are not really stars, but are loved more, because they are forever named.