Characters in Drunken Fireworks

… Statement given by Mr. Alden McCausland Castle County Police Department Statement taken by Police Chief Andrew Clutterbuck Arresting Officer Ardelle Benoit also present 11:15 AM–1:20 PM …

… Police Department Statement taken by Police Chief Andrew Clutterbuck Arresting Officer Ardelle Benoit also present 11:15 AM–1:20 PM July 5, 2015 Yes, you could say Ma n me did a good deal of drinking and lounging around out to camp after Daddy died. No law against it, is there? If …

Cindy Shining Path Parker asked if I didn’t want to at least open the crate and have a look, make sure it was the right thing, but it was nailed up tight all over, and I wanted to get back before dark, on …

“I’m a cuddly kind of gal,” she liked to say. What Doc Stone liked to say, at least until she stopped goin to him, was that she was going to be a dying-young kind of gal if she didn’t quit drinkin the Allen’s.

I’m willin to sniculate that it did have its funny side—at least until last night it did—but not s’much when you had Hallie McCausland breathin down your neck. “Yes, I can see how that would get your ma’s goat,” Pop said.

But if you’re really determined, you ought to take a ride up to Indian Island and talk to a fella there. Great big Penobscot named Howard Gamache. Biggest goddam Indian in Maine, maybe in the whole world. Rides a Harley-Davidson and has feathers tattooed on his cheeks.

Fifty bucks should do it.” Money passed from my small hand to his big one, he emailed Johnny Shining Path Parker, and when I got back to the lake and sent him an email of my own, he answered right back.

When we was in school together, you wouldn’t shut up. Tongue hung in the middle and running at both ends, Mrs. Fitch used to say. Remember her? Fourth grade. What a card she was! Remember the time you put gum in the toe of her shoe? Ha! Where was I?

“Ayuh,” Alden said. “Just like Al Capone.” Officer Ellis knocked on the glass of the interview room, pointed at Andy, cocked his thumb and little finger in a telephone gesture, and beckoned. Andy sighed and left the room.

“Only those are ill-gotten gains, Alden,” she said, “and I’m not talking about no quarter-acre pot patch, either. Everyone knows Paul Massimo is CONNECTED.” She always said it just like that, in big capital letters. Supposedly the money came from Massimo Construction.

We put it in the garage and there it stayed until Memorial Day, when we took it out to the lake. I didn’t buy nothing else of a firework nature this year, not from Pop Anderson and not from Howard Gamache, either. We was all in on the one thing.