In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [52]
The White Sox and the Brownies had painfully worked their way into the top of the Third of the first game, a scoreless tie, when Kissel appeared on the shimmering horizon, weaving spectacularly and carrying a large paper bag as carefully as a totally committed drunk can. Kissel was about to celebrate the founding of our nation, the nation which had provided such a bounteous life for him and his.
At first no one paid much attention to the struggling figure as it inched its way from lamppost to lamppost and fireplug to fireplug. Little girls burned sparklers on porches, and I was carefully de-pleating a string of Chinese ladyfingers. These are tiny firecrackers with pleated fuses, all woven together, and designed for the rich and profligate to fire off simultaneously by simply lighting the main fuse. No kid in his right mind ever did that, but instead we carefully disengaged, fuse by fuse, the ladyfingers and fired them off one by one, under garbage cans, on porches, and behind dogs. My mother, at regular intervals, called from the kitchen window the Fourth of July watch cry of all mothers:
“Be careful! You’re going to lose an eye if you’re not careful!” This was, of course, purely ritualistic, and was only a minor annoyance. Flick had already suffered a flesh wound of a routine nature, his right hand was swathed in grease-soaked gauze, the result of demonstrating that he could hold a Three Incher in his hand when it went off, and still survive. He was now back on the scene, working as a lefty. In short, it was a Fourth like all other Fourths, up to the moment that Kissel took his stance.
He had disappeared into his house to prepare for his massive statement of Patriotism. Shortly afterward he reappeared on the front porch and stumbled down the steps, carrying in his right hand the largest Dago Bomb that had ever been seen in the neighborhood. It was a Dago Heister of truly awesome stature, being fully a foot and a half high and a good three inches in diameter, and was the first all-black Dago Bomb anyone had ever seen. This point has been argued over many a cold Wintry afternoon. Some reports have it that Kissel’s Dago Bomb was not a Dago Bomb at all, but some sort of mortar shell. Others maintain that it was indeed a Dago Bomb, but of a foreign make, possibly Chinese, as the somber menacing color was highly unorthodox. Suffice it to say that no one ever really determined just where Kissel obtained the weapon, or its true nature, as Kissel himself was hazy on most details of his life, and this was no exception. His only comment later, which was never disputed, was:
“I sure got one!”
When Kissel emerged from his front door and came down the steps carrying his work of the Devil, the neighborhood almost magically knew that something big was about to happen. Sparklers flickered out; kids ran through vacant lots and over driveways; heads appeared at windows. The crowd gathered. Kissel, with that peculiar deliberateness of the perpetually fogbound, laboriously prepared to detonate the black beauty. He placed it dead in the center of the concrete roadway and stood back to survey the scene, weaving slightly as he worked. The crowd drew back and watched, silently, excitement hanging over the multitude in a thin blue haze. Fireworks of that magnitude rarely were seen and commanded instant respect. The ebony monster stood bolt upright, silently, with a cool quality of the truly lethal; understated but potent.
Shimmering waves of heat caused the scene to take on a strange unreal, flickering quality. The neighborhood fell silent, and only the dull mutterings of distant fire barrages broke the stillness. A few errant drops of tepid rain sprinkled the concrete as we waited. The skies overhead were gray and threatening, with ragged edges of black