BBQ

Since I came home from the desert, I stopped caring for fireworks. The splashes of red fire like blood across the night sky and the distant explosions like unseen mortars striking schools convinced me these patriotic holidays are for chicken hawks, children, and dutiful citizens who have never seen their own things blown up. Have you seen a school or hospital after a mortar attack? First you find the living, then the dead, then the fragments.

The Fourth fell on the weekend after the big storms. Remember those? Tore off roofs in that small town not far from us? One of the branches had fallen on my car and cracked the windshield. The ground was still wet and the bugs were as ever-present as the Holy Ghost. It was hours before nightfall, before the fools around me would blow up whatever explosive devices made it across on the boats from China.

And they wonder why they have no jobs.

Outside, in the shared driveway with my neighbor, I was looking at that windshield. Since they "fixed" it, it made a noise like a bee. The gasket was loose, I could see that much. That was when I found it. The uhh, bird. Down on the vent, kind of nestled under the windshield wipers. It was more like a chick than a bird. More like a fetus than a chick. Still curved round like it was stuck in the egg. It, of course, wasn't moving. It was a dried out child. I've seen that before. What, don't you think bombs explode in zoos and kill other living things?

God has taken sides against us, and we can't possibly blame him. And I don't mean us like some kind of flat-footed fathead thinks; I mean everyone. He's against everything on this round rock and in this goddamned universe.

I just stood there and stared at the thing. And I thought to myself even then that I must have a prosthetic heart to not feel this. To not feel anything as I picked it up--not even gently--and threw it in the trash. When I told Diane about it she was horrified. She made me get the little fetal bird out of the blue trash can from in between the black trash bags and the white fast food wrappers from our cars.

She got on her knees and started to dig a small grave for it with a gardening shovel. This was near where she had buried the cats, the fishes, the gerbils, the tarantula, and the snake that the kids felt bad about feeding live mice to.

Do you know how long it takes a snake to starve to death? The question isn't rhetorical. It turns out the answer is, "A very long time."

It was getting late and the fireworks would start soon. I told Diane I needed to get inside soon as they usually went off over the house and I didn't want to start freaking out. Like last year. She glared at me standing there. She went back to digging this tiny grave.

Last time I saw a woman kneeling next to a grave, it was her own just before someone killed her "Honorably."

So when my wife was kneeling in front of this one for some stupid bird, and the fireworks started going off overhead, I barely made it into the house before I fell down and curled up.

And when my grandfather came wheeling himself into the living room to leave the house, he called me a coward. I wanted to ask him if, on the streets of Dresden, were there any fragments left?

But he wouldn't know. His flat feet kept him behind a desk.

He always loved the fireworks.