The Winter Helen Dropped By. W. Kinsella P.

by a box social.

      Of course it wasn’t really dark enough to shoot off fireworks, but what with the baseball games being over (the Doreen Beach White Sox won the tournament with an extra-inning 12–11 win over the all-Indian team from the reserve at Lac Ste. Anne), and with the three-legged, the sack, and the wheelbarrow races, having been run, and two tubs of vanilla ice cream Curly McClintock had trucked out from Edmonton that very morning all scooped onto cones and eaten up, there was nothing left but to watch the fireworks and get to the dancing, so with children bawling and whining and squalling, and being tired and dirty-faced, fretful and downright testy, it was no wonder the mothers convinced Bandy Wicker to begin setting off the fireworks while it was barely dusk.

      While both Daddy and Bandy Wicker described the rockets of their youth as shooting upward with a whiz and whirr through the blue-black nighttime sky, sending up spumes of red, green, blue, or silver stars that hung in the sky, burning out slowly and leaving behind their images in smoke wavering like moon shadows, the rockets at Doreen Beach on the night of the Fourth of July would fire off with a certain whiz and whirr, but when they got up in the sky there would be a loud bang and a few sickly-looking stars would dribble toward the earth, none of them lasting much longer than your run-of-the-mill firefly. The crowd was prepared to ooooh and aaaah at the spectacular bursts of color in the night-time sky, but the sound that emanated as the few sickly-looking stars dribbled toward the ground was more like a groan.

      Bandy Wicker, who, in spite of his propensity to self-injury, had been formally entrusted to light the rockets in the outfield of the Doreen Beach baseball grounds, blamed the poor performance on the fact that the fireworks had been manufactured in China, rather than Juarez, Mexico. He said that if Mexican fireworks were inferior it was possible to take revenge on the Ortega Bros. Fireworks Company of Juarez, Mexico, but he didn’t see no way we could take revenge on a company in China whose name wasn’t even printed in English on the rockets.

      Bandy Wicker also wanted to know if we had got a guarantee from Mr. Prosserstein of the Acme Novelty and Carnival Supplies store that our money would be refunded if the rockets didn’t fire off properly.

      My daddy, who was pushing the little wire legs of the rockets into the ground so they would be properly pointed at the sky and not at the crowd congregated on the bleachers behind home plate, hmmmed a little, stalling for time, hoping some of the rockets would fire off beautiful bursts of colored stars and forestall further criticism. After a few more rockets had succeeded only in making a large bang and dribbling a few sickly-looking stars toward the ground, Daddy hawed a little, as well as hmmming.

      ‘Guess next time we’ll have to send a real man to do the job,’ said Bandy Wicker, lighting a couple more rockets, one of which set off with a whiz and whirr, and one of which didn’t.

      What folks didn’t notice was that the few sickly-looking stars that dribbled toward the ground carried a certain amount of firepower, and that most of the sickly-looking stars dribbling to earth behind the bleachers tended to set the grass a-smouldering. So little rain had fallen that Brother Bickerstaff of the Holy, Holy, Holy, Foursquare Church of Edson, Alberta, had held a holy roller religious service that very morning in the Doreen Beach Community Hall to extract rain from the high, dry, blue Alberta sky by means of prayer.

      Folks did not notice the smoldering grass, or the little fringe of burning grass that crept toward the bleachers, and toward the Doreen Beach Community Hall, and toward the Doreen Beach General Store, and toward the one and only house in Doreen Beach, the residence of Torval Osbaldson and his wife, Tillie, retired farmers who had moved to Doreen Beach to enjoy the hustle and bustle of town life in their declining years. And folks did not notice the fire creeping toward Slow Andy McMahon, all three hundred and some pounds of him, where he sat with his back against a large cottonwood tree, dozing fitfully and eating from several boxes of prepackaged McGavin’s Bakery donuts, and a four-pound tin of Shirriff’s orange marmalade, ‘No Pectin Added,’ which I’m sure eased the minds of anyone in the Six Towns Area who knew what pectin was.

      ‘I suspect pectin comes from the East,’ Daddy said. ‘Most everything suspicious emanates from there.’

      It wasn’t until the final rocket had been placed in the ground by Daddy and lighted by Bandy Wicker that anyone noticed fire was attacking the community of Doreen Beach from a number of angles.

      Everyone began to run around, most getting away from the fire, but some, like Bandy Wicker and my daddy, getting closer and attempting to form some strategy for firefighting. Someone said they sure wished that Doreen Beach was located on a lake like it should be, but Doreen Beach was about four miles from Purgatory Lake and not even located on a creek, the only water coming from a communal well shared by Torval Osbaldson and the current owners of the Doreen Beach General Store, a sallow Chinese with sunken eyes and stooped shoulders and his wispy wife who seldom came out of the attached lean-to they lived in, though they talked back and forth from the lean-to to the store, and listening to them talking was like listening to the morose gobble of turkeys.

      Earl J. Rasmussen was already hauling water up from the communal well, and the sallow Chinese had donated his stock of three new galvanized water buckets, so a bucket brigade of sorts was formed, the purpose of which was to save the house of Torval and Tillie Osbaldson.

      Bandy Wicker had been a volunteer firefighter in Odessa, Texas, and had brought with him to Alberta his genuine firefighter’s hat, scoop-shaped, red and shiny, which he kept on the top shelf of the closet in his and Mrs. Bandy Wicker’s bedroom. He let his son, my rabbit-snaring buddy, Floyd Wicker, try on that hat of a Christmas morning and on Floyd’s birthday.