As we walked out, I noticed that a woman I’d seen sitting off in a corner was walking in front of us. She’d obviously been expecting something else when told she was going to see “live theater” that night, and she’d seemed both frightened and appalled by everyone’s boorish behavior. As she walked through the drifts of popcorn she muttered to her date, “Ugh . . . What an offensive waste of food. Just think of all the starving children in Africa.” She may have had a point, but I thought it was a little offensive to want to give starving people popcorn touched by vaginas. “Here you go,” I could imagine her saying condescendingly to the villagers. “Take some more vagina popcorn. This batch was only on the floor for an hour. You need it more than we do.” It seemed insulting, and I felt pretty certain that even starving people would have turned their noses up at it. “No, no. We’re fine. Really. Please stop with the vagina popcorn.” Also, the popcorn was kind of stale and gross, and I know this because I ate some, and then I felt very sick later. Victor pointed out that it was no surprise. I was eating from the same bag of popcorn that I’d thrown at people, and that they’d thrown back, and it would land in my bosom and I’d scoop it out and throw it back at them, and then they’d volley it back, and inevitably some of it was landing in the sack I was eating from, and I’m pretty sure that’s how I got swine flu.
The next day we went back to my parents’ to set off fireworks for the Fourth of July, and as we finished up the Roman candles my dad said, “Oh! I promised the grandkids we could set off the cannon tonight,” and Hailey screamed, “Yay!”
“You promised my preschooler that she could light a cannon?” I asked in disbelief.
“No. Of course not,” he replied. “I told Tex he could do it.” And that seemed much safer, because Tex was fucking six. I looked at my sister to see whether she was okay with her kid lighting a Civil War cannon, but she just kind of shrugged, because she’s used to this sort of thing, and had learned to pick her battles.
My parents’ backyard. The gas pump is not functional. The cannon and chickens are.
“Are you sure this is safe?” Lisa asked, and Daddy assured us that he was only going to let Tex pack and prep the cannon—which consisted of Tex standing right in front of a giant fucking loaded cannon—but my sister was fairly undisturbed, because she knew Daddy probably couldn’t get the rusty cannon lit anyway. And she was right. But then Daddy decided he just needed more fire, so he brought out the blowtorch to light the dodgy cannon. This was when I ran for my camera, because I knew no one would ever believe me. The cannon would undoubtedly be loud and unneighborly obnoxious at that time of night, but then I remembered that the neighbors had been setting off fireworks at midnight all week long, and I thought it would kind of be kick-ass payback if the cannon actually did go off. And it did. And it was awesome, and no one died or got blood on them, so we considered it one of the most successful nights that week.
As we walked back inside for our final night at my parents’, Victor pointed at a table that had been raised up with chains to the ceiling of the carport. He said there seemed to be a dead bear on it, and I assumed that Victor was drunk, but when we went out to pack the car the next morning I realized Victor was correct. My first thought was that I probably need glasses, because it’s probably odd to not notice a dead bear floating on a table in the backyard all week. But then I realized I hadn’t actually noticed the cannon at first either, and blamed it on the fact that I was too distracted by everything else. Because that’s the kind of backyard they have. One where cannons and floating bears don’t stick out.
I stared at the bear and wondered whether Daddy was trying to raise him from the dead, à la Dr. Frankenstein when he hoisted his monster up to the roof to attract the lightning. But then I realized it was probably just a polite way of getting a dead bear out of the way when you had company over, and in a way it struck me as being kind of ingenious. Like window blinds, but with dead bears.
Victor agreed that it made sense, but then he looked a little shaken and insisted we go home immediately, because whenever all of this starts to seem rational to us that’s usually a sign that we need to leave.