It’s nighttime in the minus temperatures, biblical rain falling. My intimation of wetness is a seeping cold through my clothes, their heaviness. The sky’s an ugly haze. They lit the bonfire early to keep us from freezing. The flame’s pure demonic revelry, a spectacular of destruction. It’s a long orange plume as the wind blows it, twisting and revealing half shadows on itself, swirling up and tossing embers like confetti into the air (which dance up and drift down).
The Guy sits on high above the newborn flames. His hands are on his knees and he’s peering down. Football head, stuffed sweater. In his last minutes of life he can look out and see a dismal turn-out, scarfed, anoraked and studded here and there with umbrellas. Children in harnesses totter and squeal, kneeheight. The adults, for the most part, don’t even know the Guy is there.
The first of the fireworks whistle up and burst in the sky like neon spiders, and the flames catch the branches behind the Guy’s head; his painted face seems to be screaming.
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