December Park(39)

As if reading my mind, my grandfather leaned his shoulder against mine and pointed toward a cluster of bright stars. “There!”

The rocket ship exploded in a dazzle of bright pink, orange, gold, and silver lights that rained down in glittering streamers. On the other side of the chain-link fences, the light show was replicated in miniature on the surface of the muddy black water at the bottom of the quarry.

The next fifteen minutes continued in such a fashion. Once the final set of fireworks had lit up the sky in brilliant colors that left smoky drifts in their wake, my throat was hoarse from cheering, and I was sweating from my excitement despite the cold. The air smelled of sulfur and my grandfather’s cigar smoke.

My dad gripped me around the nape of the neck and tugged me closer to him. He kissed the top of my head and said, “Happy New Year, pal.”

“Happy New Year. Can I go check out the leftovers?”

“Just be careful. They’re still hot.”

I slipped off the limestone and hurried over to the gravel pit, where smoldering black remnants littered the ground. Curls of black cardboard smoked in the gravel. There were coal-colored scorch marks at the base of the white-powdered pit. I touched the arrowhead cupola of the rocket ship firework, a partially melted cone of red plastic, and it was still warm.

When I stood and turned back toward Worth Street, I noticed a pair of headlights speeding down the narrow road through the encroaching trees. Drifts of hazy smoke softened the glow of the headlights. The car came to a jerky halt. I heard rather than saw doors swing open and slam closed. A woman hurried toward the semicircle of lawn chairs, inappropriately dressed in nothing but jeans and a sweatshirt whose front glittered with rhinestones. The woman shouted something and looked terrified. It took me a moment to realize she was yelling my father’s name.

My dad intercepted her halfway across the gravel lot. My grandfather and Mr. Matherson came up beside him. My dad held the woman by the forearms and spoke slowly while looking her directly in the eyes. She appeared stricken, panicked. Her lips were nearly blue.

I rushed over to join them. I had missed the beginning of the conversation and struggled to catch up.

“No, no,” cried the woman, “they’re still there. They called the cops but I knew you were here.”

“Okay. Get back home.” My father turned to Mr. Matherson. “Can you—?”

“Yes, I’ll take them home,” Mr. Matherson jumped in, apparently reading my father’s mind. “Go on, Sal.”

“Go,” my grandfather echoed.

My dad rushed past the frantic woman toward Worth Street and, presumably, his car.

“Dad,” I shouted and took off after him. Both my grandfather and Mr. Matherson called my name, but I ignored them. I reached my dad’s car as he was climbing in the driver’s seat. I opened the passenger door.

“Stay with your grandpa,” he barked.

“I’m coming with you,” I said and slid into the car.

He stared at me for less than a heartbeat. Then, cranking the ignition, he said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

I slammed the door and fastened my seat belt.

My father jerked the car into Drive and gunned the accelerator while spinning the wheel. We carved a sharp circle across the narrow roadway, then headed up Worth Street at a surprisingly quick pace.

“What’s going on?”

“The Ransoms,” said my father. “Their son, Aaron, is missing.”

I knew Aaron Ransom. He lived a few blocks over on Bessel Avenue and went to Stanton School. He was a smallish kid with a blond bowl cut who sometimes skateboarded in the Superstore plaza parking lot with other kids from school. It took me a minute to realize what my father’s statement meant. “What happened?”

“Put your seat belt on.”

“It’s on.”

He increased the speed, the speedometer’s needle climbing toward forty-five through the residential street. Over the treetops at the horizon, more fireworks lit up the night sky. At Haven, my father slowed but didn’t completely stop at the intersection. He hooked a sharp left and sped more or less down the center of the street. The high beams clicked on. I looked at my dad and saw that he was not just watching the road but the shoulders and the dark spaces between the houses.

As we approached Bessel Avenue, he slowed and coasted up the hill, checking the darkened yards of the houses we passed.

“Dad?” I said.

“What is it?”

But I couldn’t think of anything. My throat dried up.

My dad glanced at me, then turned back to the road without saying a word.

There was a single police car in the Ransoms’ driveway, its rack lights ablaze. A few neighbors in heavy coats milled around the front lawn, looking as confused as cattle in a hailstorm.

My father parked at the curb and told me to get out. I did, not wasting a second, and followed him up the lawn.

The front door opened before we reached it, and a man in a gaudy Christmas sweater waved us inside.

My dad marshaled through the doorway, and I trailed close behind him, my head down. I didn’t meet the man’s eyes.

We went through a cluttered family room with walls of ugly wood paneling and into a cramped little kitchen. A youngish police officer in full uniform stood before a woman sitting ramrod straight in one of the chairs at the table. I recognized her only distantly as Aaron Ransom’s mother, since I’d seen her on only a few occasions. Now, she was hardly recognizable as that woman. Dark streaks ran from her eyes and muddied her cheeks. Her hands wrestled with each other in her lap.