Those Were Good Fireworks
We’ve all had that dream where we reach out, trying to stop some cataclysmic event, but we’re too slow. Ed lived that dream. Spinning on a dime, four of the boys broke off from the pack and veered toward the truck. Instinctively, Ed knew the target. He knew but he wasn’t fast enough. There was nothing he could do to stop it.
In a flash of teenage heroics, driven by hormones, cheap canned beer, and a deep seated resentment of Ed and his bullshit, one of the four made his move. In a great leap, he cleared the trailer, vaulted over the Tri-county Anti-drug Community Interdiction Special Programs Environmental Task Force Team Pilot Project, and flipped the big red switch.
When it was built, a hundred and fifty years ago, the Gatlin gun was chambered in .45-70 Government. Originally based on the same powder as a muzzleloading rifle, .45-70 Government was an excellent cartridge for its time and purpose. If you wanted to send a big fat blob of lead, slow and lazy, into the flank of a plains bison, then .45-70 Government is fine. It would lob a big honkin’ 300 grain lead bullet at about 1600 feet per second. BOOM, thunk, and now you’ve got a dead bison for dinner. Scale that up to repeat fire and you’d created a righteous weapon of war; for its time.
By the time Pong was impressing home electronics consumers who would later invest in Betamax, Chigger’s old man had acquired the device. If 1970’s muscle cars had taught Chigger’s old man anything, it’s that bigger, harder, and faster was the way to live. Unsatisfied with fat blobs of lead embedding themselves in trees, he’d rechambered and rebarreled. Soon it was firing .300 Winchester Magnum. Originally released in 1963, it was the hard hitting death-round of his time. If .45-70 is for knocking down the buffalo on an old Pony Express trail. The .300 Winchester Magnum is for killing the elk that’s waaaaaaay on the other side of the canyon. (At the expense of a manly recoil to your shoulder of course.) Thus, the rechambered Gatlin gun fired jacketed hollowpoints that were slightly smaller (a still beefy 200 grains) but at nearly twice the velocity. That single modification had cranked up every single round’s energy from 1,700 foot pounds to a little over 4,000. (There will be an essay test at the end of this book and you’d better start gathering adjectives to describe precisely the forces that the Gatlin gun was unleashing. Of course, you shouldn’t forget the fact it now had more barrels and an increased barrel rotation rate.)
If the men and women of the 1860’s could see what Chigger’s old man would do with their (at the time) terrifying weapon of war; they’d have died with fright. Chigger’s dad was reckless and unwise, but he was also had a way with machines. He’d made the full analog, entirely mechanical, backwoods version of a tactical nuke.
The upshot of all this is that when the red switch was flipped, all hell broke loose. The machine went berserk. It was full automatic fire in a caliber never intended to automatic anything. The trailer rocked back on it’s suspension with the collected recoil of several thousand elk hunting rounds fired blisteringly fast. The Tri-county Anti-drug Community Interdiction Special Programs Environmental Task Force Team Pilot Project were showered with hot, smoking brass. The air was instantly infused with gunsmoke. Everyone dove to the ground as a solid white hot streak, made of thousands of bullets, blazed just over the roof of the Audi.
The sound wasn’t one gunshot and then another. Nothing of the sort would’ve been adequate for Chigger’s old man! His machinery made the sound of the universe being torn in half.
The onslaught lasted seventeen seconds. That’s all it took. Ed deserves acknowledgment in that he was willing to go near the beast, reach into that vortex of chaos, and flip the switch. Nobody else even considered such bravery.
He was lucky. It was a miracle (or curse) that the machine worked at all. It if was exposed to something approaching 30 seconds of continuous fire it would overheat, seize up, and explode. Chigger’s old man never had enough money to fire it that long. The price of ammo being prohibitive even back then. Nobody else, regardless of finances, would’ve been stupid enough to try. This is the only reason nobody had used the device long enough to blow themselves up… yet.
Ears ringing from the deafening roar, Ed grabbed a huge spotlight which was one of the few items he’d seized from an actual honest to goodness poacher, and aimed the powerful spotlight into the smoke. The beast had fired over the Audi and drilled a hole through the back wall of the Che (which was thankfully empty). The Che abutted a hillside and thus all damage was safely routed though a literature department and into the earth itself. (Later there would be much complaining about the loss of a beloved coffee maker. Ed would smooth it over when he busted, without evidence, a coffee shop in Portland for allegedly trading in endangered yak pelts. He donated the forfeited espresso machine to the university and all was forgiven.)
“Thank God nobody was killed.” Breathed Ed, thought nobody could hear him. Everyone’s ears were ringing.
Fifty yards away the Girl’s leader had latched on to the nearest thing when everything went KABOOM. It was a Boy Scout. He’d thoroughly enjoyed the show. His arm had gone numb as the girl had gripped it in terror. He didn’t mind.
“Fireworks?” He prompted.
“Fireworks!” She agreed and gave him a peck on the cheek.
Then a nearby lamppost, which had been completely severed in the mayhem, eased off kilter and started to fall. It was a heroic death. A lightpost gone to Valhalla after a full attack of a genuine “Northern Idaho Ballistic Tree Felling Champion”. It fell smoothly. Gracefully. Unerringly. Directly onto the Audi; crushing it.
“Fireworks.” They both giggled and he gave her a peck back.
It was a match made in heaven and brought together by unhinged firepower. Young love in America.
