Fireworks Over Toccoa (4 page)

“Oh, I see,” Lily said playfully. “So courting me until I fall simply head over heels for you is a vital part of your career ambitions?”

“Well, seeing as how we’ve only had two proper dates so far, getting you to agree to go to the movies with me on Saturday night was about the extent of my ambitions. My dreams, well, that’s another matter.”

He looked confidently into her eyes, maintaining his glance until his words took full hold of her. After a long moment, when she could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks, Lily looked away, unable to keep herself from smiling. The attraction between them was clear.

“I don’t cook, you know,” she said with her continued playfulness. “And my mother will tell you that I am disposed to be more than somewhat willful, particularly when it comes to having my own way about…well, most everything.”

“I have been duly and extensively informed.”

“Hmm, I’ll bet you have.” Lily snuck a look over her shoulder at her mother, standing next to Lily’s father, off in the distance near the house. “I’ll bet my mother simply adores you.”

Lily was quite aware that handsome, well-mannered, well-moneyed Paul, with a very successful future ahead of him, was exactly the kind of young man her mother had always dreamed of for a son-in-law. Lily envisioned Honey visiting the Coca-Cola executive offices and interviewing young men for a special assignment. While Lily knew that her vision was part hyper-bole, she was willing to bet that it was not entirely pure exaggeration.

“She’s a very nice lady, your mother,” said Paul.

“I suspect she’s been giving you pointers about how to get me to fall for you, hasn’t she?”

“She’s a very nice lady, your mother,” said Paul again with a smile.

“Well, in all fairness to your career ambitions and the future of my heart, Paul Woodward, you should know that I rarely agree with my mother’s penchants and predilections and in fact I—”

Paul cut her off. “You have been known to make quite the effort to embrace most anything that runs contrary to her tastes and wishes.”

“I see you two
have
been talking.”

“Lily, I’m a simple guy,” he said more seriously, showing the earnestness that was the core of his plain nature. “I did okay in college, but I probably wouldn’t have gotten in without football. I understand my job, which is essentially sales, and I like it. I love the company, and I love Georgia, and that’s really all I want with my life, along with someone to share it with and…What I mean is…I’m not good at talking about my inner feelings, Lily.”

“You’re doing just fine,” she said, looking over her shoulder at her parents watching her, then turning back to Paul.

“What I mean is, taking a blow from the entire front lines of Alabama and Tech and NC State combined would be nothing compared to how hard it is not to kiss you, Lily Davis.”

She took his hand and one could almost see the spark jump between them.

“So kiss me.”

“Kiss you?”

“You could kiss me now, you know.” She leaned in closer to him.

“Your parents are watching.”

“You could still kiss me.”

“That wouldn’t be respectful.”

“So your concerns about what others think are greater than getting smacked around by a bunch of butt-slapping linemen, and greater than your feelings for me.” Lily smiled mischievously, but he was getting nervous.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Not to mention that kissing Walter Davis’ daughter in his own backyard could have decidedly deleterious effects on a young man’s career.”

“Are you teasing me?”

“I am kissing you is what I am doing.” She leaned in close to him, and he looked like he wasn’t sure what to do. As handsome and promising and strong as the former UGA offensive tackle was, he was also no match for this younger, brighter girl who was crazy about him. “You are not the only one with inner feelings here and if you are not going to put your lips on me, which is probably very smart considering where we are, then I am going to put mine on yours, which is probably rather reckless and impetuous, but it’s not going to get you fired and I simply can’t bear another moment without doing so, so…”

And with that she kissed him. After a moment, she slowly pulled away. He looked into her eyes, and he kissed her back.

“Oh, and yes, by the way,” said Lily. “Definitely yes.”

“Yes to what?”

“Yes, to the movies on Saturday night,” said Lily, looking as happy as can be.

Walter Davis, her father, watching from a distance, did not look as happy.

“Did I just see one of my employees kissing my daughter in my backyard?” Walter said.

“I think you just saw your daughter kissing him,” replied Honey.

Honey and Walter Davis, highballs of Havana Club rum and Coke in hand, watched Lily and Paul from a distance. Walter was very tall, with a muscular build, thick, full hair graying neatly at the temples, and a jaw so impossibly long and square that at times he seemed drawn by some animator giving form to a masculine ideal. Walter had the kind of rugged good looks that could best be described as dashing, and if he’d been so inclined he would have had a very good shot at success on the silver screen, most likely as the lead in some adventure serial where he was sent around the world in a cargo plane on dangerous assignments, writing in a journal about life and death and love in understated prose and wearing a lot of khaki. Though even in such success, he most likely would not have earned as much as he did as an executive.

“I like this boy, Walter.”

“Somehow I knew you would.”

“You don’t?”

“He’s a smart kid, and a born leader, that’s why I hired him.”

“If there’s war, I don’t want him on the front lines, Walter.”

“I’ll find a position for him in support, maybe doing something for the company.”

“What about Jonathan?”

“Jonathan has to make his own way in the world, Honey.”

“I don’t want my son jumping out of airplanes! Talk to him.”

“I’ll try again. You know I will.”

Walter always knew how to speak to Honey in a way that calmed her. They sipped their drinks, watching Lily and Paul in the distance.

“I like this boy. I think he’s good for her. I think he’s exactly what Lily needs.”

“Okay.”

“You think she’s too young.”

“I think she’s…Lily.”

Walter put his arm around Honey, who didn’t ask what he meant because she didn’t really care. Her mind was made up about Paul, and Walter knew it. While he loved his little girl, Walter was a man who rarely interfered in her life. To be sure, they had wonderful easy times together when he was in town, but when it came to parenting, Honey was CEO.

A few months later

With Lily in the passenger seat of his massive 1940 Cadillac 90 town car—the company car—Paul pulled up to the front of the beautiful white 1901 Queen Anne–style house with the big wraparound porch, parked, ran around to the passenger side, and let out a surprised-looking Lily. Hair cut very short, Paul wore an Army officer’s uniform.

“Why are we stopping?” asked Lily, a bit giddy.

“Come on.” Paul grabbed her hand and ran her up the front walkway.

Out of breath, they stood together on the front porch, Lily looking wide-eyed at the house and the view of sky over the foothills from the front porch.

“What do you think?” said Paul.

“I think…I’m wondering whose house this is,” said Lily, unable to contain a smile.

Paul produced a small box and handed it to her, and her smile grew until she was covering it to try to hold in the anxious laughter. Hands shaking, she took the box and then opened it. Inside was a key.

“It’s my house, Lily. I bought it. And I’m hoping that it’ll be your house, too.” Paul stuck his hand in his pocket, pulled it out fist closed, then took one of her hands to his fist, which he opened, revealing a two-carat colorless cushion-cut diamond solitaire on a platinum band, the most beautiful engagement ring a girl could ever imagine.

Lily gasped.

Then Paul got down on one knee as he knew men are to do at these sorts of times. “I know I’m leaving here in just a few weeks, but I’ll be back, and I want to have you and this house to come back to. I love you and—”

“Yes!” she said, and she dropped down to her knees and embraced him and kissed him and they stayed like that on the front porch of their house for quite a long time.

A few weeks later

Just before sunrise, Lily lay in a big brand-new four-poster bed upstairs in the master bedroom of the house, asleep. In his uniform, hat under his arm, duffel bag by his side, Paul stood over her and watched her sleeping. He told himself to take the image of her like this into the far reaches of his mind. When he had done so, he took a deep breath, picked up his bag, turned, and very quietly left the room.

Downstairs, bag in hand, he opened the front door, walked out, and closed it slowly behind him. As he made his way across the front porch, suddenly the front door opened and Lily, in a bathrobe, ran out and threw herself into her husband’s arms. He dropped the bag and his hat and embraced her.

After a moment, he kissed her, let her go, and walked down the front porch steps and down the walkway to a taxi waiting in the street.

Lily stood there in her robe, the sun rising, watching him go.

1945

Lily stood on her front porch looking out where the firework had been, remembering how she felt that day Paul left, different from how she felt now. She looked at her ring as she so often did. A symbol of her marriage, of course, it reminded her of Paul, and of the promise of the life that they would have. It was not only impressive in scale, it was, in all aspects of appraisal, near perfect, just like the house. Even though she hadn’t known him very long, accepting the ring and the house and his proposal required little consideration. Proposals of marriage were quickly made and accepted all over the country at this time. Toccoa in particular was filled with bright-eyed young men in uniform, training at Camp Toccoa, who met, dated, and proposed to many of Lily’s girlfriends. The world was at war and life decisions were made with impulse and passion.

The two weeks Lily and Paul had together after the wedding before he left for the war were wonderful. Despite what a girlfriend had told Lily, the nights were quite pleasant. Some nights were very pleasant.

Still, thinking about them, which was what she frequently found herself doing lately, left her with an imprecise though increasingly discernable sense of longing. And there was something about seeing that firework, something about how it made her feel, that seemed to focus this sense, sharpen it to the point where she couldn’t ignore it, this deep feeling that…she was missing something or, more specifically, someone. Which of course, she told herself after a moment of consideration, made complete sense. After a lifetime in a small southern town hearing that the hungers of the body were sinful and corrupt and must be suppressed until holy matrimony, and then finally a taste of marriage, clumsy and rushed, and then three years and four months of ovulating and menstruating and ovulating, a cycle of desire and flow of no apparent use other than to mark the months spent sleeping alone, of course she felt a sense of longing to share her life. To share herself.

Indeed, except for this absence of her spouse, which in just a few days would no longer be an issue, by all standards she knew Lily’s life was just the way it should be.

She sighed, running the evidence of this over in her head, but still, it did not entirely subdue the throbbing sense that something was…
What?
She reviewed the world again as though it were a hope chest, but all the articles were there. Yes, everything she wanted she had. Why then did she feel the way she did when she looked out at the firework? Why now this weight every time she let go breath? A warm current rushing into a cavity. A tidal pool in her soul. She couldn’t explain it, but she could feel the drift, heavy and blue.

Rationally, her life was perfect. The facts were clear. But deep down, in a place where facts fell flat, a place where the firework touched, emotions churned.

Lily sighed and stared out at the western sky, squinting ever so slightly, recalling the poignant beauty of the firework.
From where did it come?
she wondered.
Who could have kindled such a powerful sky?

The trajectory of the firework was just about right, thought Jake Russo, standing in the middle of a field just west of Toccoa. Now he could use that firing as a guide to calibrate and set many of the mortars he would use to shoot fireworks shells for the upcoming show.

Using a hand-bearing precision compass, Jake noted the exact direction of the firing and wrote it down in his small moleskin-covered journal. He made a few more notations regarding the approximate distance of the firing in relation to the direction and then shoved the worn journal back in a rear pocket. This field was going to be good, lots of space to work with.

Jake walked back to his big diesel freight truck parked near the edge of the grassy meadow, marched up the wood ramp, into the back, and located the mortars he needed. These were among the easiest to manage, simple black steel tubes, six inches wide, thirty-six inches long. The “bread and butter” of any solid pyrotechnics palette, they would be used to fire basic six-inch fireworks shells. In cabinets separated from the shells, the mortars were packed very tightly on wood shelves and secured with thick rubber banding so they could not knock together and create sparks.

Jake piled half a dozen of the steel mortar tubes on each shoulder, strode down the ramp, out into the field, and dumped them on the ground. This Georgia sun was intense, he thought.

Jake wore battered tank boots, snug blue jeans, and a denim workshirt over a tee. He took off his workshirt, used it to wipe the sweat from his brow, and tossed it down.

Then he picked up a shovel and started digging. Every single mortar used in the show, all 1,770 of them, had to be nearly entirely buried for stability. This would take hours of digging and hard manual labor. But Jake didn’t mind. He liked this kind of work, especially when no one was shooting at him.

Just a few months ago, Jake was in fields and roadsides and backyards across Western Europe doing this same kind of work. Of course, his mortars weren’t firing colorful pyrotechnics into the air. They were shooting high-explosive steel shells at German soldiers.

Right after his basic training in the spring of 1942, when the Army learned of Jake Russo’s knowledge of and experience with fireworks, he was sent to the European Front and quickly made staff sergeant of a 60mm mortar section.

Jake literally grew up with fireworks. His father, Ernesto Russo, took the family’s generations-old pyrotechnics secrets with him when he emigrated from Italy to America in 1911. Ernesto, soon joined by his brother, Federico, settled in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, a thriving Italian community. Together they built Russo Fireworks. By the late 1930s, the Russos were one of the great American fireworks families, creating world-class pyrotechnics displays at state fairs, city-sponsored 4th of July celebrations, and even a presidential inauguration. All of that ended, of course, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and America was drawn into the war.

Despite that the Russos immediately converted to weapons manufacturing for the Army and were entirely committed to the American war effort, it was not a good time to be an Italian in America. Among numerous challenges at home, Ernesto, who spoke mostly Italian, was arrested by FBI agents as a “resident alien” and spent much of the war years in internment camps. However, staying true to the wishes of his father, this did not deter Jake from his commitment to duty when he was drafted by the Army.

From November 1942 to March 1943, Jake fought with the first wave of American forces in Algiers and Casablanca. In the fall of 1943, he served in the decisive battle for Salerno and for four months in 1944 fought the violent assault for Anzio. In 1945, during rest outside Rome, Jake met Lorena.

In his years in the fields and deserts and trenches, he had learned that it was best not to plan for tomorrow, but the widow had warmed something in him, something he dared trust. Nearly ten years older than him, she was raven haired, shapely, with deep sad eyes. He spoke enough Italian that they could get by. There was espresso in cracked porcelain demitasse cups, taken with biscuits while reading Thoreau aloud. A gift of a clean shirt made for him from wind-faded bedroom curtains that smelled of nebbiolo on the vine. In the pain of the destroyed land, she taught him about women, how to hold them, touch them, please them. Two days before his division headed for Germany, Jake thought about proposing to her, but all that ended with a click in a ruined vineyard, her smiling, walking toward him, and the sound of metal clasping metal. And in a portion of a second she was gone with an explosive and fiery shudder, bits of her bones and body torn and hurled through the smoke, cast about the ground before him like a rain of dark hail. Jake buried her in the vineyard and headed north.

On April 29, 1945, Jake Russo, with troops from the 45th Infantry Division, fighting their way toward Munich, stumbled upon a place of barbed wire. In tattered wool pajamas, faded stripes, they peered out at him. Eyes in black sockets, in sunken bobbling skulls, reflecting the unimaginable, unspeakable horrors of the boneyards and furnaces behind them. Gaunt witnesses of the macabre, they stood and leaned and lay by the dozens and hundreds and thousands, their numbers overwhelming and terrifying and unhinging. Jake had no words to describe it. As much as war breaks a man’s heart and damages his spirit, what Jake saw in that place called Dachau changed him.

Ten days later, on May 8, Berlin fell and Germany surrendered. Americans drank champagne and danced in the streets. GIs kissed girls in Times Square. And Jake came home. But home wasn’t the same, not for Jake Russo. He wasn’t the same. Despite what those in Lawrence County had read and thought they knew, they could never know what was now inside Jake Russo. He returned a stranger.

Jake stopped his digging, realizing that he’d buried all the mortar pipes he’d removed from the truck. His body told him that he was tired and hungry. He could rest, of course. He had plenty of time. But rest was something that Jake Russo did not welcome. Because when his body was at rest, his mind was not. And the places that his mind took him when unfettered were places he never cared to see again. Even in memory, they were terrible, unfathomable places. So Jake took comfort in labor, in constantly moving.

He considered the dozens of mortars already dug in, counted them, yanked out his pocket journal, and checked them off. Then he reviewed the list of remaining mortars for this show. It was time to start breaking out the bigger ones. He went back to the truck.

Loneliness really wasn’t so bad, he often thought. There was a peace to it, and he cherished that. He had his fireworks and the simple blessings of each day. What more did a man truly need? Still, despite his best efforts, sometimes a feeling worked its way to mind, the desire for something greater, something beyond the rations and provisions on a soldier’s checklist. Someday, he couldn’t help thinking, it would be nice to have someone, to be close to a woman. Of course, that would most certainly require him to open up a part of himself that he feared was no longer there. And who could love someone like that? After all that he had seen, all that he had done, who could love what was left of Jake Russo?

So he remained determined to keep his feelings in check. Uttering his deepest thoughts only with rockets and mortars and shells bursting with stars.