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Bombs Bursting In Air
We've been told to drop the dime on our neighbors if they shoot off guns tonite but I really don't think that will be necessary in the 2600 block of Dumaine. It is also illegal to possess and set off fireworks in Orleans Parish and even though personal fireworks useage is a crime largely ignored in New Orleans, 11-year-old neighbor Bryan Henry is really pushing his luck as far as I'm concerned.
He's a good kid, has a good mother, and a couple or three male relatives living with him who don't seem to be too shabby as role models. His mother earns a modest living as a cafeteria worker and exercises her right to raise Bryan in a conservative manner. However, as an only child he does receive special treatments--a (razor) scooter for Christmas, and the latest game playing devices over the rest of the year. And he is supplied with a modest pile of firecrackers in early July and late December.
Bryan is a good kid, did I mention that?, but...
The other day the gangsters over at St. Philip and Dorgenois set off at once a low estimate of ten thousand firecrackers that lasted approximately ninety seconds and had many of us Dumainers poking our heads out our front doors to determine more accurately the proximity of these explosions. The sound was the most exacting clue as to where these firecrackers were being set off but the huge cloud of smoke and its choking odor got the other senses involved too. The frighteningly rapid sequential and concurrent explosions reached such alarming crescendo on two occasions that I found myself grimacing as if preparing for the individual blasts to become one large one which would easily blow us all to kingdom come.
...the thing about Bryan Henry is that for the last several days--a couple of which I have stayed home all day because its cold and I'm a woos--he, and one or two of his cousins will start setting off firecrackers at 8 a.m. and continue until late evening, like this: 1-2-3, wait five minutes, 1-2, wait one hour, 1-2-3-4, wait five minutes, 1, wait two hours, break for lunch. Then in a fit of orgiastic abandon a string of 25 are set off all at once. Then silence for two hours, and so on, so that my nerves might require more medication than I have readily available, or maybe I should have saved what I had. If I had a modest trust fund and I wanted to be sure it would last throughout the rest of my life I would give it to Bryan Henry to manage for me, but I don't, and so the thing about Bryan Henry is--he's gotta go down.
911
"Emergency Operator"
"Yeah, uh, I've been hearing around that ya'll want people to call if we hear gunshots."
"Yessir, what is your location?"
"Um, I live at, um, on 2600 block Dumaine."
"Can you see the person shooting sir."
"Uh, well, yeah, I can."
"Describe the person for me sir."
"Well, he's short, say about four and a half feet, and uh male, black, black male, with a parka and a hood on it, and uh he makes fun of me sometimes..."
"...you know this person sir?"
"Oh, uh uh, no, not really no, I don't know him."
"You said..."
"...I don't know him at all."
"Can you determine this person's age sir?"
"Maybe he's twelve."
"A four and a half foot 12-year-old black male with a hooded parka who sometimes makes fun of you is firing a gun in the 2600 block of Dumaine."
"Well, now that you put it like that, I don't know, really, for sure if its a gun, but it could be, couldn't it?"
"I can't really say from here, sir, but we have cars in the area, we'll pass one by."
"Ohhhkay, well, thank you and..."
...click.
Hey, don't look at me like that, I'm just being a good citizen here, and uh, anyway, those vicodins really suck. What a total waste of opiate, mixing in all that acetaminophen. The wine spritzer of dope. Desperate time, desperate measures.