The Roman Candles (standard:drama, 1963 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Jul 04 2009	Views/Reads: 3196/2116	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Fireworks often illuminate more than the night sky. Can you imagine what it feels like for the truck drivers who have to deliver the stuff? I'll bet you can't!!!

THE ROMAN CANDLES 

Pike picked up one of the guns.  It was greasy and black where the fire
had burned its stock to a crisp.  Its barrel drooped, and the trigger 
guard was bent aside.  Two hundred guns like these had been swept by 
the fire when it touched off the warehouse.  They had been hidden 
inside the hollow aluminum beams which had burst open as the roof caved 
in.  Shreds of charred paper littered the floor knee-deep.  These were 
all that remained from the thousands of boxes of fireworks: cherry 
bombs and sparklers, rockets and torpedos, Big Johns and cannon 
crackers, whistlers, zoots, Peter-eaters and starbursts.  All the 
skyrockets had gone off, together with the pinwheels and the flares and 
the Catherine wheels and the flowerpots.  Pike leaned over and nuzzled 
the ashes with the burnt gunstock.  He picked up a ladyfinger that 
somehow managed to escape the holocaust.  Over in one corner, I 
recognized some Roman Candles.  Why hadn't they gone off?  There wasn't 
a trace of the seven women who worked here. 

What were two hundred automatic weapons doing in the middle of a
fireworks factory?  What else might be hidden here besides bullets and 
grenades?   Which revolution were they waiting for? 

Pike rubbed at his beard a little, then wiped some ash out of his eye
with the cuff of his jacket.  He tossed the gun aside and began to 
search for bones, a ring, a shoe -- anything that might identify his 
wife.  Impatiently, he began to kick aside the rubble, searching 
underneath the ashes.  Clouds of dust arose around him and fragments 
settled on his hat. 

"Where is she," he mumbled, kneeling, groping on all fours, probing for
a touch of something human.  I stood aside and watched him for a while. 


Since I first knew Pike, he had driven an explosives truck.  Each
delivery to the fireworks plant meant a big fat commission.  That was 
okay.  After all, what could happen?  The worst, I mean.  You go in an 
instant. No suffering, no pain.  But it wasn't fair to love somebody, 
plan for a home, a couple of kids, the sweet life ... then go and get 
blown away.  That wasn't part of the game. 

"I can't find her.  She's gone," he sobbed, "Help me find her, someone,
help me ..."  He groped aimlessly. 

When Pike was sixteen, he leaped from his old man's tractor into an
eighteen-wheeler, hauling logs for a lumber company.  Now and then, 
they let him carry the "little logs" in a pickup truck.  Each little 
log held nine ounces of nitroglycerin.  One charge would blow a tree 
stump clean out of the ground -- a stump as big as a two story house.  
He hauled blasting gelatin for two years without a mishap. 

During the war, Pike drove a munitions carrier: a rickety carriage
loaded with high explosive artillery shells, rocket warheads, 
incendiary bombs, rifle grenades and land mines.  If even one bullet 
had penetrated the flimsy armor, Pike's war would have been over.  
After nineteen months of front line service, he walked away without a 
scratch. 

The years that followed saw Pike hauling for a farm supply depot:
shotgun shells, black powder for hand reloading, bullets of every size 
and shape.  But word got round and in a few months, he was hired by a 
long-distance trucking firm at a good wage.  He stayed sober and ready 
to drive round the clock.  They built him a special truck cab and he 
lived right inside it.  When some customer needed to move explosives, 
Pike got the job. 

He hauled nuclear igniters and ballistic missile warheads, flame thrower
fuel, magnetic mines, blockbuster bombs, depth charges, booby traps, 
bazooka shells and dozens of unnamed cargoes labeled "Top Secret."  He 
hauled high-impact cartridges for the Franklin Mint and tear gas 
grenades for the Chicago Police.  When a chemical firm needed to move a 
shipment of potassium perchlorate or white phosphorus, Pike did the 
job.  He hauled black powder to the fireworks factory twice a month; 
and he delivered the finished product to wholesalers in thirty-eight 
counties over a five state area.  That's how he met Norma. 



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