Free Born Under a Lucky Moon by Dana Precious Page A

kitchen,” she said—which was a problem when you had seven butts.
    We heard the first explosion go off. Mom lit a cigarette. I went over to the sliders to see what was going on. The first explosion seemed to be successful. Chuck and Dad were peering down at a decent-sized hole.
    â€œThat’ll fix them,” Dad crowed. “Or at least scare them over to the Longs’ yard.” Dad didn’t like the Longs. Mr. Long always complained about our dog, Buddy, peeing on his lawn. All of their kids played flute or violin in the school orchestra, and the entire family was high-strung and always on some vitamin regimen. When they started selling Amway products, Dad wrote them off for good.
    The second explosion erupted. Chuck and Dad gleefully raced over to inspect the damage. A trickle of water started overflowing the hole. Dad was scratching his balding head when a geyser shot up in the air—not just some mini Old Faithful, but a thundering-straight-up-in-the-air-for-twenty-feet geyser.
    â€œShit. I hit the water main.” Dad trudged off to the side of the house to switch off the main. The geyser slowed down and became more like an open fire hydrant in New York in August. Then it died completely. “Is it off?” he shouted from around the corner.
    â€œYup, Mr. Thompson. It’s done,” Chuck shouted back.
    The third explosion took them by surprise as Dad was rounding the corner of the house. They both leapt back about ten feet. Smoke began to rise from the pile of dead leaves under the stairs that led down to the dock. Mom had been bugging Dad since last fall to rake them out. Then we saw flames. They weren’t huge, only licking about a foot in the air.
    â€œGet the hose!” Dad screamed.
    I turned from the sliding doors back to my Mom, Sammie, and Lucy. “Is anybody else interested in this?”
    The doorbell rang, and Mom went to answer the door.
    Chuck ran around the corner of the house and reappeared on the other side. “Where is it?” he asked.
    â€œIt’s . . . shit. It’s right here.” It was on the lawn where Dad had left it while fixing the water sprinklers. He raced for the faucet and cranked the handle. Nothing.
    â€œOh shit. No water. Rose!”
    Mom was by now, thankfully, not in the house. I ran out front and listened to her try to explain to Mrs. Petty why the love of her son’s life was marrying another man a mere nine months after they had broken up. Mrs. Petty tearfully said that it shouldn’t matter that Jeff had dumped Lucy for another girl. The other girl hadn’t worked out, so why couldn’t Lucy and Jeff get back together? They still had those Christmas ornaments with their names painted on them from the high school Christmas dance, after all. I decided that Mom was much too occupied to deal with our house being on fire and ran back to the kitchen.
    Through the open sliding doors, I could see Dad trying unsuccessfully to stomp out the fire with his shoe. “Chuck, get a bucket!” he finally yelled.
    Chuck ran into the kitchen, looking dazed and panicked. “Bucket?”
    Sammie calmly opened a cupboard door and handed him a saucepan.
    â€œIs that it?” Chuck looked at the saucepan as if he had never seen one.
    â€œThat’s it,” Sammie said, and closed the cupboard door. Even if we did have a bucket we would never find it. It’s not like there was a special place in the garage marked BUCKETS , for God’s sake. Chuck ran back out to the backyard. Dad pointed down the hill at Bear Lake. Chuck ran around the fire burning up the dock stairs and nearly fell down the hill trying to get to the lake. He scooped a pan of water and ran back up the hill. By that time, Dad had put out the fire with what was left of the coffee in his thermos and the water out of Buddy’s bowl. As he stood surveying the damage, Chuck poured his 1.5 quarts of water onto the smoldering