the stars were brighter

All day on the fourth we spent pasting down the radical monthly newspaper. We use the kindergarten cut and paste method still, not the computer program. It allows for our characteristic crooked headlines,and the use of graphics culled from everywhere--staff artists, kids, the newspaper at my feet--even though we don't have a scanner. We met during newspaper production, decades ago--another small town rag. This one is I think the 5th we've been involved with, produced on cardtables set up in mid store, the dogs and customers and cats milling about. Every so often a cat jumps onto a layout sheet and is picked up and dumped down elsewhere.
But our youngest child still lives with us, and my partner thought, at 10PM, we should go in search of fireworks.
Now, the town fathers and mothers had in fact put on a big display nearby, at a recreation center along the river, this the third year. The giant chrysanthemum fireworks, none of your little sparklers. But at 10 the event had ended, and we drove to another riverbank. Blue and white flashing lights--oh! look there! But no, it was an ambulance and police cars. Seems a woman and her children had lit some illegal fireworks--the good kind--and had set fire to a whole box. Burns, disaster--but this time not so bad. Kids and their mother transported to the local hospital. We watched the few remaining little fountains of sparkling, smokey minerals ignite, and came back to finish the headlines. All above us, far from the lights of town, near the time of the dark of the moon, masses of stars.