Spring Sparks

"It sounded like firecrackers, but so much louder," I was told later. Ted had just been on his way out. They heard the shots, heard the running, heard the car peeling away and waited 20 minutes. Before Ted left, he took his 9 mm out and cocked it.

"Ted's from Mississippi," that's suppose to explain his gun.

The following Tuesday, I went to the bank in the Central Business District and sat down with a banker who said he's my neighbor. "It's a nice street to live on," he said and I agreed. I love where I live. We didn't talk about the shooting.

The second Saturday was the day before Valentine's Day. As I was entering sleep I heard screaming. There's a new teen club on the corner right there. My mind concocted a quick, dream-induced story about club romance and treachery. The person screaming sounded like he was alone. Then silence. Next came a round of bullets and exactly as they'd said, the sound of running on pavement, a car sped away.

"It's someone heartbroken," I said. We lay there in the dark, our hearts thumping. Lord I know I'd be terrible with a gun and heartbroken. That fit into a rhythm with the heartbeats and I drifted back to sleep.

The third Saturday, 12:27, the bullets flew again. This time we had company. "It's over a broken heart," I said. "They're not even shooting at anything." I went to the window and pulled the curtain aside. All down the street, brave neighbors opened doors and came onto porches. Otherwise, no one was there. Glistening under streetlights was a handful of bullet shells.

Despite the shells, we told the story to each other of how it was the Ghost of Valentines Past shooting up our street.

This was an unusually cold winter. January's hard frosts killed the banana trees and elephant ears. First the plants were drooping with cold and frozen. Next, they weren't just broken but actually liquefied. The shells of former stalks made puddles on dead lawns. Lawns the city over turned hard and brown.

The mornings after the shootings police investigators arrived to the corner of our street blocking the intersection with their unmarked cars. After a while they'd go. They never came with lights or sirens, just snuck in with their plastic gloves and radios and left without a sound.

The fourth Saturday made me mad. The round of bullets came at 12:27 am, waking me from much needed sleep. I went to the window but what I wanted to do was tear out onto the street. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? I wanted to scream. I went back to bed.

The fifth Saturday was funny. The bullets happened again, around 12:27. I went to the window and peaked out. Across the street, a neighbor looked out from her porch. Neighbors all down the street were coming out.

"Ma'am. Ma'am," I heard a small voice calling. "Did they shoot up your house?"

I looked into the street and saw three cops with flashlights rummaging around. In the dark, it actually looked like they had snouts and I laughed, not because of their noses but because of what they'd said. After that, I heard them talking. "Just fireworks," one said. Awesome, and it made so much sense, every Saturday at 12:27 someone was popping wild firecrackers. I went to bed.

Spring was in the air. Life was everywhere. On warm nights you saw kids streaming in and out of the club, music pumping. After January's cold snap I was sure our roses and citrus trees were never coming back. But after a week of sun and warmth there were new leaves. And the magnolias! I know, I get carried away, but the full blooming magnolias you see everywhere are majestic. How courageous and generous they were to come out at all when otherwise the world was cold and grey. You feel like you want to stop to kiss every bud on every magnolia tree.

The following weekend the shooting happened again. This time at 9:15. Maybe they were accounting for daylight savings. I went to the window and pulled back the curtain. The streaming blue and red of police lights burst through the dark. Several officers made a circle in the street. They wore bullet proof vests. One shouted orders to the others. He was focused and ready, you could see. He was magnificent.

I went to the balcony and heard the neighbors' talk: there had been two teens, one shot at a cop. The police dogs were loose. The air was warm and soft, the lights opened against the darkness, and the officers, strategizing, looked as though there wasn't a kid in the world who could touch them -lucky I guess too the kids do seem to be really bad at shooting.

The few people I told said the same thing: He shot at a cop? Kind of funny I thought, because in my mind, yes, if the kid was crazy enough to shoot at his friend, why not a cop?

It looks like the teen club is closed. The art house across the street with the gargantuan tree house is closed, all just as the world was starting to seem particularly lawless.

Maybe those things together were the reason for my dream.

A Catholic priest said of a haiku poet from Camden, New Jersey after he passed away decades ago: "He was pure flame in a battered city, a spark in a dark place." I think of that sometimes, about how I see those sparks everywhere I go.

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