BLOGWORDS – Wednesday 2 July 2025 –WRITING WEDNESDAY – DOUBLE DOUBLE WHO’S IN TROUBLE – FOURTH OF JULY
WRITING WEDNESDAY – DOUBLE DOUBLE WHO’S IN TROUBLE – FOURTH OF JULY
* cover reveal Friday 5 September
FOURTH OF JULY
“Shhhh….” Jere was making entirely too much noise for what was supposed to be a stealth operation. At least, as stealthy as two twelve-year-old boys can be.
Mr. Milford was the fakest pretender in the world. He did all this great stuff, like he set up a huge Christmas display in his yard every year, with Santa and the elves and Rudolf, a whole miniature Christmas village with a train running through it and tiny people on a fake ice pond. Every year at Easter he hid giant Easter eggs around his big ol’ yard and all us kids in the neighborhood got to come hunt for them. He even had his own miniature Fourth of July parade around the neighborhood before he set off his fireworks display.
And that’s what me and Jere were after. Mr. Milford’s fireworks.
Mr. Milford was a retired school teacher so he knew all about mischievous kids. And discipline. There were stories about how strict he was in his classroom.
Anyhow, me and Jere had staked out Mr. Milford’s house, which was easy enough on account of we could cut behind the old Hall house and through the little woods behind his house. We had a perfect hideout from behind the bushes.
Fourth of July was on a Sunday that year and we weren’t going to church with Marvin anymore and Mom was working, so we hauled our skinny little butts along the path to Mr. Milford’s house while he was at church.
“Sombody’s coming.” Jere whispered—way too loud.
I froze and listened, but didn’t hear anything, so we continued on.
There was a storage shed behind the carport and we knew that’s where the loot was. It was locked, of course, but the lock was old and easy enough to open without the key.
“Man alive, Jord! Look at all this stuff.”
We both gawked at all the power tools and equipment Mr. Milford had. But as much as we both could have gone ape playing with it all, we got what we came for and hightailed it out of there, putting the lock back in place even if it wasn’t, well, locked.
Diamond River ran along the north edge of our little neighborhood, and there was a field on the other side where Mr. M set up his display every year. So that’s where me and Jere headed.
Mr. M usually waited until like 9:00 to start his show so we knew we had to start earlier than that or else he’d know his goods were missing.
So we set it all up—everything all at once! We were kids what did we know? It was barely dark but we had to do it before we were discovered.
“Did you bring the matches?”
“Matches, Jord? What are you, ten?” Jere produced a brand new cheap little lighter. “This’ll do the job better than some stupid matches.”
So he lit the first fuse, and stepped around the massive pile of explosives to light another one.
But he didn’t need to.
Once the first one went off—and made a spectacular display in the semi-dark sky—it set off another, then another, and others, till they were all going off at once. The display was great but the noise was awful.
What we hadn’t figured on, though, was that the field was dry. Not like a drought or anything, but not damp either. And the fire started to spread.
Of course, we were just two dumb adventure-seeking kids, and didn’t think about a fire, let alone prepare for it.
Dummy me, I tried to grab one of the [FIREWORKS] that I thought was a dud before it caught fire. But it wasn’t a dud at all, and it was burning already—and so was my hand.
I ran to the edge of the river and stuck my hand in. It was mountain water and it was cold, and felt so good.
We tried throwing dirt on the fire, which helped some, but not much. Jere got too close and singed his hair a little bit.
We were in a panic and scared out of our minds when Mr. Milford showed up. With a giant hose. Way bigger than a garden hose. He aimed the nozzle at the flames and the ground all around it, and had the fire out in no time. Well, it felt like forever but wasn’t really more than fifteen minutes.
Of course, other neighbors showed up, Carl and Marvin, [NAMES]. And somebody called Mom to let her know.
Turns out my hand was okay, about as bad as the time I skidded on my bike and scraped up half my leg. Mrs. Hall said it was on account of I stuck it in the river. Jere had to have a haircut but we were both due for one anyways.
As for Mr. Milford, he figured we had the punishment we deserved on account of how scared we were and that we both got burned. Still, we were grounded for the rest of the summer.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“I’ve always had voices—er, stories in my head. I once said I should write them all down so someone could write them someday. I had no idea at the time that someone was me!”
My stories are deep and dark, my characters raw and real, with a healthy helping of hope and joy, humor and laughter, and abiding and sustaining faith.
My characters struggle in some way for their identity. Their stories are their journey to know who God created them to be.
There is also a strong element of friends, family, and faith in all my stories, and the difference it makes to have such a support system.
· unsavory heritage series—seven generations, from Cissy to Connie, each with their own secrets, one of which is ugly and unsavory, and initiates the curse they all bear
· Seasons series—four friends, each one struggling to know the truth of just what happened when one of them plunged into the depths of the black waters of the Edisto River
· FourSquare – Four stories about four couples who also happen to be four sets of twins.
“Maybe you have to know the darkness to truly appreciate the light.”—Madeline L’Engle
“There is freedom waiting for you on the breezes of the sky. And you ask, What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?” —Erin Hanson
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https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7808042.Robin_E_Mason
#Blogwords, Writing Wednesday, Robin E. Mason, Current Work in Progress, #WIP, Double Double Who’s in Trouble, FourSquare Series Book 2, Fourth of July, #FourSquare, #twinfiction, #twinsmarryingtwins, #twinconflict, #fictionwriter, #battleforidentity, #cominginAugust, #amwriting, #amediting, #fictionwriting, #faithfiction
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