8:27 - The rains come. The annoying kind - just a slight drizzle. Enough to dampen the shells and fuses, yet light enough to keep the show on. We place Visqueen over the small finale' stages and place sheets of thick, black, roofing rubber under and over the boxes of bombs. Mike secures sheets of aluminum foil at the larger finale' stage, individually crowning each large, preloaded mortar.

8:45 - Gunther Sinler, Ludlow Parks and Recreation Director, arrives on an empty parking shuttle bus and talks to Brent. "It's in your hands," Brent says, hoping to push the start time up. "You tell us when." Gunther wants the start to remain at 9:30 - the advertised time. The whole crew gets on edge. The longer we hold out, the damper the air gets, the damper the fuses get, and the greater the chance that the skies will open right up on us.

Gunther tells us to watch the parking lot lights behind the audience. He will flash them to signal the start of the show. He leaves.

8:52 - The Ludlow Fire Department arrives. The rescue truck pulls alongside us, raises a lighting panel and lights us up like Monday Night Football.

8:55 - Teams. This is one of those things that just cannot be done until the last minute. Everyone meets next to the boxes of bombs and Brent decides who will do what jobs tonight. On the four-inch bombs, Brent will load, Cindy will fire and I will, well, pull the bombs from the box and hand them to Brent, a critically important position, I'm told.

Robert, Troy and Mike team up on the five-inch bombs and Lonnie and Jim on the six and eight-inch bombs. Larry will fire the finale' and will fill in gaps in the main show. He will do this from behind the van, because Larry knows better.

9:04 - The fire truck leaves, rolls down the hill to the audience and lights that area.

9:05 - Larry cannot wait any longer, he has to set up the electronics. In the rain, he wires the squibs to a portable electronic panel placed behind the finale' stage, and covers it with a cardboard box. He will wire this panel to another one near the van.

9:07 - The parking lot lights go out, and that inspires the crew toward mutiny. "Brenny, that's the signal," someone says. "Let's go. Let's do it."

Brent is off-put. Gunther said nine-thirty, but... "No. He's gonna flash the lights," he says. "Brent, you can't flash sodium-vapor lights," Jimmy retorts. "He wants us to start!" Brent hunches up and thinks, his massive arms crossed on his chest. He holds firm. "We fire at nine-thirty."

9:10 - Larry performs a circuit test to check that the finale' is fully wired and ready. The test will check all the circuits without heating the squibs. The test is successful.

9:14 - Three kids, playing football or something, stray too close and Brent whisks them away like flies. "Get back, kids," not breaking his stride. "It's like a magnet," Larry tells me (he has been pushing them back all night.) "They want to get as close as they can."

9:17 - The parking lot lights are still turned off and we decide that Gunther had "turned the house lights off" for the audience. People have surrounded us, on the roadside and on the berm beside us - on our right flank, a large deck party is going on.

9:18 - The firemen start lighting flares - common red, roadside flares, about eighteen inches long. They put six flares on the ground along the front tubes to light our stage, then each fireman lights a flare to use for lighting fuses. Each time a flare is lit, the audience frenzy builds.

9:22 - Brent reviews with me what he wants me to do. I am to pull bombs out of four boxes, unwind the fuses and hand them to him. Since I will be handling four-inch mortars, I must not give one to anyone who needs a larger bomb. If a mortar is too small for the tube, it will rattle around instead of launching and will explode in our faces. I can pick the mortars in any order I please. This means that (in my mind) since I choose what gets loaded when, it is really I who is running this show. I don't brag about this.

9:30 - No lights. We wait. Maybe Jimmy was right; you can't flash the damn things. The audience is getting anxious. Rob and Lonnie are at-post, ready to light the opening double-volley. Brent looks carefully around at his crew. He is about to set off half a ton of black powder and he wants control. He checks every person with eye contact. He scans the backfield for children. He takes a mortar from me, glances at Cindy, then at Robert before giving the order.

"Rock and roll!"

The next twenty minutes fly past. I am hauling the bombs out as quickly as I can, but each time I have one ready, Brent is right there - I can't get ahead. We have at least three charges launching at a time and the noise is incredible. My heart is racing and, with my ears plugged, the sound of my own breaths fill my head.

The scene is like a very, very loud ballet, under an awesome light-show. The handlers pass the bomb to the loader who weaves between the firemen to one of the tubes, while the firemen and the loader dramatically keep the flares and the fuses far apart. The loader crouches, drops the mortar in the tube, removes the fuse cover and runs back. The fireman lights the fuse, sometimes at the end, giving him or her about three seconds to jump away, and sometimes halfway up, giving him or her about enough time to regret doing so.

Then the boom, like a car exploding, or a bank vault door being torn off and a "whoosh!" as the charge goes to flight. The audience cheers when the big ones explode and Brent yells to me as I pass him a Red and Blue Salute; "That's it, Mark. I love the crowd. I love to hear them cheer."

I try to look up occasionally to see the glory, but I am consumed with my job of passing mortars, staying the hell out of the way and watching these guys lay fire to the night sky.

There is a brief lull in the firing and Brent calls in his reserves; "Keep the show going, Larry," he shouts. Larry taps a few switches and "boom, boom!" our ceiling lights up again and we load our guns.

I hand off a Chinese Rainstorm, then a Golden Kamuro, a few Salutes and a Blue-to-Silver Penny with Pistil. Next is a Grand, Red, White and Blue Scorpion, then a Red and Blue-Tipped Tourbillion. The names are as colorful as their displays.

When I reach the bottom of my box, it is time for the finale'. We clear the main stage of all the mortar, uncover the finale' stages, check the fuses and clear out.

Tonight the fuses are just damp enough to slow the finale' down. Larry has the big shells flying beautifully, but we need someone to get to the smaller ones and keep lighting the fuses. I can see Brent doing this through the smoke and the flash, looking like someone trying to rescue a porterhouse at a way-out-of-control barbecue.

The finale' is incredible. From here the stage looks like a house-a-fire and the sky, like New Year's Eve. I am slightly dazed and so absorbed by the action that, after the closing double-volley, I am startled by a wave of applause from people all around us. The scene turns surreal; the debris floating to the ground, the roar of the audience, my breathing, my heartbeat, the steady whisper of the flares... After such bedlam, it's like we had slaughtered a magnificent beast, not created one.