From a little stand draped with flags a man with white whiskers with little red garters on his shirtsleeves is making a speech. “That’s a Fourth of July orator.... He’s reading the Declaration of Independence.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the Fourth of July.”
Crang! ... that’s a cannon-cracker. “That wretched boy might have frightened the horse.... The Fourth of July dear is the day the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 in the War of the Revolution. My great grandfather Harland was killed in that war.”
A funny little train with a green engine clatters overhead.
“That’s the Elevated ... and look this is Twentythird Street ... and the Flatiron Building.”
The cab turns sharp into a square glowering with sunlight, smelling of asphalt and crowds and draws up before a tall door where colored men in brass buttons run forward.
“And here we are at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.”
Icecream at Uncle Jeff’s, cold sweet peachy taste thick against the roof of the mouth. Funny after you’ve left the
ship you can still feel the motion. Blue chunks of dusk melting into the squarecut uptown streets. Rockets spurting bright in the blue dusk, colored balls falling, Bengal fire, Uncle Jeff tacking pinwheels on the tree outside the apartmenthouse door, lighting them with his cigar. Roman candles you have to hold. “Be sure and turn your face away, kiddo.” Hot thud and splutter in your hands, eggshaped balls soaring, red, yellow, green, smell of powder and singed paper. Down the fizzing glowing street a bell clangs, clangs nearer, clangs faster. Hoofs of lashed horses striking sparks, a fire engine roars by, round the corner red and smoking and brassy. “Must be on Broadway.” After it the hookandladder and the firechief’s highpacing horses. Then the tinkletinkle of an ambulance. “Somebody got his.”