While I’m sure that it all really began a long time before this, for me it began on Memorial Day, 1995 or, as others fondly remember it: “The Day Michael Spaulding nearly burned down Mount Royal.
“What’s Mount Royal?” asked Homicide.
“What’s Mount Royal? How long have you been skulking around here following us, and you haven’t figured that out yet?”
“We’ve been a little pre-occupied with some precocious teenagers.”
I smiled. “Fair enough. Mount Royal is a subdivision out in Fruitland. It’s where Michael grew up with his mom and dad. Mount Royal is so called because smack dab in the middle of it is an Native American burial mound of the same name. This is protected land - so it makes for a really weird setting. You have all these fancy homes, some of which have airplane hangers attached as this community has it’s own runway, and then there’s this burial mound with a fence around it. Sometimes the Native Americans go out there and perform ceremonies on the mound, and at some point in the past several years there was a big archaeological dig out there.
Anyway, that’s where Michael grew up. His parents are both dentists in Jacksonville and they own a plane. His dad has his pilot’s license, so they fly to work every day. Somehow, that makes more sense than driving. Never made much sense to me, but then again, my family’s income hovers right around the poverty line.
I digress, it was Memorial Day, 1995 and Michael had been working on some new fireworks for the fireworks display that evening. Michael had already been experimenting with chemistry for years at this point. He received some children’s book of chemistry experiments for Christmas one year when he was around eight or nine years old and the thing captured his imagination to such an extent that chemistry became his whole life from that point forward.
At first, his parents were thrilled. They thought they were going to have another doctor in the family, or maybe a pharmacist, but it wasn’t long before things began to get completely out of control. Michael was mixing any and everything he could to test for a reaction and damn the consequences. One time, his grandmother told me, he accidentally made mustard gas in the toilet while doing chores and the whole house had to be evacuated. He thought that mixing bleach and Windex would just make a stronger cleanser, never thinking for a moment that Windex’s main ingredient was ammonia. After that he got really meticulous about reading labels.
Another time there was chemical spill in the supermarket. A whole pallet of ammonia spilled in the aisle. While they were evacuating the store, our intrepid chemist runs to the other end of the place and sprints back with a bottle of The Works and pours it on the mess. A huge white cloud forms. The store manage is irate and bans Michael from the store. Later, come to find out, that’s exactly what should have been done, as the poison control hotline later confirmed.
So, like I said, Michael was making some homemade fireworks for the community celebration of Memorial Day. There were a few families in the neighborhood who would all get together and have a barbecue and set of some fireworks and sparklers and whatnot for the kids. Maybe they’d have a slip and slide as well. I wouldn’t know. I was never invited. Michael thought he would make some really big and bright fireworks for this celebration. Some fireworks that were going to put the store bought ones to shame. He worked all day mixing this and that together in his little lab and packing the powder into different rockets. He added different metals to make different colors.
Well, he decided that he wanted to make a green firework. Green is hard to make, you see. It required barium chloride, which is really unstable at room temperature, so it has to be combined with chlorinated rubber to be used in the firework.”
“How did a kid even get all this stuff?” Thunder Mountain asked.
“Man, I don’t know. His parents didn’t know how to say ‘no’ I guess. It’s not like you can’t just order this stuff from a chemistry supply company. People do experiments I guess. Short answer? No idea. Anyway, he’s got all this barium chloride in this firework which was not combined with enough chlorinated rubber. He’s packed all these fireworks with this stuff, and they’re in a pile with all the other fireworks. Suddenly, they all start going off at once, and they’re all on the ground. They shoot off in all directions. Toward houses, toward people, toward trees. It’s chaos. Total pandemonium. No one knows what’s happening, or why, but somehow everyone is pretty sure that it’s Michael’s fault.
The fire department and the police are called and eventually it becomes clear what happened. Michael feels bad and he apologizes over and over and over, but no one is having it. This was the last straw. His parents are finished with his shenanigans, he’s going to live with his grandmother in town where she can keep a better eye on him. They blame themselves because they work so far out of town, but it’s not like they can close up their practice in Jacksonville and work in Crescent City, you know? It’s not like they’re rich or something, right? It’s not like they have options.
And that’s how Michael ended up living next door to me.”
Homecide shifted in his chair. “What do you mean ‘This was the last straw?’ Other than the mustard gas and the good deed at the grocery store, what else had he done?”
“Allegedly, his mother was terrified that he was going to blow up the house when they weren’t home. She claimed that the carpet in his room was full of holes from his experiments and that he’s caused the house to shake on more than one occasion from an explosion in his lab.”
“You don’t sound like you’re buying it.”
“His mother and I don’t get on.”
“Ah.”
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