The Mystery of the Memorial Day Fire

big lights are called fireworks, and they’re on purpose. The big light we saw tonight was an accident. It wasn’t part of Memorial Day. It just happened.”
    Bobby listened to the explanation solemnly. “Oh,” he said. “Thanks for explaining, Dan.” He wriggled out of Dan’s arms and ran into the living room. “Something exploded, Brian,” he shouted. “Didja hear it?”
    Peter and Helen Belden were astonished when they walked into the kitchen a moment later and saw Trixie and Dan holding their stomachs, doubled over with hysterical laughter.
    “Well,” Peter Belden said, “I’m glad to see that you young people weren’t too terribly frightened by the explosion.”
    “Oh, Daddy, we were,” Trixie gasped through her giggles. “Really — I’m not — I’m not kidding. I think that’s — that’s why I’m 1-laughing so h-hard right now.”
    “Let me guess,” Helen Belden said. “Bobby ran in and gave you his Fourth of July speech.”
    Her mother’s thoroughly accurate guess sent Trixie into another fit of giggling. “N-not only that, Moms. After Dan patiently explained the whole thing, Bobby ran off into the living room and started the whole thing over with Brian!”
    Mrs. Belden nodded, smiling. “That’s how children learn,” she said. “The harder something is to understand, the more repetitions they need before they can grasp it.”
    Peter Belden shook his head, his dark eyes somber. “What happened tonight is hard even for me to grasp. I shouldn’t wonder that it would take some time for Bobby to understand it.” The serious look on his face was so much like the one his oldest son had been wearing a few minutes earlier that Trixie was struck again by how much Brian and his father looked alike. Both had dark eyes and dark, wavy hair. Both had a steady calmness.
    “It was a horrible thing to happen,” Mrs. Belden said. “It was the first time I can ever remember that the Memorial Day parade was stopped.” Automatically, Helen Belden got out a plate and piled it with cookies from the cookie jar. Then she took out a tray and set out cups for the hot chocolate. Trixie noted with a grin that her mother had put out exactly the right number of cups, too — without even asking how many guests were in the house.
    Trixie poured the chocolate, then Dan carried the tray into the living room while she followed with the plate of cookies.
    Mart Belden fell upon the food eagerly, as always. “Ah, sustenance!” he exclaimed. “Succor!”
    “These aren’t suckers, Mart. They’re cookies,” Bobby said sternly.
    “Delicious cookies they are, too, Mrs. Belden,” Jim said, having picked up a cookie and a cup of cocoa on his way back from the telephone. “I don’t know whether even these are enough to make me forget how stupidly people were behaving tonight, though.”
    Helen Belden’s usually serene features suddenly looked stern. “I know exactly what you mean, Jim,” she said. “We were standing right at the curb when the explosion happened, and we actually had to fight our way through the crowd to get away. Everyone else was headed toward the fire!”
    “It’s positively ghoulish!” Trixie said with a shudder.
    “Not entirely,” Mr. Belden said. “I agree with you that not clearing the way for the fire fighters is not very bright. I don’t think that people mean any harm by it, though. I don’t even think they flock toward the fire because they enjoy fires. I think it’s more an attempt to take it all in, to understand it somehow. Some people,” he added with a pointed look at Bobby, “do that by asking the same question over and over again. Other people do it by staying where they shouldn’t be, hoping to look and listen long enough for it all to make sense.” There was a moment of silence when Mr. Belden finished speaking. The silence was broken by
    Brian saying, “Thanks, Dad. I was feeling awfully angry until you said that. I’m glad you — ”
    Brian broke off as Mart, who was sitting closest to the radio, put his fingers to his lips and turned up the volume.
    “... further word on the explosion that occurred tonight in Sleepyside-on-the-Hudson during the Memorial Day parade,” the announcer was saying.
    “The blast took place at eight p.m., just as the Torchlight Parade was near its midpoint. The parade was the one hundred seventeenth annual event, and the first ever to fail to reach its natural conclusion.”
    “Oh, who cares about all that stuff?”