Part 2. $14,000 for what

Three possible fates await when you drive up a long dirt driveway in New England.

(A couple of weeks ago, I wrote to you about my stance on kid birthday parties, which saw my family eventually driving to a kid birthday party in Richmond, NH, where all the things are true. That was Part 1. This Part 2.)

One fate is a hunting camp — a near-shack of dark-stained pine wood and a collection of ratty camp chairs. Sometimes a shabby carport leans into the shack like a tired, loyal dog. It's rough, but it's tidy. It's got a job.

Two is a palace. A second-home flaunting of privacy and windows, and the despair of a well-intended soul who didn't realize the country would make them feel so alone.

Then there's number three.

"Hi. Hey. What's up. Hi. Hey. Devohhhhhhhhhhn! Get out here! You got a friend!"

A quartet of white adults in camp chairs greeted my spouse and me as we emerged from our electric vehicle by the birthday party house. Our son, resplendent in a too-small rainbow-colored sweater, his red-gold braid down his back, ran through the open side door to find Devon.

The house sat at the top of a rise in the forest.

It seemed to grow out of the woods, at first a small saltbox with a crumbling, mossy foundation, then a bulging hobbit-like burrow, except the winding rooms were piles of discarded large appliances, and a jumble of car parts, old grills, bottles, and broken furniture, and what I assumed was a small off-brand UFO.

"Thanks for coming."

A woman I recognized from school pick-up stood up. Devon's mom. To her right was the junk. Behind her was parked a bulky SUV, and to her left sat a large dark truck, making a courtyard of the dirt patch beside the house.

She smiled, very bright, her eyes wide and warm behind her glasses.

She turned her head toward the door and loosed a yell practiced over many children. "Dehhhhhhvon! Come play outside!"

"Are we the first here?" My spouse sat in one of the moderately ratty chairs and extended his hand to the youngish-oldish man next to him.

Devon's dad. I remembered him from the second-grade open house. He was clever and quick. Irascible. Uncomfortable in groups. Something like Adam Sandler, Jon Stewart, and Jeff Foxworthy combined.

"Nah, other kids are inside. More coming, right? I gotta dunk Tammy's dinglebrat in the lake, I promised him."

Pushing his big glasses up his nose, pushing back his corona of black and gray hair, he turned to the couple in the other chairs, two people of indeterminate shape and hesitant, pained expressions, as if the effort of existing again today had already exhausted them. Later I learned that the woman was suffering a bad migraine, three days long.

My spouse, who, as a local journalist, can shoot the shit with anyone next to inexplicable junk piles, starting talking about Richmond and his years at the regional high school, where Devon's mom and dad also went.

Bam. Bam bam bam. Bam.

Moderately distant gunshots thudded against their talk. It was a week after Uvalde.

Bam bam. Bam bam bam. Bam.

"Yeah, you can tell when people get home from work!" Devon's mom nodded. She'd just been talking seriously about her son's neurodivergence and when he best thrived during the school day. "All around the hill, everyone shoots off, like 20 minutes at a time with," she squished up her mouth, "their wittle, wittle shotguns."

I began to make a sympathetic face. People ran a backwoods shooting range near our house, too, until enough residents complained. The hours of bambambambambambambambam made every day feel like an urgent, boring war.

"Those peashooters aren't nothing like what we got though," she said.

Children erupted from the house in a battle of yellow and blue pool noodles. They hooted and thwacked, my son among them, fierce and at ease up and down the driveway and in the woods.

Sometimes when kids play rough I have to look away. I can't bear the real violence underneath the game. Need and horror twist their faces. Given enough time, they harm.

But these kids, a bunch of ages, white and brown, some of indeterminate gender, weren't scary. They hit hard but laughed and backed off. They coiled into bunches of chaos and split apart to run, the distance between them never too close or too far. All dirty and safe. Free.

"Oh yeah." Devon's dad sat with his feet together, toes pointed out, and knees splayed, relaxed in a too-small chair. He pointed at Devon's mom. "She's got her shotgun and her pistol. Our daughter has her semi. Our other boy wants an AK-47, maybe next year. Devon's too young. But as soon he can handle a weapon, maybe, yeah."

I declined my head in a soft mask of protection, as if to say, Oh, yes, tell me more. Hearing about family arsenals is familiar and comforting to me.

He glanced my way. "Yeah, they're all pretty loud. But," he stuttered his feet forward and titled his head back. "nothing like what I take up to the police range."

He said some words I didn't hear. My son was whipping his pool noodle with hot gleeful abandon at the older boys.

I watched their faces and bodies, but they seemed game to humor this littler kid. I felt no danger, saw no edge. They could play.

I tuned back into Devon's dad. "Yeah," he was saying, "all the cops get out of their cars when I put that attachment on."

"Food's ready!" Devon's mom called from the doorstep. The wood was ragged and dusty. It reminded me of my childhood home.

Devon's dad laughed. "With that attachment that baby shoots 6000 rounds a minute."

Devon's mom turned to us. "There's a whole spread," she said. "All sorts of stuff. Devon's favorites."

Devon's dad stood up. "Kids! Crazy kids with pool noodles! Come eat before I eat it all."

He put his hands on his hips. "Yeah, the cops all want to get a look at it. Of course they do! That attachment cost $14,000."

The kids rumbled up the hill, flushed and free of time, sure of food.

"Eat up, there's plenty for everyone," Devon's mom said to us. Soon she would tell me about her ferrets and show me pictures of them on her phone.

"We're so glad you came."

// End of Part 2. Next time: Adults-Only Renaissance Faire //