FAMILY RIOT

by ardavenport

- - - Part 1

"Oh, boy."

"What is going on?"

Fireman-Paramedic Roy DeSoto steered the rescue squad past the long line of parked cars, off the curved private drive onto the grass by a large tent canopy where a large crowd argued, yelled, pushed and jostled. Engine 51 rolled onto the flat expanse of lawn beyond, past a very large stone facade house. The fire engine stopped by a bonfire of trash and chairs and other wreckage from the picnic. The four men in helmets and turnout coats jumped out and grabbed hoses from the rig.

"Don't you talk to her like that!" "I should never - - !" "Let go of - - " "You never said that - - !"

The jumble of irate angry words told Fireman-Paramedic John Gage nothing about where they were needed as he climbed out of the passenger seat of the squad. A paper cup flew by. Behind him, he heard his partner requesting police assistance. The dispatcher replied that the Sheriff's Department had already been called. But they obviously had not arrived yet.

Roy got out of the squad. "Where do we start?"

A woman in a sleeveless plaid dress answered his question. "Oh, here! Help! It's my daughter!" She dragged a blond-haired girl, maybe nine or ten years old, behind her. Gage knelt to look at the girl, while DeSoto took their equipment boxes out of the squad compartments. The mother raged on.

"That horrible boy did this!"

Tight-lipped, the girl glared back at Gage, her left arm clutched tightly to the frilly front of her blue polka-dot dress. DeSoto tried to get information from the mother while Gage introduced himself.

"Hi there. Looks like you might have hurt your arm. My name's Johnny. What's yours?"

With a determined expression, she pressed her lips together.

"Charlene. And that horrible boy has broken her arm, I'm sure of it." The woman in the plaid dress leaned forward and her daughter cringed. Roy pulled her back.

All around them people shouted, though a few only watched and ate from paper plates on benches at the tables under the canopy. Lunch had apparently been hot dogs and potato salad. Trash and smashed food littered the ground.

"Do you mind if I have a look at it, sweetheart?"

Blue eyes huge, Charlene tensely watched him carefully take her arm and examine it, but she did not pull away.

"There, that's quite a bruise you've got there."

The girl suddenly flinched.

"Does that hurt?"

She silently nodded, her expression tragically close to tears now.

"Roy, I'm going to need a splint." Gage carefully guided her to the running board of the squad. "It's going to be okay. Let's just sit down right here." Roy handed him the splint and tape before calling for an ambulance on the squad radio. The mother followed him, complaining all the way.

"Now lets get this on you. Are you hurt anywhere else?"

She shook her head and whimpered a little as he immobilized the arm, but her worried glances all went to her irate mother.

A couple teenagers ran by and DeSoto caught a stream of yellow on his pants. Gage took a big squirt of red and a whitish splat on his shirt.

"Hey, hey!"

The condiment squeeze bottles and potato salad had become weapons in fight.

Another parent presented another injured child to John Gage. Sirens approached. Over by the bonfire a woman shrieked at Captain Stanley about the fire truck ruining her lawn, but the fire was out, now a smoldering pile of trash that Stoker, Lopez and Kelly were overhauling. Burned wood, paper and plastic scented the whole area. In the driveway, car breaks squealed; car doors slammed.

"All right, break it up!" "Break it up!"

Familiar, reassuring voices. Officers Grady, Duncan, Howard and others. Gage looked up from the arm he had just bandaged and the boy it belonged to yanked it back, his lower lip jutting out in an aggressive pout. The level of chaos around the picnic area immediately went down.

"Can we get some service here?!"

A loud man with a big gut in checked pants and a golf shirt came next. He had a puncture wound on his hand from a barbecue fork. He came with a large woman with tinted hair and bright yellow horned-rim sunglasses. More people followed with various minor injuries from the fight. A cut hand from broken glass, another kid with a broken arm, an older woman with a twisted ankle. The children were sent to the hospital with their parents when the ambulance arrived, but none of the other injuries required more than bandages. One somewhat calm woman told them that the fight around them was actually a family reunion of the descendants of a very wealthy and deceased patriarch who'd had fifteen children.

Both paramedics finished with the minor injuries and complaining, closed their boxes and put them away in the squad compartments.

"What the hell?! You! Stop that!"

Gage and DeSoto stepped away from the squad and the canopy to see what Captain Stanley was yelling about. A thin man in plaid pants and a white golf shirt waved around an improvised torch of a burning chair leg.

"This is my family's home! I can burn this garbage if I want to!" He waved back the fireman, swinging the flaming chair leg at them. The two paramedics ran up the hill to help, but before they got there, Marco Lopez had grabbed the reel line from the ground and unleashed a stream of water on their attacker, soaking him and the torch which went flying from his hand. The police officer who was about to grab him ducked out of the way just in time.

An angry Captain Stanley advanced. "Sir, you cannot just burn things in your yard like that! The county fire regulation - - "

"We'll see about that!" He turned around and ran right into the police officer who took him away.

"Would you look at that." Gage shook his head at the soggy, charred pile next to them.

DeSoto nodded. "Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, 'family feud'.

"Is that what this is? You mean all these people are related to each other?" Stanley walked up to them. The other firemen stood around the former bonfire on the lawn. The crowd over at the picnic area looked thinner, broken up by the police.

"Yep." DeSoto nodded. "And most of them make my mother-in-law look like a doting aunt."

"Mine, too." Stanley watched a white chair fly in the air. A policeman chased down the man who had thrown it. "Look at that."

"There goes the barbecue." DeSoto pointed toward the sound of metal clanging to the ground.

"Huh?" Gage looked up from the mess on the lawn at his partner and then over his shoulder to where he was pointing.

Pop! Pop!

The firemen all ducked down.

"What the hell was that?" Stanley straightened, looking toward the crowd. "Don't tell me those people have fireworks, too."

"That didn't sound like fireworks to me." Chet Kelly got up from his crouch. DeSoto helped Gage up.

"Ow." Gage rubbed his side and looked toward the new action over at the picnic area. Three policemen had converged on somebody under the tent canopy.

"Hey, Gage, what's what on your shirt?" Kelly pointed at his waist on his right side.

Looking down at the mess leftover from the food fighting family, he grimace. "Ketchup. There were some teenagers throwing food over there while we were trying to work."

DeSoto brushed at his own shirt. "And mustard. And maybe a little relish, too." But Kelly persisted, snagging the shirt, pulling on it.

"That's not ketchup."

- - - End Part 1