Redding Family Reunion  I'm at a Redding family gathering at a house that is near Roundabout Way in Wilmerton, southeast of the sharp northward turn in the road, near Karen Hamilton's house. My uncle Rusty Redding and his son Melvin are there. I'm in a gray Isuzu Trooper-like vehicle with my cousin Rich Redding. I'm driving; Rich is in the passenger seat. He makes a comment on how he is attached to or likes this vehicle, and how he will miss it and won't know what to do when he is without it. I back the Trooper out of the driveway and park it next to the curb on the right side of the road. It's a stick shift, with a "sticky" shifter, not a smooth one. I may put it in gear to park it. My aunt Elaine Grains has bought the house two doors down from the one where we are. I'm walking back towards the house. Someone has a big box of Cuban cigars. They say the cigars were left over from my high school classmate Todd Warden's party yesterday. Todd was sick at his party, and cigars were passed out. I get a cigar and go into the house. I unwrap it, but don't know which end to bite the tip off, so I don't bite it. The cigar unwraps a bit. My uncle Dannie Redding and cousins Henry and Avery King are there. My housemates Hank Anderson and Norman Noman, and my supervisor Carly Lunch are there. There is orange juice in the refrigerator. Melvin is outside playing with a younger cousin. He has a red light, like the ones we're using in physiology lab. He is holding the light, which deflates when he nears a stream of hot air being out by a small heater. I may instruct him on how to avoid this. The family seems to be divided into two groups for a big game. One group consists of adults, who weigh more, and the other group of younger people and kids. It seems to be lopsided, so grandma Redding runs from the one team over to the other waving her arms comically. All of the extended Redding family is then in a big circular gathering. There is cotton candy being made in the center of the circle. Everyone is supposed to get a turn eating this cotton candy, but we all hold back, waiting for others to do so, so as not to be rude. Then someone says that newborns/young people should go first, so Melvin runs up and gets some cotton candy. From there, there is a pause again: people are reluctant to go. Rusty goes and comes back, sitting on my right eating his cotton candy. He says he's not going back to get more. I'm outside with a group of people sitting near the alley at home in Oak Valley at the south end of the garden near the tree. We sit in the dark watching the sky. There are lights that move across the sky at rapid speeds: too fast to be a plane, satellite, or other human object, but too slow to be a shooting star. I say, half joking, that it may be a UFO! One of these objects explodes. I think it has been shot. My friend Sarah Reed is there, behind me. I can't see well because there are branches in the way, so I move. There is a loud blast. Everyone stands up, startled and concerned. I say, "That was a shotgun", and then feel silly because many Redding men are there, and I know they know what a shotgun blast sounds like, so my words really just indicated my inexperience. Rusty leaves with Melvin to protect him. More blasts appear, and we see that there are fireworks in the sky. I sit down where I have a better seat. My friend Nat Miller is there. I see the silhouette of a helicopter circling close to us. It's dark and hard to see. I'm concerned about his because it seems like a war helicopter. I know there is one person in it, and later realize there are two. I'm concerned, and as the helicopter starts to come in to land at the north end of our block by the alley, I flee, to get out of sight. I know the men in the helicopter are from the army and will kill indiscriminately. I run out front in the yard, but then cut back towards the back yard. I see the two men approaching from the direction where they landed. They look lethal. I run though the back of Trammell's yard, down near the white house, across Home Avenue, and over a fence near the Giles' yard. There is a large machine at Giles' house that crushes people. There seems to be a narrator now. People are not spared. The army is responsible. There is a big spring in the machine that crushes people.