A Plague Year (34 page)

I walked over to the Suburban and stood next to Arthur. I leaned my head into the hole he had just made. There was no question about it; Joel and his boys had smoked weed here during the play.

I was pulling my head back out, carefully, when I noticed a toolbox. Some pieces of the windshield had fallen down onto an open metal toolbox, but I could still see what was sitting right on top—a wood-handled ice pick. I reached in, brushed the glass shards away, and pulled it out.

Arthur’s eyes narrowed. But before he could do anything, I did it for him. I gripped the wooden handle tightly and stepped around to the left side of the Suburban. I pulled the ice pick back and plunged it, hard, into the left rear tire. I heard a quick hissing sound; then I smelled stale air rushing past my nostrils.

Arthur just stared at me, amazed. He finally proclaimed, “Righteous, cuz,” and clapped me on the shoulder.

We turned and walked back to the Geo Metro, leaving the ice pick, still hissing, in the sidewall of that very big, very expensive-looking tire. Arthur tossed the tire iron into his trunk and slammed it shut. Then we got in the car and drove off.

And we didn’t look back.

Arthur gunned it down the long entrance, laughing all the way. “I can’t believe you, cuz! I can’t believe that act of blatant vandalism. And with an ice pick! That was
righteously
blatant.”

“Well, they deserved it.”

He held up a hand to slap, which I did. He slowed down to negotiate the right turn onto Route 16. “Hey! Forget them, right?”

“Right.”

“Forget all of them. Forever.”

“Right again.”

“I have already forgotten them.”

“Me, too.”

“Now tell me: Where are we going?”

“The Friendly’s downtown. It’s across from Kroger.”

“Got it.” Arthur shook his head, bemused. “Those losers are too stoned to change a tire.”

I added, “And too pusillanimous.”

“Yeah. Whatever. Hey! Do you think they belong to triple A?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“Check it out: We belong to double A; they belong to triple A.”

We slapped five again.

The car kept skidding at every stop sign and traffic light, so Arthur dropped the transmission to a lower gear. Still, we managed to arrive at Friendly’s right after the Weavers.

As soon as we walked inside, I saw Jenny wave to me from a
vinyl-backed booth. I cut in front of Arthur and slipped in next to her. The lineup was this: Ben, Jenny, me, and Arthur on the red vinyl side: Mike, Mrs. Weaver, and Mr. Weaver in chairs on the other side.

Ben ordered a sundae with a cherry and nuts on top. He picked up the cherry, held it out to Arthur, and asked, “Can I eat this?”

Arthur assured him, “Yeah. That’d be okay.”

“What about the stem?”

“Ah, no. No stems.”

“Oh, man!”

We all laughed. The Weavers seemed puzzled, but they smiled along with us.

The Weavers started talking about the play and its themes, Mr. Proctor’s themes. They understood that it was all about Blackwater, and that the plague was meth. We talked about meth and what it had done to us, and how we could continue to fight against it.

Mrs. Weaver said, “Your parents have been terrific, Tom. Your father has been so generous with supplies from his store. Your mother has been so generous with her time.”

Mr. Weaver added, “We’re getting more people at the church basement—desperate, desperate people. We’re going to expand our services to food, clothing, and medical care. We’ll need more volunteers.”

Everybody raised a hand, nodded, or spoke up. We would all volunteer. We would have it covered.

I asked, “Medical care? How are we doing that?”

Mrs. Weaver said, “Nurses from Good Samaritan.”

“Is Mrs. Smalls one of them?”

“Oh yes. She’s organizing it.”

“I’m not surprised. She really knows what’s going on. She’s been calling it ‘the meth plague’ for a long time.”

Mrs. Weaver nodded. “We all need to do that. We all need to call it what it is.”

We continued to talk, and eat sundaes, and plan our counterattack against the meth plague for over an hour. When we finally trooped out into the parking lot, I saw that the snow had stopped falling. The sky was now clear and dark, with twinkling stars. The temperature had dropped, though; it had dropped a lot—so much that a runoff from the roof had crystallized, leaving foot-long icicles hanging over our heads, like swords.

Arthur jumped up and snapped one off. He handed it to Ben. “Here. Take this in case you get hungry later.”

Ben took it and stuck it between his back teeth. “Great. I’ll eat this before it melts.”

We all laughed; Mr. and Mrs. Weaver looked puzzled again. Then Jenny gave me a beautiful smile, and they took off.

It was a perfect moment, I thought. On a perfect night.

But if I had known where to look, to the north and west, I might have thought differently. I might have seen a faint red glow in the dark sky.

Yin and yang.

Heaven and hell.

Paradise Lost
.

All the things Mr. Proctor had talked about.

If I was thinking that this plague year would end on a happy note, or on a positive note, or even on a not-horrible note, I was mistaken.

Arthur saw the glow in the sky before I did, but he misinterpreted it. “Looks like a fire up in Primrose. Maybe a forest fire.”

“A forest fire? In the snow?”

“No, you’re right. Maybe a grease fire. Or maybe somebody was cooking with propane and the damn thing blew up.”

But as we drove on, Arthur got less sure of that, and less talkative. Something bad was happening, but it wasn’t in Primrose.

It was in Caldera.

He finally said, “Sorry, cuz. I gotta know where that fire is. You okay with getting home late?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Neither of us spoke again as we rose higher into the mountains. The first sign of the tragedy was, oddly enough, something comical. The heat of the fire was melting the snow and ice above us, creating a river of running water. As we slowed to turn onto Arthur’s road, I saw an orange duck—a small plastic one—floating by.

As we accelerated up the road, I saw orange plastic rings floating in the runoff, too, followed by black Transformer parts.

By then, we could see the red flashing lights of a Haven County ambulance up ahead. We could see the blaze by then, too, through the sparse winter trees.

It wasn’t Aunt Robin’s trailer, but it was right behind it.

It was Warren’s.

Arthur slammed to a halt in the middle of the road. He turned off the ignition and bolted out of the car. I got out and followed him as best I could, scrambling up the short hillside, slipping in the river of icy water that was running down.

Jimmy Giles, wearing nothing but jeans and a T-shirt, was standing halfway between his trailer and Warren’s. He looked devastated, broken, shaken to the core.

The ambulance was parked on a spot well away from the blaze. Aunt Robin, Cody, and a paramedic were sitting in the front cab. The paramedic was speaking into a black microphone.
A second paramedic, a stocky guy in an orange coat, was standing between Jimmy and the burning trailer.

Arthur ran up to Jimmy. He had to shout to be heard. “Where’s Warren?”

Jimmy opened his mouth slowly, reluctantly. Then he spoke through gulping sobs. “He was the doomed one. Not me.”

“What?”

Jimmy’s voice rose. “Warren’s dead, Arthur! He got killed in there. By an explosion.”

Arthur shook his head from left to right. “What are you talking about?”

“He’s got chemicals in there. You know that. Bad stuff …” Jimmy’s voice trailed away.

The paramedic took a step toward Arthur and yelled, “The man inside the trailer is dead from an explosion. It blew a hole in his chest.”

Arthur pressed both hands against his ears. Then he yelled back above the roar of the blaze, “Where is he now?”

“In the kitchen area.”

“Why isn’t he out here? Why aren’t you working on him out here? Why aren’t you trying to save him?”

The paramedic took another step and explained. “I looked inside. I saw the man very clearly. He is dead. He is surrounded by volatile chemicals, though. We can’t remove him until the firefighters get here, put out the fire, and tell us it’s safe to remove him.”

The paramedic half turned at the sight of flashing lights. His right arm shot up and pointed. “Okay! Here they are! They’re turning up the road.”

Arthur looked confused. He finally asked, “You’re not leaving him in there?”

“No. I just explained to you—”

“No, I’m explaining to
you
! We gotta get him out of there!”

The paramedic opened his mouth, but he stopped speaking at the blast of a horn from the fire truck. A voice called out from the passenger-side window, “Move this car! We can’t get the engine in!”

My head was whirling around—from the blaze, and the smoke, and the noise, and the rush of the icy water. Here was something I could do. I yelled, “I’ll get it!” and took off back down the hill.

Almost immediately, my feet flew out from under me and I slid to the bottom, my back caked with ice and mud. I hurried to the driver’s side, jerked the door open, and jumped in. I cranked the car key, dropped the transmission into gear, and lurched forward about twenty yards up the road. Then I turned the car off and ran back, as best I could, to the blazing trailer.

I couldn’t see Arthur anywhere.

The paramedic was gesturing angrily to his partner, and to the firefighters. Suddenly I heard an explosion inside the trailer, like the propane tanks at the Food Giant. The fire surged even higher into the night, bursting through a hole in the trailer’s roof.

I looked at Jimmy. He was staring, stunned, at the trailer’s front door. Then I knew where Arthur was.

I took off running toward that door. The paramedic made a move to block me, but he was too slow, and I slipped around him.

The heat got stronger, like a wall of energy pushing against me. I reached the trailer just as Arthur’s back appeared inside. His hood was up over his head. The top peak of it was on fire, like a small candle. His sleeves were on fire, too, at the elbow. He backed out rapidly, so fast that I had to scramble out of his way.

He was dragging a body after him.

Warren’s body.

Warren’s face was gray with death. He was wearing the remnants of that Haven High Football jacket. His chest had a large bloody indentation in it, the size and shape of a bowling ball.

Arthur kept moving, kept dragging, seemingly unaware that his own clothes were on fire. I sprang forward and drove my shoulder into Arthur’s, hitting him a solid blow, like a football block. He released his grip on Warren and fell backward. I could hear the flames on his head and arms hiss out on the watery ground.

Arthur’s face contorted in pain. His mouth opened, and he screamed. Then he flipped himself over spastically, rising up on his elbows. He started coughing rapidly, deeply, uncontrollably.

Somewhere behind me, the firefighters unleashed two streams of water onto the roof of the trailer. One of them barked at us, “Get back! Both of you! There are chemical vats in there!”

The paramedic grabbed hold of Warren’s body, just as Arthur had done. His partner joined him, and they soon had Warren away from the trailer. They fastened him to a stretcher and hoisted him into the back of the ambulance.

Jimmy and I helped Arthur rise to his feet. We led him, step by step, to a spot in front of the ambulance. Arthur dropped to one knee and stared at the ground, panting and coughing miserably.

Jimmy spoke in that haunted voice. “It was Warren. He was the one. He was doomed.”

The first paramedic returned to take a look at Arthur. He said, “You are injured, son. We need to treat these burns. We might need to take you to the ER to check out your lungs.”

Arthur hacked up some foul liquid and spit it on the ground.
He managed to say, “Treat the burns. But I ain’t going to no ER. I’m staying here.”

The paramedic applied salve to Arthur’s ears, arms, and hands; then he wrapped both hands with gauze and tape. He lectured him, “I told you he was dead already. Didn’t you believe me?”

Arthur answered softly, almost to himself, “He didn’t burn.”

The paramedic asked, “What?”

But Arthur didn’t answer him. He spoke to Jimmy and me, his voice rising in intensity. “He didn’t burn, goddammit! He may be dead, but I didn’t let him burn.”

I nodded rapidly; then Jimmy did, too.

“He didn’t burn.”

The paramedic stared at Arthur for a moment, confused. Then he went back to wrapping the bandages.

From somewhere behind me, I heard Cody start to cry. Aunt Robin crossed in front of us, bearing him up in her left arm. She paused for just a moment to stretch out her right arm and touch the top of Arthur’s head, keeping her hand away from the burns. Then she stepped carefully through the mess and continued on into her trailer.

Jimmy trudged in after them. His feet were bare. His bony shoulders showed through his T-shirt. He had to be freezing.

I stayed outside with Arthur. He remained kneeling in the slop, his head bowed. The runoff water continued to flow around him. He was holding up a bandaged hand at a ninety-degree angle, like he wanted to ask a question. His lips were moving.