On Fire (19 page)

He shuffles through the papers on his desk. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“Not to me.”

He finds a red folder, holds it up and opens it. “Your name, based on your fingerprints is Willis Asche.”

“Who?” I ask.

“Asche, Willis Alan. Your parents had you finger-printed when you were eight as part of a missing child program. I've got it right here.” Frank flaps the papers at me.

“I've never heard of him,” I say.

Frank fiddles with the stapler on his desk. I think his time as an explosives expert is almost over.

“Listen, Frank,” I say. Now it's my turn to lean forward. “I'm positive my father never had me fingerprinted for anything like a program to find missing children.

“I've always believed that if I was kidnapped, he'd yell, ‘Amen,' and crack open a bottle of whiskey to celebrate.”

“Your father's alive?” Frank's eyebrows go up again. The top layer of paper on his desk lifts slightly, then settles back down.

“As far as I know.”

He studies the papers again. “This Willis Asche kid's whole family was killed in an automobile accident when he was nine. He was the only survivor. I've got a copy of the newspaper article here.”

He pushes on his lips like he's searching for the switch that will make this whole problem go away. “You're positive about your dad?”

“I'm positive he didn't die when I was nine.”

“And about the name? You didn't know what it was this time last month.”

“Now I do.”

“Son of a gun,” Frank says. He slaps his hand down on the desk. Then he looks up at me. “If you're this Eustace Miller character, and it seems like you know what you're talking about, then who in blue blazes is Willis Asche?”

“I'm sorry, Frank,” I say. “That name doesn't mean anything to me at all.”

M
ATTI

1
C
HARCOAL

I
DECIDED THIS IS WHAT
I'
D
tell a T. V. reporter if one ever stuck a microphone in my face and asked me, “Matti Iverly, what's it like to move back to the place you've lived all your life after it's been burned out?”

“If you're serious about finding out,” I'd say, “get a bulldozer to come in and knock down most of the houses in your town. Make it your neighbourhood if you live in the city. Leave a few buildings standing for no reason you can understand.

“You can even let one of those buildings be your own house, if you're okay feeling guilty about having a roof over your head when your neighbours don't. Try living in your house while what's left of the ones around you have been bulldozed out.

“I wouldn't suggest setting your town or neighbourhood on fire before the bulldozer comes in,” I'd add, “because fire can get away on you. You'll just have to dream up the smell of smoke and the black soot everywhere. You'll just have to imagine the feeling that your whole life has turned to charcoal.”

Of course I'd be telling the T. V. reporter what it would be like for the average person to experience what I'd described.

For me? With my beloved Tourette's? Moving back to Blackstone Village turned out to be a hundred times worse than staying at the evacuation centre in Kingman, and not just because of the stuff I've already mentioned.

The sound of chainsaws and jackhammers and people shouting never seemed to stop during the day. Trucks constantly came and went. It was solid noise and confusion.

And there was no bus I could take to get away from all of it.

During the day, I wore the special kind of earmuffs jackhammer operators use. I stayed inside with the windows and doors shut and the curtains pulled. My main job was holding myself together. I barely managed that.

Even the mighty Mrs. Stoa had to back off on her advice-giving. And on the assignments she wanted me to do for school. I couldn't concentrate.

After dark, when all the work had stopped, I took off my earmuffs and sat in the porch swing. Dan visited me sometimes when I was there. We talked a little. But I wasn't very good company. And he was getting up early and working hard. He usually hit the hay by nine-thirty.

Virgil brought his guitar by a few times and checked in. He'd learned from Mrs. Stoa that he had a poet's name and he was trying to live up to it, so he wanted me to listen to a song he'd written for his new girlfriend.

I liked the quiet way he played. And his voice was not bad, but the song didn't have much in the way of lyrics — just, “Rosey, oh Rosey, oh,” over and over again.

I told him he should put in something stronger, like, “Oh Rosey, I burn for you, babe.” I showed him how that would sound, but he didn't go for it. “That's giving away too much,” he said. “Jeez, Matti, I hardly know this girl.”

At least he got my name right.

I would have stayed with my routine until every bit of burn was gone and the last nail was hammered into the new buildings that eventually went up. Routines work for me. They keep me from melting down.

A person like me doesn't get to sit on the sidelines much, though. It wasn't too long before I had to spring into action again.

2
O
UT OF THE
P
HONE
B
OOTH

I
WAS SITTING IN THE SWING
out on the front porch one night the way I usually did, when I heard Mrs. Stoa talking to someone in the living room. “What on earth were you doing?” she said. “Stealing that young man's fingerprints. Did you think you were living in a detective novel?”

“Frank didn't take the glass.” That was Marsh's voice. “I did.”

Mrs. Stoa clucked her tongue. “Just like the two of you in school. Frank egging you on and you covering for him.”

I loved it when Mrs. Stoa talked about the two of them like they were still kids in her class at high school. And this time I definitely agreed with her.

I sat there swinging back and forth and eavesdropping. I was actually enjoying myself for a change when another voice, Frank's this time, snagged my attention.

“I thought at first my contact in Kingman had sent me the results from the wrong fingerprints. I called and gave him an earful. ‘We're not rubes up here,' I said. ‘We can tell when you've sent us the wrong Intel.'

“He insisted he'd sent me the right results. I apparently sent him the wrong fingerprints.”

“My fault, Frank,” Marsh said. I got up and moved close to the screen door.

“I suppose you involved Dan in this,” Mrs. Stoa said. She clucked her tongue again.

I opened the door quietly and went through the hallway into the living room. All three of them were sitting there drinking tea. Mrs. Stoa was frowning. Frank's face was red and Marsh looked completely sheepish. “What's going on?” I said.

Then the truth came out about the whole ridiculous fingerprint-swiping episode. Dan finally remembering his name. And Frank insisting he was someone else.

“Dan could sue you for what you did,” I said.

“No, he couldn't.” Frank stuck out his chin. “It wasn't his fingerprints we took.”

“I took them,” Marsh said.

“Too bad we don't know who this Willis guy is,” I said. “Then he could sue you both. And I'd make sure he did.”

I went upstairs to bed, but I couldn't sleep. At first it was because I was so irritated at Frank and Marsh, but after a while I began getting curious about who the fingerprints actually belonged to. It turned in to a kind of puzzle for me.

There weren't that many people sitting at the table with us the day Frank and Marsh and I were at the Metal Spring hospital together. I closed my eyes and tried to remember exactly how it was.

It was just after three am when I opened my eyes again. I switched on the radio in time to hear the tail end of the news. All of it was depressing. Murders. People getting blown up. Stock market information I couldn't imagine anybody being interested in.

At the end, the announcer did what they call a recap, where he reviewed everything you didn't want to hear in the first place. That's when I found out a tornado had touched down in a large city on the opposite side of the country.

No one was killed, but people were still in shock. “It came out of nowhere,” a woman's voice said. “It sounded like a freight train was bearing down on us and then . . . ” She was crying so she had to take a minute. “The whole world fell down on top of us.”

It was the jog my memory needed. I sat up and looked at the clock. Only ten minutes since I looked the last time. Too early to go and wake Dan. I had to talk to him though. I was pretty sure by then I knew whose fingerprints Marsh had pinched.

Still, I was mature about it. I turned off the radio. I scrunched up the pillow behind my head. And I waited.

Just before five, I got up. I couldn't wear the earmuffs, because I wouldn't be able to hear what Dan had to say. Instead, I pulled a black toque as far down on my head as it would go, put on my jeans and a black turtleneck sweater with the collar turned up, and went outside and across to the egg.

I banged on the door, just like I used to when he was staying in the jail. Maybe a little louder. “Get up,” I yelled. I banged a few more times before he called out, ”What?” in a bleary voice.

“I have to talk to you ASAP,” I said. I heard him fumbling around inside. Finally he stuck his head out the door.

“Matti,” he said. “Wha . . . what do you want?” He was obviously only half awake. His face was puffy and he had a thermal-blanket print running up and down one side of his face.

“I know who this Willis guy is.” I waited to let Dan take that in. He didn't seem to. “The guy whose fingerprints Marsh took,” I said. “The one Frank thought was you.” He was still acting very groggy.

“Meet me at the Hot Spot in five minutes. Arlen probably has some breakfast started. I'll get something for you.”

“May I get dressed first?” Dan asked. “Or do you want me to come the way I am?”

I ignored that. “And hurry up. I don't want to be out too long after daylight.”

By the time Dan got to Arlen's, I had coffee in take-out cups and some sausage rolls and cinnamon buns bagged up. We carried it all away from the Hot Spot and down toward the lake, close to the place Dan and I used to go when he first got here and I still called him the on-fire guy.

The sand was the same. The water, and the rocks. We were the ones who'd changed.

“You're a vampire now,” Dan said. He bit into a sausage roll. “Is that why we need to do this so early? You have to get into your coffin as soon as the sun comes up?”

“I know all about the fingerprint mix-up,” I said. “And I think I know who Willis Asche is.” He kept on eating. “Do you want to know?”

“It doesn't really have much to do with me. He's some patient at the hospital I never met. Or maybe a visitor.”

“Think about the people at our table,” I told him. “The prints had to belong to one of them. I heard Marsh admit last night that he must have taken the wrong glass.”

“Matti.” Dan had been blowing on his coffee but now he took two or three swigs. “I was still out of it then, remember? And besides, I couldn't see very well.”

“That's a good point,” I said, “so just listen. We were sitting at a long table. Frank and Marsh were next to each other. We sat across from them. I was on your left.

“Obviously it wasn't any of our fingerprints.” I couldn't tell if Dan was paying attention or not.

“There were some women down at the end of the table to the left of me. They were very loud and they talked in a foreign language. It couldn't have been one of them, unless they'd had a sex change before the age of eight.

“That's how old Willis was when his fingerprints were taken. Even then, the women would be too old.

“The only other person I could think of for a long time was an even older man down across from them. It can't be him for the same reason.”

Dan finished his coffee so I gave him mine. “The fingerprints belong to someone invisible. Is that what you're telling me?” He didn't seem to care for the idea.

“Now you're being stupid,” I said. “There actually was another person on your right side. I didn't remember at first because I felt shy around you and I didn't look in your direction very often. But we had those huge pieces of white cake, remember?”

Dan nodded. “They tasted like air.”

“Egg cartons,” I thought. “Anyway, I was looking at your plate, noticing you hadn't eaten anything when some guy slid an empty plate in front of you and slid your plate with the cake on it back toward him.

“He had to lean far forward to do it and I saw the edge of something rainbow coloured running up and down his back. Like suspenders.”

Dan turned and looked at me. “You're talking about Howard?” I nodded. “He wasn't there.”

“Yes, he was. He was with you when I first saw you sitting outside. I think he tagged along with us when we went in to eat and got a free meal.”

“That sounds like him,” Dan said. He threw the crumbs from the bag out to some ravens that were perched on a rock. “But what difference does it make if he really is this Asche guy?

Maybe he just made up his first name like someone else we know.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But don't you think it's weird that his name came back to us here?”

Dan got up and dusted the crumbs off his jeans. “What are you suggesting?” he said. “What is it you want to do?”

I could hear car doors slamming which meant people were coming to work. I stood up, too, and readjusted my toque so it came as far down as possible. “When work's over and I can stand to come out again, I'm going to talk to Frank. Will you come with me?”

“Why Frank?” Dan asked.

“He started this mess,” I said. That wasn't really true. I'm not sure even now who started what. But I definitely needed Frank's help to clear it up.