On Fire (3 page)
Marsh was always right outside the door when I came to visit. I sat on a chair beside the bed and talked to the on-fire guy, even though he was usually asleep. I told him my name and quite a bit about myself â how my mother had died right in our house because I couldn't get help there in time and now I just lived with my dad.
How I didn't think there was any question about my intelligence but I still couldn't do certain things at school, like write very well or spell. And how because of my Tourette's, if I made up my mind to go in a certain direction it was very hard for me to change. It almost hurt to do it.
It was easy talking to him since he didn't seem to hear me.
I was just starting to tell him how I treed a kid named Billie Butler in sixth grade for calling me Matti, the Extra-Tourretsial when the guy opened his eyes and looked right at me. “Are you an angel?” he asked me for the second time.
“Of course I'm not,” I said. “Cut it out.”
He sighed and closed his eyes again. “Then I guess I really am in Hell.”
I couldn't understand why he kept mentioning that. Frank always told me hell is something we make for ourselves on earth. It's not a real place, although I know some old people believe it is. Like this mountain man who used to come into town now and then.
One day I came out of school ticcing-off like crazy because I'd spent the whole day trying to hold myself together and be normal and there he was. He pointed at me and said in a raspy voice, “You're possessed! You'll burn like hamburger in the eternal flames and choke on the smoke.”
It was just the sort of thing I needed to hear out in public.
“You certainly are not in hell,” I told the on-fire guy. “You're in Blackstone Village. We don't usually have fires like this. People come here in the summer to fish and swim. In the fall they hunt and in the winter they heli-ski. If you believe the sign at the edge of town, this is paradise.
“Something happened to my hair,” he said. He ran his hands over his scalp.
“It was him.” I pointed at Marsh. “Your hair was full of dried blood and worse things. He had to cut it to get it clean.”
The guy closed his eyes again. I watched them move back and forth like marbles underneath his eyelids for a while until they finally went still.
M
RS
. S
TOA DIDN'T THINK
I
WAS
making what we had for sale in the Gas and Grocery attractive enough, even though our only customers were guys in forestry trucks or fire fighters. She demonstrated how to make pyramids out of canned baked beans in the front window. The next day she took away the beans â all unsold â and put out corn or tomatoes.
She also made it her mission to clean out our freezer at home. We had a lot of stuff in there people had given us that we didn't want but weren't organized enough to throw away, like bear ham or moose meat chilli.
Every time she whisked something out of the freezer and into the oven, she'd say, “We may as well eat this up. When we evacuate, you'll lose everything that's left.” She was still counting on the village burning up even though the weather had changed. “Now let's sit down and enjoy this while we can.”
I did sit down at the table with her when she asked me to, usually as a non-eater. Frank may have brought me up to speak my mind. He probably knew he couldn't stop me. But I wasn't supposed to be rude to someone as old as Mrs. Stoa. Unless, of course, I had no alternative.
“I understand you found a young man coming down from the wilderness,” she said. I think that was the real reason she wanted us to eat together in the first place. “And now you're looking after him at your father's office.”
“Where'd you hear that?” I asked.
“Marsh told me.” She slid out of her chair and went to the sink to get a glass of water. She'd given up asking me to bring her things by then, and she got around very well on her own.
“Marsh and I are taking care of him together,” I said.
“You should be careful.” Mrs. Stoa came back to the table and sat down. “You don't know anything about the boy.”
“I know he's practically a man,” I said. “Marsh has shaved him twice since he got here.”
“Well then,” she said. She chased a piece of something suspicious looking across the plate with her fork. “All the more reason for me to meet him.”
“You?” I sat back from the table. “It doesn't have anything to do with you.”
“Of course it does. Your father asked me to take care of you.”
“No, he didn't. He asked you to
stay
here. He asked Marsh to look out for me. Anyway, what use would you be if I really got into trouble? You're too little.”
I knew I'd just crossed some kind of rudeness border again, but I couldn't stop myself.
“They say it takes a whole village to raise one child, Matilda,” Mrs. Stoa said, “and right now, I'm part of that village.” If she couldn't quote her Dante book at me, she'd dig out some old saying like that and wave it in my face.
“He's not a child,” I said. “I told you that. And neither am I.” I was so upset I had to go outside to tic-off and do the one Karate move I knew over and over.
Marsh said we couldn't ignore Mrs. Stoa's request to come down to the jail, so not long after my meltdown, she made her visitation. She went right inside and had a long look.
The on-fire guy was awake that time and sitting up in bed with a piece of toast. He didn't look at us though, or acknowledge he knew we were there gawking at him like it was parents' day at the zoo.
“I think we should leave him in peace,” I said after a while, but Mrs. Stoa wouldn't go. She went right up to him in fact and put her tiny little paw on his shoulder.
It was so light he probably didn't feel it for quite a while. Then when he did make eye contact with her, she sat down and started reading to him. It's not hard to imagine the book she chose.
Marsh and Mrs. Stoa and I went outside after that. “He's going to need care,” she told Marsh, like she'd been a nurse for the last century instead of an English teacher. “I don't think she should be alone with him in a closed room.”
“She hasn't been,” Marsh said.
“Hello,” I said. I waved my hand in front of his face. “No need to talk about me like I'm not here.”
“And she shouldn't try to take him anywhere.”
“Matti?” They both turned and looked at me.
I said, “Okay,” like they were expecting me to, but it was a dumb thing to ask me to agree to in the first place. Where would I take him?
All the decent boats in the village marina had been moved farther down toward Kingman. The helicopters up the road at X-Treme Ski would have been fun. But it was a hike up there and anyway, they were all out working in the fire effort.
I suppose we could have looked through all the pamphlets on AIDS and teen-aged pregnancy in the rack at the back of our store. Maybe tried out a few elk calls. Or I could have hooked the on-fire guy up to the blood pressure machine. I did that to myself now and then when I was really bored, but I didn't imagine he'd find it entertaining.
After we took Mrs. Stoa home, Marsh said, “The kid might be up to sitting outside for a bit tomorrow since the air is better. Do you think you could find him some clothes?”
“Frank's would be too big,” I said, “but I could go to the Thrift Shop. Do you want them A.S.A.P.?”
“Tomorrow will be fine,” Marsh said. “He needs everything. But not too early.”
I went home right after we talked and got my roller suitcase. I had it packed in case we needed to take off in a hurry, so I emptied it and went to the Thrift Shop in the basement of the Glory Assembly Church.
I didn't have to pick the lock. I knew the key was under the door mat so I used it to let myself in. I wouldn't have broken in anyway. It was a church.
I filled up the suitcase with shirts and shorts and a backpack. I even put in long pants and sweaters for later in the year. I didn't get underwear. I didn't feel right about that. I left an I.O.U. for $20.00 and went home.
My bedroom is on the third floor of the house. I carried the suitcase up the stairs as quietly as I could so Mrs. Stoa wouldn't hear me and want to see everything. After that I sat down on the bed, ticced-off and tried to think of something else to do. I couldn't.
I took the clothes out of the suitcase, refolded them and put them in again.
Then I sat some more.
I
WAITED AS LONG AS
I could the next morning, but I still got to the jail with my suitcase before eight o'clock. Marsh was gone somewhere and the on-fire guy was sitting on the bench outside the jail in an old bathrobe, eating peanut butter and toast and drinking a glass of milk.
“Hello,” I said. Then my brain conked out. It's harder to talk to someone who's actually awake and listening. “Where's Marsh?”
“He went out to check on something.”
“Oh,” I said. “I hope you're not going to ask me if I'm an angel again.”
The on-fire guy had been looking down at his feet the whole time, like he couldn't believe he actually had two of them. “No.” He shook his head. “Why would I do that?”
“I . . . ” My face was always turning red around him.. “I'm Matti Iverly. This is Blackstone Village. I live here.”
He turned his head to look at me then. “Okay,” he said. He moved over on the bench. “You can sit down if you're not afraid of me.”
“I'm not afraid,” I said. I sat down harder than I meant to. Then I stared off to one side.
“Are you running away from home?” he asked me after a while. He pointed to the suitcase.
“What? Oh,” I said. “No. These are clothes for you.”
He stuck his bare legs out. They were long and thin and kind of hairy in a golden way. I'm sure he didn't mean for me to notice that. “This bathrobe is a little short,” he said.
“You could try the clothes on if you want to. Only not out here.” I felt dumb and red again after that.
“Maybe I'll go inside,” he said. He was pretty solid standing up, but I had to help him get the suitcase inside.
I waited for him to come back out. Finally I got up to check and he was on the bed asleep again.
“Give him time,” Marsh said. He'd finished his errand and was standing behind me. “Come back after lunch.”
I did. The sun was out and it was getting warm again. The two of them were sitting on the bench together this time. Marsh had rigged up a beach umbrella to keep the sun off.
The on-fire guy was wearing green shorts and a grey T-shirt with
Blackstone Village Volunteer Fire Dept.
on it. Frank had one like it, but his said Chief, of course.
“Why don't you go for a walk around the building?” Marsh said.
“I thought I couldn't take him anywhere.”
“I'll be right here.”
When the on-fire guy stood up, I saw that he had a piece of rope tied around his waist to hold the shorts up.
“Maybe go back and get something a little smaller, Matti,” Marsh whispered.
“Sorry,” I said, but I wasn't apologizing to him.
We walked on a gravel path that went around the building. Marsh couldn't see us when we got on the far side, but we were in the open. We went slowly because the guy was still a little wobbly.
“I need to warn you,” I said, just to be on the safe side, “I'm working on my black belt in Karate.” I didn't say I had about fifteen years to go.
“Congratulations,” the on-fire guy said. Then he sat down on a bench that faced out toward the lake. The water was so smooth that the trees and the mountains and the clouds above them seemed to be floating on top of it. Or else there was a second world just like ours shining up from the bottom of the lake.
“Do you have a cigarette?” he asked me, which ruined the mood.
“I'm fourteen,” I said. “I don't smoke.”
“I think I might.”
“Well, I'm not getting cigarettes for you so don't ask me to.” I stood up. “Next thing you know you'll want matches, and anything to do with them, you can count me out. I'm sick of fire.”
I didn't tell him how my mother died. I hardly ever talked to people about that.
“Just asking,” he said.
We walked back to the jail then. He didn't have a lot to say. He usually didn't. He was kind of mysterious in that way, but I still liked going out with him. I can talk enough for two people when I feel like it.
W
E WENT OUT A LOT AFTER
that. Just short walks to build up the on-fire guy's strength. I tried to ask questions that would jog his memory while we walked. Like he wore a ring on the thumb of his left hand. It was a silver snake with its tail in its mouth. I asked him where he got it.
“I don't know,” he said. It was his standard answer.
“Do you think maybe someone gave it to you?” He shrugged, and I should have stopped right there. But I tend to push. It can be a failing of mine.
“Those burn marks on the back of your legs are healing up. How did you get them?”
He ran his hands up and down his legs. “I think it was an accident,” he said.
“It wouldn't happen accidentally in rows like that, would it?”
He pushed his hands down deep into the pockets of his shorts. “I don't remember,” he said. “Maybe I have enemies.”
“What kind of enemies?” I asked.
He turned and looked at me like he was suddenly suspicious. “You don't have any idea what's out there, do you?”