On Fire (4 page)

I told Marsh about the conversation later. “Sometimes people burn themselves intentionally,” he said.

“Why?”

He didn't try to explain it, and I wouldn't have understood him even if he had. I just couldn't see the on-fire guy doing something like that.

Then I thought of another possibility. “Maybe he wasn't kidding about enemies,” I said. “What if someone really did hold him down and do that to him?”

“That would be torture,” Marsh said. “And if we find out anything about that, I'll have to get word to the police again.”

That gave me a jolt. “What do you mean
again
?” I said.

Marsh began cracking his knuckles, which wasn't a good sign. “When I was down in Kingman yesterday I notified the force that we have an amnesia patient here.”

“What?” I whooshed the word out along with quite a lot of air.

“I haven't been able to get in touch with Frank, so I have to guess that's what he'd do.”

Pressure started building up in my throat. “You should have asked me first,” I said.

“Someone might be looking for him, Matti. Did you think of that? He may have a family somewhere.”

I walked away from Marsh and let off steam for quite a while. It's what you're supposed to do when you're trying to control yourself. Then I came back again. “What did the police say?
Is
someone looking for him?”

“Apparently not.”

“Well, then,” I said.

They asked how old he was. “Probably around eighteen,” I told them, “but we can't be sure. They said there are so many displaced people around here right now because of the fires, he'd have to be a lot younger than that before they'd look into it. .”

“So it's up to us to find out who he is and where he's from,” I said.

“I'll get Allard to put out a bulletin on his CB radio,” Marsh told me. “That might turn up something.”

“I suppose,” I said.

The police in Kingman weren't the only problem I could see down the road, of course. With the weather getting better, Frank could come home at any time. He wouldn't just sit and wait like Marsh had been doing.

Frank was a detail person. He'd poke around until he knew who the guy was and twenty-eight other things about him. After that I wasn't sure what he'd do.

10
Y
OU'RE
D
AN
N
OW

I
WAS SO PREOCCUPIED WITH MY
visits to the jail I pretty much forgot bout the Gas and Grocery. Mrs. Stoa didn't, of course. She gave up on her window displays after a few days, but she sat out on the front porch with her book and watched for customers to drive up. I believe that happened once or twice. She phoned up Allard Grass then, and got him to take their money.

She was at her post one morning when I came out with a jug of lemonade and a paper plate of Million Dollar Fudge I'd made the night before. I was beginning to think she had the power to make herself invisible because I didn't even notice her.

“Good morning,” she said.

I stopped and whirled around. “What are you doing there?” I tried to hide the fudge behind my back.

“Reading,” she said. “As usual. And watching you. I'm supposed to know where you're going.”

“I'm going down to the jail,” I said. “And I'm sorry, but this food is not for you.

“You call the town office ‘the jail'?” she asked.

“Sometimes.”

She clucked her tongue. “All that sugar can't be good for the young man. What do you call him, by the way?”

“He still doesn't know his name,” I said, “so I don't have a serious one for him.”

“Isn't it about time you got one? If he was your pet dog you'd have given him a name by now.”

“You just don't understand,” I said. Mrs. Stoa had put a stool under the swing to make it easier for her to get up. I pushed it just slightly out of reach with my foot as I went past and out onto the sidewalk.

“You should name him Dante,” she called after me. She waved her perfect comedy. “He practically walked out of these pages.”

I put that suggestion out of my mind right away.

Marsh's truck was gone when I got to the jail so I knocked on the door. “Breakfast,” I called out. I felt like a beautiful waitress in the kind of movie where a stranger comes to town and stays in the hotel she's working in. I wished I'd brought a flower. I wished the flowers hadn't all dried up and were still around to bring.

The on-fire-guy came out in a minute yawning and wearing the volunteer fire department T-shirt, which I'd washed a couple of times already, and some shorts that fit a little better. “Am I too early?” I asked.

He rubbed his face and ran his hands over the stubble on his head. “I guess not, Warden,” he said. “Where's the chain gang working today?”

“Whatever that means,” I said.

When we were sitting in our usual place looking out over the lake, he took a piece of fudge from the plate and put it in his mouth. His eyes opened really wide. “This is good,” he said. “What is it?”

“Million Dollar Fudge,” I told him. “It was my mother's recipe.” Before he could ask anything about her I changed the subject. “Does it bother you about my T. S.?”

He'd finished his first piece of fudge by then and was licking the chocolate off his fingers. “What is it?”

“Tourette's syndrome. I told you about it when you first got here.”

He shook his head and kept on licking. “I don't remember.” That bothered me for some reason so I sat and looked at the ravens in the tree above us. There were just a few of them around by then. Most of them had gone.

“You mean the sounds you make?” he asked me.

“That's partly it.”

He took more fudge. “Everything has a sound,” he said. “Humans. Animals. Sunsets. You wouldn't be normal if you didn't.”

“I'm not normal,” I said. “Sometimes I feel like I'm a freak.”

“No.” He took a slurp of lemonade and shook his head. “You're okay.”

I laughed, but it came out sharp, almost like a bark. At least the point was turned away from me for once.

I felt more relaxed after that. And even if I didn't like admitting it, Mrs. Stoa was at least partly right about the name situation, so when he'd finished the food, I said, “I think you should have a name.”

“What for?”

“Because . . . just let me do this. Pick a letter. Any letter you like and I'll come up with one for you.” He didn't react. “Unless you have a better idea. Do you?”

“X,” he said.

“What?”

“X is my favourite letter.”

“But there aren't any names beginning with X.”

“There's Xerox, for one.”

“But that's like . . . a business,” I said.

He shrugged. He did that a lot and his shoulders were very sharp so I always noticed. “It's still a name. And I like the colour.”

I let that pass. “But I mean a serious letter like A. Or B.”

“D,” he said very quickly.

“That's your letter?”

“Yes.”

I tried to think of some D people I knew. “Dwayne,” I said. He was someone at school who wasn't too irritating.

“No,” the on-fire guy said.

“How about David? He was a giant killer.”

“I think that was Jack,” he said, “but no, anyway.” He wouldn't give a reason.

After that I thought about names from the comics. “Donald?” I said. “Daffy? Or Dick?” No to all of them. “Darren?” That was another name from school.

“Wait,” he said. “I think I should have picked R for Rumpelstiltskin.” He pointed his finger at me. “Since you haven't guessed it, you'll have to give me your first born child.” He laughed.

I turned my back to him. “I'm not having children,” I said. “They might turn out like me.” I didn't talk for a while after that.

“Just leave it,” he said finally. I don't want a name.”

I was on a roll though, and like I said it isn't easy for me to stop when that happens. A name popped out of my mouth like it had been waiting there all the time. “How about Dante?” I said. He got a puzzled look on his face. “Or it could be Dan for short.”

“Dante went through hell, didn't he?”

“You've heard about him?”

“Read about him, probably.”

“Where?”

“I don't know. Maybe it was a computer game. I just remember it was a long story. And not the kind of thing you'd discuss with a kid.”

“I'm not a kid,” I said. “What was it about?”

He rubbed his eyes. “Torture. People get cut open and eaten alive so . . . there's also cannibalism. Monsters.” He hesitated. “Demons. It's all red.” Then he suddenly snapped at me. “I don't want to talk about it.”

“I was just trying to help,” I said. “You asked me to.” I went over and sat on the ground away from him.

After a while, he came and stood behind me. “Look,” he said. “All I have inside my head right now is blue. Blue is true. I want it to stay that way.”

“Blue? What do you mean?”

“B-looo,” he said, like making two syllables instead of one would get his point across.

“I know my colours,” I told him. “But what are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about your questions,” he said. “You have to stop asking them.”

I tried to be what you call light-hearted after that because I could see he was getting agitated. “I guess it's no to Dante then,” I said.

“I can live with X,” he said.

“I can't.”

I wasn't about to go around referring to the person whose life I was trying to save with a single letter of the alphabet. It was insulting to both of us.

“If you don't want a name,” I told him, “I can't do anything about that. But in my head you're going to be Dan. I'm afraid that's the best I can do.”

11
V
IRGIL

D
AN AND
I
STARTED TAKING LONGER
walks down to the lake after that. We used the path that dips down behind of the jail. This time of year the water should have been full of kids yelling and thrashing their way out to the float.

And our little sand beach should have had blankets and sunbathers and gum wrappers and coke cans and ghetto blasters all over it. But even with better weather and a few people trickling back into town, it was empty.

I spread out the blanket I'd brought and we sat there for a while watching helicopters fly over with their belly buckets full of water. Dan pointed across the lake. “Do people live over there?” he asked.

“A few,” I said. “There used to be a lead mine there. And a town called Cato City. It's pretty much a ghost town now.”

“Are they friendly ghosts?”

“What?” I said. Sometimes I worried about the way he talked. Maybe I didn't worry enough.

“I was just wondering if you ever went over there.”

“Not too often. There's nothing to see but fallen down buildings.”

“I thought you said there were a few people there.”

“Well, actually just a girl I sort of know from school. She's a year older and doesn't have much to do with me, of course. Her name's Bee Laverdiere. Her hair's black and long. She's very beautiful.”

“She lives there by herself in a house that's falling down?”

“I suppose her house is okay,” I said, “but she's probably alone a lot. Her mother goes away to cook for hunting camps and stuff like that. I've heard Bee has a younger sister, too. Then there's her cousin Virgil. He's what you call a guide.”

“What kind?”

“Hunters, mostly. He takes them back into the mountains to fish or find bear or elk or mountain lions. He's gone now, if you're wondering. The whole family's been evacuated.”

That was a lie. The fire wasn't even supposed to get to Cato City. They'd burned off a huge section of forest up at the lake head. And Blackstone Lake itself is too wide for any fire to jump, except maybe at the end of the world.

I wasn't interested in having Dan meet Bee, though. He'd probably fall in love with her like all the other boys in school. For all I knew she could also fall in love with him, like in
Romeo
and Juliet
. Then where would that leave me?

While we sat there we saw a black speck moving toward us out on the water. I thought it was a couple of ravens floating on a dead head at first. Then it got closer and I could make out the outline of a boat. “Oh crap,” I thought. “That's probably Bee now.”

It was her cousin Virgil, though. Big boats go into the marina at the north end of the village, but we have a dock on the edge of the beach where small boats can tie up. He was making for that.

He cut the kicker, which is what we call an out-board motor, and paddled the last distance into shore. I got up and held out my hand so he could throw the guide rope to me. “Hello, Virgil,” I said.

“Who are you again?” he asked.

“Matti Iverly. I know your cousin, Bee. She didn't come with you?”

Virgil climbed out of the boat all in one smooth motion. He took the rope from me and tied up. “Bee and Charlene went to our Grandma's in Kingman,” he said. “And my aunt's cooking for tree planters, so there's nobody there but me.” His eyes were amber coloured and his hair was long and dark like Bee's.

“This is my friend,” I said. “He has amnesia. Do you think we could borrow your boat?”

“Have you got a license?” Virgil asked.

“I'm not old enough.”

“What about him?” He looked at Dan.

“Probably not,” Dan said.

Virgil dipped his red bandana into the lake. He wrung it out and tied it around his head. “I'll have to say no, then, Marti. I've only got one life jacket and it's for my little cousin Charlene. What if one of you drowns?”