The Fireman (57 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

3

For a while they followed the road that ran along the back of the cemetery. Then Nick turned in among the headstones, through the waist high grass. The boy paused at an old, rough, grayish slab of rock with the name
mcdaniels
upon it. He squatted down and touched the edge. Harper saw a dash of bright red paint.

He turned and went on and she followed. At a blue marble slab commemorating the life of one
ernest grapeseed
, Nick bent, pointed to another little red line, then looked meaningfully back at her.

Nick finger-spelled: “Nail polish.”

Harper remembered, then, one of the first things to go missing: a bottle of red nail polish that had belonged to the Neighbors sisters. Each believed the other had swiped it and there had been a nasty fight.

He led her up and down the rumpled green earth. The grass was growing long throughout the cemetery. Harper thought by mid-June, all but the highest plinths would be sunk deep beneath a riot of wild green. That didn’t seem so bad to her. She thought there was more beauty in wildflowers and tufts of beach grass than there was in a whole park of groomed lawn.

They came to a crypt, the walls of white stone buried under vines of ivy and oily green leaves. A captain’s wheel had been stamped into the lead door, above the name
o’brian
. A chunk of rock, with another little dash of fingernail polish on it, held the door slightly ajar.

Nick put a shoulder to. The door slid inward with a grinding shriek.

There was no light to see by and Harper wished she had brought a flashlight—there
had
to be one back in the garage—but Nick moved quickly around to one of the stone caskets against the wall. His fingertip ignited, spilling a ribbon of bluish-green fire. He touched it to a series of candles, most of which had been melted down to deformed stubs, then shook the flame out.

Harper’s carpetbag sat on one of the caskets. Allie’s gold locket hung from the handle. Harper felt funny all through her middle, seeing the Portable Mother again. It was like running into someone she had fancied a long time ago—in high school perhaps—and discovering he was just as good looking as she remembered.

A giant teacup, the size of a soup bowl, sat on another stone coffin lid. Emily Waterman’s special cup of stars. The inside was crusted with ancient gobbets of dried meat. Stacked against the wall were three cans of Spam, three cans of condensed milk.

The boy hitched himself up to sit with candles on either side of him. Harper sat across from him, inclined her head, and waited.

“I was trying to catch the cat,” he said with his hands. “A big cat with stripes like a tiger. When I stroked him, I could feel him humming, like a small motor. I can’t
hear
purring, but I can
feel
it, and nothing feels better. But when I tried to capture him, he always got away. Once I had him trapped in a box and carried him halfway back to camp. But he pushed his head out through the bottom and jumped away.”

She nodded to show she was with him so far.

“Michael said he’d help me catch it. It was supposed to be a secret. We’d catch him together and bring him back to camp and I could keep it. Mike told me to sneak Spam and milk out of the cafeteria. He met me with things
he
took out of camp, like soda and candy bars. I asked if we’d get in trouble and he said not if no one found out. I knew we were being bad kids. I felt sorry—
sometimes
.”

“But it was nice, too—Michael was paying attention to you,” Harper said, moving her hands very deliberately to be sure she said exactly what she meant.

Nick nodded, with an eagerness that broke her heart a little. “Most of the other kids never seemed to even notice I was there. None of them understood sign language—and I can’t follow spoken conversation. I’d sit with them in the cafeteria, but most of the time I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. If they all laughed, I’d smile, like I knew what was funny, even though I didn’t. They could’ve been making jokes about me, for all I knew.”

He lowered his head, looked at his hands. They twitched, made little motions, and Harper thought, with a flush of surprise and pleasure and sadness, that he was talking to himself, and those little finger-wiggles were his version of a whisper. At last he lifted his chin and met her gaze and began to speak again.

“Mike didn’t know sign language, but we wrote each other notes. He was really good about waiting for me to finish writing when I had a lot to say. He could sit there just swinging his feet for five minutes while I scribbled away. Most people aren’t very patient. He helped me build traps for the cat. Some of our traps were really funny. Right out of comic books. One time we stole a camouflage Windbreaker, and stretched it out over a pit, and covered it with leaves. Like maybe the cat would be stupid enough to fall in.”

Harper remembered the day a camouflage Windbreaker had gone missing. It had belonged to a teenage girl named Nellie Lance, who had been miffed and baffled by its disappearance.
There are literally ten thousand nicer coats she could’ve stolen,
Nellie said.

She. They had always believed the thief was a woman. Everything that disappeared went missing from the kitchens or the girls’ dorm. But of course there was
one
male in the girls’ dorm. Nick had spent the entire autumn there, sharing a bed, at first with his sister, then, later, jumping into Harper’s cot with her.

Nick went on, “Everything we stole from camp we hid here. I used the nail polish to make a trail, so we could always find our way to the stash. Sometimes we broke into the garage for the grounds crew. Mike figured out he could put me up on his shoulders and I could get in through the window.”

“People got angry,” Harper said. “When you knew people angry, why no tell? You could have explained all and no one mad.”

“You’re going to think I’m an idiot.”

“Try me.”

“I didn’t know anyone was even
looking
for a thief. Not for a long,
long
time. Everyone was talking about it, but no one was talking to
me
. People made announcements in chapel that I couldn’t hear. I asked Mike sometimes what everyone was talking about, but he always said it was nothing. Once, Allie was so angry she was shaking, and I asked her why, and she told me some bitch was stealing from the girls’ dorm. I was such a big dummy, I didn’t even know she was talking about
me
. I thought someone
else
was stealing things.
Important
things. Stuff that really mattered. I only took nail polish and a stupid teacup and Spam. Everyone hated Spam.” He lowered his eyes. “And once I took Allie’s locket.” Then he looked up, a bright challenge in his eyes. “But only because it was supposed to be
my
locket too. We were
supposed
to share. But Allie said lockets are for girls and so she kept it all to herself and never let me wear it or even look at it.”

“What about Portable Mother?” Harper asked.

He rested his chin against his chest and blinked. Tears plopped on his thighs.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t sorry. Tell why.”

“Mike said it was big enough to put the cat in it. He said it would be really useful for a trap and we could give it back to you later. I wasn’t going to take all the stuff in it, too . . . not at first. I was going to empty it out and just take the bag. But then I remembered my View-Master.”

“What?”

He twisted around and popped the carpetbag’s gold clasp. He fished around inside and came up with a red plastic View-Master.

“I remember. Carol gave me,” Harper said. “For baby.”

His face darkened. “It wasn’t hers to give. It was
mine
. Aunt Carol told me one day I was too old for it and then she gave it to you. She told me to be a big boy about it. So I took the whole bag. I stole it. Even though you’re my friend. And it was really bad.” He swiped at his eyes with one hand. The muscles under his face trembled with the force of barely contained emotion. “After I took it, I
wanted
to give it back. I really did. Michael met me here in the tomb and said we couldn’t risk it. He said Father Storey had announced that the person who stole the Portable Mother would have to leave camp forever. He said stealing from a pregnant woman was the worst sin this side of murder. Mike told me I couldn’t even return it in secret, because Ben Patchett would fingerprint it. And Allie told me whoever took the locket was going to have her hands cut off. Even still I thought I could tell Father Storey what I had done. I was going to. As soon as he got back from rescuing the prisoners with the Fireman. And then—” His hands stopped moving for a bit, while he rubbed the balls of his palms into his eyes. Soon, though, his fingers began to move again. “Mike said maybe it was
lucky
for me Father Storey got smashed in the head. He said he was pretty sure Father Storey
suspected
me. He said before Father Storey got his head crunched, he warned Mike he was going to have to ask me some tough questions about the things that had been stolen, and if I didn’t answer them right, he’d probably have to send me and Allie
both
away, forever and ever. Mike said Father Storey would get rid of us both because it was Allie’s job to make sure I behaved. And Father Storey also said it was important that the camp knew he wouldn’t treat me different just because I was his grandson.”

“He lie. Lie bad. Father Storey never hurt you or sister. He never let anyone else hurt you.”

She could see Nick didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want to make eye contact—but it was the curse of the deaf that they could not hide their eyes if they wanted to communicate. He had to keep his gaze on her hands. He blinked at tears and dragged the back of one arm across his nose.

“I know
now
. But I was scared. And that’s why I stayed with you in the infirmary. So if Father Storey woke up I could tell him I was sorry and ask him to please not punish Allie for anything I did. And Mike said that was a good idea, and he’d hang around the infirmary, too, as much as he could. That way if Father Storey woke up, he could take most of the blame. Mike said he ought to accept most of the responsibility anyway because he was older.”

“Not you fault,” Harper told him with her hands. “Michael was a liar. He fooled
all
of us.”

Nick’s shoulders hitched convulsively. He lifted his hands and dropped them, lifted them and tried again. “I woke up once and got up to go to the bathroom and found Mike bending over Father Storey’s feet. He was surprised to see me and stood up really fast and looked scared. And he had a needle in his hand. I asked him what he was doing and he said he had come by to give himself his insulin shot and then he stopped to say a prayer over Father Storey. He was trying to kill Father Storey, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. When happen?”

“February.”

Harper thought back and nodded. “Father Storey stop having fits in February. That’s when he start getting better. After the fits stopped. You saved Father Storey’s life. You scared Mike after you caught him with needle. He didn’t try poison again.”

“

Nick shook his head. “I didn’t save him. Michael still killed him.”

Harper leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees. “But not before Father Storey woke and tell you how much he loved you. You understand? You were very love. You are not no bad boy.”

Nick looked so disconsolate she had to get up and kiss his head and give him a squeeze.

When she let go of him he was at least not crying anymore. She said, “Do you think that can with meat still good?”

“It was
never
good. But we can probably eat it.”

Harper gathered up the Spam and condensed milk in both arms. When she turned around, Nick stood before her, wearing the locket around his neck and holding the Portable Mother open wide. She nodded in approval and dropped the cans inside.

They slid themselves out into the darkness and started back the way they had come. They had not gone more than a hundred feet, though, when Harper heard the whine and roar of a big and familiar engine, a sound that made her insides clump nervously together. She grabbed Nick’s shirtsleeve and pulled him down to a crouch behind a Virgin Mary.

The orange plow rumbled past out in the street, spoiling the night with its diesel stink. It moved slowly and a searchlight mounted to the top of the cab dipped and swayed, flashing over the stone wall and into the graveyard. Ten-foot-long shadows of angels and crosses lunged across the grass toward Harper, then retreated. She let out a long, unsteady breath.

Still out there. Still looking. He knew what they had fled in. Maybe he knew they hadn’t gone far. A fire truck was not the world’s most discreet getaway car.

She turned to look at Nick—and was surprised to find the boy grinning broadly. He wasn’t peering toward the street, but instead was staring intently across the gravel road that bordered the back of the cemetery, watching something in the high tangled undergrowth. Harper saw ferns twitch as something slipped away.

“What?” she asked him with her hands.

“The cat,” he told her. “I just saw the cat. It survived the winter, too.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

4

Harper was prepared to step between Allie and Nick, was ready for threats, tears, and flying furniture. But Allie did not seem even a little surprised to see the Portable Mother again, or to find Nick wearing her locket. When they reentered the office, Allie sat on the edge of the couch, rubbing her face with both hands. She looked at them with blurred eyes and asked no questions. Harper took a can of Spam out of her carpetbag and hunted in the cupboard for something to spread it on. She discovered a box of saltines and felt a twang of gratitude that approached the spiritual.

Nick planted himself in front of Allie, chin stuck out, waiting for her to say something. She did, at last, finger-spelling only: “I guess you can wear it. I thought it would make you look like a little girl, but –at least you’re a cute girl.”

Harper found a cassette, the Rolling Stones’
Aftermath,
and punched it in the cassette player. Mick Jagger warned his baby, baby, baby that she was out of time.
Just about,
Harper thought.

Harper gave Allie the shorter version of what Nick had told her in the tomb, while she spread gelatinous Spam on crackers. Allie did not interrupt or cross-examine. When Harper had finished and they were all sitting on the couch together, eating pasty meat, Allie used her fingers to say, “I can’t believe you fell for Mike’s BS about fingerprints. That’s pretty dumb even for you.”

Nick said, “I know. But by the time I started to think Michael was wrong about fingerprints, there was snow on the ground, and no one could leave camp, so there was no way for me to bring anything back without leaving footprints. Besides.
You
were the dummy who told me when they found the thief, Ben was going to cut off his hands in front of the whole camp.”

She nodded. “Don’t sweat it. You’re just nine. You’re
supposed
to be dumb. I’m seventeen. What’s my excuse?”

When had Allie turned seventeen, Harper wondered, and then it crossed her mind she had missed her own birthday, four weeks before.

“How long will the Spam hold out?” Allie asked. She slurred a little. Her upper lip was ugly, split in two halves where Jamie had slashed her mouth. Harper needed to poke around for a needle and thread.

“Two cans.”

“Good. Because it will be sweet mercy when it’s gone and we can starve to death in peace.”

“I was hoping to avoid that,” Harper said, and began to speak to Nick again with her hands. “The Fireman said you can find him and show him where we are.”

“If I have to.”

“You have to.”

“I’d need to throw fire. I don’t like to.”

“I know you don’t.”

He looked at her with the wary fear of a stray, half-feral dog watching a man approach with a collar and leash. “Did he tell you why?”

Harper nodded.

Allie looked slowly back and forth between Harper and Nick.

Harper was going to try and speak to him with her hands, but this time sign language wouldn’t do. She got up and hunted in the drawers and came back with a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen.

What happened was
not
your fault. It takes a minimum of six weeks for the spore to reach the part of the brain that makes controlling it possible. Maybe longer. Your mother wanted to animate fire, the way John does with his Phoenix or you did last night with your little birds. But her brain wasn’t ready. What she did was like inducing labor before a baby is prepared to survive outside the womb. Instead of a child, you get a miscarriage. But she didn’t know. Neither of you did. THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT. Or hers. It was a shitty accident. That’s all.

But he shook his head, folded the note once, twice, and pushed it down into his pocket. His face—swollen from crying, pink where he had burned himself, filthy and still bloodstained—had nothing like ease or acceptance in it.

“You don’t know,” he said with his hands. “You don’t have any idea.”

Before she could reply, he pushed off the couch with both fists and went to the door out into the garage. He looked back.

“You coming or not?” he asked with his hands.

He led them behind the building. A pulsating harmonic filled the night, seemed to make the air itself vibrate: the shared song of a thousand crickets. Nick moved away from them, into the high grass. He paced in a circle, tramping the grass flat. Wet weeds squealed under his sneakers. He went around and around, going faster and faster, his head swinging back and forth. His fingers danced and played and Harper thought he was singing without a song, listening to a melody that had no sound. Asking for what he wanted without words. It was a little frightening, watching him go about like a figurine in a silent music box lurching along its track. His eyes were closed. Then they weren’t. They snapped open, peepholes into a furnace. His fingers trailed orange sparks.

He lifted his left hand and flame trailed off it. Little flames sheared from his fingers, fluttering into the air, but instead of shrinking and vanishing, they took shape, became dainty birds of fire. A burning flock of them fell streaming from his blazing hand and shot this way and that, spinning like rockets into the night. A dozen. Two dozen. A hundred.

“My God,” said Renée, who had come to the back door to watch. “How come they don’t just burn up and vanish? What are they using for fuel?”

“Him,” Allie said and nodded at her brother. “He’s the kindling and the firewood both. The lighter fluid and the match.”

“No, that isn’t right,” Harper said. “That doesn’t make any sense. I haven’t been able to figure this part of it out yet, no matter how much John has tried to—”

But Nick had stopped going about in a circle. He rapidly flailed his hands back and forth and put them under his armpits and the bluish-yellow streamers of flame went out in a whimsical pink gush of smoke. He bent over to blow on his palms, and while he was leaning forward, something gave, and he toppled headfirst into the grass.

Allie got to him first, scooping him up in both arms. His head lolled on a neck that didn’t seem to have any bones in it. Allie glared.

“He wasn’t ready to do that,” Allie said. “He’s been through too much. We should’ve waited another night.
You
should’ve waited.”

“But John—”

“John Rookwood can take care of himself,” Allie said. “Nick can’t.”

And she marched past Harper into the garage.

It was what Allie needed, Harper supposed: a chance to stand up for her brother, to reclaim the role of Nick’s protector from Harper—or at least reclaim a share of it.

“I really don’t understand,” Harper said to Renée. “What Allie said just now about Nick being the kindling and the kerosene—that has poetry in it, but it doesn’t make a lick of sense.”

“That’s what poetic speech is for—for the things that are true but don’t make sense. For the rough beast and the widening gyre,” Renée said, and she lifted her gaze to stare into the night, where a hundred flaming birds turned in a widening gyre of their own before scattering into the stars.