The Fireman

by Joe Hill

  “Don’t bet on it,” Allie whispered, and the Neighbors twins stifled nervous laughter. There was no amusement on Allie’s face, though.

  “It would take bravery of the deepest kind to use your voice and speak up and admit what you did. But if you tell us the truth—if you raise your voice to give back—everyone in this room will shine for you. The happiness we all feel when we sing will be nothing compared to it. I know it. It will be sweeter than any song, and every heart here will give you something better than the things you took. They’ll give you forgiveness. I believe in these people and their goodness and I want you to know the same things about them that I know. That they can love you even after this. Everyone here knows what makes the Dragonscale glow. Not music—if it was just the music, my deaf grandson wouldn’t glow with us. It’s harmony—harmony with one another. No one will shame you or ostracize you”—he lowered his chin and gave the room an almost-stern look over his glasses—“and if they do I will set them right. In this place we raise our voice in song, not in contempt, and I believe whoever took these things could no more help themselves than my grandson can help being deaf. Believe in us and I promise: it will be all right.” And he smiled so sweetly Harper’s heart broke a little. He was like a child, gazing into a July night and waiting on fireworks.

  No one moved.

  A floorboard creaked. Someone cleared their throat.

  The small candle wavered on the lectern.

  Harper discovered she was holding her breath. She dreaded the thought that no one would speak and that they would disappoint Father Storey, would erase that smile. He was the last innocent man in the world and she could not bear for that to change. The thought—ludicrous but intense—came to her that she ought to say she had stolen the things, but of course no one would believe that, and she hadn’t stolen them, so she couldn’t return them.

  The Neighbors sisters gave each other anxious looks, each of them squeezing the other’s hand. Michael stroked Allie’s back until she shrugged him off. Ben Patchett exhaled—a thin, tense, unhappy breath. Onstage, Carol Storey hugged herself tightly as if to ward off a chill. In the whole room, perhaps the only person immune to the tension was Nick. He was no lip-reader under the best of conditions, and certainly not by candlelight, from fifty feet away. He was doodling gravestones in the back of a songbook. The dearly departed included the famous I. M. DUNFORE, HARRY PITTS, and BARRY D. BODIE. One tombstone read HERE LIES A THIEF, KILLED WITHOUT GREEF . . . so then again, maybe he was following along just fine.

  When Father Storey looked up at last, he was still smiling. He showed not the slightest sign of regret.

  “Ah,” he said. “It was too much to ask, I suppose. I imagine whoever took the things from the kitchen and the girls’ dorm must feel terribly pressured. I only meant to show you that everyone here wishes you well. You are one of us. Your voice belongs with ours. The things you took must be an awful weight on you and I’m sure you’d like to be out from under it. Simply leave the things you took somewhere they can easily be found and drop a note to tell me where to look. Or have a private word with me. I won’t judge you and have no interest in punishment. When all of us are walking with a death sentence inscribed right on our skin, what need is there of punishment? We have all been found guilty of being human. There are worse crimes.” He looked back at Carol and said, “What are we singing tonight, joy?”

  Carol opened her mouth, but before she could reply, someone shouted, “What if she doesn’t come forward?”

  Harper glanced around: Allie. She was quivering—with fury, but also, maybe, with nervousness—and at the same time, her jaw was set in a look that was perfectly stubborn, perfectly hostile, and perfectly Allie. Somehow Harper wasn’t surprised. Allie was the only person in camp who wasn’t in awe of the old man.

  “What if the thief just keeps taking more stuff?” Allie asked.

  Father Storey lifted an eyebrow. “Then I imagine we’ll make do with less.”

  “It’s not fair,” whispered Gillian Neighbors. Her voice was low, pitched to just above a whisper, but in the great echoing space of the chapel, everyone could hear.

  Carol stepped forward, to the edge of the stage, looking at her feet. When she lifted her chin, her eyes were red, as if she had been crying or was about to start.

  “I don’t feel like singing especially,” she said. “I feel like something important slipped away tonight. Something special. Maybe our trust in each other. Allie, my niece, doesn’t want to stay with the other girls anymore, knowing there’s a thief there. She doesn’t have any other pictures of her mother, my sister. No way to remember her. Just what was in the locket. That locket will never mean to anyone what it means to her and her brother. I don’t understand how anyone could hurt her that way and then come in here and sing like she cares about other people. It makes the whole thing feel phony. I’ll play a song you all know, and you can sing if you want, or you can be silent with me. Whatever feels right to you. A part of me feels like if we can’t all be honest with each other, silence might be better. Maybe we should all hold one of Father Storey’s stones in our mouth for a bit, and consider what really matters.”

  That sounded a little schoolmarmish in Harper’s opinion, but she saw people nodding. She also saw Allie brushing away an angry tear with one finger, then twisting her head and turning to furiously whisper something to Gail and Gillian Neighbors.

  Then Carol began to play, picking at the strings of her ukulele, not strumming. Notes rang out, like little hammers striking silver chimes. It took only a moment for Harper to recognize “Silent Night.” No one sang. There was, instead, a reverential hush, the room utterly silent aside from Carol’s playing.

  Harper wasn’t sure who lit up first. At some point, though, she became aware of a faint luminescence in the cavernous dim. Eyes shone the blue-green color of lightning bugs flashing in a summer night. Dragonscale became scribbles of dim fluorescence. Harper thought of those fish that lived in the deepest basins of the ocean, illuminating the depths with their own glow-in-the-dark organs. It was a cold, alien light, different from the usual almost-blinding intensity of the Bright. Harper had not imagined they could create harmony without a sound, that they could join in a silent chorus of disapproval rather than song.

  Only about half the room turned on, and Harper was not among them. For the first time in weeks she was unable to join, to connect. Over the last few weeks, she had come to look forward to chapel, and slipped into the Bright as she would’ve slipped into a warm bath. Now, though, the water was cold. She couldn’t understand how any of the others could stand it.

  The last note hung in the air like a snowflake that refused to fall. As it died away, this new, ill-hued Bright died away with it, and the darkness around them returned.

  Carol blinked at tears. Father Storey put his arms around her from behind and hugged her to his chest. Maybe the thief had stolen that locket from four people, after all: the dead woman had been Carol’s sister and Tom Storey’s daughter, as well as Allie and Nick’s mother.

  Father Storey peered over Carol’s shoulder into the chapel and smiled. “Well. That was very beautiful, but I hope we won’t make a habit of it. I like hearing all of you. We will be rearranging the pews for morning reading and—ah! John! I almost forgot you. Thank you for coming tonight. Is there something you wanted to say to us?”

  The Fireman grinned from the back of the room.

  “I’ve found two men in need of shelter. With permission, I’d like to bring them into the camp. I can’t vouch for them, Father—I haven’t been able to get close enough to talk to them yet. They’ve painted themselves into a bit of a corner. I can get them out and I can make a distraction to cover their escape, but I’ll need some others to lead them back to camp.”

  Father Storey frowned. “Of course. Anyone who needs our help. I’m surprised you’d even ask. Is there some special reason for concern?”

  “Judging by the orange suits they’re wearing,” the Fireman said,
“the ones that say ‘Brentwood County Court’ on the back, they might be even more in need of salvation than the average member of your flock, Father.”

  6

  When Father Storey asked the Fireman who he’d need, Harper didn’t expect to be on his list, but she was the only person he mentioned by name.

  “Two or three men and Nurse Willowes, if you please, Father. I don’t know what kind of state they’ll be in. At the very least they’ve spent twenty-four hours in a cramped hiding place, in temperatures barely above freezing, so they’ll be suffering from exposure. It might make sense to have medical assistance on hand. What say we group up in Monument Park in twenty minutes? I’d like to get under way.”

  The service was over. Everyone crowded into the aisles, all of them yammering at once. Harper pushed her way through the close press of bodies and the noise. Ben Patchett was saying something—Harper, you’re pregnant, he’s out of his mind if—but she pretended not to hear. In another moment she was through the enormous red doors and out into a cold so dry and sharp it stung the eyes.

  Alone in the infirmary, she flung open cabinets, collecting anything that might be useful and dumping it in a small nylon knapsack. In her haste, her elbow struck the big anatomical model of a human head. It tipped off the counter and smashed on the floor.

  She cursed, turned to kick the shards out of sight—was in too much of a hurry to sweep—then hesitated.

  The head had busted into several large pieces. One half of the face gaped up at her with an idiotic astonishment. A stenographer’s notebook, rolled into a tube and bound up with thick rubber bands, lay among the shards.

  Harper picked it out of the shattered pieces, undid the rubber bands, and looked at the cover.

  PRIVATE NOTEBOOK OF HAROLD CROSS

  MEDICAL OBSERVATIONS AND PERSONAL INSIGHTS

  WITH SOME OCCASIONAL POETRY

  She considered what to do with it, thought there might be quite a few people in camp who would want to know what Harold had written about in the weeks before his death. Finally she decided not to decide. There wasn’t time. She tossed it in a drawer and got out of there.

  Captain America was waiting on the steps of the infirmary.

  “I’ve got some other masks if you want one,” Allie said, leading the way along the wobbling planks set out between buildings. “I’ve got Hulk, Optimus Prime, and Sarah Palin.”

  “Is it important to disguise our identity?”

  “I don’t think so. But it does make you feel more badass. Like when guys rob a bank and they’re all wearing scary clown masks? I have a huge girl boner for scary clown masks.”

  “Unless you have Mary Poppins, I think I’ll go as I am. But thank you for asking.”

  Allie led her through the looming pagan rocks of Monument Park, to a stone altar that would’ve been the perfect place to sacrifice Aslan. Father Storey stood behind it, with the Fireman on his right, and Michael and Ben on his left—an image that Harper thought oddly recalled The Last Supper. Michael even had Judas’s stringy red beard, if none of his malice or fear.

  “Allie?” Father Storey raised one hand, palm out, as if in benediction. “I promised your aunt you’d have no part in this. Head down to the bus—you’re watching the gate tonight.”

  “I swapped with Mindy Skilling,” Allie said. “Mindy didn’t mind.”

  “And I’m sure she won’t mind if you swap back.”

  Allie shot a questioning, hostile look at the Fireman. “I always go. Since when do I not get to go? Mike is going. He’s only a year older than me. I started the Lookouts, not him. I was the first.”

  “The last time you went running around with John, your aunt Carol sat staring out the window, clutching one of your sweaters and praying,” said Father Storey. “She wasn’t praying to God, Allie. She was praying to your mother to keep you safe. Don’t put her through another night like that. Have mercy on her. And have mercy on me.”

  Allie went on staring at the Fireman. “You going along with this bullshit?”

  “You heard him,” the Fireman said. “Run along, Allie, and don’t give me one of your sixteen-year-old death stares. If you want to have a row with me, it’ll have to be later.”

  She glared at him for a moment longer—eyeing him as if trying to decide how best to get even. Then she looked at Michael, opened her mouth as if to plead with him. Mike half turned away, though, scratching his back with his rosewood nightstick, and pretended not to see her staring.

  “Fuck you,” Allie said, her voice shaking with anger. “Fuck all of you.”

  In the next instant she bolted into the trees. Harper had been able to move like that once; she remembered being sixteen quite vividly.

  Father Storey smiled in a way that looked awfully like a wince. “In her own soft-spoken, gentle fashion, she does manage to get her point across, doesn’t she? I would add that compared to her mother, Allie Storey is the very model of restraint.”

  “Shoot,” Ben Patchett said. “I forgot to grab a flashlight.”

  “No worries, Ben,” the Fireman said, stripping off his left glove. “I brought a light.”

  His hand ignited in a gout of blue flame, with a soft whoosh, illuminating a circle ten feet in diameter. The boulders threw monstrous shadows halfway down the hill.

  Ben Patchett swallowed heavily as Harper fell in beside him.

  “I’ll never get used to that,” he said.

  7

  They followed the Fireman away from the church and in under the pines, where there were no boards to walk on. But the snow was brittle here, frozen and glassy on the surface, and for the most part they could make their way downhill without leaving any tracks.

  Downhill? They seemed to be heading toward the water. Harper was surprised, had expected them to pile into a car.

  Harper’s foot went through the polished surface of the snow and she lurched into Ben’s side. He steadied her, then looped his arm through hers.

  “Let me help you,” he said. He cast a hooded look at the Fireman’s back and muttered, “Crazy bringing you along.”

  A weight and ill-shaped mass in his pocket pressed against her arm and she frowned. She pushed her fingers into his coat pocket and found a revolver: hatched walnut grip, cold steel hammer.

  She slipped her arm free.

  He glanced at her, half smiling. “You’re supposed to ask if that’s a gun in my pocket or if I’m just happy to see you.”

  “Why do you need that?”

  “You have to ask?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I thought we’re off to help people, not shoot them.”

  “You’re off to help people. I’m on this trip to make sure my favorite nurse gets back to camp in one piece. We don’t know anything about these two men. We don’t know what they were locked up for. Maybe John Rookwood is all right risking your life for a couple outlaws, but I’m not.” His face flushed and he looked down and away. “You ought to know by now how much I care about you, Harp. If something happened—sheesh.”

  She put her hand on the back of his arm and squeezed. She hoped he read that squeeze as Thank you for caring and not God, I’m horny, we should really screw sometime. In her experience it was very difficult to offer a man affection and kindness without giving him the impression you were also offering a lay.

  He smiled. “Besides. Departmental regulations require any officer transporting a prisoner to carry his firearm at all times. You can give up the badge, but it’s hard to give up the mind-set. Not that I ever really gave up the badge.”

  “You still have it?”

  “I keep it with my secret decoder ring and the fake mustache I used for undercover work.” He bumped her affectionately with his shoulder.

  The snow was the color of blue steel, of gunmetal, in the moonlight.

  He mused, “Sometimes I think I ought to put it back on.”

  “The fake mustache?” She peered into his features. “I guess you could pull one off without looking too sleazy. You have a goo
d face for a mustache.”

  “No. My badge. Sometimes I think this community could use some law. Or at least some justice. Think about this gal who’s running around, helping herself to grub and jewelry. If she comes forward and admits what she did—or if we find her out—is that really going to be the end of it? We’re all just going to hug it out on Father Storey’s say-so?”

  “Maybe she could peel potatoes for a week or something.”

  “Or we could lock her up for three months, teach her a lesson. I even know where I’d do it. There’s a meat locker below the cafeteria, just about the size of a cell at the county jail. Bring in a cot and—”

  “Ben!” she cried.

  “What? She wouldn’t freeze. It’s probably warmer in there than in the basement of the church. There hasn’t been any electric for months.”

  “That’s disgusting. Solitary confinement in a room that smells like rotten meat. Over a couple cans of milk?”

  “And the Portable Mother.”

  “Fuck the Portable Mother.”

  He flinched.

  Father Storey and Michael Lindqvist ambled along ahead of them, Father Storey saying something, a hand on Mike’s back. Mike walked with his nightstick stuck out to one side, rapping it against the occasional tree trunk, like a boy running a stick over the boards of a fence. Ben watched them for a bit, then shook his head and snorted.

  “If I was Mike, I’d be relieved to get out of camp and I don’t know if I’d hurry back. He might be in more danger here.”

  “From who?” Harper asked.

  “From Allie. That girl has a temper. I wouldn’t want to cross her.”

  “You think she’s mad Michael didn’t come to her defense?”

  “Especially after what they were up to before chapel. I saw the two of them ducked behind a pine at the edge of the woods, making out like they were never going to see each other again. If I was her father, I would’ve—but I’m not, and I guess neither of them are exactly kids anymore.”