The Fireman

by Joe Hill

  Carol stared at her father with a horror-struck fascination. Father Storey licked his lips.

  “I brought this on myself. I called weakness kindness and told lies when I should’ve kept a stone in my mouth. I did the worst thing a father can do. I had a favorite. I am so sorry, Carol. Please forgive me. I always loved Sarah best. It is right and proper that I should go to her now. Give me another stone. More weight. I’ve said enough, amen.”

  He exhaled a long, dreamy breath and was silent.

  Harper caught Carol’s eye. “He doesn’t mean it. He’s suffering from a subdural hematoma. If he’s talking nonsense, it’s because of the pressure on his brain.”

  Carol looked back at her with a strange lack of recognition, as if they had never met before. “It isn’t nonsense. It’s a revelation! He’s doing what he’s always done. He’s showing us the way.” Carol reached out, blindly grasping backward, and took Michael’s hand. She squeezed his fingers. “We’ll sing. We’ll sing and call him to the Bright. We’ll give him all the light he needs to find his way back to us. And if he can’t come back to us—if he has to go—” Her voice choked. She coughed, and her shoulders shook spasmodically, and she went on: “—if he has to go, he’ll have our song to guide him and give him comfort.”

  “Yes,” Harper said. “I think that’s just right. Go and sing for him now. He needs your strength. And sing for me, because I need your strength, too. I’m going to try and help him, but I’m scared. It would mean the world to me if you could raise your voices for both of us.”

  Carol gave her a last, wondering look, then stood on her tiptoes and kissed her on the cheek. It was perhaps the last kindness she ever showed Harper. A moment later she brushed through the curtain and was gone, taking the others with her.

  Don Lewiston was getting ready to walk out, too, pulling his sleeves down to button them.

  “Not you, Don,” Harper said. “You stay. I’ll need you.”

  She circled behind the cot, taking Don Lewiston’s place behind Father Storey’s head. She gently lifted his skull in both hands. His silver hair was drenched in blood. She could feel the place behind his right ear where he had been struck, a warm wet lump, and another place, higher up, where there might’ve been a second blow.

  “How did this happen?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Don said. “I didn’t get the whole tale. Mikey carried him into the camp, found him fackin’ half dead in the woods. I guess it was one of the convicts. That’s the early word. Ben is working on them right now.”

  Working on them? What did that mean? Didn’t matter. Not now.

  “And Father Storey couldn’t say anything about what happened?”

  “Not that made sense. He said it was a judgment. He said it was what he had coming to him for protecting the wicked.”

  “That’s the pressure on his brain. He doesn’t have any idea what he’s saying.”

  “I know’t.”

  She looked at Father Storey’s pupils, sniffed his lips, and caught an unsurprising whiff of vomit. She thought about what she had to do and felt nauseated herself. Not the notion of doing it—it had been a long time since she had been squeamish about blood—but at the thought of getting it wrong.

  In the waiting room, she heard voices warming up, heard the Lookouts humming together, trying to find the same note.

  “I need a razor to shave away the hair back here,” Harper said.

  “Yes’m. I’ll get’cha one,” he said, and took a step toward the door.

  “Don?”

  “Yes’m?”

  “Can you get your hands on a drill? Maybe from the wood shop? A power drill would be ideal, but I don’t imagine you’ll find one that has any charge. I’ll settle for one I can crank by hand.”

  Don looked from her to Tom Storey—his white hair shampooed in red froth—and back.

  “Oh, Jesus. Anything else?”

  “Just hot water to sterilize the drill bit, please. Thank you.”

  When he didn’t reply, she looked up to tell him that was all and that he should go, but he was already gone.

  In the next room they began to sing.

  15

  Harper wiped Father Storey’s face clean with a cool, damp kitchen towel, taking off soot and blood in long swaths to reveal the lean, curiously lupine face beneath. Now and then his left eye would well with another drop of blood. It would trickle down into his ear and she would wipe him clean again.

  He seemed attentive, listening to the voices in the next room. They were singing the same song Harper had heard the night she first came to camp. They sang they were one blood and they sang they were one life. Harper was sure she would not be drawn into the Bright herself—she could not afford to drift away into that shimmering brilliance, where everything was easier and better. Her place was here, with the dying man. She wondered, though, if Father Storey might not be carried away, and if it might not be a real help to him after all, a replacement for the sedatives and the plasma she didn’t have.

  His Dragonscale, though, remained cold, dark swirls and scrawls on his old, loose flesh.

  “God is a good story,” he told her, all of a sudden. “I like that one and I also like frying pan and Wendy. We read that one together, Sarah, when you were little.”

  In her mind’s eye, Harper glimpsed a serene, lovely face shaped in flame. She squeezed his hand.

  “I’m not Sarah, Father Storey,” Harper said. “I’m your friend, Nurse Willowes.”

  “Good. Nurse Willowes, I have a private medical blather to insult you with. I’m afraid someone has been playing us like a ukulele. Someone has been singing new words to old songs. It’s important to act now. These savings won’t last.”

  She said, “First we have to fix your head. Then we can worry about the thief.”

  “I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains,” he said. “Anyway, stones taste better. I think I hit my head on something and knocked my shadow off. Are you going to stick it back on, or did it get away?”

  “All I need is a little needle and thread and we’ll have you right as rain.”

  “Or at least right in my brain,” he said. “I’m going down the drain. You know my little Sarah was an awful thief, too. She stole away from me—stole away from all of us. Even the Fireman. Poor John Rookwood. He tried not to kill her. I guess he’s going to try not to kill you now. Probably he’s in love with you, which is tough luck. Out of the frying pan and into the Fireman.”

  “Of course he tried not to kill her, Father Storey. He didn’t kill her. I heard he wasn’t even on the island when Sarah—”

  “Oh! No. Of course not. He was an innocent grandstander. So was Nick. You can’t blame the boy. They were both her unwilling accomplices. What she couldn’t get from one she got from the other. She was a very accompliced woman. I know John blames himself, but he shouldn’t. He’s been incinerated for a crime he didn’t commit. The bride died and we all cried. Not that they were married. They never would’ve married. All firemen are wedded to cinders, in the end. You ever ear that old hopscotch? John and Sarah, sitting in a tree, B-U-R-N-I-N-G.” He paused, then his left eye fixed on something beyond her shoulder. “There’s my shadow! Quick! Stitch it back on.”

  She looked. A dark form bobbed its head on the other side of the green curtain between the ward and the waiting room. Don Lewiston pushed through it, holding a steel pail of steaming water in one hand and a paper bag in the other.

  “H’ain’t gonna believe our fackin’ luck,” Don said. “I came up with a fackin’ power drill, battery in it, still good. There’s a old cuss what pull’t in camp this week, had it in his pickup. I got the bit in the hot water right now.”

  “Do you have a razor? Scissors?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Good. Come over here. Father Storey? Tom?”

  Tom Storey said, “Missed will owes?”

  “Tom, I’m just going to give you a nice little haircut. Bear with me.”

  “W
hat kind of beer? I’m not shally much a drinker but I ad go fuh a beer. I’m sull shirty.”

  Don Lewiston said, “You followin’ any a this?”

  “Don, I hardly follow you most of the time. Lift his head.”

  In the next room the song ended on a last deep note of harmony. Carol murmured to her small attentive flock. Carol and her faithful were deep in the Bright now, casting enough light to make the green curtain in the doorway glow an irradiated shade of lime.

  Don held Father Storey’s head between his crooked fingers while Harper clipped hunks of bloody hair away from the spot behind his ear where he had been struck. The scalp beneath was purplish-black, like eggplant.

  In the waiting room their voices rose again. The Beatles now. The sun was coming, the long, lonely winter was over.

  Father Storey stiffened and began to kick his heels.

  “He’s having a grand mal,” she said.

  “He’s goin’ t’choke on his tongue,” said Don Lewiston.

  “Anatomically impossible.”

  “We’re losin’ him.”

  Yes, Harper thought. If this wasn’t a final convulsion, it was close to it. Foam dribbled from the corner of his mouth. His left hand grabbed fistfuls of the sheets, let them go, grabbed again. He couldn’t do anything with the right hand. Harper was holding his right wrist, monitoring his erratic, racing pulse.

  The song in the next room rose to a high, sweet, perfect note and Father Storey’s eyes sprang open again and his irises were rings of gold light.

  His back had been arched right off the mattress, so only his head and heels touched, but now he relaxed onto his bedsheets. His heartbeat began to slow. Squiggles of dull red light pulsed in his Dragonscale, faded, pulsed again.

  He almost seemed to smile, the corners of his mouth rising just slightly, and his eyelids sank shut.

  “He’s out,” Don said. “B’God, it helped. They sang him outta the worst of it.”

  “Yes, I think they did. Put the bit in for me, will you, Don?”

  “Are we doin’ this?”

  “He doesn’t have much strength left. If it’s not now, there won’t be another chance later.”

  She shaved the rest of the hair off the back of Father Storey’s head, to reveal the outraged flesh. It was no good giving herself time to think. It wouldn’t help to dwell on maybe killing him, or lobotomizing him, slipping and driving the drill in deep enough to throw curds of brain.

  Don stuck his hand in the nearly boiling water without any sign of distress—Harper thought those hands were just slightly more sensitive than a pair of canvas gloves—and brought up the dripping bit. He clicked it into a Black & Decker power drill straight from Home Depot and gave the trigger a squeeze. It whirred to life with a sound that made her think of eggbeaters and cake frosting.

  He looked at the blackening bruise on Father Storey’s scalp and swallowed.

  “You aren’t goin’ ta ask me—” he began, then caught himself, and swallowed again. “I don’t know how many fish I’ve put an end to, gutted and cleaned, but—a person—Tommy—I don’t think I can—”

  “No. I won’t ask you to do it. It better be me, Mr. Lewiston.”

  “’Course. You’ve done’t before.”

  It was not quite a question, the way he put it, and she didn’t think he required an answer. She held out her hand for the drill. The bit steamed.

  “I will need you to hold his head. Do not let it move in any way while I’m operating, Mr. Lewiston,” she said, in a tone of cold command that hardly seemed identifiable as her own voice.

  “Yes’m.”

  He spidered his fingers over Father Storey’s head, lifting it off the pillow.

  She examined the drill, found the dial that controlled the power settings, and turned it up as far as it would go. She gave the trigger a test squeeze. It startled her, the bit spinning up to a chrome blur, the vibration shooting down her arm.

  “I wish we had better fackin’ light,” Don said.

  “I wish we had a better fackin’ doctor,” she said, and bent and located the tip of the drill two inches to one side of Father Storey’s right ear, where the bruise was ugliest.

  She pressed the trigger.

  The bit chewed up the thin layer of skin in an instant, turning it to what looked like flakes of wet cooked oatmeal. The bone smoked and whined as the drill worked down into it. She applied pressure slowly, determinedly. Sweat sprang up on her face but Don was occupied holding the head still and she could not ask him to wipe her brow. A single drop of sweat caught in an eyelash and when she blinked, the eye began to burn.

  Blood welled from the hole in the skull and raced up the grooves of the bit. She thought, obscenely, of a child sucking red Kool-Aid up through a Krazy Straw.

  Without opening his eyes, Father Storey said, “Better, Harper. Thank you.”

  Then he was silent, and he did not speak again for two months.

  BOOK FOUR

  MARLBORO MAN

  1

  From the diary of Harold Cross:

  JUNE 18th:

  THE GIRLS IN THIS CAMP ARE A PACK OF LESBIAN BITCHES AND IF THEY ALL BURNED TOMORROW I WOULDN’T GIVE A SMOKY FART.

  THE WORD FROM SF IS THEY’VE GOT 2500 PEOPLE ALIVE IN THE PRESIDIO WHO HAVE THE ’SCALE AND NONE OF THEM ARE BURNING. FUCK THIS BULLSHIT. I’M GOING TO MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT IN CHURCH TOMORROW. SOMEONE NEEDS TO TELL THESE IGNORAMUSES YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORSHIP IN THE HOLY CHURCH OF CAROL STOREY’S SACRED PUSSY HAIRS TO LIVE. ANY RELEASE OF OXYTOCIN WILL TELL THE ’SCALE IT’S FOUND A SAFE HOST.

  IF I HEAR ONE MORE ROUND OF “SPIRIT IN THE SKY” OR “HOLLY HOLY” I’M GONNA PUKE. WE COULD SHUT DOWN THE SPORE JUST AS EASY WITH ONE BIG CIRCLE JERK. A GIANT COMMUNAL CIRCLE JERK, AND CAROL’S PRETTY LITTLE HAND RIGHT ON THE ROD. HER DADDY CAN FRIG HER WHILE SHE FRIGS ME, THAT’S WHAT SHE REALLY WANTS ANYWAY.

  I HAVEN’T WRITTEN A NEW POEM IN DAYS. I HATE THIS PLACE.

  2

  Harper read just the one page in Harold’s notebook, picked at random, then flipped through some others. She glimpsed doodles of boobs and bush, saw some words in dark block lettering: SLUTS WHORES BITCHES CUNTS. Harper had never met him, but felt she understood Harold Cross pretty well. She thought a collection of Mr. Cross’s poetry would probably go nicely alongside a copy of Desolation’s Plough.

  She turned back to the entry from June 18th and let her gaze linger on that one sentence: ANY RELEASE OF OXYTOCIN WILL TELL THE ’SCALE IT’S FOUND A SAFE HOST. She folded the notebook shut, slapped it against her thigh, and put it in one of the drawers . . . then, after a moment, took it out again.

  The drop ceiling was made of big white squares of particleboard. She had to stand on a chair to reach them. Harper lifted one ceiling tile and pushed the notebook up and out of sight. Not as good as hiding it inside an anatomical model of the human head, but it would do for now.

  She could not have said who she was hiding it from. Perhaps it was only that Harold had been hiding it himself, which meant he thought there was someone who would take it away if he or she had a chance.

  As she was pushing the chair back where she found it, she noticed blood on her knuckles, staining the fingers of her right hand. Tom Storey’s blood. She washed it off in icy water, watched pink swirls chase one another down the drain in candy-cane stripes.

  Father Storey slept on his back, the top of his head bandaged in a cap of clean white gauze. The dusty windows above let in milky rays of sunshine. Like Father Storey himself, the daylight seemed tired out, hardly there. But the sheet was tucked under his chin, not pulled over his face. He had lasted the night. That was no small triumph.

  Harper was woozy with exhaustion, but the baby wasn’t going to let her sleep. The baby was hungry. What the baby wanted was a deep, warm, buttery bowl of Cream of Wheat, drowned in maple syrup. Food first, sleep after.

  As she walked over the snow along a path of wobbling pine boards, through knee-high mist, she tried to remember what she knew a
bout oxytocin. It had a nickname, “the cuddle hormone,” because it was released when a mother held her baby—released in mother and child alike. Harper thought about crawling through that smoke-filled drainpipe and singing to the infant she hadn’t seen yet and how it had shut down the ’scale.

  Your brain gave you a fix of oxytocin when you hugged, when you received a round of applause, when you sang in harmony with someone and the singing was good. Strong communal experiences produced it like nothing else. You could get a dose from a good experience on Twitter or Facebook, too. When lots of people retweeted something you said or favorited a photo, they were throwing the switch for another squirt of oxytocin. Why not call it the social-networking hormone, then? That was better than “cuddle hormone,” because—because—

  She couldn’t remember. There was something else about oxytocin, something important, but it had been too long since she had done the reading. For some reason, though, when she shut her eyes, she was picturing soldiers in desert fatigues and jackboots, cradling M16s. Why that? Why did oxytocin also make her think of crosses burning in the Mississippi night?

  The cafeteria was padlocked from the outside and there was plywood nailed up in the windows. The place looked shut for the winter. But Harper had helped out enough in the kitchen to know where the key was hidden, hanging on a nail under the steps.

  She let herself into the spacious, dusty dimness. The chairs and benches were all turned upside down on tables. The kitchen was gloomy, everything put away.

  Harper found a tray of biscuits in the oven, covered with Saran Wrap. She took a tub of peanut butter from one of the cupboards, and was crossing the room to fetch a butter knife, when she almost stepped through an open trapdoor into the cellar. A slanted wooden ladder led down into a darkness that smelled of earth and rodents.

  She was frowning at the open hole when she heard a curse from below, followed by a soft thud, as if someone had dropped a flour sack. A man groaned. Harper stuck a biscuit in her mouth and started down.