The Burn Palace

by Stephen Dobyns

  The boy Baldo wanted most as a friend was Hercel McGarty Jr., who, of anyone in fifth grade, was the most serious and had the least developed sense of humor. These are the tricks life plays. The mouse wants to hang out with the cat. Hercel didn’t dislike Baldo, he just didn’t see the point of him, which was how Hercel felt about quite a few things. For instance, it would be wrong to say he didn’t have a sense of humor, but a whoopee cushion, even the electronic variety, didn’t interest him. He saw no point in it, and the same could be said of a pie in the face. Sure, he had an imagination, but he pushed it aside. An imagination made it difficult to concentrate; he saw no point in it.

  In September, Baldo had talked to Hercel at recess and told him he would like to be a vampire, though he’d wait until he grew up so he wouldn’t be a kid-size vampire. Hercel found this a strange ambition. Baldo said he knew vampires were unpopular; they had bad breath, couldn’t sleep at night, and had bad habits. But what Baldo liked was that vampires weren’t shy. “Whoever heard of a shy vampire?” asked Baldo. Hercel looked at him and walked away.

  Baldo liked Hercel’s evenness of temper. He didn’t put it in those words, though it was what he meant when he called Hercel cool. He was curious about Hercel. But Hercel wasn’t curious about Baldo. On the other hand, Hercel was well mannered. Even if Baldo bothered him, he wouldn’t knock him down. His father, Hercel Sr., had told him never to punch somebody who was weaker than he was, especially in the face.

  Baldo also thought Hercel had something odd about him. He knew odd wasn’t the right word, but he couldn’t think of anything better. That’s a problem with being ten: feelings and ideas are still being sorted into language. And Baldo was well spoken. Because he was shy and spent a lot of time by himself, he had done a fair amount of reading. It would be nice to say he read Charles Dickens and Emily Dickinson, but no, he had read a book on hypnotism for beginners, a book on invisibility and levitation, books by people who had been taken up by flying saucers, a book called How to Flirt 101, also a book called Forbidden Science, which explained how to harness energy from outer space and the true function of the Great Pyramid.

  Baldo’s curiosity about Hercel had increased since the start of the school year to the point that he had begun to follow him. Not all the time, but sometimes. Baldo told himself that something might happen to let him do Hercel a small service, like pushing him out of the way of a speeding car or saving him from drowning. Really, there’s something pathetic about these uneven relationships.

  Baldo knew nothing about Hercel’s snake, nor did he know why Hercel had missed school that day. There was a bug going around, and quite a few kids had missed a day here or there. Baldo had even heard kids after school talking about snakes in the hospital, a whole truckload of snakes and one fat nurse had jumped out of a window and three patients had heart attacks and died. There was no talk of a missing baby. That would come later. But Baldo in his insistent way wanted to know if Hercel was all right. Maybe one of the snakes had bit him. Like many ten-year-olds, the line between reality and possibility was a shifting frontier.

  Though it was still a week until daylight savings time, by five-thirty it was nearly dark. Clouds had moved in, and there would be rain in the night. About that time, Baldo was making his way toward the corner of Newport and Hope, to the bungalow where Hercel lived with his sister, Lucy, his mother, and his stepfather. He didn’t quite imagine himself looking through the windows, but if he ambled by slowly enough Hercel might come out and they could exchange a word or two. He didn’t know about Carl Krause and wouldn’t recognize him if he saw him.

  Hercel wasn’t hanging around the windows waiting for Baldo to walk by. A light was on in the two-window gable above the front porch, the first floor was dark, and a light was on in the basement. Baldo stood across the street, shielded by an old maple, and considered his options. The yappy dogs in the house next door gave a sporadic bark, more a generalized warning than focused indignation, but it was enough for Baldo to think that if he were to approach the house, he should do it quickly. There was little or no traffic, and no people were wandering around. Folks ate dinner early in Brewster.

  Baldo didn’t choose to look through the basement window; rather, he just found himself going in that direction. He wore jeans and a dark sweatshirt and had black hair. Fred Bonaldo’s hair had also been black before it fell out. Dreading what lay ahead, Baldo already knew that someday he’d be called Bald Baldo Bonaldo and Baldy Baldo. These realizations can lead to bitterness or a teeth-sucking homespun philosophy.

  Moments later, Baldo lay on his stomach behind a bush, peeping through the basement window. The first thing he saw was the empty cage where the snake had been kept, though he didn’t know it had contained a snake. A pet gerbil, Baldo thought. At that moment, the snake was in the Brewster Animal Shelter. It was evidence, but acting chief Bonaldo had yet to decide what kind of evidence. It might be a weapon; it might be a perpetrator; it might be a victim. This remained up in the air. Anyway, when Hercel told him he wanted his snake back, Fred Bonaldo said it couldn’t be done.

  Edging closer to see more of the basement room, Baldo discovered Hercel lying on the cement floor. His first thought was Hercel had been hurt, but his eyes were open and his face calm, apart from a look of intense concentration. Hercel lay on his stomach with his arms crooked in front of him and his chin resting on the backs of his hands. His legs were bent and his feet were raised toward the ceiling as his heels tapped each other in a thoughtful way. A foot in front of Hercel on the cement were three marbles. These were what he was staring at.

  Well, this was a mystery, and it was with regret that Baldo realized Hercel didn’t need his help. Still, Baldo lay quietly and watched, though the ground by the side of the house was cold and rather damp.

  Then it moved, the marble in the middle moved. It moved about three inches and Hercel hadn’t touched it. Baldo got the shivers, but he guessed that Hercel had blown a sharp blast of boy breath to send it rolling. But Hercel’s mouth was shut and his cheeks weren’t puffed out. Baldo thought he must be wrong. It hadn’t moved after all. Even so, he watched more closely.

  Next the marble on Hercel’s left began to roll. Hercel’s mouth remained shut. Could he be snorting through his nose? The marble rolled forward about six inches and stopped.

  In Baldo’s small library were several well-thumbed magic books. He could make coins disappear and then reappear in a person’s ear. He knew three card tricks. He knew the rigid-rope trick and the cigarette-through-a-coin trick. He could turn water to wine, but don’t drink it. But he couldn’t make marbles move by themselves.

  Now the marble on Hercel’s right began to move. Hercel was focused and straining, and his face had turned pink just as if, Baldo thought, he was trying to free a large turd. The marble rolled forward, and then turned and clicked the marble in the middle. No way could Hercel make a marble move sideways by secret blowing. Baldo crawled forward until his nose was pressed to the glass.

  Hercel again pursed his lips, and his face turned pink. His folded hands curled into fists. The marble in the middle moved. Then, slowly, it rose in the air. Shaking with inner vibration, it rose three inches, and then up to about five inches. It hung there briefly until Hercel gasped loud enough for Baldo to hear and the marble dropped to the floor.

  Then, unhappily, a man began to shout, “Hey, kid, what the fuck you doing?” It was Carl Krause leaning over the side of the porch.

  Baldo turned and glanced back through the basement window. At that moment Baldo’s and Hercel’s eyes met. But it was the briefest of moments, because in an instant Baldo leapt to his feet and broke through the bushes as he heard Carl’s boots clomping down the front steps.

  “You fuckin’ brat, I know what you’re up to!”

  Baldo wasn’t much of a runner, but circumstances can erase any shortcoming. He ran as he’d never run before as he heard Carl behind him. He never even glanced back, nor did he know how far Carl kept up the chase. Six bloc
ks later, when Baldo dropped to the ground exhausted and no longer caring if the man killed him or not, he looked back and Carl was gone.

  FIVE

  IT WAS EIGHT O’CLOCK Thursday night and drizzling when Ernest Hartmann drove out of Brewster in his Ford Focus. He had a map as well as written directions, but the first part of the drive seemed simple enough. Beside him on the seat lay his Browning Hi-Power. He’d been unsure about bringing it but then grabbed it at the last moment. Thirteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber—nine-millimeter, the King of Nines, as his father had said. Better safe than sorry.

  Hartmann took Route 1 to Perryville, and then turned north on Ministerial Road to South Kingstown. There were few lights. Most of the road led him through woods with scattered houses back among the trees, and then farms and a park and more houses around Tuckertown Four Corners, then back into the woods again. For a two-mile stretch he saw nothing but the shadows of trees till he passed Larkin Pond and reached South Kingstown, where there was an Amtrak station. A mile to the northeast lay the University of Rhode Island campus; less than a mile to the west was the entrance to Great Swamp. He had passed few cars, had seen no people. At one point three scruffy dogs dashed out of the trees and across the road. On further thought, Hartmann decided they were coyotes.

  He was uncertain about what he was doing. It was unwise, perhaps illegal, and possibly dangerous. Balanced against these considerations were his twin girls, living in LA with his ex-wife. If he turned a good profit on this current venture, he could move there. The money would give him something to live on until he found a job. That was one good thing about being an insurance investigator—they were always in demand.

  So whenever he thought he was making a mistake driving out to the swamp, it felt like he was rejecting his daughters, pushing them out of his life. Yet if it weren’t for them, there was no way he’d be doing what he was doing now. If it was as illegal as it sounded, then just the fact he knew something about it could make him an accomplice and, if nothing else, he’d lose his job and his investigator’s license.

  As for why Hartmann had to come out to Great Swamp, well, it had to do with Indians, at least that’s what he had been told. It had to do with Indian claims and Indian burials. It had to do with the Indians’ detribalization by the state of Rhode Island in the 1880s and their loss of fifteen thousand acres of land. After a century of trying to get their land back, the tribe was given eighteen hundred acres thirty years ago. Bad feelings continued about this, but how it led to grave robbery Hartmann didn’t know. Possibly Indians had raided white cemeteries placed on those fifteen thousand acres, or possibly whites had raided Indian graves. But it also had to do with casinos and the Indians’ desire to have a casino in Rhode Island and the exertions of the Connecticut Indians—who had a huge casino across the border—to keep them from having one. But Harrah’s Entertainment backed the Rhode Island Indians, and they carried a lot of clout.

  Hartmann was interested in the insurance angle. The village of West Kingston, and a number of other villages, formed the town of South Kingstown: eighty square miles and thirty thousand people. In addition, South Kingstown contained Great Swamp and part of the Indian land. Vandalized graves, uncertain responsibility, international conglomerates, angry townspeople, as well as swamp Yankees: fiercely independent rural poor whose roots in South Kingstown went back several hundred years—what lay ahead, it seemed to Hartmann, was litigation. If it were all as he’d been told, insurance companies would be eager to pay Hartmann for his services. But the story he had heard in Boston didn’t entirely jibe with what he’d heard this morning. For instance, the fellow in Boston said nothing about the Indians building a casino.

  Hartmann turned left onto Liberty Lane, drove past a row of small houses and farms, and then the road came to an end at the train tracks, and another road, a dirt road, turned left along the tracks and half a mile later passed a few buildings and garages, all dark except for several outside lights. Now the trees thickened, and in his headlights he saw bushes of mountain laurel. Soon he passed a parking area and a raised barrier; the road narrowed to little more than a single track. Did he wonder why the barrier had been raised? He hardly noticed it.

  Yet as he proceeded and the road grew narrower and bumpier, his doubts grew larger. He’d been told to drive to the old hangar on Worden Pond, still two miles ahead. But after going no more than a quarter of a mile, he slowed to a stop. He could easily bust an axle on one of these holes, and, of course, the Ford Focus didn’t have four-wheel drive. Looking for a place to turn around, he saw nothing suitable. Trees, laurel bushes, and swamp blocked his way. Setting the pistol in his lap, he put the car in reverse and peered out the back; then he rolled down his window. The air was thick with the smell of wet, rotting leaves. Twice he nearly went off into the thick mud of the swamp. He moved at hardly more than a crawl, but his increasing fear caused him to speed up and then abruptly brake as he veered toward the mud.

  After five minutes, he dimly made out the parking area. Something was wrong; the barrier was down. He slowed again and backed within a foot of the metal bar. Taking his pistol, he began to get out of the Ford. Then he saw someone walking toward him from the parking area. His heart took a leap until he realized the man was wearing a uniform. Presumably he was a park ranger and he’d been the one to lower the barrier.

  The man held a flashlight, and the glare made it difficult for Hartmann to see as the man approached his door.

  “I’m lucky I caught you before you left,” said Hartmann, through the open window. Still, he kept his pistol just below the level of the glass.

  The man bent down and raised the flashlight slightly toward his face. But there was no face. There was only a skull and great black holes where the eyes should have been. The mouth was a black gash.

  Hartmann froze with his mouth open to speak, but instead of words he made only a long drawn-out “Aaaa.” It was his last sound. The man at the window raised his other hand and shoved a long knife into Hartmann’s chest, moving aside as his arm thrust forward to keep from being splashed with blood. Then he lifted the knife upward so the body wouldn’t thrash off the blade. Hartmann’s hands jittered and his feet kicked between the pedals, but then all movement stopped.

  The man withdrew the knife and reached forward and put his hand in the warm blood. With his bloody fingers he drew a smiley face on the rear side window. He shone his light on the bit of artwork and seemed satisfied. Then he leaned into the driver’s-side window and grabbed hold of the thick brown hair. Raising the knife, he cut a straight line across the top of Hartmann’s brow.

  • • •

  Harriet Krause stared at the red bruise on her cheek in the bathroom mirror. She had a narrow, delicate face with a straight nose and dark eyes. The bruise took up her entire left cheek. Carl had struck her with his open palm when he had returned home from chasing the boy down the street. For that matter, he had nearly struck her when he’d come back from the police station that morning. In both instances he accused her of helping the people who were out to get him, whatever that meant.

  “Why should anyone be out to get you?” she had asked. He’d looked at her as if she was an idiot and his expression changed to suspicion. Then he retreated upstairs, his feet clomping on the steps.

  The blow had hurt, but what bothered her more were the changes that had come over Carl in the past months, changes with no explanation. They had been married a year ago April, and the first year had been wonderful. They had been hungry for each other, as well as loving. Although Carl had lost his temper more than once during that time, he had never hit her or the children. Then, in August, when he lost his job at Phelps Plumbing & Heating, he’d come home and kicked a chair, broken a vase, and smashed her mother’s pottery lamp. And he’d been shouting, even growling, in his anger at Howard Phelps, who had criticized Carl’s attitude, that Carl had gotten angry at a customer and it hadn’t been the first time he’d been rude to someone.

  Ha
rriet had stood in the kitchen doorway, watching Carl smash up the living room. But she hadn’t spoken. She’d been too astonished to speak. When he’d finished, he sat down on the couch and put his head in his hands, sitting as quietly as a statue.

  “Are you all right?” she’d asked. “What happened?”

  “Don’t talk to me now.” Carl said this with seeming calm, and she had returned to making dinner, even though her hands were shaking. That night he told her he’d been fired, but it wasn’t his fault. A customer had been rude and he was rude back.

  Before that, in April, he had been fired from a construction company because of a “disagreement” with another worker. When she’d talked to him about it, he had said, “These things happen, I’m a new worker and I’m better than a bunch of the older guys. Some of them got pissed off.”

  She had accepted that as the truth, and she had accepted that Howard Phelps was wrong to fire him, though she hadn’t accepted it as readily. But Carl was persuasive. He described what had happened and it seemed to make sense. Also she loved him and dreaded that something might go wrong between them. But the times he had gotten angry, according to Carl, had been the other person’s fault. That morning when he pointed the shotgun at the two policemen, and at Hercel, too, for that matter, he said they had broken into the basement and he hadn’t known they were policemen. Did she expect he’d do nothing? Anyway, he wasn’t going to shoot; he was just putting a scare into them.