Tongues of Fire

by Peter Abrahams

  Slowly it approached the dock, propeller whirling: first a translucent disc, then a dozen flashing blades, finally three that didn’t move. A cabin door opened and Wes climbed down onto one of the pontoons. He had a line in his hand and a pink bubble in front of his face. The plane glided up to the dock and stopped dead. Wes reached forward about a foot and hooked the line around a wooden cleat. He stepped onto the dock and turned to the plane, waiting.

  The other door opened. A big black shoe appeared, feeling around for something solid. It found the pontoon. Another big black shoe. Two long and heavy blue legs. Wes held out his hand. A tall, heavy man in blue clambered onto the dock.

  “We should have taken the pictures down,” Paul said.

  Wes knelt on the dock, hanging bumper pads on the pontoons. The big man came up the path.

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  A knock at the door. Rehv opened it. “Derlago, Provincial Police,” the big man said. He had a mouth full of crooked yellow teeth. “Got a few minutes?”

  What if I didn’t, Rehv thought. “Come in.”

  Derlago took off his hat and came in, ducking his head as he walked through the doorway. He looked at the stone chimney that stood in the middle of the big room, open on both sides. The fire was almost out. “Very nice. You keep warm in the winter?”

  “Warm enough.”

  “Insulation behind those pine boards?”

  “Lots of it.”

  “Very nice.” Derlago walked around the chimney to the other side, where the kitchen was. He put his hat on the heavy wooden table and sat down. “Oak?” he asked, running his hand along the grain.

  “I think so.”

  “They sure knew how to make them.” He stuck a thick finger into one of the holes gouged in its surface and trapped an apple seed under his fingernail. He flicked it at the fireplace. “Been on the phone to Immigration,” he said. “They told me to get up here and see some ID. So I’m here. Let’s see some.”

  “I don’t have ID.”

  Derlago looked at Paul. “The boy neither?” he asked, keeping his eyes on him.

  “No.”

  Derlago stuck his finger into another hole and felt around inside. “You anarchists or something like that?”

  “No. I had ID, but it’s all been lost over the years. We’ve just never had any use for that kind of thing up here.”

  Derlago sighed. “Then I’ve got to take you back.”

  “What for?”

  “Questioning. Fingerprinting. Whatever else they want.”

  “I meant, what have we done wrong?”

  “That’s what we’ll have to find out,” Derlago said. He turned and looked again at Paul. “See, they think maybe you’re not citizens. There’s lots come in these days from the West Indies on visits. Visits that last forever.”

  Rehv took two steps across the room and stood over Derlago. “Are you telling me you’re doing all this because of the color of my son’s skin?”

  He felt Paul suddenly behind him, tugging at his arm. “Control yourself,” the boy said quietly.

  Derlago looked up at Rehv, but otherwise he didn’t move. “I’m doing this because they told me to do it.” Paul pulled him away. “So let’s not make a fuss. If you’re citizens you’re citizens, and if you’re not you can go to court. That can take years. So why waste all your energy now?”

  Rehv looked out the window. The wind was stronger. It made the dark trees on the far side of the lake look like a crowd applauding wildly. On the dock Wes had put on a leather jacket and was staring into the northern sky. “Do we both have to go for questioning?” Rehv asked.

  “Not for questioning, no. There was no talk of questioning the boy. But they want his prints too.”

  “Can’t you do that here? I don’t see why he has to be involved.”

  Derlago found another apple seed and rolled it beneath his thumb and forefinger. “Can he stay here by himself for a day or two?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay,” Derlago said, standing up. “I don’t see why not.” He went to the door, opened it, and called to Wes. “Bring up my kit, will you? It’s under the seat.”

  Rehv heard Wes say: “Weather’s coming up.” He glanced at Paul. The boy was watching him thoughtfully.

  “That’s all right,” Derlago said. “Just bring the kit.”

  Wes came in with a small black case. “You’re not going to be long?” he said, handing it to Derlago.

  “Not long. Sit down and take it easy for a few minutes.”

  Wes shook his head. “I’ll put another bumper on.” He went away.

  Derlago opened the case and took out a black ink pad and a few sheets of stiff paper. On the sheets were printed a few rows of boxes, the size of fingertips. “Who’s first?”

  “I thought you were going to take mine at Frog Lake,” Rehv said.

  “Might as well do them both while I’m at it.”

  “I don’t mind waiting.”

  Derlago pried the tin cover off the ink pad. “Let’s not make a fuss.”

  “Do I still have to go with you?”

  “Yup,” Derlago said. “Who’s first?”

  Paul sat down beside him at the table. “Right hand.” Derlago took the boy’s long brown hand in his big square white one. One by one he rolled the well-shaped fingers on the ink pad and then inside the boxes on the form, as though the fingers were inanimate parts that had come down the assembly line. “Left to right, left to right,” he said as he rolled them. His mouth opened a little. Rehv watched his tongue, thick, white, and dry, rubbing back and forth around the inner rims of his crooked teeth; they did not look like teeth at all, but chips of hard yellow bone stuck into his puffy gums by a dentist in a hurry.

  “Next.”

  Derlago took Rehv’s thumb in his hand and rolled it on the ink pad. He wasn’t one of those big men with a surprisingly light touch. “Left to right, left to right.” Rehv looked over Derlago’s shoulder and saw the trees on the far side of the lake in frenzy. The wind was driving whitecaps across the water and tearing their heads off if they were slow.

  “No, no. Left to right. Christ. Now I have to start over.” Derlago reached for another form. He squeezed Rehv’s fingers a little tighter, pressed them a little harder, but something went wrong anyway when there were only two fingers to go. “Shit. Don’t you know left from right?” Derlago said, starting again. The northern sky was one huge black cloud, closing in. Lightning cracked across it like a battle standard. The sky ripped its bloated belly on the treetops and roared.

  Wes came running into the cabin. “Let’s go, for Christ’s sake.”

  “We would have been gone long ago if this son of a bitch would cooperate,” Derlago said, mashing Rehv’s thumb into the ink pad. Rain moved in from the northern end of the lake like a curtain of steel pellets.

  “Come on,” Wes said, rocking on his feet the way a child does when it has to go to the bathroom badly.

  Derlago threw the ink pad and the forms into his case. “Move it,” he said to Rehv.

  “Just give me a second to get my overnight bag.”

  “Hurry,” Wes said. He opened the door and started running toward the dock.

  Rehv crossed the big room and went through the doorway that led to the bedrooms at the back of the cabin. In his room he took a small canvas bag from the closet and put in it two pairs of socks, two pairs of undershorts, a pair of corduroy jeans, and his shaving kit. He was folding a shirt when Derlago burst inside, grabbed his arm and yanked him out of the room. “Goddamn it. Move.”

  They hurried down to the dock, leaving Paul in the cabin. Wes had both hands on one of the pontoon struts and was leaning on it hard to keep the plane from banging into the dock. The wind ripped Derlago’s hat off his head and blew it way. “Get in, get in,” Wes yelled. Then the rain hit, drenching them in seconds. A bolt of lightning struck very near, behind the cabin. They heard something crash in the forest, just before the thunder boomed
.

  “No way,” Derlago shouted.

  “Get in. I’ve taken off in worse than this.”

  Lightning flashed in front of their eyes like a hacksaw blade of fire. Thunder shook them at the same moment. “Not with me.” Derlago ran heavily toward the cabin. Rehv turned to follow.

  “Wait. Help me get another line around her.”

  “What?” Rehv shouted at the top of his voice, although they were close enough to shake hands.

  “Another line. Or we’ll lose her.” A wave broke over the dock.

  They struggled with the line. The wind tried to wrench it out of their hands. It tried to blow them into the water. Cold steel pellets stung their skin. Lightning dove at them like lines on a graph in 1929.

  When the line was secure they ran up the muddy path. Inside the cabin Derlago was sitting on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, and Paul was adding logs to the fire. Derlago’s outfit was spread across the stone hearth: gun and holster, blue uniform, black socks, black shoes, frayed white jockey shorts, stained blue. “We’ll just have to wait it out,” he said.

  “It’ll be dark soon,” Wes said.

  Rehv looked outside. It was dark already. “Anyone for a drink?” he asked.

  “I never drink when I’m in uniform,” Derlago replied. “But I’m not in uniform.”

  Rehv poured Canadian whiskey into thick plastic tumblers. The tumblers had fishing flies embedded in their bases. “Very nice,” Derlago said, holding his up for a better look. He drank. “Very nice.”

  “None for me,” Wes said. “It might blow over.”

  When it didn’t, he drank too.

  They finished the bottle. Paul made sandwiches. Ham. Cheese. Tuna. Peanut butter. Derlago had one of each. Wes kept putting on Rehv’s oilskins and going outside to look at the plane. “Better radio in,” Derlago told him. “Say we’ll be back tomorrow.” Paul went to bed. Rehv opened another bottle. They played three-handed cribbage for a penny a point. Rehv won two dollars and fourteen cents. Then they played hearts. “Have you got Monopoly?” Derlago asked.

  “No.”

  They played crazy eights. Wes chewed gum and drank whiskey at the same time. The fire roared inside. The storm roared outside. They finished the bottle. And started another.

  “Bedtime for me,” Rehv said.

  “I guess we should too,” Derlago said. He rose, swaying slightly, and pulled the blanket around himself like a toga. He picked up his gun and his black case.

  Wes stood up too. “Have you got anything to read?” he asked. “Like flying magazines?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m seeing double anyway.”

  Rehv led them to the door that opened into the hall at the back of the cabin where the bedrooms were. Derlago paused in front of a photograph of the savannah hanging on the wall. “Where’s this?”

  “Arizona,” Rehv said.

  “Yeah? My wife’s brother goes there every winter.” He gazed at the photograph. “Doesn’t look so great to me.”

  There were three bedrooms off the hall: Rehv’s at the lake end, Paul’s in the middle, and the spare one at the other end, where Rehv took Wes and Derlago. It had an old bunk bed, left behind by the lumbermen who had once lived there. “Dibs the bottom,” Derlago said. He put the gun and the black case on the bedside table and lay down. Rehv went out and closed the door. He walked down the hall to his own bedroom. Inside, Paul was kneeling on the floor, refilling the two packs by candlelight.

  They put out the candle and waited. Rehv had drunk very little, but it was enough to make him sleepy. He put his mouth close to Paul’s ear. “Don’t let me fall asleep.”

  But he fell asleep anyway. He dreamed he was swimming on a cold black sea. “Wake up,” said a voice, very calm, very close. Paul. He sat up with a start.

  “How long have I been asleep?” he whispered.

  “Half an hour.”

  He listened. The house was very quiet. The storm was dying down. They picked up the packs and walked slowly and quietly out of the room and down the hall. Rehv thought of his fingerprints in the black case on Derlago’s bedside table, but without the noise of the storm he could not risk it. They went into the big room. Rehv closed the hall door very softly behind them.

  Cinders glowed in the fireplace, casting a faint orange light on Derlago’s uniform. Paul gathered it up—shirt, trousers, socks, shoes, underwear—as they crossed the room.

  Outside, a light drizzle drifted down, wafted over the water by the last exhausted panting of the wind. A few stars showed in the north. Rehv carried the canoe from its place by the tree to the shore. He avoided the dock because of the chance it might creak. Gently he lowered the canoe into the water. They set the packs inside. Paul knelt in the bow. Rehv pushed off and knelt in the stern. They glided to the end of the dock. Paul untied the two lines from the cleat and passed them to Rehv. He retied them to the seat and looked back at the cabin. It was quiet and dark.

  They paddled away, towing the seaplane behind them. In the middle of the lake Paul stopped paddling for a moment and fumbled for something in the pocket under the bow. Rehv heard a faint splash. Derlago’s clothes sank to the bottom. Rehv looked back again and in the darkness saw the shadows of the spruce trees that protected the cabin. He tried to distinguish the outline of the cabin itself, but he couldn’t. He didn’t look back again.

  They crossed the lake. The wind breathed its last few breaths and died. The water was as smooth as black jelly. The sky cleared and the moon appeared, a new moon like jaws wide open to devour the dark part that didn’t show.

  When they reached the far side they paddled along the shore until they came to a rocky point that rose steeply out of the water. They pulled the canoe onto the shore and then gripped the struts of the seaplane and began dragging it up the steepest part of the rocks, tail first. The seaplane was much heavier than Rehv had expected, and it took a long time. “One, two, pull,” he whispered. “One, two, pull.” When it would go no higher they each stood by a pontoon and rocked the plane forward toward its nose. Rehv held it like that while Paul found two large round boulders and rolled them under the raised parts of the pontoons. Then, with the round boulders as a pivot they began rocking the plane tail to nose, tail to nose, until at last it tipped up on its nose and stayed there. They leaned against the pontoons and pushed it over into the water. It landed on its back with a splash that threw silver drops high into the moonlight.

  They put the canoe back in the water, retied the lines, and began towing the plane out into the lake. It was much harder with the plane upside down. When Rehv thought the water was deep enough he dropped the lines and guided the canoe around to one of the doors of the cabin. The water reached a third of the way up the door. Rehv pulled on the handle, but it would not open. Carefully he lifted himself out of the canoe and stood on the underside of the wing with water up to his knees. He pulled on the handle. And pulled again with all his strength. The door opened. The lake began to pour inside. Rehv climbed back into the canoe and pushed off.

  They watched the seaplane settling lower in the water. First the cabin disappeared, then the tail, then the struts, leaving only the pontoons. There was plenty of room in the plane, room for four people and some baggage. When the water had taken all of it, the pontoons too sank out of sight. A big silver bubble rose up and broke on the surface of the black jelly.

  Paul turned to his father and grinned, his teeth as hard and white as the moon. Rehv wanted to grin too, but he was too busy thinking about the other times his fingerprints had been taken: once for the army, the other time when he had arrived in America. And thinking about the black case on the bedside table.

  They paddled south. The night was quiet and still and very long. They were quiet too, except once when Paul said, “Where are we citizens, Dad?” He hadn’t called him that in a long time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The big helicopter droned on and on. A thousand feet below lakes and forest were gliding by.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said the young RCMP man looking down. “That’s the real Canada.”

  Green and blue. Green and blue. Krebs was bored with it right away. He had never flown in such a slow helicopter. For something to do, he opened his briefcase and looked at two photostats he had already looked at a lot. One showed a set of fingerprints, incomplete and of a quality so poor he found it difficult to believe they had been taken by a professional; but there was the provincial police seal at the bottom. The other was a copy of a special immigration permit, almost sixteen years old. It was the kind of permit issued for a short time by the U.S. government, after the fall of Israel. This one had a thumb print in the lower right-hand corner and the name Isaac Rehv written on the top line. The Interpol computer said that the print in box B-1 of the provincial police form and the print on the immigration permit had been made by the same thumb. The Interpol computer had said this without being asked, the way it did nowadays. Information on a man named Reeve had been fed into it; it had thought for a second or two and then told Krebs’s computer the whole story. The system had worked perfectly. But for some reason no one had given the Interpol computer a look at the prints until two weeks after the disappearance of Mr. Reeve.

  Krebs felt the body of the RCMP man suddenly go tense. “Bring her down, bring her down,” the RCMP man said to the pilot. He had binoculars in his hand, and he was training them on the narrow end of a pear-shaped lake below. “Look, sir,” he said. “A moose.” He gave the binoculars to Krebs. The helicopter went down to about a hundred feet. Krebs saw something brown and stupid standing in the water.

  They saw two more moose on the way, and one tree stump that looked like a moose. “That’s the real Canada, sir,” the RCMP man told him a few more times. A tree stump that looks like a moose? Krebs wanted to say; and once, even a few years ago, he would have. But not now.

  Now he kept all that inside. Now he was a man who knew how to get along with other men. He had to be, after five years at headquarters. Two thousand four hundred and sixty-three meetings. He numbered them in his desk diaries. It proved how busy he was. But no one doubted that: They kept adding people to his staff.