Demarcus said “Hey Dad” as we passed through the front room. Demarcus’s dad was wearing a bathrobe and sitting in a lounge chair, reading a newspaper. He eyed us over the paper as we went into the kitchen. After Demarcus showed me the phone and I took it off the cradle, Demarcus’s dad called to his son in the warm yet commanding voice I associated with dads on TV. I was convinced that he, unlike Demarcus, knew at a glance I was a terrorist. So after I called Carl, who was startled by my request to be picked up in Haislip and said he’d come right over, I walked boldly into the living room. I had decided I would introduce myself to this man in a friendly way that suggested I had nothing to hide.
“Hello, sir,” I said, “I’m Ben. Pleased to meet you.”
The father, who was very tall and had graying puffs of hair over his ears, shook my hand and introduced himself as Mr. Caruthers. He asked what brought me to Haislip, and I surprised myself by telling the truth: that I was following along the fence until I found a way inside the dump.
“Why on Earth do you want to go inside that nasty old dump?” Mr. Caruthers asked.
“To see it,” I said, which was true, though I left out the part about strategizing to destroy it by firebomb.
“Can’t you see it from over there in Komer?”
“There’s razor wire to keep us out.”
He shook his head. “Figures,” he muttered, then told us we shouldn’t be playing in that dump, though he admitted the temptation to be irresistible. He told us about a creek where he grew up and how they built forts out of old tires and driftwood that floated down the muddy water. “Simpler times,” he said.
When Carl showed up, he looked stoned. Mr. Caruthers shook his hand in a stiff way and asked if he was here for his brother. I’m not sure why Mr. Caruthers thought Carl and I were brothers—we looked nothing alike—but for some reason I blurted, “Yeah, he’s my brother. He’s gonna take me home.” Then I shook hands with Mr. Caruthers and on my way out I whispered to Demarcus that I would be back to finish the job.
In the car, Carl started making a speech about how I shouldn’t wander so far away, but I told him to fuck off. He said he was doing me a favor and I should be more respectful. I said I was sorry. Then I asked him about Haislip. Carl said he sometimes delivered pizzas over there but it was scary at night because the empty houses had vagrants inside. I had no idea what a vagrant was but assumed it to be a sort of creature.
We went back the opposite way that I came, completing my loop around the dump. Turns out I had walked the long way before, and Haislip and Komer were only a mile or so apart. I made note of this for later.
When I got home, Ruthanne was washing dishes and asked me where I’d been. I told her the whole story, leaving out the particulars of my plot but allowing that I had been casing the dump. It was important to tell at least part of the truth to Ruthanne because she had a nose for lies.
“I swear, Ben,” she said, “sometimes you just don’t think.”
“I think all the time,” I said. “Pretty hard, too.”
She snorted like it was ridiculous, the idea of me thinking. That made me mad. It also made me mad she had the energy to stand there washing dishes but hadn’t told me before, because if I knew she felt strong we could have rode bikes. So I went into my room and didn’t sneak into hers even once that night.
During computer class the next day I tried to find out more about Haislip. I wanted to know if it was worthy of my sacrifice, if saving Haislip, in addition to Komer, would doubly glorify me. The internet said Haislip was named after a Civil War guy and was known as Flag City, USA. I was confused. I thought Komer was Flag City, USA. Then the internet said Haislip was the hometown of mountaineer Bob Bilger, who was the first man to videotape climbing Mount Everest and wrote a book about it, but I thought Bob Bilger was from Komer. Then the internet said Haislip was the birth-place of the frozen hamburger even though everybody knew Komer was the birth place of the frozen hamburger, so when Mr. B came over to bug me about staying on task I asked him where was the birthplace of the frozen hamburger.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Is that question on the internet treasure hunt?”
“I finished that. You know anything about Haislip?”
“Haislip is a very interesting city, full of history and hardworking people, not unlike Komer. You’ll learn more about Haislip in high school, where half the students will have gone to Truckee.”
He meant John R. Truckee, the middle school in Haislip. I was at Milford Perkins, the one in Komer, which people said was better but had sloppy joes made of rat meat.
“Why the curiosity about Haislip?” Mr. B asked.
“No reason.” I didn’t want to let anything slip that might be a clue when the FBI questioned everybody who knew me. “I gotta finish my internet treasure hunt now.”
Mr. B walked away, looking confused.
I knew Mr. B wouldn’t bug me for a while so I turned my attention to the actual firebombing. I learned that firebombs, aka incendiary weapons, looked like rusty logs and were thrown from planes during World War I to light towns on fire. Since I couldn’t get my hands on one of those logs, I would have to settle on an “improvised” incendiary weapon such as a Molotov cocktail. Molotov cocktails were easy to make. All you needed was gasoline and a glass bottle and some fabric for a wick.
The beer Dad drank came in cans, so late that night I snuck out my window to check the alley for glass bottles. The bottles in the alley were all broken, though. Then I heard a distant clang and saw a dark shape lurching down the alley. At first I thought it was a junk monster of some sort, born from the dump, but it turned out to be a lady hobo pushing a grocery cart. I watched her lift the top off a trashcan and root around in there until she pulled out some bottles, so I did the same thing and found some nice clean bottles of my own. She noticed me and muttered something, probably a hex.
Next, I got the big red jug of gasoline Dad kept by the side of the house for his mower. The jug was almost empty (he had used it to top off his car) but there was just enough gas in there to fill three bottles halfway, which was how much you were supposed to fill them for Molotov cocktails. It was dark outside and hard to see so the gas went all over the bottles and my hands and shorts. I rinsed the bottles in the kitchen sink then balled up my shorts and hid them under the stairs in front of the house. They were my favorite shorts so this was a terrible sacrifice, but it felt good to feel the feeling of sacrifice.
Next came the wicks. I looked under the sink for a dishrag but got nervous because Mom had a peculiar memory. I opened my closet and got my worst, most skid-marked underwear, but the underwear was so threadbare that I worried it might burn too fast. So what I did was cut a strip from the bottom of my bed sheets. If I cut cleanly enough, I reasoned, no one would notice that my top sheet was a few inches shorter. I cut the long thin strip into three and tied each strip as tight as I could around the side of each bottle. (The internet said most people stick the wick directly into the bottle, but the wick can get too much gas on it and explode in your hand so it’s better to do it on the side.)
I kept the Molotov cocktails under my bed until five o’clock Saturday morning, when I stuck them in my backpack and crept out the door before Mom and Dad woke up. It was still dark outside, which was good. I needed to commit my act of terror under cover of darkness. But as I walked down the alley I started thinking about Ruthanne, because what if I died? Wouldn’t she want to know what I died for? I was still sore at her for what she said about me not thinking, but I didn’t want to leave things bad between us in case I was blown up by my own firebomb. I decided to write a note.
Back at the house I got a piece of paper and puzzled for a while over what to write. It had to be somewhat vague in case the FBI questioned her, but also heroic and majestic and memorable. Finally I wrote, “Dearest Ruthanne, You’re the best sister a boy could have. What I do today I do for you, for all of us, and for the galaxy. Your ever loving brother, Ben.” I folded up the note and was
going to put it in her favorite shoes, but then I heard Dad banging around in the kitchen looking for something to eat. I thought about sneaking out, but I knew I shouldn’t risk it. He had eagle eyes like me, and it was getting light outside anyway. I didn’t want to spoil my plan out of hastiness.
I spent the whole day fidgeting alone in my bedroom until the sun was just over the treetops, then I grabbed my backpack and told my parents I was sleeping over at a friend’s house. What friend, they asked, which was a reasonable question since I didn’t have friends. I told them Timothy McCoughtrie. I had slept over at his house one time, years before. They looked suspicious. “Didn’t his family move away?” Mom asked.
“Yeah,” Dad said, “and I thought McCoughtrie killed himself. But maybe I’m thinking of Mike McCutcheon.”
“No, that was Mike McCoughtrie,” Mom said, adding that Mike McCoughtrie had been a great basketball player and should have gone to college for it.
“You always were hung up on that guy,” Dad said.
“I just think it’s a shame he’s dead is all. When someone’s so good at something it makes it harder to imagine them dead. It’s funny is all.”
“Nothing funny about being dead.”
I said, “So, um, is it okay if I go?”
They said okay so I hit the road.
I walked the way Carl had driven me home, which was only a mile and had a sidewalk the whole time. It was a pretty nice walk.
In Haislip, all the houses were the same size and had the same little screened-in front porch so it took me a while to locate Demarcus’s house. When I did, I circled it, peeping in windows for Demarcus, but he wasn’t there. No one was there. So I strolled out to the field where I had found him before, and sure enough he was out there stacking rocks in a pile while the older boys played ball. I told him tonight was the night. He asked if I needed his help.
“No way,” I said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Then why’d you come tell me?” he asked.
I didn’t know what to say to that. By then some older boys had noticed me and were approaching us. I worried that if I ran they’d come after me, so I stood my ground. They were bigger than they looked from a distance and crossed their arms to show their muscles. One, the tallest, who was basically a man, asked me who I was.
“A friend of Demarcus,” I said, but Demarcus just looked at the ground.
The boy turned to Demarcus. “He a friend of yours?”
Demarcus didn’t say anything.
I thought the boys were going to attack, but they just stood there, arms crossed, staring at me. They seemed to be waiting for something. Finally I just turned around and walked away. I didn’t dare look back until I heard them hollering, resuming their game, but by then Demarcus wasn’t among them.
Who needs him, I thought. Each man stands alone. But I really didn’t want to be alone just then. I wished Ruthanne were with me.
I found my way back to the hole under the fence, but I didn’t slip through it right away. I strolled around a bit, trying to look casual. Then, when I was sure the coast was clear, I carefully slid my back-pack under the fence and slid through after it, on my back. On the other side of the fence I looked up at Trash Mountain. It was reddish from the sunset, like a wayward outcropping of the mountains of hell. Its shaggy piebald flesh of plastic rippled in the breeze. I walked along the base, looking for a spot that was partially blocked from view, in case anybody crept up on me, and I found a nook between two rusted-out refrigerators. I opened my backpack. It smelled like gasoline even though the bottles were closed, and the inside felt greasy. I took out one of the Molotov cocktails and turned it in my hand, appreciating not only my handiwork but the craftsmanship of the bottle itself, which spoke of a bygone era when kids like me hung around corner stores with bar stools and bartenders who served soda instead of beer, and the kids were always stealing candy but the bartender guys just shook their heads and said, Boys will be boys.
There was a rustling nearby. I ducked into one of the refrigerators to hide, and in a moment I saw Demarcus walk past holding a heavy bucket. “Psst,” I whispered, and he turned and saw me in the fridge.
“Ben!” he said. He said he was sorry again and again but that Daryl and Boogie one time beat up this white boy for goofing with Boogie’s sister.
“What’s goofing?” I asked.
“You know,” he said, then made his finger and thumb into a circle and stuck another finger through it.
I said the whole thing was no problem, but Demarcus seemed pretty worked up, so I said I absolved him, which was something I saw a priest on TV say.
“Thanks,” Demarcus said. He held up his bucket to show me it was half-filled with water in case I lit myself on fire, and we got started.
I had planned to dig a hole in the side of Trash Mountain so I could ignite my Molotov cocktails beneath it, to cause it to collapse from the inside or possibly explode at the top like a volcano, but the trash was so smelly that I gave up digging after just a few minutes. Demarcus said maybe I should just light one and throw it as high as I could, to see what happened. I agreed. I reached into my pocket for the matchbook I had stolen from the kitchen, and while my hand was in there I felt a piece of paper. I took it out and saw my note to Ruthanne. I almost cried, thinking how the note might have burned up with me, without her knowing what it said and how I felt about her. I handed the note to Demarcus. “If anything happens to me,” I said, “give this to my sister.”
“What does she look like?”
I wasn’t sure how to describe her so I told him my address and said she was the girl living there, not the lady. I also told him to deliver the note under cover of night in case FBI snipers were watching the house.
Then I took out the matchbook, lit a match and held it up to the wick. It caught fire real quick, maybe because of the extra gasoline in my backpack, so I sort of panicked and threw the bottle just ten feet or so up onto a trash bag. It landed with a thump and didn’t break. I watched the flame peter out, hoping something in the trash pile would catch fire, but nothing did.
Demarcus said I should aim for a big blue metal thing that looked like the fender of a van. It was about thirty feet up, close enough to hit but far enough to be hard to aim at. I accepted the challenge. I took out the second Molotov cocktail, lit it, grabbed it by the bottleneck, as described on the internet, and flung it with force at the fender. But I flung it with so much force that the wind put out the wick and by the time the bottle smashed against the fender, the fire was long gone.
“Fuck, man,” I said.
“Maybe throw it softer,” Demarcus said.
“How can I throw it softer? I gotta hit the goddamn fender.”
“Wait for the rag to be more on fire, maybe. You threw it pretty quick after it was lit.”
Demarcus had a point. But I was nervous. This was my last Molotov cocktail, and I had to make it count. The lucky thing was some gasoline was already on the trash from the second Molotov cocktail, so if I could hit the fender again then the fire might be doubly intense. So I took a few deep breaths and shook out my hand, then I lit the final Molotov cocktail and waited. The waiting was eerie, watching the fire slowly devour the wick. Demarcus was watching too, his eyes glistening with tiny reflected flames. When the fire met the bottle I flung it with not quite as much speed but a higher arc, and Demarcus and I watched for what felt like minutes as the flaming bottle traced a trajectory high in the air. At first I thought I had missed, because the bottle went so high, but sure enough it began to sink, and then, suddenly, it shattered against the fender and bright orange flame spread like spilled juice splashing across the floor. We kept watching, stunned, then something else caught fire beneath the fender and rumbled so loud I could feel it in my chest. A tiny fireball shot up and showered sparks. We ran.
The next part is fuzzy. I remember watching Demarcus basically dive under the fence and scoot through on his belly. I followed him, but by the time I got through he was shrinking in
the distance, running for home. I looked over my shoulder and saw smoke. I ran along the fence, stumbling over clods of dirt and falling at least once, scuffing the palms of my hands. When I got to the road to Komer I was still running. It was dark and I was running down the sidewalk, not even thinking about perverted hobos or what my parents would say, just desperate to get home. Once or twice I looked over the fence and saw what looked like a plume of smoke in the purplish night sky.
When I got home I fumbled with the doorknob for what felt like an age, then I ran through the empty house to Ruthanne’s bedroom. She was there, thank God, reading her paperback. She looked up at me, startled. I told her to look out her window.
“Ben,” she said, “are you okay?”
I went over to the window and pulled back the drapes. “See?” I said, but there was nothing to see. There weren’t any flames in the distance. Not even smoke. Just the lumbering dark shape of Trash Mountain. Near the top, a big floppy mattress glittered in the moonlight. Its stuffing was coming out in balls, and for days the puffy white balls had been rolling in slow-motion down the raggedy slope. If only I had caught that stuffing on fire, I thought, but the thought rang hollow. To destroy Trash Mountain would take more than a couple Molotov cocktails, I knew. Much more.
Chapter 2
TURNS OUT GARBAGE piles combust from their own heat pretty much all the time, so the night watchman, who sat in this little tower you could see from the road, didn’t even call the fire department that night. He just drove out to Trash Mountain in his golf cart, sprayed the side of it with a hose, then turned around and finished his shift. I learned all this from Demarcus a few months later. He did a school report on the dump and interviewed the night watchman, among others, on what was most exciting about working there. Demarcus said the night watchman was a creep. When Demarcus asked him what was most exciting, the night watchman pointed at a pile of porno magazines and winked.
Trash Mountain Page 2