On Fire

by Dianne Linden

  “Matti’s got her heart set on it, like I said.”

  “I’ll take the job then, as long as you agree to keep what you found out about me between us.”

  “All right.” Frank shrugs and starts the car. “But I don’t see why you’re so hush-hush about the whole thing. From what I found out, you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  16

  A LITTLE GUY WITH SUSPENDERS

  HOWARD ISN’T AROUND THE DAY I leave the hospital. After I’ve looked everywhere else I can think of, I go to the cafeteria and knock on the kitchen door. A guy with a neck too thin for his Adam’s apple opens it. “I’m looking for the cook who’s a friend of Howard’s,” I say.

  “Howard?” The guy seems to reflect on the name for a minute. “He work here?”

  “Not in the kitchen,” I say. “But I thought he had a friend here who saved food for him. He said she used to be a patient herself.”

  The guy must be a cook. He has something white all over his hands and his apron. It occurs to me that he might be the one who makes the air cake they serve in the cafeteria.

  “Edith, you mean?” he says. “Yeah. She was always giving food to people. That’s why she doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “She’s not around at all?”

  “No, she’s gone. And don’t ask me for a handout, because I can’t do it.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” I say. Obviously. I have both my hands in my pockets. “It’s not her I want, anyway. I’m trying to find the guy she used to give food to. Howard, like I said.”

  “Can’t help you there,” The cook says. He closes the door. White powder flies up into the air.

  I go back to 5B and ask for Howard there. “The little guy with the rainbow suspenders,” I tell people. They all nod when they hear the description, but that’s as far as it goes.

  When I walk out the door of the Metal Springs Hospital late that afternoon and get into Marsh’s truck, I feel positive about everything I’m about to do, except leaving without telling Howard goodbye.

  That doesn’t seem right after all he’s done for me.

  17

  PARADISE

  WE MAKE SEVERAL STOPS FOR SUPPLIES on the way to Blackstone Village. We also stop at a burger place to eat, so it’s dark by the time we arrive. Marsh lets me off in front of the little egg-shaped trailer he says is my new home.

  He gets out of his truck and opens the door. “You’re just behind Frank’s house,” he says. “I ran a cord over from there to give you power.” He flips a switch and a lamp comes on.

  In two seconds I’ve looked all around me.

  “This okay?” Marsh asks. “Frank thought you should have your own place.”

  I sit on the narrow bed that runs across the fat end of the trailer. “Where’s Matti?” I ask.

  “You probably won’t be seeing much of her for a while.” Marsh leans against the door frame. “She stays in her room all day. She says it’s because she’s bored but I don’t think that’s it. I think she isn’t coping very well.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  “Like the man says, life ain’t easy.”

  Marsh straightens up. “You’ve got water.” He points at a jug on the tiny counter that runs across the front of the trailer. “Outhouse is up in the trees. Breakfast’s at the Hot Spot across the way at six-thirty. Let’s get some sleep.” He opens the door and steps outside. “Good night.”

  I stay on the bed after he leaves and look around again. There are a few things I missed the first time. A dried flower in an old maple syrup bottle on the counter, for example. Books on a shelf above the bed. It’s not quite the welcome I was hoping for, but it does look like somebody’s expecting me.

  I stay where I am until I hear a bell tinkling. I get up and look out the window over the counter. It’s the only one in the trailer.

  I can’t see anything, but as the sound gets louder, I realize it’s two bells I hear. One is like water running over rocks. The other is a plague bell. One that bongs, “Bring out your dead.”

  I’m not sure what kind of visitation to expect when I open my door, but it’s Mrs. Stoa who is walking toward me with a flashlight in one hand and a bell in the other. Behind her is Matti. What she’s carrying is the sound of a funeral.

  “Marsh let you off here and didn’t tell us?” Mrs. Stoa says. She shakes her head. “That boy never had any social skills, even before his war.”

  She climbs up the two steps to the trailer and stands in the doorway. Matti stays down on the ground. There really isn’t room for three people inside.

  “We just wanted to make sure you got settled in,” Mrs. Stoa says. “And by the way, this trailer was Frank’s idea. You can stay in the house if you’d rather.”

  Matti moves up on to the first step. She has something fuzzy and black on her head. It’s pulled down so far over her ears that her face hardly shows.

  “We have a bear in the area,” she says.

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Stoa tells me. “If you go out at night for . . . any reason, ring this bell and make as much noise as possible. The bear will be as frightened of you as you are frightened of the bear.”

  She hands the bell to me. It’s silver. Engraved with spirals and squiggly lines. “I’d like it back when the danger’s past.”

  “It’s a mother bear,” Matti says. “She’s grieving because of what she’s lost.”

  “Perhaps,” Mrs. Stoa says. “Did you find the books I left you?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll leave you to them,” she says. She waits for Matti to step down so that she can step down. Then they walk away.

  I take the pills I brought with me from the hospital. One is supposed to help me shut my mind off and go to sleep. It really works. The bed is short and there’s no room to hang my legs off the end so I have to curl my knees in to my stomach to fit, but I’m out in a few minutes.

  I’m only disturbed once during the night. Something heavy heaves and scrapes against the side of the trailer. Something like a mother bear. “I wondered where you went,” a candy-covered voice says. It almost sounds like Howard.

  I can’t answer because I’m asleep.

  18

  SCARS

  IT’S STILL DARK WHEN I GET to the Hot Spot for breakfast. People are already lined up for whatever’s coming off the grill. Pancakes, probably. The whole place is floating in maple syrup.

  The guy lined up in front of me turns around. “Remember me?” he says. “I’m Virgil.” He’s handsome. Long hair. Dark eyes. But when I look at him, all I can think of are ravens.

  “I’m the guy who went off and left you over in Cato City,” he says. “Sorry about that.” He steps back and looks me over. “Shorts and a T-shirt all you’ve got? It’s cold in the mornings now.” He takes his sweatshirt off and gives it to me. “Shirt off my back,” he says. “There’s gloves in the pocket. You’re working with me today.”

  When Virgil and I come out of the Hot Spot, the sun’s up and I see why Matti’s not coping. It’s like a scene from a World War II movie. There are huge piles of charred wood and rubble everywhere. Specks of black dust hang suspended in the air. Then the trucks roll in belching diesel and talking business.

  In the time it takes us to pick up a chain saw and get into Virgil’s old car, someone’s loaded a burned-out school bus on a flat bed and is driving it away. And someone else — Marsh, probably, is wheeling back and forth in a bobcat, loading junk from the piles onto dump trucks.

  Virgil drives the car to the far edge of town. He stops, gets out and takes the chainsaw out of the trunk. “Marsh went through here and took down most of the dead trees,” he says. “We need to cut them into smaller pieces and pile them up so he can get at them with the bobcat. You ever use a chainsaw?”

  “I doubt it,” I say.

  “I’ll saw then, and you stack.” He grabs a vest from the back seat of the car and walks a little distance away from me. When he starts up the saw, i
t’s like I hear a pack of demonic wolves in the distance.

  Then I realize it’s the sound of something suffering. Trees, maybe. Who knows how long it takes a tree to die?

  Lunch is back at the Hot Spot. I don’t see Matti there. I don’t see Frank. Mrs. Stoa puts in a brief appearance and reminds me of the importance of leafy green vegetables. When we’re about finished eating, Marsh comes over.

  He’s wearing army camouflage with a Red Cross band on his arm. Or maybe I still can’t trust me eyes completely. “How’s it going?” he asks me. Then he looks at Virgil.

  “We’ve been working flat out,” Virgil says. He winks at me. “May have to slow down this afternoon.”

  We definitely do that. I’m tired after lunch from working. Virgil’s more tired of working. We pick two fat logs to sit on. He pours out coffee from his thermos, and we take a long break in a clearing that was once thick with trees.

  “It looks like you’ve had some serious burns on your legs,” Virgil says. “How’d you come by those?”

  By now I’ve accepted the fact that somewhere up in the mountains, I took the lit end of one cigarette after another and used it like a red-hot paint brush against my skin.

  I tell him that. I figure I may as well be honest.

  “Cigarettes’ll kill you,” Virgil says. “You need any help kicking the habit?”

  “It’s done,” I say. “It wasn’t too hard. I never actually inhaled.”

  19

  BLUE BLAZES

  SLEEPING INTHE EGG, AS MATTI calls my trailer, takes some getting used to. But I manage. The sounds that disturbed me get fainter every day. And I like being able to open the door and look out at the Milky Way.

  I eat well. I get stronger. I can see how things will be better here next year and I want to be part of that. It still takes me a couple of weeks to decide the best way to make that happen.

  Once I’ve decided I walk into the trailer where Frank has his temporary office and lay it out for him. “I want to change my name to Dan Iverly. Legally,” I say. “I need to know you don’t have a problem with that.”

  ”I don’t,” he says. He’s sitting behind his desk. Paper is piled up all over it and spills out onto the floor. “I told you that before.”

  He gives me that look again. Maybe he isn’t suspicious. Maybe it’s just a guy thing. “Matti says you’re a Justice of the Peace.”

  “I am. But J.P.’s don’t do name changes.” I think I sag a little when he says that. “Move those insurance forms off the chair and sit down,” he says. I carry out both orders.

  “I’m also a Notary Public. I can notarize your statement saying you want to change your name from what it is now to something else. We’ll fax that off to a person I know in the registry at Kingman. There’s a fee, of course. But you’re working now.”

  “You’re sure I can do this?”

  “Like I told you. You’re over eighteen. You can change your name to Darth Vader if you want to.”

  I’m pretty sure my birthday is October 25, not that I was ever allowed to celebrate it. That’s a little less than a month away according to the calendar in my trailer, so unless I’ve lost an entire year, my eighteenth birthday is coming up.

  I don’t know why Frank thinks I’m older than that. But I want to get started so I let it pass. “Okay,” I say. “I’m ready.”

  Frank hands me a blank piece of paper and a pen. He tells me what to write. I hand it back to him when I’m finished.

  “Now,” he says. “I need you to swear to the truth of this. Raise your right hand.” I do that, feeling self-conscious.

  “Do you solemnly swear,” he begins, “that what you have written here is true to the best of your knowledge? If yes, say I so solemnly swear.”

  I only get to, “I so sol…” when Frank cuts me off.

  “Hold on,” he says. “What did you write here?” He brings the paper closer to his face. “Eustace Aaron Miller?” His eyebrows soar up. It’s almost like he has little black wings above each of his eyes.

  “Are you crazy?” Right away I can tell he wishes he hadn’t asked that. “You can’t swear to this, I mean. You haven’t put down your legal name.”

  “Yes, I have,” I say.

  “No, you haven’t. You must still be confused.”

  “I’m not. Why would I make up a name like that?”

  “Eustace Miller?” I can tell Frank’s beginning to fizzle out.

  “That’s who I was. Useless Miller I was also called.”

  He shuffles through the papers on his desk. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “Not to me.”

  He finds a red folder, holds it up and opens it. “Your name, based on your fingerprints is Willis Asche.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Asche, Willis Alan. Your parents had you finger-printed when you were eight as part of a missing child program. I’ve got it right here.” Frank flaps the papers at me.

  “I’ve never heard of him,” I say.

  Frank fiddles with the stapler on his desk. I think his time as an explosives expert is almost over.

  “Listen, Frank,” I say. Now it’s my turn to lean forward. “I’m positive my father never had me fingerprinted for anything like a program to find missing children.

  “I’ve always believed that if I was kidnapped, he’d yell, ‘Amen,’ and crack open a bottle of whiskey to celebrate.”

  “Your father’s alive?” Frank’s eyebrows go up again. The top layer of paper on his desk lifts slightly, then settles back down.

  “As far as I know.”

  He studies the papers again. “This Willis Asche kid’s whole family was killed in an automobile accident when he was nine. He was the only survivor. I’ve got a copy of the newspaper article here.”

  He pushes on his lips like he’s searching for the switch that will make this whole problem go away. “You’re positive about your dad?”

  “I’m positive he didn’t die when I was nine.”

  “And about the name? You didn’t know what it was this time last month.”

  “Now I do.”

  “Son of a gun,” Frank says. He slaps his hand down on the desk. Then he looks up at me. “If you’re this Eustace Miller character, and it seems like you know what you’re talking about, then who in blue blazes is Willis Asche?”

  “I’m sorry, Frank,” I say. “That name doesn’t mean anything to me at all.”

  MATTI

  1

  CHARCOAL

  I DECIDED THIS IS WHAT I’D tell a T. V. reporter if one ever stuck a microphone in my face and asked me, “Matti Iverly, what’s it like to move back to the place you’ve lived all your life after it’s been burned out?”

  “If you’re serious about finding out,” I’d say, “get a bulldozer to come in and knock down most of the houses in your town. Make it your neighbourhood if you live in the city. Leave a few buildings standing for no reason you can understand.

  “You can even let one of those buildings be your own house, if you’re okay feeling guilty about having a roof over your head when your neighbours don’t. Try living in your house while what’s left of the ones around you have been bulldozed out.

  “I wouldn’t suggest setting your town or neighbourhood on fire before the bulldozer comes in,” I’d add, “because fire can get away on you. You’ll just have to dream up the smell of smoke and the black soot everywhere. You’ll just have to imagine the feeling that your whole life has turned to charcoal.”

  Of course I’d be telling the T. V. reporter what it would be like for the average person to experience what I’d described.

  For me? With my beloved Tourette’s? Moving back to Blackstone Village turned out to be a hundred times worse than staying at the evacuation centre in Kingman, and not just because of the stuff I’ve already mentioned.

  The sound of chainsaws and jackhammers and people shouting never seemed to stop during the day. Trucks constantly came and went. It was solid noise and confusion.
/>   And there was no bus I could take to get away from all of it.

  During the day, I wore the special kind of earmuffs jackhammer operators use. I stayed inside with the windows and doors shut and the curtains pulled. My main job was holding myself together. I barely managed that.

  Even the mighty Mrs. Stoa had to back off on her advice-giving. And on the assignments she wanted me to do for school. I couldn’t concentrate.

  After dark, when all the work had stopped, I took off my earmuffs and sat in the porch swing. Dan visited me sometimes when I was there. We talked a little. But I wasn’t very good company. And he was getting up early and working hard. He usually hit the hay by nine-thirty.

  Virgil brought his guitar by a few times and checked in. He’d learned from Mrs. Stoa that he had a poet’s name and he was trying to live up to it, so he wanted me to listen to a song he’d written for his new girlfriend.

  I liked the quiet way he played. And his voice was not bad, but the song didn’t have much in the way of lyrics — just, “Rosey, oh Rosey, oh,” over and over again.

  I told him he should put in something stronger, like, “Oh Rosey, I burn for you, babe.” I showed him how that would sound, but he didn’t go for it. “That’s giving away too much,” he said. “Jeez, Matti, I hardly know this girl.”

  At least he got my name right.

  I would have stayed with my routine until every bit of burn was gone and the last nail was hammered into the new buildings that eventually went up. Routines work for me. They keep me from melting down.

  A person like me doesn’t get to sit on the sidelines much, though. It wasn’t too long before I had to spring into action again.

  2

  OUT OF THE PHONE BOOTH

  I WAS SITTING IN THE SWING out on the front porch one night the way I usually did, when I heard Mrs. Stoa talking to someone in the living room. “What on earth were you doing?” she said. “Stealing that young man’s fingerprints. Did you think you were living in a detective novel?”