The Firebug of Balrog County

by David Oppegaard

  Goddamn, I liked this girl.

  We drove for an hour, winding our way around until I no longer recognized where we were. Trees blurred past the Bug’s windows like the background scenery you’d see in an old-timey movie, their autumn leaves a mash-up of canary yellows and russet browns. When we passed the occasional field it was like coming up for air, and the blue sky seemed impossibly enormous.

  At dusk, Katrina turned off whatever godforsaken highway we were driving on and into a pasture’s access driveway. She didn’t slow down to do this. She just flicked the steering wheel, jammed the brake pedal to the floor, and laughed manically as the car fishtailed ninety degrees before plowing to a stop, spraying dirt into the air.

  A thoughtful silence followed. I registered that we were still alive and had stopped moving altogether. My shoulder ached from the dozens of collisions it had enjoyed with the passenger door, not to mention the cutting press of the seat belt. Across from us a bunch of Holsteins were grazing in the pasture, hunting half-heatedly through the drought-blighted grass for something enjoyable to chew on. Compared to the objects we’d been roaring past, they appeared almost stationary, like spotted hay bales.

  Katrina unbuckled her seat belt. “Shit, that was fun.”

  “Yes,” I said, staring ahead at the nearest cow. “Vroom.”

  Katrina sat forward and reached across my lap. Luckily, my hard-on had disappeared a few miles back and we avoided having an awkward discussion, at least for the moment. She popped open the glove box and fumbled around in what appeared to be a mass of paper trash. She smelled like ladies’ deodorant mixed with cigarette smoke.

  “Ahhh. There you are, baby.”

  The glove box trash dumped out on my feet as Katrina drew out a fifth of golden liquor and held it up between us, her smile as curved as a farmer’s scythe. I unbuckled my seat belt and focused on the bottle, trying to ignore how close our bodies were.

  She gave the bottle a happy shake. “This here is brandy.”

  “You keep brandy in your glove box? Are you an eighty-year-old British dude?”

  “I wish. Those guys fucking rock.”

  Katrina took a pull from the fifth and handed the bottle to me. I took a healthy swig and my toes unclenched from their death curl inside my shoes. Katrina’s seat creaked as she reclined. The Bug’s interior was so small it felt like we’d shoved ourselves into an escape pod and crash-landed on a dusty, backwater planet.

  I took another drink and handed the bottle back to Katrina. You could hear the car’s engine clicking as it cooled, as well as the hordes of crickets and grasshoppers buzzing in abandon. Past the field and above a distant tree line the sun had started to set, turning the entire horizon golden.

  “So. Katrina. What are you majoring in?”

  “Art and business.”

  “You’re a double threat.”

  “I’d like to own my own art gallery someday. Tour the world, buy beautiful shit. Then sell it for twice what I paid for it.”

  Katrina took another swig of brandy. I waited for her to pass the bottle but she kept it flat against her stomach. A cow lowed at us from the pasture, sounding confused. The Holsteins had given up grazing and had hunkered down in ones and twos.

  “Don’t cows go in at night? They sleep in a barn, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

  “That’d be nice. Being a cow, sleeping with all your cow pals around you, warm and safe while the wind howls outside. I’d like that.”

  “Huh,” I said, imagining. It did sound nice.

  Katrina took a nip from the bottle. “You like working at the hardware store, Mack?”

  “It’s okay. Kind of boring.”

  “I bet. I worked at Target in high school. I was a cashier.”

  “Really?”

  “Every day was the same fucking thing. A bunch of saps buying the same old crap. Beep, beep, beep. Everybody staring at my mascara, my nose piercing. The old ladies acting like I’d gobble them up.”

  “Ha. I’d like to see you in those khakis.”

  Katrina turned and looked at me. “It was better than hanging around my house, trust me. My stepdad can get pretty grabby when Mom’s not around.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah, he’s a real snake in the grass. That dude’s got my mom wrapped around his little finger, though. I think he’s a sociopath.”

  “Really?”

  “Not the murder-spree kind, though. More like the manipulative man-slut kind.” Katrina leaned in and I could smell the brandy on her breath. “What about you, Mack? Are you a snake in the grass?”

  I didn’t answer. The brandy was warming my cheeks and the sun was almost halfway beneath the horizon. Everything was so beautiful.

  “Shit, I don’t know,” Katrina said, sitting back and taking another long swig. “I guess I’m becoming … untethered. I sit in class and can’t focus on anything. I feel like a helium balloon after it’s been released by some chubby kid at the state fair. My brain rising and rising and rising.”

  “Life will make you crazy,” I agreed. “No way around that.”

  “There isn’t?”

  “Not if you’re paying attention.”

  “Well … shit.”

  “Yep.”

  Katrina handed me the brandy. I took another nip and returned the bottle. A gust of wind rustled the loose paper on the car’s floor and carried the smell of wood smoke.

  “I blame my mother. She’s a vegetarian and made us all vegetarians, too. I probably didn’t get enough iron during crucial developmental phases.”

  “Is she as pretty as you?”

  “Prettier.” A tiny smile hooked the corner of Katrina’s mouth. “Why, Mack? You sweet on me?”

  I closed my eyes and let the sunset burn itself into my brain. Everything turned red then gold.

  “Sweet,” I said, “as honey pie.”

  Katrina slapped my arm, sloshing brandy onto the sleeve of my T-shirt. “See? Fucking snake.”

  “I am not a snake, madam,” I said. “I’m totally warm-blooded.”

  “Yeah right. You’re a youngin’ snake, Mack. A snake in training. I bet you’re thinking about sexing me up right now. You’d probably love to turn me into your little fuck doll, wouldn’t you?”

  The golden light behind my eyelids turned a spotty purple. I rubbed my eyes and turned to look at Katrina. I wondered if she had some kind of mental disorder or if this fuck-doll talk was just her friendly way of passing the time. It occurred to me that she probably had her own dark shit going on. She was voluntarily hanging out with me, after all. That couldn’t be a healthy sign.

  A cow lowed in the field.

  A second cow lowed back from a point farther away.

  “Well, I don’t think he’s coming,” Katrina said, taking a final pull from the bottle and emptying it. “Old MacDonald isn’t taking his cows back home tonight. He’s probably sitting with Ma and Junior at the kitchen table right now, enjoying an overcooked pork chop doused in cream of mushroom soup.”

  She capped the bottle and tossed it over her shoulder. I leaned forward, studying the cows in their darkening field.

  “It’s a nice evening,” I said. “He probably leaves them out on nights like this.”

  “Like camping, but for cows.”

  “Why not? The cows like to see the stars, too.”

  A grasshopper flew up and landed on the windshield. The insect and I studied each other through the glass while Katrina shifted in her seat and groaned.

  “Oh man. I think you’re going to have to drive us back to town, Mack-Attack. I’m done tuckered.”

  She burped and I laughed.

  The grasshopper flew away.

  As soon as I pulled us out onto the road, Katrina slumped against the passenger window and fell asleep. She made little
snoring noises, cartoonish high whistlings that sounded like a child pretending to be asleep. It took me a half-hour to find a road I recognized and another twenty minutes before I was certain I’d pointed us in the right direction. Along the way we passed through a small Amish area that was pitch black except for the Bug’s headlights and the eerily beautiful kerosene lantern light that shone from the sprawling homes of the Amish themselves. I shook Katrina’s shoulder so she could see the houses and she asked me if she was dreaming. I told her yes, she was, and let her fall back asleep.

  The History Test

  The siege continued and Mom kept chugging along. By the start of my freshman year of high school our family had grown used to how thin she was, how little she could eat with her reduced stomach, and how determined she was not only to keep on living but to participate in the world. On good days, she’d have one of us fill up R2O2 from the main oxygen tank and carry it out to the van for her and then she’d drive into Thorndale by herself to go shopping.

  Mom was five-nine. As her weight dipped below one hundred pounds, then below ninety, her face hollowed out and her bones rose up from beneath her skin. When you hugged her you had to be careful (she cracked ribs frequently, sometimes just from coughing hard). When I hugged her, I’d feel the knobby ridge of her spine with my fingers. It reminded me of the outline of a mountain chain, or the armored plating of a small, vegetarian dinosaur.

  Women joked with my mother about how they wished they could transfer some of their fat onto her and men treated her with exaggerated courtesy, holding doors and carrying anything that needed carrying. When you went out around town with her, you could feel people staring, startled by her thinness, by the fact she was still among the living. Mom didn’t mind—I think she felt that it was far better to be stared at, to be seen, than to be tucked away in a hospice with more privacy than anyone could possibly want.

  In November, I got a call from Dad during my lunch hour. He said he was taking Mom to the hospital because she was having trouble breathing. More trouble than usual, he meant. My grandparents were going to pick up Haylee and he thought it might be a good idea if I also left school early and rode with them to the hospital.

  The first thing I thought about was my American history class.

  “I have a test next period,” I told him. “A big history test.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dad didn’t say anything. I thought about all the long years of siege, all the false alarms and minor incidents.

  “Is it okay if I take the test first and then show up? Sam’s grandma can take me.”

  I saw Dad standing in the living room with his phone to his ear, frowning.

  “Sure, Mack. That’s fine. We’ll meet you at the hospital.”

  “Cool. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  I took my test and then dutifully rode with Sam’s grandmother to Thorndale. At the hospital, I found my father sitting with Haylee and Grandpa and Grandma Hedley in the waiting room. They all looked worn out, blasted. They told us Mom had been sedated and put on an artificial respirator. She couldn’t breathe on her own anymore.

  I’d missed her by an hour.

  A Slow Afternoon at

  Hickson Hardware

  So you went on a drive?”

  “Yes.”

  “With her? That hot college chick from Lisa Sorenson’s party?”

  “Vroom vroom, baby.”

  “And you drank … brandy?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you watched the sun set behind a field of cows. A beautiful, romantic sunset.”

  “Yes, Sam. We did.”

  “And you didn’t put the moves on her?”

  “Well—”

  “Damn it, Mack. That was your shot. Your one shot at the big time.”

  “I didn’t really see an opening—”

  “And you fucked it up. You fucked it up and now she probably thinks you’re solid best friend material. You will now be BFFs.”

  “I don’t think you should be behind the counter. What if Big Greg checks in? That’s his stool you’re sitting on. He loves that stool.”

  “Big Greg? That’s what you’re worrying about right now?”

  “He can get mad, dude.”

  “No he can’t.”

  “He yelled at this guy for returning a ladder. He’d already seen him using it to trim branches in his front yard.”

  “Wow.”

  “And then he pummeled him with both fists, Incredible Hulk-style.”

  “That didn’t happen.”

  “And then he bellowed. He bellowed so loud Mr. Ladder’s head exploded in a spray of meaty fragments. I had to use the wet mop and tons of bleach after that one. You wouldn’t believe how much fluid the human body actually contains.”

  “I bet I would.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Jesus, Mack. Do you want to be a virgin forever?”

  “Sam, it’s not like she’s dead.”

  “Unless you killed her. Did you kill her, Mack? Is this really what we’re talking about here? A country drive gone horribly wrong? Did you pitch her down a well? Chuck her into a bottomless sinkhole?”

  “I’m laying a foundation here. It takes time.”

  “A foundation of death.”

  “What time is it, anyway? I think we’ve entered some kind of shadowland where the laws of time no longer apply. Purgatory.”

  “Her nose is pierced, man. I hear those girls are crazy in the sack.”

  “Why? Some kind of metal-poisoning thing?”

  “Metal poisoning?”

  “Metals can poison people. They seep into your blood.”

  “Right. Whatever. The point is—”

  “Sam, I know what I’m doing here. She’s a headstrong little pony and is going to take some rustling.”

  “That’s your cowboy accent? You sound like a stroke victim.”

  “You’re just jealous I get all the ladies.”

  “Wow, Mack. You went on a car ride with a girl who fell asleep. You’re like a god of carnality walking amongst us mere mortals.”

  “I wish somebody would stop in and buy something. Just one goddamn customer.”

  “I thought you hated customers.”

  “I do.”

  “But without them, you’re nothing. You’re useless. Just a guy sitting behind a counter watching your life tick by.”

  “One rake. That’s all. I’d just like to sell one motherfucking, ass-poking rake.”

  “Ass-poking?”

  “It’s October. People need to rake their lawns. This isn’t some crazy hardware store dream, right?”

  “Not as crazy as you getting it on with that goth chick.”

  “That dream is beautiful, Sam. Not crazy.”

  “If you say so.”

  “C’mon, people. One rake. We can do this shit.”

  The Graveyard

  Hickson’s graveyard sits on a peninsula that juts out into a polluted body of water called Baker’s Lake. The graveyard’s first plots were planted along the outer edges of the peninsula, with subsequent generations of dead spiraling ever inward.

  The edges of the peninsula have slowly eroded over time. A few years back, we had a big spring flood that swamped everything. Later that same summer, a fisherman on Baker’s Lake reeled in what he thought was a whopper of a fish but turned out to be the rib cage of a four-year-old boy.

  The boy had been dead for over a hundred years.

  Company

  Two days after my terrifying and erotic country drive with Katrina, I came home from work to find all the lights on and jazz music coming from the kitchen. The living room had been tidied up, the hardwood floor mopped and waxed to a glossy sheen. After years of my father’s laissez-faire approach to housekeeping, the effect of this
domestic glow was so disorienting I checked the framed family photos on the wall to make sure I’d entered the right house.

  “Mack, is that you?”

  I stuck my head through the kitchen doorway.

  “There he is. There’s my guy.”

  Dad beamed at me from the stove. He was wearing a white chef’s apron and his nice sweater. His round eyeglasses were fogged from stove heat.

  “Hey Dad. What’s up?”

  “Dinner, buddy boy. That’s what’s up.”

  “You’re cranking the jazz, huh?”

  “We’re having spicy shrimp stir-fry.”

  “Uh oh.”

  Dad laughed and wiped his hands on his apron. “C’mon, it’ll be great. I got a foolproof recipe from the Internet. It got sixty-eight five-star reviews.”

  “Okay … ”

  “And I bought Thai beer. It’ll be like we’re eating out.”

  I glanced around the kitchen, noting the smell of rice pouring out of the rice cooker and the surprisingly clean counters, which were usually cluttered with dirty dishes and mangled bits of vegetable during Dad’s stir-fry process. The kitchen table was covered in the good white tablecloth, had a small cattails-and-cheatgrass centerpiece, and had been set with four plates.

  “We’re having company, Mack. I invited a friend from work to eat with us.”

  My chin snapped upward. The Druneswalds weren’t the kind of people that had guests over for dinner—we settled for managing to feed ourselves and called it good. Sometimes Sam showed up and ate with us, but that was only on pizza Fridays.

  “Her name is Bonnie. She’s the new receptionist.”

  “The new receptionist?”

  “She’s a real sweet lady. You’ll like her, Mack.”

  Dad had turned sweaty and pale, all friendly chutzpah evaporated. I felt both sorry for him and as if I were about to puke on the heavily waxed floor. A tight, sour knot was forming in my stomach, not unlike the feeling you get after being kicked in the balls. I could only imagine this Bonnie, this office temptress.

  “Does Haylee know?”