The Firebug of Balrog County

by David Oppegaard

  It was already the best party I’d ever been to.

  We started setting off fireworks when it was dark enough and we all had a solid buzz going. We didn’t have anything too big or bright—just bottle rockets and sparklers. Hardly anything for the cops or even the firebug to get excited about.

  But still.

  The firebug was paying attention.

  “We should visit Mom while we’re here,” Haylee said to me, waving a lit sparkler in the air, her elfin face serious in the dark. “She’s right up front.”

  “I need more to drink first,” I said. “We all do.”

  “Your mom was awesome,” Sam said, waving his own sparkler in the air. “You remember that bat? The one we caught?”

  Katrina pulled out her pack of cigarettes and lit one, studying Sam from across her spot in the circle. “You guys caught a bat?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, still studying his sparkler. “Five or six years ago Mack and I were watching a late-night movie in his living room when this bat came out of nowhere and started flapping around. It was kind of freaky because Mack’s dad was out of town and everybody else but us was sleeping, right? So we grabbed a broom and a tennis racket and we chased the bat around for, like, ten minutes. Finally Mack swatted it out the side door and we were all hell yeah, bat, this is our turf!”

  Sam laughed.

  “Then Mack’s mom got up and we had cookies and hot chocolate to celebrate. Even though it was so late at night.”

  I pictured the three of us at the kitchen table, Sam and I happily dunking cookies in the hot chocolate while Mom drank her herbal tea, smiling a happy Mom smile. She never minded getting up in the middle of the night. She liked the company.

  “She called them Victory Cookies,” I said.

  “Right,” Sam said. “Victory Cookies. Like she was so proud of us just for catching a stupid bat.”

  The sparklers had fizzled out, leaving us in the dark. You could see the end of Katrina’s cigarette glowing red.

  “Maybe she’s still around,” Haylee said, her voice sounding soft and small. “Maybe Mom’s watching us right now.”

  “Like a ghost?” Sam said.

  “I don’t know. Like something.”

  I took another drink as my buzz threatened to leave me. Beyond the graveyard you could see the surface of Baker Lake shimmering faintly with starlight, the darkness of its shoreline broken by the occasional house light. A train whistle sounded a mile away, most likely passing through our own backyard.

  “I believe in spirits,” Katrina said. “When I had a bad fever once, I saw my grandmother sitting beside my bed. She’d been dead for two years but she was there, knitting a blanket for me. She asked me how I was feeling and I turned over and went back to sleep.”

  “Really?” Haylee said.

  “Really. When I woke up, she was gone but my fever had broken. My mom said I’d been up to one hundred and three degrees. She smiled when I told her about Grandma, but I knew Grandma had been there. I could still smell her perfume.”

  The train whistled again, sounding closer.

  “That’s cool,” Sam said. “I wish my parents would come visit me.”

  I took out my lighter and reached around in the grass until I found a pack of sparklers. I lit one, used it to light two more, and stuck all three sparklers into the ground in the center of our circle, where they burned fresh and bright for a few fleeting moments, showing how serious everyone had gotten as they turned inward to their own thoughts. Around us, the dark night waited patiently to take over again.

  Beechnut

  Six miles southeast of Hickson is a micro-town called Beechnut (pop. 89) which is basically a gas station, two blocks of houses, and a little graveyard.

  I once sat next to a kid from Beechnut in civics class. When I asked him what he did out there, he said he liked to fool around with a chubby neighbor girl who was so bored she’d let him do just about anything. The first time they fooled around, she pulled her pants down all the way to her ankles while they were out ditch-walking and let him finger her about a hundred feet from her mother’s front door. He said she bled like crazy because she hadn’t popped her cherry yet.

  Whenever I imagine this scene, I can’t help adding the sound of a fierce prairie wind, howling and lonely and ever present.

  Recon

  On Saturday night I called in sick again to my gig at the Legion, which did not seem to surprise nor bother my boss Butch very much. After a nourishing dinner of pizza and cola I took a shower, threw on my least smelly clothes, and picked Katrina up at seven sharp.

  Katrina smoked as I drove, looking out at the dark town like an empress surveying one of her lesser territories.

  “Does this count as a date?”

  Katrina blew smoke through her nostrils and considered the smoke. “Why, Mack? Are you trying to fence me in?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, turning left toward the park. “I wouldn’t mind knowing where we stand.”

  Katrina smiled and knocked cigarette ash through the crack in her window. “We’re having a good time. I guess that’s where we stand.”

  The Olds bounced as it struck a pothole. It occurred to me that Katrina was not the type of girl who would enjoy fucking a clingy, whiny, high school bitch boy and that it would be best to keep my cards close to my chest for the time being. Not that I really had any cards to play, anyhow. One night of bourbon-inspired passion was already far more than I’d expected. As far as I or any other non-wealthy, average-looking small town Joe was concerned, I had already run the table in this particular hottie encounter and anything else that came my way now would be a bonus, like finding a quarter on the street after winning the state lottery.

  We ran into traffic and had to park several blocks away from Robinson Park. It was cold out and we were bundled in fall coats and stocking caps. The street that led to the park was filled with parents and their kiddies, the younger grubs latched on to their parents’ hands while the older ones ran ahead, free-range style. The air was filled with much shouting and laughing and unheeded motherly admonishments. It reminded me of the county fair in Dylan.

  Katrina hooked her arm through mine. “Opening night’s big around here, huh?”

  “Well, Hickson’s not known for a plethora of cultural events.”

  “Those kids are cute.”

  The kids were cute, from what I could make out in the light of the streetlamps. Many wore costumes though Halloween wasn’t until the next day. I saw a shorty Batman scoop a pile of leaves from the gutter and drop them on a shorty pink princess. As the shorty princess twirled and screeched, shorty Batman cackled and sprinted into the night, one more good guy gone bad.

  We turned off the street and entered the park’s parking lot, which was crammed with cars and trucks and folks chatting in the slim spaces in-between. Kids darted around and played tag. Katrina slapped her sides, a happy little jumping jack.

  “Hell yes. Are they actually tailgating this shit?”

  “Looks like it.”

  The playground was packed with kids. The swings, the jungle gym, the sandbox, the merry-go-round—there was action everywhere. A line of parents and kids ran from the edge of the playground all the way down to the castle on the baseball diamond. Katrina and I skirted the playground, eyeing the swarm of kids warily, and got in the back of the line.

  The haunted castle was impressive. It was no longer a glorified hayride; they’d built an actual wooden frame for the structure, two full levels with two front towers. Gaps had been left in the walls to serve as windows and you could see strobe lights flickering inside. Halved straw bales formed a crenellated battlement that ran from tower to tower, which were also crenellated. People stood on top of the towers and waved down to the line below like royalty.

  “Whoa. Your gramps has been busy.”

  I rubbed my hands together
and blew hot air into them. “Grandpa Hedley doesn’t do anything half-assed. You should see their backyard. It’s like Italy exploded.”

  The line moved as a group of giggly teens exited the castle. We passed through a gate in the baseball diamond’s fence and walked onto the infield. You could hear screams coming from the castle, both recorded and real.

  “You think your grandpa really did all this just to catch you?”

  “It’s likely.”

  “Huh. My grandpa reads Westerns all day and barely leaves his recliner. I guess you should be happy yours is staying involved.”

  I noticed a black flag protruding from the castle’s battlement, snapping crisply in the cold wind. At first I assumed it was a pirate’s flag, or something equally devilish, but as I looked closer I saw it was an old POW/MIA flag.

  I pointed the flag out to Katrina. “Look how serious he is. This is his War of the Worlds. His Siege of Gondor.”

  “What?”

  “Fuck me silly. You know what? I think he got that flag from the Legion.”

  The mom ahead of us in line turned around and glared at me. She had big hairspray-lady hair.

  “There are children here,” she hissed. “Watch your mouth.”

  I held up my palms. “This is a haunted castle. You don’t think the Devil lets a salty word fly now and again?”

  “The eternally danged,” Katrina said. “Little heckians.”

  The lady made an angry horsey sound and turned back around, clutching her two chunky fledglings to her waist.

  “Tough crowd,” I said. Katrina laughed and slid her hand into the back of my jeans, cupping my ass. When the ticket lady reached us, I paid for two and the line surged forward again. Lo, soon we had passed beneath that Unsettling Black Flag and entered those Mighty Straw Walls, where we were subjected to Numerous Ye Olde Terrors that would drive Many a Mortal to the Brink.

  It was the kind of corny shit Mom would have loved.

  After we’d recovered from our Mortal Terror, we headed back to Katrina’s house and found her roommates throwing a loud party. Her roommates were as hipster and dramatic as advertised—I counted five fussy arguments in the first half-hour—but I was in the mood for drinking and threw myself into the festivities with the best of them.

  Around midnight I found myself standing outside the house with a bunch of dudes I didn’t know. More than half-drunk, I suggested we get a bonfire going. This idea was greeted with a bunch of fuck yeahs but the only firewood we could find was a starter log in the house’s fireplace. The dudes were disheartened but I remembered the basement, crammed full of flammable shit, and led us downstairs while everyone else was busy arguing about the various cinematic adaptations of Les Misérables. I directed the dudes toward whatever looked like it would burn best, making certain they left Katrina’s birdhouses alone, and we started hauling the more flammable junk upstairs, careful to stay on the party’s perimeter. We brought out three loads before Katrina and her roommates caught on to our game, but by then we’d created a tantalizing pile of burnables in the backyard. Everybody pitched in for one more load and we hauled more basement junk out en mass and piled it high.

  “Jesus, Mack,” Katrina said, tossing a cardboard box full of magazine onto the pile. “My birdhouses aren’t in there, are they?”

  “Nope. I kept the drunkards away from your workshop.”

  The partygoers around us started chanting fire, fire, fire, which rattled the firebug’s cage and rebooted my highly suggestible brain. The college dudes looked at me, their self-appointed leader, and I knew the time had come. I used a lighter, a few twists of newspaper, and the starter log to kindle the junk heap’s center. The moldy boxes and lacquered furniture took a while to catch, but I had the dudes scoop up dry leaves and twigs from the yard and toss them into crucial spots, warning them not to choke the fire. Eventually, with the help of the wind, the flames found an ugly wicker chair that went up like a torch and the heap erupted.

  Sometime around three a.m. I noticed Katrina standing outside the group, talking on her phone. I ambled over to her, feeling drunk and unusually cool after the fire’s success.

  “ … I don’t care, Mom. No. I don’t care.”

  I took a pull from the beer in my hand. Katrina’s brow was furrowed and her eyes gleamed with firelight.

  “Who the fuck knows? He was at a bar, right? Maybe he got in a car accident. Maybe he’s dead on the side of the road.”

  “Maybe he hit a deer,” I drunkenly interjected, wondering who we were even talking about. “I hit a deer recently and it was quite traumatic.”

  “You always do this. You always want sympathy when he pulls shit but then you take him back. Every fucking time you do this.”

  Katrina rolled her eyes as a squall of static sound erupted from her phone.

  “I’m hanging up now, Mom. Yes, I am. Sorry. Give Bill my worst.”

  Another squall of static noise. Katrina powered off her phone and slipped it into the front pocket of her jeans.

  “Jesus Christ. My mom’s, like, the drama queen of the century. She and Bill fucking deserve each other.”

  I nodded agreeably, regretting having left the bonfire’s comforting warmth and my new carefree drinking buddies. Katrina glowered and stared off into the night, arms crossed.

  “Beer?” I said, offering her the half-full can in my hand.

  Katrina looked at me as if noticing me for the first time and accepted the beer. She downed it in one gulp and chucked the can into the dark.

  “Let’s go in, Mack.”

  “What about—”

  “Come on.”

  Katrina’s hand gripped my own, pulling me toward her house. She brought me inside, up the stairs, and into her bedroom. She took my clothes off so quickly I almost fell over and suddenly she was naked, too. We smelled like wood smoke. Katrina tasted like salt and lime. From time to time I raised my head, looking out the window to check on my crackling work below.

  You Are My Sunshine

  Our family remained in the meeting room while they removed Mom’s respirator tube, crumpled in our chairs.

  We’d voted to let her go.

  It was time to let her go.

  We did not want to let her go.

  A nurse came to get us. She asked who wanted to be with her at the end and I rose from my seat without thinking. Haylee stood up too, though her skinny legs wobbled, threatening to spill her. We followed the nurse out the door, and when I looked back I was surprised to see nobody else trailing us. Not Mom’s brothers, not Grandpa and Grandma Hedley. They stared at the floor, as limp as if someone had cut their strings. They’d already said goodbye, I realized. Even Dad, good old Dad, sat hunched over in his chair as if he’d been socked in the stomach. His blurry red eyes met mine and dropped back to the floor.

  Haylee took my hand and pulled me forward. We followed the nurse down a long hallway I didn’t exactly recognize and entered another I knew all too well. We were kid explorers, Hansel and Gretel in a hospital. We entered a room and there was Mom, lying on a hospital bed. As advertised, her breathing tube had been removed and the respirator was finally silent. Her eyes were still closed—they’d pumped up the sedatives and morphine to just this side of fatal. Her skin had turned yellow, her hands were as water-bloated as ever, and she was gasping.

  Great, hitching gasps. An animal reduced to its purest form. Her entire emaciated frame writhed with each inhalation, her head convulsing slightly to the left. So much oxygen in the room and she couldn’t use any of it.

  I breathed deeper, as if I could breathe for her, and cheered her on with every molecule in my useless body. Haylee circled the bed and took her right hand. I stepped up and took the left. It felt so warm and heavy.

  “We’re here, Mom,” Haylee said. “We love you.”

  It could take several minutes, the doctor had warned us.
The body fighting on after the war had been decided.

  The hitching got worse.

  More desperate.

  I told my mom I loved her. That we all loved her so much. The nurse came up and put her arm around Haylee, who’d started to cry and smile at the same time. I was not crying. I was too busy trying to breathe and channel the breathing. I felt a coldness fall upon my shoulders and knew Death had entered that sterile room.

  Not movie death, not book death.

  Death.

  “Does your mother have a favorite song?” the nurse asked. “We could sing it to her.”

  Haylee sniffled and nodded. She wasn’t fourteen anymore—she was four. “‘You Are My Sunshine.’”

  I frowned, unable to understand why Haylee had picked that song. Mom had sung that to us when we were little but her favorite stuff had been ’60s classic rock, like Joplin and Hendrix.

  Then Haylee and the nurse started singing the goddamn song and it was too late to argue. I started singing too, though I was filled with a new and powerful rage, a rage stronger than anything I’d ever felt in my entire life. Who was this old lady nurse, who was she to intrude on our last moments with Mom? Why did Haylee have to pick this fucking song? Why couldn’t Mom FUCKING BREATHE—

  I noticed movement in the corner of my eye.

  Dad had poked his head into the room. Just his head, as if the hospital bed inside were radioactive. His eyes were big and full of so much love I felt my rage blown apart, a pile of leaves scattered by a gale force wind. Dad stepped inside the room, came up to Mom’s bed, and wrapped his hands around one of her feet. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there, holding her foot and watching, while the rest of us sang like a bunch of cheesy singing assholes. The spasmodic hitching breaths worsened, then lessened, then lessened in an alarming way. We ran out of song and fell silent. Mom’s body sank into the bed, remained still for a good thirty seconds, and gave one last gasp before she was thoroughly gone.