Prodigal Blues

by Gary A Braunbeck

  Take whatever you want from the house. There's some really nice stuff.

  But don't leave this house standing. You'll find about a dozen cans of gasoline over by the shelves down here. Douse this place and burn it to the ground. What the gas doesn't take care of, the alcohol and formaldehyde will.

  I don't want people turning this house and what's inside it into a freak show. The idea of newspapers and television and tabloids foaming at the mouth over what happened here makes me sick, and it would only hurt Arnold and Rebecca and Thomas and Denise. None of them will name you, Pretty-Boy, and neither will I. (You'll notice that I haven't once used your name in this letter? That's just in case you're not as smart as I think you are and someone else finds it first.) But if you go public with this and they ask one of them if they know you, they'll tell the truth. But that question will never be asked if you keep quiet.

  I'm sorry to dump all of this in your lap, but like I said, you're one of the good guys and I trust you to do the good and decent thing.

  I never was one for long good-byes, so I'll just say please leave me here and thank you for being my friend an go now.

  Burn this fucking place to the ground.

  I bent down and kissed his cold forehead, adjusted his hair piece, then put the letter in my pocket and turned toward the gas cans.

  I was just starting with the last can of gas when Tanya came up onto the front porch and saw me.

  "What the hell are you doing?"

  "Honoring a last request," I said, handing over Christopher's letter.

  Tanya read it and began crying softly. "Oh, God, Mark…" She began moving toward the threshold.

  "Stay on the porch, Tanya, you don't want to see what's in here."

  "Piss on that," she said. "I've never been a helpless female and I'm not about to start now." She stepped inside and saw the jars and what was inside them. She brought a hand up to her mouth and held it there. "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy name…"

  "Outside," I said, pouring a trail toward the porch.

  "…Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…"

  I backed down the stairs, still pouring the gas. "Please go start the car and get it turned around. When this goes, it's gonna go fast and it's gonna go big."

  She put her hand on my arm. "I'm so sorry, Mark."

  I said the first thing that came into my mind: "Why? It's not your fault."

  "For all of… all of them," she said, pointing into the house. "For Christopher. My God, how alone he must have been."

  I touched her cheek. "Please go start the car."

  She said nothing, only nodded her head and sprinted away.

  I finished pouring the last of the gasoline. I was about twenty feet from the bottom step of the front porch. We'd have maybe, maybe forty seconds before it all went up. I pulled a pack of matches from my pocket and was readying to stroke one when I remembered the computer in the hall closet.

  I ran back inside, choking on the gas fumes, and opened the door, pulling out the shoulder bag—

  —and revealing a framed color photograph that had been placed underneath it.

  The frame was solid silver and weighed about five pounds. The photograph had been taken outside this house; it showed Denise, Thomas (before the fire), Rebecca, Arnold, and Christopher sitting together very close on the porch. They were smiling and waving at the camera.

  A Post-It note on the frame read: "One of the few good days we ever had here. I thought you'd like to have this."

  I slipped it into the bag, then ran outside. Tanya had the car running and turned around; she'd also opened the passenger-side door for me.

  I knelt at the end of the gas trail and, after three attempts, finally got a match lighted, then set fire to the whole book and tossed it down. The gas ignited instantly and began running toward the porch while I ran toward the car, threw the shoulder bag in the back, jumped in just as Tanya floored it, and slammed the door just as the fire entered the house.

  The first set of downstairs windows blew out before the house was out of sight, and by the time we reached the end of the side road and turned onto the main drag, there was an explosion the likes of which I'd never experienced and the ground shook and the car shook and the sky behind us was black with smoke and flying debris.

  "I hope he's rotting in Hell," said Tanya through clenched teeth as she banged the steering wheel with her fist. "I hope that sick fuck is getting ass-reamed by Satan himself."

  "I'd like to think that even Hell has its standards."

  She looked at me, her tears almost spent. "Goddammit, Mark, I love you so much."

  "I love you, too."

  We spent the night at a Holiday Inn, holding each other, making love once, and listening to the sirens in the distance. I turned on the local news around eleven and saw a live report from the scene of the fire. Arson was suspected, and there were unconfirmed reports of body parts having been found in what debris had landed after the initial explosion. Fire crews from three counties were still battling the blaze, which had spread out into the trees.

  I turned off the television and looked at Tanya.

  "Is it over now?" she asked.

  I shook my head. "No. I don't know that it ever really will be."

  I crawled into bed beside her and wept for my dead friend and all the others who didn't make this far.

  It has been a month since I set that fire. Thomas, Rebecca, Denise, and Arnold all made the national news for a while; "The Four Brave Escapees", they were called. All of them have so far refused to give the name of the man who "rescued" them.

  So far no one has discovered the bus and trailer, so the bodies are still in that mine, rotting away. The thought makes me smile.

  Tanya thinks she might be pregnant. She's seeing her doctor in a couple of days to confirm what we both already know. I have applied for an adjunct faculty position with the English department, and it's looking good; my second interview, this time with the department chair, is on the same day as Tanya's doctor's appointment. I hope at day's end that we will both have good news for each other.

  Speculation as to the nature of what happened in the "Woodstock House" (as the news media has named it) remains just that; although the remains of dozens of bodies were removed from the debris, the damage to the house itself—which had been all but razed—has thus far prevented forensics experts to form any solid conclusions; all they know for certain is that several children may have died or been murdered in the house. The tabloids are going nuts with it, but not many have tried to get on-scene. There's nothing left.

  I distract too easily these days; if we pass a car on the road and I see a crying child with their face peering out at me from the window, my first thought is always: They're scared to death and need help; if I see a kid in a store struggling to pull away from the adult who's got hold of them, I immediately wonder if they've only moments ago been snatched away from their mom or dad or other family member; if I hear a child yell or scream in the evening when our street is filled with children at play, it never occurs to me that the sound might just be one of glee or excitement or good-natured Let's-Scare-So-and-So because they're such a wuss—no, in my ears it is the sound of a terrified, helpless child being yanked into a stranger's car and shrieking for someone they love to come save them, please, please, Mommy, Daddy, somebody, anybody please help me.

  I will watch over my child when it is born, and I will stay by my wife's side no matter what; I my loved one's watch will keep all through the night.

  I have made copies of everything from both computers, and have assembled over two dozen packages that I will mail out in the morning; The Columbus Dispatch, The New York Times, newspapers in Los Angeles, Denver, Washington D.C., and many others. All of them contain the same information, all have the same unsigned cover letter. I will wait two weeks after mailing them, and if none report what's in their possession, then I will take the computers and the discs and I will walk into the studio of a Columbus television station a
nd give them quite a show.

  Tanya and I still have the money, and have agreed that we will wait until the families of the missing dead children from Grendel's house have come forward, as they eventually will once some sort of identification has been made on those body parts that can still be identified. When that happens, we will start sending out the money to each family. It isn't much, but it's the best I can do for them and still remain anonymous.

  But we're not completely altruistic; we've decided to keep some of the money for the raising of our child. I can think of no better way to piss on Grendel's memory.

  I wake some nights to the echoes of cries from my dreams. I lay there for a while, watching Tanya sleep and reminding myself again how very, very lucky I am that she permits me to be her husband.

  And I feel lucky to have known Christopher.

  When I wake from these dreams that I never remember, I slip out of bed and go downstairs to the living room, where a silver-framed photograph sits on the mantel above the fireplace. I take this photo in my hands and stand near one of the windows, looking at it in the moonlight. I see their faces and their smiles and the way the bright sun alights on their features, and I imagine that it is me who has taken this picture, who is taking this picture. They have come to visit Tanya and me at our new house, and, of course, to see the new baby that everyone coos and goobers over. We've had a wonderful picnic lunch and laughed about our past exploits. Arnold has played some Billy Joel songs on our piano because he's good at it and, besides, it gets on Rebecca's nerves and he thinks it's cute, the way that one little vein in her forehead pops out when she yells at him to play something else. Rebecca has a new boyfriend at school who she doesn't want to talk about, but she smiles whenever we kid her about him; prom is coming up, after all. Thomas has just learned how to skate and likes to show us his fancy moves before he slips and falls on his ass and we all laugh, including him. Denise has just started second grade and thinks her teacher's a mean old prune. And Christopher… Christopher has started writing his very first children's book, all about the adventures of a stuffed toy aardvark named Wilbur whose sole quest in life is to find other damaged and abandoned toys and make them new again so that they can find homes with children who love them. But Wilbur has gas problems; even though he's a toy, he farts a lot, so no one can be near him for too long, which often puts a crimp in his plans.

  I stand in the yard and tell them to all gather together on the porch; Tanya has made cookies for dessert, Edna's famous truck-stop-recipe cookies, which are yummy anytime, but are best when they're still warm, so we have to get the picture taken now before I lose the light and the cookies cool. Scoot in closer, gang, that's it. Look over here, at me, that's right. If you smile for Pretty-Boy and say cheese so I can take this damned thing, then it's cookies for everyone. Sound good?

  All in favor….