The Fireman

by Hill,Joe

  Renée winced. “It turned out to be The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Our only copy. If I had known what he was going to do with it, I would’ve given him a copy of Atlas Shrugged.”

  “On the fourth day, though, our boy Mike followed Harold to an abandoned summer cottage a half mile away, place with a generator and Internet. The boy is in there on a laptop, typin’ e-mails with one hand and crammin’ down a pepperoni Hot Pocket with the other. Not only was Harold right back to the same tricks, spillin’ our secrets to the same people, but he had a whole deep freezer full a chow he was keepin’ to his own self.”

  Don passed the job of telling the story to Allie with a sidelong look. She nodded and went on, “I was there when Mike showed up. This was over at the House of the Black Star, where my aunt lives with Granddad. This wasn’t so long after my mom passed away.” Allie spoke quietly, neither hiding her pain nor making a display of it. “Aunt Carol had some of Mom’s things and she asked me to look through them and see if there was anything I wanted for Nick and myself. There wasn’t anything, really, except this.” She touched a finger to the book-shaped gold locket at her throat. “When Mike came in and said what he had seen, we stopped what we were doing, and Granddad sent me to find Mr. Patchett. By the time I got back with Ben, Aunt Carol was sitting in a chair with her face in her hands and she had gray threads of smoke coming off her. She was so stressed.

  “She said we needed to force Harold out of camp. But Mr. Patchett said that would be the worst thing we could do. If we sent Harold away and he got picked up by a Quarantine Patrol, they’d make him tell everything he knew about us. Mr. Patchett wanted to lock Harold up somewhere, but Granddad said it would be enough to make Harold promise to remain on camp grounds and stop contacting outsiders. Carol and Mr. Patchett gave each other this look, like: Which of us is going to tell him that’s the most senile thing he’s ever said? But the thing about my granddad is . . . it’s kind of hard to convince him people won’t just do the right thing. You hate to say anything that sounds hostile or untrusting or small-hearted around him. You feel like he’d be disappointed in you. Mr. Patchett gave in. He got Granddad to agree to keep Harold under close watch and that was it.”

  Allie put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in the cradle of her hands. She wasn’t looking at any of them now, had lowered her gaze to stare disconsolately inward. Harper felt they had just about come to it, now. The end of Harold Cross’s story . . . which also happened to be the end of Harold Cross.

  At last she went on, “After Mr. Patchett confronted Harold about what he had been up to, Harold came down with stomach pains and took himself to the infirmary. Mr. Patchett made sure there was always a Lookout stationed there, day and night, to make sure Harold didn’t wander off. If they weren’t stationed right in the ward with him, they were in the waiting room. When it happened, it was on my shift, during the day, when the whole camp was asleep. At some point near the end of my watch, around dusk, I had to pee, and the only way to get to the bathroom is to walk across the ward. I crept through on tiptoe, real careful, trying not to wake Harold up. He was in one of the partitioned-off sleeping areas. I could just see him under his sheets, through a crack between the hanging curtains. I had almost made it to the bathroom when my hip bumped a bedpan and it fell with a loud bang. Harold didn’t even roll over. Suddenly I got a cold sick feeling and I pulled aside the curtain to have a closer look at him. It was just pillows under the sheets.” She looked up and met Harper’s eyes, and her gaze was wounded and ashamed. “See . . . I was asleep most of the afternoon, while I was supposed to be on guard in the waiting room. I told myself it wasn’t hurting anyone. I figured if Harold tried to sneak out past me, I’d hear him. I thought I was too light a sleeper for him to get by me. Some light sleeper. I must’ve been in a low-grade coma. Maybe Norma Heald slipped a roofie into my tea, hoping to get lucky with me.” The corner of her mouth tweaked up in a little smile, but her chin trembled.

  Don put a leathery hand on the back of her neck and gave her a gentle, awkward sort of pat. “You ever think if you woke up when he was trying to sneak out, he might a belted you one? He was goin’ out that door, one way or t’other.”

  “Harold couldn’t fight his way past Nick,” Allie said, brushing roughly at her eyes with the back of one hand.

  “Who says he would a fought? He might a called you into the ward and then socked you with a wrench. No, ma’am. He was goin’ to depart our company, by hook or by crook. It was mad to think we could hold him prisoner without lockin’ him up. I’d fistfight sharks for your grandpap, but he was wrong about how t’handle Harold, and Ben Patchett was right.”

  Nick had noticed Allie rubbing at her eyes. He scribbled something on the placemat. Allie read it and shook her head.

  “No, I don’t want your last marshmallow.”

  He wrote something else, then stuck a spoon in his mug and dredged out part of a melted marshmallow. Allie sighed and opened her mouth and let him feed her.

  “He says it’s medicine for misery,” Allie told them in a muffled sort of way, chewing gummy marshmallow. A bright tear skipped down one cheek. “It does make me feel better, actually.”

  Don Lewiston leaned in, elbows on the table. “I can tell the rest, I s’pose, quick enough. Allie got Mike and Mikey ran for Ben Patchett. My cot is next to Ben’s, and all their whisperin’ woke me up. When I heard they were all settin’ out to see if they could bring Harold back, I offered to go with ’em. Maybe I felt like I had to go. Harold had been part of my crew. My lack of supervision is what gave him the chance to get back in contact with the outside world. I don’t remember who went and got a rifle from the range, but I think it was on all our minds Harold might not come back of his own free will. I remember this one”—he patted Allie’s shoulder—“was tolt to stay here. As you might guess, that did about as much good as shoutin’ at clouds. We covered probably three miles of hard trail in twenty minutes, makin’ a beeline for Harold’s little hideaway, and Allie was out in front the whole way. And it was still a damn’d close thing. When we got there, it was pretty much the worst-case scenario. Maybe some a the people Harold had been e-mailing with were who they said they were. Maybe most of ’em were. But one of ’em wasn’t. When we got to the cabin, there was a van parked out front and men with guns. Not a state-run Quarantine Patrol. Cremation fellas. We saw the whole thing from behind this old stone wall that was out behind the cabin. They had Bushmaster rifles and were thumpin’ Harold with the butts. Shovin’ him around. Havin’ fun. Harold was down in the dirt, clutchin’ his laptop, and beggin’ them not to kill him. He was sayin’ he wasn’t dangerous, that he could control his infection. He was tellin’ em he could lead ’em to a hidin’ place where there were lots of people who could control the Dragonscale. That was when Ben asked Mikey if the rifle was loaded.”

  “I thought we were going to fight for Harold,” Allie said. “Like on a TV show. Four of us against twelve of them. Pretty stupid, huh?” Her voice was rough and strained, and Harper was conscious of Allie trying to restrain her tears.

  “Mikey’s hands were shaking so hard he spilled bullets all over the ground, but Ben—he turned into a different man altogether. He was a cop in his former life, you know. You could see the cop in his face. He went calm, but he also went hard. He said, ‘You better let me do this, son,’ and took the rifle out of Mikey’s hands. He put the first one in Harold’s throat. He put the second in the laptop. The Cremation Crew hit the dirt and for all I know they’re lying there still, because we got up and ran like hell and never looked back.” His coffee was gone. He rolled his mug back and forth between his palms. “Ben Patchett looked icy enough out in the woods, but when he got back, he cried his eyes out. Sat on one of the pews with Father Storey holdin’ him like a child. Father Storey shushed him and rubbed his back and told him if it was anyone’s fault it was his own, not Ben’s.”

  Nick was frowning, writing on the placem
at again. He pushed it to Allie, who read it, then turned it toward Renée and Harper so they could read it.

  Mr. Patchett shouldn’t have sent someone to get a rifle. He should’ve sent someone to get JOHN. He could’ve saved Harold.

  “Maybe so,” Don said, who was reading the placemat upside down. “We were in a helluva rush, though. And it was a good thing we moved fast, as it turned out. If we were even two minutes slower, Harold might’ve coughed it all up. Then instead of one dead kid, we’d have a camp full dead kids, and dead grown-ups, too.” He set his mug down on the table with a glassy clink. People were up on their feet, filling the room with a lot of loud, happy conversation. It was time for chapel. Harper felt the familiar bunched knot of dread tightening in her stomach. Another song was coming, another harmony she wouldn’t be able to join, another overwhelming blast of noise and light.

  “I guess that’s all of it,” Renée said. “The sad ballad of Harold Cross.”

  Harper didn’t want to go, and so when she spoke, it was more to stall for time than anything else. “Maybe not quite all. There is one thing I’m wondering about. What was in his notebook? Did anyone ever find out?”

  “I’ve wondered that myself,” Don said, getting to his feet. “It never turned up. Maybe he had it on him when he was kilt. If so, it didn’t reveal the location of camp, or this whole place would be burnt to the ground by now.” He clucked his tongue, shook his head. “I don’t expect we’ll ever know. Some mysteries ain’t ever gonna be solved.”

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  DECEMBER • 10

  Two sisters, Gail and Gillian Neighbors, were having a spat.

  They shared a single bottle of red nail polish, which had gone missing, and each accused the other of losing it or maybe hoarding it. They were twins and barbaric with each other by nature. Gillian already had a twisted nipple, and when Harper separated them, Gail was clutching a dirty sock to a bloody nose. Gillian had jammed her thumb at least an inch up one nostril.

  Harper patrolled the dorm, asking around. It felt good to think about someone else’s problems. Better than worrying about lights out, when she would lie in her cot, desperate to sleep and sick at the thought of what might happen when she did.

  She figured Allie might know who, if anyone, might’ve helped themselves to the nail polish (the shade was called “incendiary,” which the Neighbors twins didn’t seem to realize was funny). Allie and another girl were playing rummy on a stack of suitcases. Harper wandered over and stood behind this other girl, Jamie Close, and waited to be noticed.

  “I’m glad I’m not sleeping next to her,” Jamie Close was saying to Allie.

  Jamie was one of the older lookouts, nineteen going on twenty. She had close-set eyes and an upturned nose, which conspired together to give her an unfortunate swinish mien.

  “Sleeping next to who?” Allie asked absentmindedly over her cards.

  “You know: Nurse Sunshine.” Jamie went on, “She woke up coughing smoke last night. Did you hear her? I’m, like, burn already, so some of us can sleep. I’m, like—”

  Allie stepped on Jamie’s foot, hard. A child might’ve imagined it was an accident; a very small, very naive child. Jamie stiffened and went silent.

  After a moment, Allie’s gaze drifted up and she appeared to see Harper for the first time. “Hey! What’s going on, Nurse Willowes?”

  “The Neighbors twins lost a bottle of nail polish. Just asking around to see if either of you might have seen it.”

  Jamie Close sat rigidly on an upturned bucket. Her T-shirt was hiked up to show the tramp stamp on the small of her back: a tattoo of the Confederate flag, above the word rebel. She didn’t have the nerve to look back at Harper. “Sorry, ma’am. I don’t do nothin’ with my nails but chew on ’em.”

  Allie looked like she wanted to say something—her eyes were apologetic and worried—but she just opened her mouth and closed it and shook her head.

  Harper smiled effortfully, thanked them, and walked away. Her Dragonscale pulsed with a disagreeable warmth, in a way that made her think of someone breathing on coals.

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  HarperCollinsPublishers

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  11

  She dreamt she wore a gown of wasps and woke when they began to sting.

  The basement was stuffy and dim in the late morning and she lay motionless, still feeling wasp-stung: on her collarbone, on the inside of her left thigh, between two of her toes.

  Harper pressed her chin into her chest, looking down, and saw a red spot burning through her T-shirt above her left breast, as if someone were pressing the tip of a cigarette into the cotton . . . from the inside. A silky thread of white smoke trickled up from the growing burn. Harper watched, in a state of horrible lassitude, as the hole expanded, the edges a bright orange lacework. At last she rubbed it out with her thumb and brushed the sparks off her chest.

  Her body throbbed from nearly a dozen of those wasp-sting burns. She flapped back her blanket, to see if her clothes were burning anywhere else, and a gush of black smoke drifted toward the ceiling. She was reminded of her childhood fascination with smoke signals. What would this message translate to? Probably: Help, I am going to be burned alive.

  Enough, she thought.

  She sat up, very carefully, iron bedsprings creaking. She did not want to wake anyone, did not want to cause any trouble. In those first moments, she was not clear about what she meant to do, only that she didn’t want to have to talk to anyone about it. That enough indicated some kind of decision, but it was not immediately clear to her what she had decided.

  In the next bed, Renée slept on her side, deep in her own dreams, smiling at some imagined event. Harper half had an urge to lean over and kiss her forehead, to have one final moment of physical contact. Final moment? Harper found she couldn’t look at Renée for long. Enough represented some kind of betrayal of their friendship. Enough was going to hurt Renée, would leave her—what? Bereft was the word that came to mind. Bereft and enough went together like bride and groom.

  Harper considered packing The Portable Mother and her clothes into her carpetbag, but enough was a destination that required no baggage. Enough was a reverberation deep inside her, a kind of ringing emptiness, as if she were a steeple in which a bell had been solemnly struck. Ask not for whom it tolls.

  She rose and paced across the cool, dusty concrete. Harper paused at the bottom of the steps for a look back at the maze of cots, a labyrinth of sleeping women. In that moment she loved them all, even awful Jamie Close with her ugly mouth and upturned nose. Harper had always wanted a tough friend like Jamie, someone rude and mouthy, who would cut a bitch for talking smack. She loved Renée and the Neighbors girls and little Emily Waterman and Allie and Nick. Nick most of all, with his bottle-glass-green eyes and articulate hands, which drew words on the air like a boy wizard sketching spells.

  She climbed three steps to the door, eased the latch up with a click, and slipped out. She blinked at the watery sunlight. She hadn’t seen any in a while and it hurt her eyes.

  The sky was high and pale, like the dingy canvas roof of a circus tent. She went up more steps, trailing wisps of smoke behind her. The ’scale had burned holes in her sweats, holes all through her Rent T-shirt. She had seen Rent with Jakob and he had held her hand while she wept at the end. She was surprised to find herself longing for Jakob now, for the wiry strength of his arms when he held her around the waist. It didn’t seem to matter that the last time she had seen him he had been waving a gun at her.

  She supposed Jakob had been right. It would’ve been much easier to do things his way. He had known how awful it would be to burn to death. He had only wanted to spare her. For that she had carved open his face with a broken glass and wasted their s
pecial bottle of wine.

  Harper had told herself she was staying alive for the baby, but the baby never had anything to do with it, not really. She was holding on because she could not bear to say good-bye to her life and every good thing in it. She had selfishly wanted more. She had wanted to hold her father again and smell his Eight & Bob cologne, which always made her think of sea-soaked rope. She had wanted to sit by a swimming pool somewhere, with the sun glowing on her mostly bare skin, drifting half-awake while her mother gabbed on and on about all the funny things Stephen Colbert had said on TV the night before. She had wanted to read her favorite books again and revisit her best friends one more time: Harry and Ron, Bilbo and Gandalf, Hazel and Bigwig, Mary and Bert. She had wanted another good hard lonely cry and another pee-your-pants laughing fit. She had wanted a whole bunch more sex, although, looking back, most of her sexual history involved sleeping with men she didn’t much like.