The Fireman

by Hill,Joe

  “There are a lot of good people in this camp,” Harper said to Don. “Maybe they’ve gone along with some bad ideas, but only because they’re scared.”

  Don narrowed his eyes, squinted toward the steeple. “She has a lovely voice, sure. I could listen to that all night. But I wonder if you’d still think so well of this camp if you had heard everyone singin’ together in chapel a couple hours ago. Or at least, it was singin’ when they started out. But after a while everyone was just hummin’, this one long idiot note. You feel like you’re inside of the world’s biggest beehive and everyone around you looks like they’re burnin’ from the inside. Their eyes just fackin’ . . . blaze. They don’t smoke, but they throw heat, so much heat you could just about pass out from it. Sometimes they all get hummin’ so loud, I feel like my skull is vibratin’ and I just about have to stick a fist in my mouth to keep from screamin’.”

  They resumed walking, the stones and dirt crunching under their feet.

  “And you can’t join in? You don’t shine with them?”

  “Once or twice. But it ain’t treated me right. It’s not how hard it hits you—though when I come up out of it, my skull is always ringin’ so fackin’ hard it’s like I slammed down a quart of Jack. The worst part isn’t forgettin’ who I am, either. That’s bad, though . . . but thinking I might be Carol is worse. It’s like your own thoughts are a faraway radio station, and Carol’s station is closer, broadcasting her music right over yours. Hers gets louder and clearer and yours gets fainter and thinner. You start thinkin’ Father Storey is your own dear dad lyin’ in the infirmary with his head mashed in, and the idea that whoever done it hasn’t been punished will make you so sick and angry you feel like you’re boilin’. You’ll wonder if someone is goin’ to come bash your head in next, if there are secret forces and whatnot workin’ against you. What you feel in your heart is that if you have to die, you want to die singin’, with the whole camp around you. Everyone holdin’ hands. You almost hope it will happen . . . that a Cremation Crew will come. ’Cause it’d be a relief to get it over with, and you aren’t scared of the end, because you’ll be burnin’ up with all the people you love right close beside you.”

  Harper shuddered and leaned into Don for warmth.

  They made their way out onto the dock and Don helped Harper into the rowboat. She was glad to have his hand clutching his arm and she stepped down from the dock. She had made the trip across the water often enough over the last few months, but now, for the first time, she felt unsteady on her legs and uncertain of her own balance.

  In a few deep, steady strokes, they had left the beach behind. Don sat on the thwart between the oars, leaning into each pull and rocking back, his whole body extending into a straight line. He was old, but like beef jerky: knotty and tough.

  Would the eye in the steeple (which sees all the people) observe them now? Don had mentioned to Ben that he might take the boat out to fish tonight. Hopefully their movements on the water this evening would be accepted as Don Lewiston paddling around, looking for flounder . . . if they were spotted at all.

  Without any prompting, Don seemed to pick up where he had left off a few minutes before.

  “It’s bad, having a head full of Carol. It’s bad not knowin’ my own name, not knowin’ my mother’s name. But I’ll tell you. A month back, we all had a big hard sing, like we do. And then Carol gave a kind of sermon, about how there is no history before we got Dragonscale. That a new history started for each of us when we got sick. That the only life that matters is the life we have now, together, as a community, not the life we had before. And then we sang again and we all lit up—even me—and we hummed real hard, and afterward we staggered out of there like drunk sailors on New Year’s Eve. And I forgot”—his breath hitched as he leaned forward to pull against the oars once more—“I forgot my mate, Bill Ellroy, what fished with me for thirty years. He was snatched right out of my head. Not just for hours. For days. I had the best years of my life out on the boat with Billy. It’s hard to tell you how good they were. We’d fish three weeks hard, come back and unload our catch in Portsmouth, then take the boat out to the Harbor Islands, drop anchor, and drink beer. I’d hate goin’ home. I liked every minute of bein’ with Billy. I liked who I was when I was by his side.” He had stopped rowing for a moment. The boat rocked in the swell. “Bein’ with him was like havin’ the whole ocean under you. We didn’t talk much, you know. We didn’t need to. You don’t talk to an ocean and it don’t talk back. You just . . . let it carry you.” He began to stroke the oars again. “Well. When I suddenly realized I had lost him for a while—that he had been wiped out—that was when I decided I had enough of this place. No one gets to take Bill Ellroy from me. Nobody. Not for no reason. No one gets to take our friendship. There was a thief workin’ in this camp last fall, and if Carol had ever caught her, she would’ve fed her piece by bloody piece to wild dogs. I’ll tell you what, though. The things that are stolen from us every night, when we all sing together, those are a lot more important than most of what the thief took. And we know who’s takin’ ’em, and instead of lockin’ her up, we elected her head of camp.”

  He fell silent. He had taken the extra precaution of rowing them around the northern tip of the island, to the far side of the rock, so he could beach the rowboat where it couldn’t be seen from shore by the casual observer. Harper spied two canoes already pulled up on the gravel. Beyond, set back from the water, was the thirty-three-foot cruising sloop, sitting in its steel carriage and covered by its taut white tarp.

  “What do you think happened to the thief, anyway?” Harper asked. “I don’t think there’s been a theft all winter.”

  “Maybe she ran out of things to steal,” Don said. “Or maybe she just finally got what she wanted.”

  Harper watched Don lean and pull, lean and pull, and thought the power of the Bright couldn’t compete with being close to someone you loved with all your heart. One took away; the other gave you access to your best, happiest self. I liked who I was when I was by his side, Don Lewiston said, and Harper wondered if there had ever been anyone in her life who made her feel that way about herself, and at that moment the boat ground onto the sand with a wet crunch, and Don said, “Let’s go see the Fireman, huh?”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  ....................................

  8

  Before she climbed out, Harper reached into the bin under the thwart and found her hidden grocery sack, which still contained a bottle of cheap banana-flavored rum and the long box of Gauloises. Don waited for her halfway up the shale, under the bow of the long white sloop. He had a hand on the hull when she caught up to him.

  “Can you sail it?” she asked.

  He lifted an eyebrow, gave her an amused, sidelong glance. “All the way around the horn and on to exotic Shanghai if I had to.”

  “I was thinking just a ways up the coast.”

  “Yuh,” he said. “Well. That would be easier.”

  They went on arm in arm, through the dunes, up the narrow, weedy trail, over the hill, and on to the Fireman’s shed. Don lifted the latch and eased the door open onto laughter and warmth and shifting golden light.

  Renée stood at the furnace, wearing oven mitts and hanging the kettle on its hook over the coals. Gilbert Cline had settled near her, sitting in a straight-backed chair against the wall. He had his gaze on the door when it opened—ready to move if he didn’t care for the company, Harper thought.

  The Mazz sat at one end of John Rookwood’s cot and John at the other, both of them quivering with laughter. The Mazz’s wide, ugly face was suffused a deep shade of red and he was blinking at tears. All of them—all except for Gil—had their eyes on Allie, who stood over a pail, pretending she was a man taking a piss. She wore John’s fireman helmet and held a plastic lighter at her crotch.

  “And this is only the second
coolest thing I know how to do with my dick!” Allie announced in her intentionally atrocious English accent. She flicked the lighter, so her pretend cock spurted flame. “I’ll have your campfire going in no time, but if you’re really in a hurry to bake your hot dogs, I’ll just bend over, and you can—”

  Allie saw Harper in the doorway and her voice trailed off. Her grin faltered. She let the lighter go out.

  John, however, continued to tremble with amusement. He gestured to the Mazz and said: “What she just demonstrated, that did happen to me once. But this was years before Dragonscale, and a little penicillin cleared it right up.”

  The Mazz bellowed with laughter, was so raucous it was impossible not to be entertained. The ghost of a smile even briefly reappeared on Allie’s lips—but only for a moment.

  “Wow,” Allie said. “Ms. Willowes, you got huge.”

  “I’m glad to hear your voice, Allie. It’s been a while. I’ve missed it.”

  “I don’t know why you would. Mostly when I do open my mouth, it seems like people just gets hurt.”

  Her gaze dropped. Her face wrinkled with emotion. It was difficult to watch her trying not to cry, all the muscles in her face struggling at once with the strain to hold it in. Harper reached out and took Allie’s hands, and when she did, Allie lost the fight and began to weep.

  “I feel so bad,” Allie said. “I think we were supposed to be really good friends and I fucked it all up and I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh, Allie,” Harper said, and tried to squeeze her. Her stomach made squeezing people tricky, and instead of a hug, she wound up giving Allie a rubbery bump with her belly. Allie made a strangled sound that was part sob, part laugh. “We are really good friends. And to be honest, I had wanted to try a shorter haircut for years.”

  This time Harper was certain the sound Allie made was a laugh, although it was choked and half muffled; Allie had her face buried against Harper’s chest.

  At last, Allie stepped back, wiping her hands down her wet cheeks. “I know everything in camp is going bad. I know everyone is batshit crazy, my aunt especially. It’s scary. She’s scary. Threatening to take your baby away if Granddad dies, when you’ve already done everything anyone could do—that’s so fucked up and sick.”

  John sat forward, his smile fading. “What’s this?”

  “You were unwell,” Harper said, not looking directly at him, but speaking over her shoulder. “I didn’t want to bring it up. You look better now, by the way.”

  “Yes,” John said. “Antibiotics and Dragonscale have a lot in common. One is a mold that cooks bacteria, and the other is a mold that cooks us. I wish there was a pill we could take to cure us of Carol Storey. She’s out of her good goddamn mind. She can’t have meant it. Take your baby? What is this rubbish?”

  Harper said, “Carol told me . . . she told me if Tom died, she’d hold me personally responsible, and send me away. She’d keep the baby, so that if I’m captured by a Quarantine Patrol or a Cremation Crew, I won’t be tempted to give away any information about Camp Wyndham.”

  “It’s not just that. She really would want the baby to be safe. She wants to protect us. All of us,” Allie said. She cast her gaze around the room, looking at each of them, and her voice was almost pleading. “I know she’s awful. I know she does terrible things now. Thing is, my aunt Carol would die for the people in this camp. Without a second thought. She really does love everyone . . . at least everyone she isn’t suspicious about. And I remember before Granddad got his head bashed in. She was good then. When she knew she could help people by singing and playing music and showing them how to join the Bright. She was the best person in the world to have as your friend. I could always go cry to her if I had a fight with my mom. She made me tea and peanut butter sandwiches. So I know you guys all hate her, and I know we have to do something. But you also have to know I still love her. She’s a fuck-up, but so am I. I guess it runs in the family.”

  John relaxed, leaned back against the wall. “Decency runs in your family, Allie. And a really unsettling streak of personal daring. And charisma. All the rest of us flutter around you Storeys like moths around candles.”

  Harper thought automatically of how the romance between a moth and a candle usually ended: with the moth spinning to its death, wings smoking. It didn’t seem like a thought worth sharing at that particular moment.

  Gilbert Cline spoke up from over by the furnace. When Harper glanced at him, she noticed Gil had one hand around Renée’s waist. “It sure is a relief to be out of that meat locker for a while. Next time I step out for a breath of fresh air, I’d just as soon not have to go back. Right now, though, we’ve got half an hour. If we’ve got things to figure, we better figure ’em now.”

  The Mazz lifted his chin, was looking down the length of his bulbous nose at Harper’s grocery bag. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I always do my best figuring over a drink. Looks like the nurse brought just what the doctor ordered.”

  Harper lifted out the bottle of banana rum. “Don, would you find us cups?”

  She dashed a little rum into a collection of chipped coffee cups, tin mugs, and ugly tumblers and Don passed them around. The last cup Harper offered to Allie.

  “Really?” Allie asked.

  “It tastes better than a rock.”

  Allie tossed back the quarter inch Harper had given her in a single swallow, then made a face. “Oh, God. No it doesn’t. This is piss. Like drinking gasoline after someone stirred it with a Butterfinger. Or like a banana smoothie that went rotten. Horrible.”

  “You want another slosh, then?” Harper asked.

  “Yes, please,” Allie said.

  “Well, too bad,” Harper told her. “You’re a minor and one sip is all you get.”

  “I used to eat sardines out of the can and drink the oil afterward,” Don said. “It was a gruesome thing to do. That oil always had little fish tails and fish eyes and fackin’ fish guts and little black rubbery strings of fish shit, and I drank it anyway. Just couldn’t help myself.”

  Gil said, “Saw a movie where a fella said he’d eaten dogs and lived like one. I never ate a dog, but there was men that caught and ate mice in Brentwood. They called ’em basement chickens.”

  “Worst thing I ever ate?” the Mazz speculated. “I wouldn’t like to go into the details in polite company, but her name was Ramona.”

  “That’s lovely, Mazz. Very tasteful,” Renée said.

  “Actually, it wasn’t even a little tasteful,” the Mazz told her.

  “This reminds me: Are you going to eat the placenta?” Renée asked Harper. “I understand that’s a thing now. We stocked a pregnancy guide at the bookstore with a whole chapter of placenta recipes in the back. Omelets and pasta sauces and so on.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Harper said. “Dining on the placenta smacks of cannibalism, and I was hoping for a more dignified apocalypse.”

  “Rabbit mothers eat their own babies,” the Mazz said. “I found that out reading Watership Down. Apparently the mamas chow down on their newborns all the time. Pop them down just like little meat Skittles.”

  “The worst part,” Allie said, “is that you’ve all only had one drink.”

  Don said, “So who’s the captain of this ship? Who’s settin’ our course?”

  “You’re so adorable when you’re nautical,” John Rookwood said to him.

  “He’s right, though,” Renée said. “That’s the first order of business, isn’t it? We need to hold the election.”

  “Election?” Harper asked. She was vaguely aware that she was the only person in the circle who didn’t have a knowing smile on their face—a fact she found mildly irritating.

  “We need to settle on an evil mastermind,” Renée told her. “Someone to set the agenda when we have meetings. Someone to call a vote. Someone to make on-the-spot decisions when there isn’t time to
vote. Someone to boss around the minions.”

  “That’s silly. There’s just seven of us. Eight, if you count Nick.”

  Don Lewiston lifted his eyebrows and turned an expectant expression toward Renée Gilmonton.

  “You’re off by fifteen,” Renée said.

  “Make it seventeen,” Don said. “The McLee brothers are with us too.”

  “There are . . . what . . . twenty-five people ready to . . . strike out on their own?” Harper asked. Dumbledore’s army, she thought. The Fellowship.

  “Or strike out at Ben and Carol,” Don said, “and take back the damn camp.” He saw Allie blanch and added, “Strike back gently, I mean. Politely. You know. With good manners.”

  “We can do some things by way of a vote,” Renée said. “But working in secret as we are, a lot of choices will require an executive decision. It’s a necessary job, but I don’t think it’s likely to be a terribly rewarding one . . . or particularly safe. You want to think about what might happen to whoever we put in charge, if we’re discovered.”

  “I don’t need to think about it,” Allie said. “I know. When my aunt talks about slicing the rottenness out of camp, she’s not playing with words. She’s talking about cutting a bitch. She’d have people killed. She’d have to set an example.” Allie smiled at them, but looked wan. “I read in history that public executions used to be popular events. I’m sure if Aunt Carol announced one, Mrs. Heald would make sure there was popcorn for everyone.”

  The fire cracked and hissed. A coal popped.

  “You really think it could go that far?” Gil asked, his voice suggesting only mild curiosity. “Public executions?”