The Sky Is Yours

by Chandler Klang Smith

  “For real?”

  “Too bad those days are gone.”

  Gone. Could have been. The words make Ripple think of Kelvin’s: Empire Island is over. Everybody’s so quick to bail on this place, but it’s Ripple’s kingdom. It’s where he was born, where he grew up, where his family owns a buttload of real estate. And now it’s down to just this guy trying to keep it in one piece. Fuck that. It’s not too late. “Maybe you could train me.”

  It’s hard to tell through the gas mask, but Leather Lungs seems doubtful.

  “You could be my personal trainer,” Ripple goes on. He’s liking the idea more and more as he explains it out loud. “My coach. You could teach me what you know, and I could join you.”

  “It isn’t something to enter into lightly,” says Leather Lungs.

  “But you said I kicked ass out there.”

  “I said you had potential.”

  “I always knew I’d be good at this,” Ripple says brashly. “I’m fearless.”

  “Are you?” Leather Lungs says it like he can see inside Ripple’s head: the four torchies in that hallway, the sound of those alarms.

  “Look, you’re the one who needs me,” Ripple says, with more confidence than he feels. “If you were good all on your own, you wouldn’t be conscripting people on the street every time this happens. It’s fate. I’m meant to help you with your mission.”

  Leather Lungs nods slowly. “It’s an idea.”

  “I just have to go back up to the Heights and check on my family first,” Ripple adds.

  The elevator doors ding open on the first floor. The Librarians are waiting there, thirty at least, a whole hoary vexation of the barely undead, arranged in a half-circle, stooped and waiting. For a second Ripple thinks they’re about to go full zombie. Then they applaud.

  Back outside, Ripple finds Abby sitting by herself on the steps, crying. Oh, right. For a second there, he totally forgot he was responsible for anyone besides himself.

  “Hey, what’s up?” He looks around. “Where’s Swanny? Where’s Hooli? Where’s Avian Floozy?”

  “They left,” she blubbers.

  “Swanny left?” It’s more of a gut punch than Ripple would have expected. Swanny left. “She took my dog?”

  “Everyone left.” Abby musters a smile: “But you came back.”

  “Believe it, damsel. And guess what?” Ripple jerks his thumb at Leather Lungs, who stands a few yards away, speaking into that blocky, antennaed walkie-talkie. “I saved the library. Now he’s going to make me a special officer, just like him.”

  Abby looks from the snozzled figure to Ripple, then back again. “But we need to find my people.”

  He was afraid she’d bring that up. “Sure, we will. Except I need to find myself first.”

  Abby stares at him, blindsided; her years alone on the trash island have left her unschooled in the psychology of self-actualization. “But you promised.”

  Why is she giving him such a hard time? If he wanted a guilt trip, he would have stuck with his wife. “Listen, this is just a detour. The first BeanReader we see, we’ll check out your foot. Your parents have waited all this time, a little while longer’s no biggie. They’ll like me better if I have a career—if I’m not just someone’s kid.” Which reminds him: “First, though, we’ve gotta go check on my family. Maybe we can just peek in a window or something, to make sure they’re OK. When I go back, I want to return in triumph, you know?”

  “Not necessary.” Leather Lungs plods over with the hot-dog cart. “I just spoke to headquarters. They dispatched a team to the Ripple mansion an hour ago, and it all looks normal. Everyone’s accounted for.”

  “Wait—everyone?”

  “Except your mother-in-law. Damn shame about that.”

  Sucks for Swanny, anyway. She and that Old Mom were joined at the ovaries. Ripple pulls out his LookyGlass. No new texts. “But my dad still hasn’t answered.”

  “Fathers can be distant sometimes.”

  Even through the Tarnhelm, there’s something in Leather Lungs’s tone that suggests he understands. Ripple feels a surge of anger at Humphrey. He’s always failing his dad, and always in the most public ways. He felt like such a boss just a second ago.

  “I’ll show him,” Ripple says. He hurls his LookyGlass to the ground, and the screen shatters against the pavement.

  Abby cringes. “You hurt it.”

  Ripple ignores her. To Leather Lungs, he adds: “Sign me up. For serious. Let’s do this.”

  * * *

  “Hey, I’ve been here before,” Ripple says. The building is white marble with a neoclassical portico, four alabaster columns supporting a pediment carved with figures clad in togas and merryweather helmets, ornate situlas in their hands. Chiseled into the stone just beneath the bas-relief are the words BRING IT ON.

  The Fire Museum. Ripple, Abby, and Leather Lungs walk into the lobby: an expansive, open room, not unlike the one in the Ripples’ mansion. But instead of a stone fountain depicting ripped hunk vs. kraken, the monumental statue here is a giant fireman, bent on one knee, his eyes shielded beneath the brim of his helmet from the glory to come. Cast in bronze.

  “I don’t like the metal man,” Abby murmurs.

  Ripple came here on an underschool field trip when he was just eight; attendance was mandatory. The space is empty now, but he remembers it a decade ago, filled with the shouts and disorder of dozens of his classmates. That long-ago autumn day, the boys wandered these halls in pairs, split up by the buddy system. Kelvin was absorbed in a Boy Toy handheld championship, earmuff-headphones on, eyes trained on his screen, as they walked among the exhibits. Even Ripple’s videographers bailed after an hour. But Ripple was enraptured. In glass cases, ancient firefighting tools were laid out like holy relics, axes and wooden pails and Draegerman suits, diving bells for plunging into the sea of fire. Ox-drawn pumpers and steam-powered fire bikes stood on platforms. In one room, the boys took turns hopping from a ladder onto an old trampoline marked X in the center: JUMP FOR YOUR LIFE!

  It should have been boring as fuck, yet the artifacts—adorned with brass beavers and bronze eagles, gilded and painted candy-apple red—got Ripple curious. Why had they bothered to make these things beautiful? He’d always thought of firefighting as janitorial work, late capitalism’s punishment for those too poor and lazy to qualify for exemptions, too boring to appear in reality. But the Fire Museum made them look like warriors girding for epic battle, dressed to dine in hell.

  The main event took place in the museum’s auditorium. Ripple readied himself to nap through some multimedia, but instead the boys had a surprise guest: newly appointed Fire Chief Paxton Trank. Ripple didn’t exactly follow city politics, but even he’d heard of Trank. Just two weeks after his inauguration, this pro was already shaping up to be the stuff of legend. More like an action hero than a civil servant. He had a reputation for showing up to press conferences soot-streaked on the back of a HowDouse, which fired up its sirens and blasted off for the next emergency the second the Q&A concluded. That day, though, Trank was scrubbed and smartly dressed, clad in a slicker with epaulettes. Ripple doesn’t remember all the details of what he instructed them in his gravelly voice, though he did extol the virtues of enlistment and warn them to beware of “privileges that will subsidize your goddamned childhoods all the way to old age.” He cursed a lot for somebody talking to a group of kids.

  A fire alarm interrupted his speech in the middle, and, as the state-of-the-art, best-in-class sprinkler system rained down, the teachers hustled them all out in a frantic rush to re-board the HowBuses that had ferried them here from the Chokely Bradford campus in South Crookbridge. It turned out to be a burned grilled cheese in the museum cafeteria, nothing so glamorous as a dragon, the forgettable end to a forgettable field trip for the other boys. But something about Trank stuck with Ripple. Humphrey called Trank “a doer, not a leader,” but even he had a twinge of admiration in his voice. It bummed Ripple out when he heard about the fire that did Tran
k in: about six months ago, his men abandoned him in a dragon blaze at the Gemini towers to lead the mutiny that finally shut down the fire department for good.

  Now, in the lobby of the Fire Museum, Ripple points at Trank’s enormous portrait on the wall, at the landing of the staircase. It’s done in oil, maybe even by the same painter who did Humphrey’s for the Hall of Ancestors: the same style anyway, lots of woodwork in the background and a fancy gold frame. In it, Trank holds his parade helmet under one arm, his rough-hewn features—hawkish nose, piercing quicksilver eyes, cleft chin—glowing like he’s on the receiving end of a coronation.

  “I met that guy once,” Ripple tells Leather Lungs. “He talked to my underschool class.”

  Leather Lungs gazes up at the portrait. For a moment, he’s so still he could be another statue, man-made, a posture of grief and reverence suspended out of time.

  Then, with a final, deflating exhalation, Leather Lungs unfilters his face.

  Hawkish nose, quicksilver eyes, cleft chin: the data say it’s Paxton Trank, a dead ringer for his portrait across the lobby. And yet—and yet. Something is missing: not the stubble, which glitters gray; not the bushy tufts of eyebrow; not the wrinkles, a rugged terrain of emotion around his eyes, across his brow. None of these are missing, and yet something is missing from all of them.

  He is not human.

  Abby squeezes Ripple’s arm with sudden death-grip intensity. Her voice glitches, nonsense syllables, all consonants stammering: “Dddd…nnnn…cccckkk…”

  Ripple blinks. Leather Lungs can take the form of anyone—your best friend, your dad, your childhood hero. But he is a messenger from one place only.

  “No offense, but—since when are you alive?”

  Trank pulls off his gloves, one at a time. His hands underneath are broad, callused and sinewy, nothing uncanny there. “My own men left me to die. But I didn’t.”

  “No way. I saw your funeral. I watched it on the Toob at underschool. Closed coffin, but still. We were supposed to wear black armbands, but I couldn’t find mine so I tied on a black sock instead, except it had rockets on it, which is supposedly disrespect for the dead. I spent all of recess in detention.”

  “Recess? That’s for children. This was six months ago.”

  “Study hall, whatever. I think you owe me an apology. Unless…” Ripple leaves the word hanging. But Trank doesn’t fess up to his ghosthood—and besides, there’s nothing disembodied about him. If something is missing from that face, it’s the soul.

  “If they wanted to kill me, they shouldn’t have counted on a fire.”

  Ripple can’t put his finger on it. Maybe Trank had reconstructive surgery? His body moves like a human’s as he unsnaps the slicker, bundles it and the Tarnhelm into the hot-dog cart, but when he turns to smile at Ripple and Abby, his expression is just a little off. It’s like he still has on a mask.

  “I’d give you the full tour, but it sounds like you already know the place,” he tells Ripple. “Maybe you’d rather kick back and watch a show.”

  * * *

  FADE IN:

  EXT. CITY STREET—DAY

  CLOSE on a firefighter’s helmet.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  President Roswell once said that bravery isn’t the absence of fear. Bravery is acting despite your fear.

  CLOSE on a firefighter’s boot, stamping out the last glowing ember on a rubble-strewn sidewalk.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  Firefighters live Roswell’s vision…and take it to a whole new level.

  ZOOM OUT to reveal a trio of handsome, square-jawed FIREFIGHTERS, streaked with soot, gazing resolutely at the camera.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  We fight fire. We fight fear.

  CUT TO:

  INT. BURNING BUILDING—DAY

  One of the FIREFIGHTERS runs in slow motion down a burning hallway.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  But bravery is more.

  The FIREFIGHTER kicks in a door. A MILF and CHILD cower in one corner of the smoke-filled room. He dramatically gestures for them to follow.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  Bravery is fighting doubt, anger, frustration. Sometimes even common sense.

  The FIREFIGHTER, MILF, and CHILD run a flight of stairs to safety, but once outside, the CHILD hesitates, her eyes filling with tears. The FIREFIGHTER looks at her and understands. He runs back inside the burning building. The MILF gasps and swoons.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  Bravery is doing the thing you don’t want to do, for the simple reason that you don’t want to do it.

  EXT. CITY STREET—NIGHT

  The FIREFIGHTER reemerges from the inferno, holding an adorable kitten. The CHILD grins. The MILF, half-revived, parts her lips in an expression of melting admiration.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  It’s heroism for its own sake.

  CLOSE UP on the kitten, happily meowing.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  Bravery is obedience.

  EXT. URBAN PARK—DAY

  A phalanx of FIREFIGHTERS marches by, holding hatchets, as a FIRE CHIEF barks orders.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  Obedience lets you focus on being brave, instead of on being right.

  INT. FIERY MATERNITY WARD—DAY

  A FIREMAN runs down a fiery hallway full of stunned pregnant women, hugging a BABY to his chest.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  When a burning hospital is collapsing all around you, you can’t afford to hesitate.

  CLOSE on the sickly, bright-pink face of the premature BABY.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  Hesitation sends babies to Limbo. That’s why your squad captain is trained to do the thinking for you. His orders free you to do your best. To be. A hero.

  The FIREMAN runs toward an open window. He leans his head and shoulders out, pauses, then drops the premature BABY.

  CUT TO:

  EXT. CITY STREET—DAY

  An older SQUAD CAPTAIN easily catches the baby and gazes down at it lovingly. He gives the FIREMAN a thumbs-up.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  Because a hero doesn’t stop to think. A hero does.

  CLOSE ON the premature BABY’s amphibious, fetal hand, also giving a tiny thumbs-up.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  Bravery is character.

  CUT TO:

  EXT. BURNING SKYSCRAPER—DAY

  A FIREMAN zips on a heavy-duty fireproof suit and gas mask, grabs two huge canisters marked Fire Suppressant Powder and lies down in a catapult.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  The character to take the heat.

  The catapult launches the FIREMAN at the building, into the heart of the flames.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  And to go the distance.

  Other FIREMEN and BYSTANDERS cheer as the fire extinguishes itself in a cloud of billowing white.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  You’re following in the footsteps of the firemen who came before you…

  EXT. SEPIA-TONED, LONG AGO CITY STREET—DAY

  A group of FIREMEN tumble over one another, their movements made comically jittery by the undercranked frame rate as they struggle to drag a gigantic hose out from their antiquated, steam-powered fire engine.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  …and inspiring generations of firemen to come.

  MONTAGE, as music swells, of happy, victorious FIREMEN: atop fire escapes and ladders; drenched in sweat, hacking at walls with axes; riding solemn-faced in a tickertape parade; offering water to people trapped under charred, fallen pillars.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  The brotherhood.

  EXT. BURNING SKYSCRAPER ROOF—DAY

  A FIREMAN, pushed back by a fireball, almost falls off the ledge, but another FIREMAN grabs his hand at the last moment and pulls him up.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  Of the helmet.

  MONTAGE, of changing helmet styles through time.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  Of the hose.

  MONTAG
E, of changing hose styles through time.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  The brotherhood. Of heroes.

  MONTAGE, of sepia, black-and-white, and colorized faces of diverse FIREMEN through time.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  Nothing in this fair city is braver than a firefighter. And it’s a good thing too, because nothing else stands between civilization…

  EXT. CITY SKYLINE, PRE-DRAGONS—DAY

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  And destruction.

  CUT TO BLACK.

  NARRATOR (V.O.)

  Be brave. Be very brave. Be firefighter brave.

  TITLE CARD: A McGuffin-Stork production. Paid for by the Metropolitan Fire Department.

  * * *

  “It’s cool there’s still pizza delivery around here,” says Ripple, though his mind isn’t really on the food. After watching the edutainment special upstairs, blasted by surround sound in the Hall of Heroes’ Ida Lowry Theater, he was so blown away that for a good thirty seconds he couldn’t remember where he was. This happens to Ripple sometimes: the show ends but in his brain it keeps going, with himself in the leading role. A holdover from the days of his Toob series, maybe, when he would watch the last week’s episode and then jump right back into living out its arc.