Indigo Hill: A Novel

by Liz Rosenberg

  He barely budged from in front of that Lundgren girl once Louisa got there, except once in a while to poke at the wet wood sizzling in the oil drum and make disparaging remarks about it, or to get another pour of tequila. He’d hailed Louisa when she first came in—“Hey, Louie Lou!” and waved so hard he almost toppled over onto the Lundgren twin, so it was clear Flick was pretty sauced before Louisa even arrived. As usual, she was too late. When Flick zeroed in on a girl, he seldom lost focus.

  When there were more than ten or fifteen of the neighborhood kids in there at one time, they were packed into the tiny shack like sardines, so you had to watch your feet when you walked, and Louisa wondered what would happen if things went south. The place was a powder keg. You couldn’t even turn sideways without bumping up against someone. When she mentioned it to Zamboni, though, he just cut her a sardonic look and called her a worrywart. Stupid, was what it was. Let him call her whatever he liked.

  Others of the kids from her neighborhood showed up at some point during the night, though only their core group stayed on—Paco and his chubby sidekick Art Wandowski; Zamboni; Paul Bell; plus a couple of the younger kids who had actually built the shack—Paul’s kid brother Tommy and a couple of his friends, looking startled and pleased to be in the presence of the tough, popular Swedish Hill high schoolers. Other boys, more acquaintances than friends, came and went, and came and went. Louisa was bored, and she felt like a frown had permanently affixed itself to her face, creasing her forehead. Her head throbbed from the closeness of the room. Every time someone opened the narrow front door, a blast of cold air would smack her in the face and leave her shivering, and in between blasts the smoke made Louisa’s eyes water.

  She stood as long as she could, but by ten o’clock she had just about given the night up as a lost cause. Some holiday party. The crowd had thinned; only about a dozen of the whole crowd remained. The wet-wood smoke had given her a pounding headache. Flick had finally left the Lundgren twin’s vicinity, so apparently they weren’t literally glued to each other after all. The Lundgren girl sat across the room in her cherry-red sweater, with her blonde hair glinting by the lantern light, one long jean-clad leg crossed over the other. She was busy flirting with Paul Bell now.

  Louisa stood up to look for Flick.

  She could picture herself touching him lightly on the back and asking if he wanted to get out of there for a breath of fresh air. Chances were he’d agree. Flick was so restless he pretty much wanted to get out of anywhere as soon as he arrived. This party was winding down, anyway. Soon it would be over. The muscles in Flick’s back were long and strong; Louisa could almost feel them under her palm, thinking about it. Then at least they’d have the long walk home in the cold together, to joke around and talk.

  Louisa poked her head up into the second floor to find Flick, but there was nobody up there but Paco and a knot of younger kids avidly playing a game of Pitch, clustered around a messy stack of dollar bills in the center of the circle. The little kids looked mesmerized.

  Paco was chanting, “Five dollars a game, dollar a set, ten dollars in the hole!” —So he was going to make some money, though he’d probably spend it all treating the younger kids to M&M’s or Snickers bars afterward. The card players barely looked up when she stuck her head up into the crawlspace.

  “You seen Flick?” Louisa called to Paco.

  “Many times,” he answered with a drunken grin.

  Louisa stepped back downstairs, carefully, because the jerry-rigged steps were rickety. She warmed her hands over the sputtering fire in the oil drum when she suddenly spotted Flick’s plaid shirt, in the darkest, farthest corner of the shack. His golden-brown hair glinted in the light from the lantern, only because he was so tall, even sitting down. He was sitting cross-legged—and now Louisa saw that the other Lundgren twin was sitting in his lap, facing him. They were entwined like a pair of snakes, heads moving. Flick was kissing the other girl, and rummaging his long hands through her blonde hair before resting his fingers on the blades of her back. Louisa could almost feel the ache in her own shoulder blades. She snatched up her coat, and grabbed the arm of the first person she saw—dull, chubby Art Wandowski.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said to him. “I’m freezing.”

  His eyes widened in surprise, but then he smiled, and nodded, his round cheeks rising. “Okay,” he said.

  Paul’s kid brother Tommy, the builder, who had overheard Louisa said, “It’s not cold.” He was proud of the oil drum stove he’d made. He was proud of the whole place. And there wasn’t all that much he’d ever had to be proud of.

  “Yeah it is,” Louisa said. “Feel my hands.” She thrust them out under his nose. Tommy Bell looked startled, then reached out one hand and touched the top of her cold hand. He acted like it was the one and only time in his life he’d ever touched a girl.

  “I’ve got plenty of cardboard to burn,” he said.

  “Cardboard’s not much use,” Art said. “As a heat source.”

  “Let’s go,” Louisa said, still hanging on to Art’s round arm. “Can’t we just go?”

  “Would you wait ten minutes?” Tommy Bell asked. “I’ll walk home with you.”

  Louisa was still aware of the two figures making out on the floor in the corner. She wished she could force herself to look away. She thought maybe Flick had his hand moving around under the girl’s sweater, but she couldn’t tell. The only light came from a lantern hanging in the middle of the room, and from the snow shining through the one small window by the door. Louisa wasn’t absolutely sure, but she thought maybe she heard Flick moan.

  “I’m not waiting,” she snapped.

  Art shrugged apologetically. “I’ve got work in the morning,” he said to Tommy.

  “Okay then,” said Tommy Bell, polite as a grown-up. “Thanks for stopping by.”

  When they left, Tommy was still standing over the fire, with his head cocked, studying the stove like he was puzzling out something.

  “That kid’s gonna be a millionaire,” said Art, as he pulled open the narrow front door. “Did you see the way he rigged up a set of stairs, and everything?” Louisa dropped Art’s arm to step sideways into the bitter cold. . No one from inside the shack called after them. Very likely nobody else noticed them go. A handful of kids still hung around outside but they didn’t say anything either. The night was black as coal, and full of stars. A half-moon had risen above the tops of the pines. First the fresh air felt good, then in less than a minute it stung her lungs with the bitter cold.

  Art took her hand in his plump hand. Apparently he had misunderstood Louisa’s invitation. She felt too tired and too disappointed by the way the evening had fizzled out to argue or explain. Let him think what he wanted. She let her hand rest listlessly in his, as Art led her clumsily back down the side of the snowy Indigo Hill, chattering on and on nonstop. Something about his work, something else about ice fishing, going into great and tiresome detail about fishing lures. Something about drilling, something else about the importance of using live bait. She wasn’t really paying attention. Her face felt stiff from scowling. Her new wool coat kept her body warm, but her feet, in the chunky boots, were growing steadily wetter and colder till they felt like two huge lumps of ice, impossible to move.

  At the bottom of the hill, something made Louisa turn around. She never knew what it was. Maybe it was a flicker of light that caught her eye against all that darkness. Or maybe she was like that woman in the Bible who just had to look back over her shoulder one last time and risk turning into a pillar of salt. At first Louisa thought she was imagining things; then she was sure she saw it: a sharp bright point of light, blinking on and off like a firefly. She stopped walking. She looked again, ducking under the branch of a fir tree to see better. The light at the top of the hill grew bigger and stronger. Then she felt something like a wave of heat, rolling downhill toward them.

  “I swear to God,” she said in a tight voice. “I think the shack’s on fire.”

>   “What?” said Art. He was still talking about ice fishing, and flooding the fields.

  The flickering up the hill grew brighter, rose straight up into the sky like a pointing, accusatory finger. Louisa stared at it in horrified fascination, waiting for the vision to go away. She must be imagining things. It was like staring at a crumpled bag on the road that looked like the twisted dead body of an animal, till the wind finally came along and lifted it away. She waited for the wind to blow this thing out, for the fire to disappear. But it didn’t go away. Flames leaped up in all directions instead, spreading jaggedly. She ran back uphill toward the shack to get a better look, dragging Art along with her, and at the next bend, the trees opened, like a keyhole, and through that keyhole she saw a column of blackish-orange flame, rising straight up into the sky.

  “Holy shit,” breathed Art. He squeezed Louisa’s hand and tried to pull her away. Her palm felt trapped in a soft, moist cage.

  One of the Lundgren girl twins came pounding down the hill past them. Her hair was wild. She wasn’t wearing a red sweater so it must have been the other Lundgren girl. “Get help!” she screamed, and fled headlong toward the road.

  Art stared after her, his mouth twisted open. His shoulders were hunched. He looked like a frightened rabbit. “What do we do now?” he asked Louisa.

  Louisa yanked her hand away and started running wildly back uphill, blindly. She followed the distant flame. Prickers scraped against her, a branch lashed her neck till she bled, but she didn’t feel any of it then. Art shouted after her to stop. She no longer noticed that her boots were wet. It felt like she was flying against gravity, pounding uphill. Art stumbled after her, pleading for her to slow down, to come back to safety.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea!” he gasped, out of breath. “It’s too dangerous. We shouldn’t go back!” He gestured desperately for her to come back downhill. She could smell the smoke now.

  And Flick—Flick was still back there. She ran straight uphill. She ran harder till Art’s words were torn away by the wind whistling in her ears. She thought she saw Zamboni running off in his bright-orange sweatshirt, but if so, he was headed the other way, cutting through the woods toward his house. She didn’t feel cold anymore, but the freezing air stood like an obstacle in her path, menacing, a physical force as hard as a wall trying to block her way. She pushed on past it, both arms stuck out in front of her, pounding uphill through the pines as fast as she could, jumping over rocks and tree roots. She didn’t stumble once. Her stiff legs seemed to know where they needed to go. She let them carry her onward. Two more boys ran past her, coming from the direction of the shack. “Fire!” one of them yelled in a cracking voice. Their faces were so sooty she didn’t recognize either one. Neither boy was Flick.

  She fought and tore her way uphill till she was suddenly standing at the door of the shack. She could feel the heat of the fire on her face. It was like a scene from a disaster movie or a bad dream. Flames were shooting off the walls. Paco was running up and down in front of the shack yelling, along with Paul Bell, and flames were licking at the roof. The top floor had sagged down onto the bottom floor, so the boys couldn’t get the door of the shack open.

  “They’re gone,” Paul said in a ragged voice to Paco. “The smoke got them.” He looked like the image of a hanged man, Louisa thought. His head was nodding forward, his hands hung at his sides, his body slumped forward.

  “Shut up and let me think!” shouted Paco. He tugged at his hair with both hands as if he could reach his brains that way.

  Then they all heard a loud thumping noise as if something or someone had been thrown against the door. It happened once more. The door shook.

  “Open the door!” Louisa screamed, kicking at the wood. “Do something, get him out! Get him out!” Nobody had to tell her Flick was trapped in there. She already knew it.

  She yanked at the door but the doorknob wouldn’t turn. She pounded on the narrow door till her fists were numb. Paco pushed her out of the way and kicked at a couple of boards beside the door. Art had finally caught up and he stood at a distance, arms hanging helplessly at his sides. Nothing happened till Paco and Paul picked up a log, and smashed into the shack, using it like a battering ram. The boards loosened. They rammed it with the log again and again. Paul Bell was a big kid. He punched a hole through the window with his fist, and then kicked at the loose boards beside the window with his big, steel-toed boots till they splintered. His hand was bleeding but he didn’t seem to notice. Paco reached inside and dragged something through, out into the cold. It was Flick. His leather jacket and his hair were on fire. When he landed in the snow, his hair made a sizzling sound. Louisa threw handfuls of snow on his jacket till that went out, too.

  Flick’s face was red and black, like a mask, but he was awake, alert, and his blue eyes were blazing in his head, still completely alive, still Flick. He picked himself up out of the snow and stumbled forward, his legs rubbery. Paco and Paul grabbed him under either arm, and Louisa followed them. It felt like a scream was stuck in her throat, like the point of a sword.

  “Poor Tommy,” said Paco, in a broken voice. “He poured gasoline on the fire, to make it warmer. Crazy kid.”

  Art made a sound.

  “I tried to stop him,” said Paul. “I saw him lift the can of gasoline. I swear to God, I tried to get there first.”

  Art was still standing off a little ways, hanging back from the fire, but he trudged after them down Indigo Hill. Louisa turned to look at the shack one more time. Behind them now, the whole structure was engulfed in a tower of flame. It reached up toward the sky. Pieces of the tar-paper roof lifted off and floated down. The building seemed to be coming apart on itself, a crumbling sheet of fire and smoke.

  They all stumbled back down the hill, coughing as they ran. Smoke was still curling from Flick’s hair. Every rock and thorny shrub Louisa had managed to avoid on her sprint up the hill caught her on the way down. Twice she fell flat in the snow. Flick’s long legs were as wobbly as a colt’s, but he didn’t go down once. She saw him turn his red-and-black burned face toward Paco to say something, and Paco turned his head away for a minute like he was going to be sick.

  At the bottom of the hill, on Indigo Hill Road, they finally got lucky. Two older kids were heading toward them, driving along the snowy two-lane road in a four-door sedan. The headlights rose over the crest of the rise. Louisa and Paul screamed and waved their arms. The kids driving the car somehow knew enough to stop. Their car radio was blasting music. The boys staggered up to the sedan. Only Art hung back. They pulled open the back door and climbed in. Louisa leaned into the front seat and pulled the poor guy out into the cold. She thought maybe he’d been on the wrestling team at Burncoat High a couple of years before. “Get out,” she commanded and she climbed inside the car.

  The driver gaped at her. Art and the kid who had been in the passenger seat just stood there at the side of the road staring at them as they settled into the sedan. It was warm inside the car.

  “Hospital,” Flick mumbled from the back seat. His voice sounded calm, still sounded like Flick.

  The driver really looked at Flick then, for the first time. “Holy shit,” he said, and gunned it. They lurched off into the night. In the side-view mirror Louisa saw Art and the older boy standing at the side of the road, still staring after them. Art raised one heavy arm to wave. Louisa watched the speedometer climb to fifty, fifty-five, sixty. It occurred to her that Flick might die right there with them in the car. As they approached Shore Drive they hit a red light, with a cop car parked right next to it.

  Flick leaned forward. He smelled like smoke. “Run the light,” he ordered.

  The driver balked. “But the police—”

  “Drive!” Louisa yelled, practically into his ear. The song on the radio had changed. Someone was covering “Forever Young.” The driver shook his head, but put his foot back hard on the gas.

  They floated on through, running the light and sure enough, the cop pull
ed right after them, his red lights twirling. They sped on another half a mile or so, turning onto Route 190 where the police siren came on full blast, and flashed his lights at them, and finally they jerked over onto the shoulder of the highway, bumping over ruts.

  “Shit,” said the kid driving the car.

  The cop got out of his patrol car. He sauntered up to their sedan. He peered inside, took one look at Flick and his whole expression changed. “Follow me!” he barked.

  They flew through the cold night. Route 190 turned to 290. It felt like the car was sailing over the hills and valleys, past the Christmas lights blinking on houses, following the trail of the police car. The tires didn’t seem to be touching the earth. No one talked. The radio played. The car smelled like smoke and burned flesh. They lurched and swayed with every bend in the road. Other cars’ taillights sparkled. The cop kept on his siren, which almost but didn’t quite drown out the wailing radio. It was still playing “Forever Young.” It seemed like it would never stop playing.

  Louisa thought maybe she heard Flick humming along under his breath. He must have been in shock, because he didn’t seem to be in any pain yet.

  Once Louisa heard him tell Paco, “I can’t feel my legs.”

  Once Flick asked Paul Bell, “Where’s Tommy? Where’s your brother?” but Paul didn’t answer him.

  They slid along Route 290 so fast that the city seemed to zip by in a blur; with holiday lights blinking red and blue and white and green as if life was still going on as usual, and the city was festooned with its usual stars and red bows and somewhere along the line an ambulance joined in, as if they were all part of some bizarre midnight parade, and then they were suddenly stopped right in front of Memorial Hospital in Bell Hill, and hands were reaching in to pull Flick out of the car. Everything seemed to happen all at once, fast and slow at the same time, and everyone surrounding the car was dressed in blue scrubs. Louisa was shoved aside, along with Paco and Paul Bell, whose foot and hand were bleeding, and Flick was loaded onto a stretcher like a bundle of cargo. “Quit worrying,” he said to Louisa.