Firestarter (61 page)

“—going to do?” Norma asked.

It was wrong to eavesdrop, but how could she help it? And they were talking about her; she knew it.

“I don't know,” Irv said.

“Have you thought anymore about the paper?”

Papers,
Charlie thought.
Daddy wanted to talk to the papers. Daddy said it would be all right then.

“Which one?” Irv asked. “The Hastings
Bugle
? They can put it right next to the A&P ad and this week's shows at the Bijou.”

“It was what her father was planning to do.”

“Norma,” he said “I could take her to New York City. I could take her to the
Times
. And what would happen if four guys pulled guns and started shooting in the lobby?”

Charlie was all ears now. Norma's footfalls crossed the kitchen; there was the rattle of the teapot's lid, and what she said in reply was mostly lost under running water.

Irv said, “Yeah, I think it might happen. And I tell you what might be even worse, as much as I love her. She might get the drop on
them
. And if it got out of control, like it did at that place where they kept her … well, there's pretty nearly eight million people in New York City, Norma. I just feel like I'm too old to take a risk like that.”

Norma's footfalls crossed back to the table again, the old flooring of the farmhouse creaking comfortably beneath them. “But, Irv, listen to me now,” she said. Norma spoke carefully and slowly, as if she had been thinking this out carefully over a long period of time. “Even a little paper, even a little weekly like the
Bugle,
they're hooked into those AP tickers. News comes from everyplace these days. Why, just two years ago a little paper in Southern California won the Pulitzer Prize for some news story, and they had a circulation of under fifteen hundred!”

He laughed, and Charlie suddenly knew he had taken her hand across the table. “You've been studying on this, haven't you?”

“Yes I have, and there's no reason to laugh at me for it, Irv Manders! This is serious, a serious business! We're in a box! How long can we keep her here before somebody finds out? You took her sapping out in the woods just this afternoon—”

“Norma, I wasn't laughin at you, and the child has got to get out sometime—”

“Don't you think I know that? I didn't say no, did I? That's just it! A growing child needs fresh air, exercise. Got to have those things if you're going to have any appetite, and she's—”

“Peckish, I know.”

“Pale and peckish, that's right. So I didn't say no. I was glad to see you take her. But, Irv, what if Johnny Gordon or Ray Parks had been out today and had just happened to drift over to see what you were doing, like they sometimes do?”

“Honey, they didn't.” But Irv sounded uneasy.

“Not this time! Not the time before! But Irv, it can't go on! We been lucky already, and you know it!”

Her footsteps crossed the kitchen again, and then there was the sound of tea being poured.

“Yeah,” Irv said. “Yeah, I know we have. But … thanks, darlin.”

“Welcome,” she said, sitting down again. “And never mind the buts, either. You know it only takes one person, or maybe two. It'll spread. It'll get
out,
Irv, that we got a little girl up here. Never mind what it's doing to her; what happens if it gets back to
them?
”

In the darkness of the back room, Charlie's arms rashed out in goosebumps.

Slowly, Irv answered her. “I know what you're saying, Norma. We got to do something, and I keep going over and over it in my head. A little paper … well, it's not just
sure
enough. You know we've got to get this story out right if we're going to make that girl safe for the rest of her life. If she's going to be safe, a lot of people have got to know she exists and what she can do—isn't that right? A
lot
of people.”

Norma Manders stirred restlessly but said nothing.

Irv pressed on. “We got to do it right for her, and we got to do right for us. Because it could be our lives at stake, too. Me, I've already been shot once. I believe that. I love her like my own, and I know you do, too, but we got to be realists about it, Norma. She could get us killed.”

Charlie felt her face grow hot with shame … and with terror. Not for herself but for them. What had she brought on their house?

“And it's not just us or her. You remember what that man Tarkington said. The files he showed us. It's your brother and my nephew Fred and Shelley, and—”

“—and all those people back in Poland,” Norma said.

“Well, maybe he was only bluffing about that. I pray to God he was. It's hard for me to believe anyone could get that low.”

Norma said grimly, “They've been pretty low already.”

“Anyway,” Irv said, “we know they'll follow through on as much as they can, the dirty bastards. The shit is going to fly. All I'm saying, Norma, is I don't want the shit to fly to no good purpose. If we're going to make a move, I want it to be a good one. I don't want to go to some country weekly and then have them get wind of it and squash it. They could do it. They could do it.”

“But what does that leave?”

“That,” Irv said heavily, “is what I keep tryin to figure out. A paper or a magazine, but one they won't think of. It's got to be honest, and it ought to be nationwide. But most of all, it can't have any ties to the government or to the government's ideas.”

“You mean to the Shop,” she said flatly.

“Yeah. That's what I mean.” There was the soft sound of Irv sipping his tea. Charlie lay in her bed, listening, waiting.

… it could be our lives at stake, too … I've already been shot once … I love her like my own, and I know you do, too, but we got to be realists about it, Norma … she could get us killed.

(no please I)

(she could get us killed like she got her mother killed)

(no please please don't don't say that)

(like she got her daddy killed)

(please stop)

Tears rolled across her side-turned face, catching in her ears, wetting the pillowcase.

“Well, we'll think on it some more,” Norma said finally. “There's an answer to this, Irv. Somewhere.”

“Yeah. I hope so.”

“And in the meantime,” she said, “we just got to hope no one knows she's here.” Her voice suddenly kindled with excitement “Irv, maybe if we got a lawyer—”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I'm done in, Norma. And no one knows she's here yet.”

But someone did. And the news had already begun to spread.

Until he was in his late sixties, Dr. Hofferitz, an inveterate bachelor, had slept with his longtime housekeeper, Shirley McKenzie. The sex part of it had slowly dried up: the last time, as well as Hofferitz could recall, had been about fourteen years before, and that had been something of an anomaly. But the two of them had remained close; in fact, with the sex gone, the friendship had deepened and had lost some of that tense prickliness that seems to be at the center of most sexual relationships. Their friendship had become of that platonic variety that seems to genuinely obtain only in the very young and in the very old of the opposite sex.

Still, Hofferitz held on to his knowledge of the Manderses' “boarder” for better than three months. Then, one night in February, after three glasses of wine while he and Shirley (who had just that January turned seventy-five) were watching television, he told her the whole story, after swearing her to complete secrecy.

Secrets, as Cap could have told Dr. Hofferitz, are even more unstable than U-235, and stability lessens proportionately as the secret is told. Shirley McKenzie kept the secret for almost a month before telling her best girlfriend, Hortense Barclay. Hortense kept the secret for about ten days before telling
her
best girlfriend, Christine Traegger. Christine told her husband and her best friends (all three of them) almost immediately.

This is how the truth spreads in small towns; and by the night in April when Irv and Norma had their overheard conversation, a good deal of Hastings Glen knew that they had taken in a mysterious girl. Curiosity ran high. Tongues wagged.

Eventually the news reached the wrong pair of ears. A telephone call was made from a scrambler phone.

Shop agents closed in on the Manders farm for the second time on the last day of April; this time they came across the dawn fields through a spring mist, like horrific invaders from Planet X in their bright flame-resistant suits. Backing them up was a National Guard unit who didn't know what the fuck they were doing or why they had been ordered out to the peaceful little town of Hastings Glen, New York.

They found Irv and Norma Manders sitting stunned in their kitchen, a note between them. Irv had found it that morning when he arose at five o'clock to milk the cows. It was one line:
I think I know what to do now. Love, Charlie
.

She had eluded the Shop again—but wherever she was, she was alone.

The only consolation was that this time she didn't have so far to hitch.

The librarian was a young man, twenty-six years old, bearded, long-haired. Standing in front of his desk was a little girl in a green blouse and bluejeans. In one hand she held a paper shopping bag. She was woefully thin, and the young man wondered what the hell her mother and father had been feeding her … if anything.

He listened to her question carefully and respectfully. Her daddy, she said, had told her that if you had a really hard question, you had to go to the library to find the answer, because at the library they knew the answers to almost all the questions. Behind them, the great lobby of the New York Public Library echoed dimly; outside, the stone lions kept their endless watch.

When she was done, the librarian recapitulated, ticking off the salient points on his fingers.

“Honest.”

She nodded.

“Big … that is, nationwide.”

She nodded again.

“No ties to the government.”

For the third time, the thin girl nodded.

“Do you mind my asking why?”

“I”—she paused—“I have to tell them something.”

The young man considered for several moments. He seemed about to speak, then held up a finger and went and conferred with another librarian. He came back to the little girl and spoke two words.

“Can you give me an address?” she asked.

He found the address and then printed it carefully on a square of yellow paper.

“Thank you,” the girl said, and turned to go.

“Listen,” he said, “when was the last time you had something to eat, kid? You want a couple of bucks for lunch?”

She smiled—an amazingly sweet and gentle smile. For a moment, the young librarian was almost in love.

“I have money,” she said, and opened the sack so he could see.

The paper bag was filled with quarters.

Before he could say anything else—ask her if she had taken a hammer to her piggybank, or what—she was gone.

The little girl rode the elevator up to the sixteenth floor of the skyscraper. Several of the men and women who rode with her looked at her curiously—just a small girl in a green blouse and bluejeans, holding a crumpled paper bag in one hand and a Sunkist orange in the other. But they were New Yorkers, and the essence of the New York character is to mind your own business and let other people mind theirs.

She got off the elevator, read the signs, and turned left. Double glass doors gave on a handsome reception area at the end of the hall. Written below the two words the librarian had spoken to her was this motto: “All the News That Fits.”

Charlie paused outside a moment longer.

“I'm doing it, Daddy,” she whispered. “Oh, I hope I'm doing it right.”

Charlie McGee tugged open one of the glass doors and went into the offices of
Rolling Stone,
where the librarian had sent her.

The receptionist was a young woman with clear gray eyes. She looked at Charlie for several seconds in silence, taking in the crumpled Shop and Save bag, the orange, the slightness of the girl herself; she was slender almost to the point of emaciation, but tall for a child, and her face had a kind of serene, calm glow.
She's going to be so beautiful,
the receptionist thought.

“What can I do for you, little sister?” the receptionist asked, and smiled.

“I need to see someone who writes for your magazine,” Charlie said. Her voice was low, but it was clear and firm. “I have a story I want to tell. And something to show.”

“Just like show-and-tell in school, huh?” the receptionist asked.

Charlie smiled. It was the smile that had so dazzled the librarian. “Yes,” she said. “I've been waiting for a long time.”

While
Firestarter
is just a novel, a made-up tale with which I hope you, reader, have passed a pleasant evening or two, most of the novel's components are based on actual happenings, either unpleasant or inexplicable or simply fascinating. Among the unpleasant ones is the undeniable fact that the U.S. government, or agencies thereof, has indeed administered potentially dangerous drugs to unwitting subjects on more than one occasion. Among those which are simply fascinating—if a little ominous—is the fact that both the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have programs for isolating the so-called “wild talents” (a term for psionic abilities coined by the science-fiction writer Jack Vance) … and perhaps putting them to use. Government-funded experiments in this country have centered on influencing the Kirilian aura and proving the existence of telekinesis. Soviet experiments have centered largely on psychic healing and communication by telepathy. Reports filtering out of the U.S.S.R. suggest that the Soviets have achieved some moderate success with the latter, particularly by using identical twins as communicators.