Hothouse (13 page)

Montgomerie hasn't said a word to me, hasn't so much as glanced in my direction. Not a smirk. Almost respectful. You'd have to think this was a good thing, wouldn't you?

Something's got to happen today, though, because we have a visitor scheduled. We have a representative of the fire department coming to speak to us today.

The school requested it. The school needs this put right or at least put neat because everybody recognizes how unbearable it is. The papers and radio and all the other news has not been nice. It's not saying huge monstrous things—yet—but it is not hero talk like it was before, I can tell you that. My mother has quietly rolled out a news blackout in the house, just short of taping the windows over, but there is no avoiding it because it seeps under and around whatever you do, like smoke.

So we have a visitor. He is coming to speak to our modest homeroom class personally first, followed by a more general address to the school in the gym. And it's someone we can trust to know what's what because it is the big guy, Jim Clerk, coming to lay it all smooth for us.

Which, now, is making things more tense. If you tried to lift me out of my seat right now I would have all the flexibility of a garden gnome.

But after an excruciating silent wait, the bell rings for us to get up and go to our first class, which is supposed to be gym. Mr. Clerk was to be here by now, and everybody kind of squirms, looks around, half spilling out of seats but hanging on at the same time. Then, just as we are about to go, Mrs. Boyd waves us back down.

“I believe our special guest is here,” she says, more in relief than actual gladness. She scurries to the door to let him in.

It isn't him.

It is a representative of the fire department, sure. In fact, it's three representatives.

Two young guys, firefighters, but so new they have mustaches that could lose a competition with mine, come strolling in in full gear, with axes and masks and everything. Tailing politely behind them is a dog. A dalmatian.

“Okay, students,” a clearly confused but unfailingly polite Mrs. Boyd says, “now please give your full attention to these men … who have come here to … tell us all about life as firefighters.”

What? I know this presentation inside out. It's the professional-day schtick.

My dad and DJ's used to do this a lot of years ago. They practiced in our living room.

Where is Jim Clerk? Where is our reassuring talk about what really matters? Telling us
all about life as firefighters
?

My pose is rigid no more.

“I already know all about the lives of firefighters,” I say, smacking the top of my desk as I shove out of my seat.

“Please, Russell,” Mrs. Boyd says, but it is obvious who is in charge now and it is not Mrs. Boyd. “Please, take your seat.”

I am rolling up my sleeve as I roll up the aisle. “See this, Mrs. Boyd,” I say, pausing and poking my own sore tattooed arm, “I've already had the ‘lives of firefighters' lesson and here's my badge, okay?” I don't really wait for her okay. I am still flashing the tattoo when I pass the fire boys. They stare pretty good.

I don't look back as I storm out the door.

I'm a block up the road when Adrian catches up to me.

“If you are supposed to haul me back, you're making a mistake,” I point out.

“I wasn't told specifically what I was supposed to be doing, other than to go after you.”

“That what you're doing?”

“I guess it is.”

“Well you can escort me where I'm going, but you're not coming inside.”

“And that's to the Hothouse, isn't it.”

“Damn right it is.”

We march side by side with great purpose, almost military. The solidarity, I have to say, feels like blood being pumped into my sad body after having so much of it bled out of me.

“Thanks, man,” I say to Adrian as I deposit him there on the sidewalk outside the Hothouse.

“Y'know, whatever, your dad is still to me a total beast hero,” he says. “Always will be.”

“And to everybody else? What's everybody else saying, Adrian?”

He stares, I stare. He opens his mouth to speak, and I just about stick my pointer finger right in there.

“It's gotta be true, Adrian. I mean thanks and everything, but whatever comes out of your mouth next has got to be true because one more particle of bullshit is going to blow the world up.”

I pull back and wait.

Adrian nods at me, and shuts his mouth.

I turn right away from him, because I have a job to do and I have to be able to stand up and I feel strength seeping out of me by the second.

“Jim Clerk,” I call out, standing up, but still so small in between the two big machines, engine and ladder. “Jim Clerk!”

I had forgotten, totally, absolutely, how much I loved this place. The gleaming machines, the size and scale of the place, the smell of the guys, which is with you no matter where you go. The hoses and axes and endless array of cleaning products and gadgets which always, always suggested to me that this was the place in the universe that was more dedicated than any other to the ideal of doing important, heroic stuff, doing it right, keeping things right. I still remember out there at the farthest reach of my memory, coming in here the first time with my dad and being convinced beyond all reason that this place was what heaven must be. Only better, because heaven didn't need heroics, and this place demanded it.

I cannot believe how soon all that was wiped off my board.

Jim comes out of his office.

“Shouldn't you be in school right now?” he asks.

“Shouldn't
you
be in my school right now?” I answer.

“As I'm sure you can understand, Russell, I am extraordinarily busy right now.”

“That's the thing. That's exactly the thing, you see. I don't understand. I don't understand. Why won't you stop it, Mr. Clerk? Can't you just make it all stop, right now and for good?”

He lets out a great sigh and with Jim Clerk's voice even a sigh is something that reassures you and calms you right down.

Unless you are here and now.

“Is that your answer?”

“No,” he says patiently. “I apologize. I just want to say the right words. Please understand, I am doing what I can. But I can't force things. The different investigations have to be allowed to run their course in order for people to have confidence in the results. Don't you worry. The fact of the matter is that both your dads were heroes and will continue to be heroes in the eyes of everybody who appreciates what we do, no matter what happens. Great men are great men, and nothing can alter—”

“Is that what I think it is?” I say, as my eye drifts past Jim, to the wall beyond.

“Oh,” he says, brightening up at being able to get off the subject. Sort of. “It is of course. They did a great job, didn't they? Fitting, and beautiful?”

He leads me to that back wall, where the shiny new tribute sits.

Sits. Propped against the wall in front of the two great beastly machines.

“Yeah,” I say, “it's beautiful. But I thought it was going to hang in some big open conspicuous spot, a place of honor, like.”

“The thing is,” Jim says, putting a hand on my shoulder as we admire Dad's badge together, “with things the way they are right now, it was decided that anything showy would not be appropriate, at this time.” His voice gets smaller, slower, and a little less reassuring toward the tail end there. Then it comes all the way back. “But the guys, oh, I'll tell you, the love and devotion in this house for your fathers, is an overwhelming thing. The guys wanted to have that thing up, and there was no two ways about it, so we have our own small quiet thing here. It's temporary.”

“Your own?” I say, like he has said something in Russian. “Your
own
, quiet, thing?”

“Don't you worry, though. There will be something a little more prominent down the line....”

I don't say anything to that. I nod, even. But I feel my tight fists bouncing lightly off my thighs. “Thank you, Jim,” I say, and start walking out.

I repeat the thanks, walk more slowly. I look back at the big shiny tribute sitting on the floor. If one of those young kid firefighters drives the ladder truck a couple of feet too far, the thing is smashed. I walk between the world's shiningest trucks, touching them, sorry about the fingerprints but unable to not touch. I look up and around and around again, turning and walking until I am a bit dizzy walking out into the sun.

“You okay?” Adrian says, steadying me with a flat palm on my chest.

I wait a bit, think a bit.

“Of course I am,” I say. “I'm a fireman. We can take it. Whatever it is, we can take it.”

I turn and go back to Big Jim.

“Jim,” I say as big as I can be, “I want that.” I point at it.

There is no discussion.

Life is a team sport, son, is what my dad told me over and over and over again.

Is it, though? Is it a team? Was it a team? What is a team, in the end?

Who is your team?

Who is mine?

I am staring at my computer, at today's edition of the paper, and yesterday's, and parts of tomorrow's as it is being assembled because that's the beauty, isn't it, of the electronic paper, that you can watch all the new elements fly right up onto the screen and stick there, stick right onto the story, just as fast as it all comes in. And then you get to watch as people digest and regurgitate the story and let you all know what they think about the story even if they haven't had enough time to give the story a proper think. You almost don't want to look away to grab a peanut or wash your hot face because you might miss the next micro-development of the story and two thousand people's well-considered instantaneous reaction to it. It is a beautiful thing to watch the construction of it all in 3-D, not to mention dimensions you never even asked for.

“How could nobody know?” I ask, stomping into my mother's bedroom feeling the heat rise off of me. “Ma? About these guys? How could nobody know, with how close they were with each other. With everybody. Is that even possible, that nobody could know?”

She stares at me now, with the old-fashioned slow-mo newspaper folded in her lap, on top of the blankets. Her lips are slightly parted like she is going to tell me something but she's not telling me anything.

“For godsake, DJ knew. About his own dad. How could DJ know and everybody else not?”

Suddenly she starts poring over the newspaper as if the answer is in there, then just as suddenly she comes out with, “A lot of times, Russ, we allow ourselves to believe what we would like to be true, even if that truth is unlikely. A lot of times we can maintain the truth we need until we are made to see something else by force.”

She does not look up from the paper as she says this. The radio, pulled off the night table and lying on the bed beside her, is playing soft jazz music now, but the room is filled with a mammoth silence anyway.

I return to the room, the net, the news. The site, the comments section that follows the toxicology report article, is filling up fast.

The message board is alight.

… pair of disgraces …

If only they were still alive … so they could be shot....

I feel sorry for the families. The humiliation worse than death.

How about the poor old woman?

Heads should roll.

Somebody's got to pay. Got to pay.

Mrs. Kotsopolis taught me in school … a wonderful, gentle soul....

Their names shall live in infamy....

That is the voice of the city, right there. That is everybody speaking, right there.

I want to cut my wrists. I want to go to the park, and soak myself in gasoline, and make a brilliant bonfire of myself. What are they called in China? Burnt offerings.

Holy shit. Holy shit. Jesus. My God. God help me.

I am on my knees, by no effort of my own. It is as if I have been thrown right to the floor, by the power of those words from all those people, and they just keep coming. I am on my knees, leaning on the edge of the desk, just about holding myself upright, and still, still, holding down the key that is scrolling the words, the endless deathless hateful cascade of words directed toward the memory of my father. And I cannot stop reading. I'm like a body, electrocuted on a high voltage wire, tangled and unable to even fall off the charge.

He was such a good man, my dad. He made me pancakes with faces on them, and a fire helmet on top traced out of red licorice. He saved that lucky little puke of a drowned kid. He did more selfless things in a month than every last one of these poster jerks have probably done in their whole cowardly lives.

But I agree with them on this one thing: if he were here now I'd kill him myself. What did you go and do, Dad?