Hothouse (2 page)

My father got more pay from this very mayor in the end and everybody seemed to respect him and they are coming from everywhere to pay even more respect now because pay may be respect but there is a lot more to it than that. Respect is respect.

And my father was Beast.

The two funerals DJ and I have been to recently are the two funerals DJ and I have been to. We have seen more firefighters wearing white gloves than most people have seen birds. I cried at DJ's dad's funeral even harder than I cried at my dad's. Because of seeing DJ. Because I was seeing him and feeling him and crying for him because he was
there,
I could see him right
there.
At my dad's funeral I cried less because I couldn't see DJ, because I couldn't see one single thing because I was there only for myself. I couldn't feel anything out there at the end of my reach, not even my old friend who is probably the only person on earth who knew exactly precisely what it was like to be me. I can only guess what DJ's reaction was at my dad's funeral. But I
can
guess.

I cannot stand bagpipes. If I ever encounter bagpipes again, there may be violence. If I crossed the street and played bagpipes under DJ's window, I'm sure he'd throw a chair out the window at me. I know this because I know DJ and I know what we have shared, even if we cannot speak about it.

“So, how you been?” I say when I see him the first time after the funerals are over and the strangle of the bagpipes is still torturing my ear bones.

“I've been … probably exactly how you think I've been,” he says with a slant smile that seems to take some effort.

He has just stepped out of his front door, headed west toward where the bus collects for his school. I came out mine, headed east to catch my own bus. We're not going to school, which doesn't even start again for over a week, but we are dry-running it because here we are. I crossed the street, which I would not normally do. If he appreciates it, it's hard to tell.

“Lots of ham, huh?” I say.

The other half of his smile shows up, which is great. “Ham and bagpipes. Cripes …”

I laugh. I don't find it funny, exactly, because nothing is funny now, not yet. But the laugh is real, at the same time. I want to laugh, I'm glad to laugh. “Cripes, is right.”

He thumbs west. “I have to get moving, man … so do you, right?”

“Right,” I say, helpfully thumbing back the other way.

He sticks out his hand.

I shake his hand.

It might not seem like much, not for two guys who have known each other so long. Certainly not for two guys who know so much about each other now. But it is something. It is a long and strong and warm handshake that feels like a pretty decent something as we head off on our east-west ways.

It's the best we can manage anyway. Maybe now, this is the best we will ever be able to manage. You should always do the best you can manage, my dad would say.

“What do you want to do?” Adrian asks me. We are riding the bus to nowhere, and thinking beyond this very bus ride feels beyond me right now. If this were the school run, Adrian and I would have to change once, take two buses from our neighborhood to our school. That feels like work at the moment, and today I probably wouldn't even get there.

“Whatever you want to do.”

“Russell, don't start this. Not right now.”

According to Adrian, I have a history of doing this but in reality I am the one who has all of the ideas. But he is right that we have to do something. We have not been doing
things
since everything changed, and it is starting to hurt, the motionlessness of life. Thinking about my dad, thinking about him whenever it gets quiet, aching for him when it's bad. Adrian wants to jump-start life again, and he is right.

“What do you want to do?” I ask.

“Right now, I want to knock you on the head because it's twice already you're telling me to decide.”

Despite how it might look, this is progress. People have been too gentle with me, for obvious reasons, and a bit of a head-knock would not be altogether awful. What friends are for, so they say.

We are on the bus. We are sitting at the back like we usually do, and there are a few other people sprinkled here and there, older folks mostly, sad-looking drudge-job commuters, one lady with a little kid about three years old sitting on the seat next to her and trying every few seconds to escape before she grabs him again. The bus driver keeps staring back and I am certain he is staring at Adrian and me in that way that bus drivers have of singling you out from far away, making their eyes look huge at the same time they make them squinty and piercing.

“We could go to the mall,” I say kind of lamely, while the driver continues to hypnotize me. I don't even like the mall.

“Russ, you're not even trying. The mall?”

“I think that bus driver thinks we did something,” I say. “He's kind of worrying me.”

Adrian looks now at the driver eyeing us. “How's he even managing to drive the thing?” he asks. “He's not looking at the road in front of him at all, that's what's worrying. How's he do that?”

Adrian finds things fascinating, mostly, or at least interesting. He can forget sometimes to take a situation personally, just because it's intriguing.

And good for Adrian, because right now things get extremely intriguing. The bus driver leans hard on the brakes, and jerks the bus sharply to the curb, and parks spontaneously. It makes that big shooching sound as he jams on the parking break. Hopping right up out of his seat, he spins and thumps with great purpose down the narrow aisle, past the quiet old folks, past the kid who behaves really well now, right back and up to us, close enough he must be able to hear my heart punching me quadruple time in my chest.

He reaches into his baggy blue pocket and hands me a little more money than I paid to get on his bus.

“Sons of heroes don't ever pay no money to ride on my bus,” he says, and his hard eyes are very wet. “Ever.” He holds out his hairy meaty hand, like he's asking permission to shake. I give him permission, which is only the right thing to do.

“How 'bout friends of sons of heroes?” Adrian asks with outstretched hand.

The driver turns such a look of puzzled disgust on Adrian, it's a wonder he doesn't put him off the bus. He marches back up front. The rest of the passengers are now looking at us. In a few seconds we are in traffic again, on the road to we don't know where. People continue to look at us while they pretend to be looking at other things.

“People know me?” I say low, my turn to be fascinated.

“I guess they do,” Adrian says. “You stopped a whole bus.”

Adrian waves—at the little boy who hasn't got a clue, to an elderly lady who probably has. She waves back.

“So,” he says, “you're some sort of public figure now.”

I get a chill, instantly. I don't know this feeling. I don't know that I don't like it either. I just don't know.

Adrian punches my leg, supportively. It helps, a little tiny bit.

“So, where you want to go?” he asks.

“I don't know,” I say, but surer. “Let's just ride and see where we wind up.”

He's good, Adrian. “Sounds like a plan. Not. But let's.”

I have been a firefighter all my life. In my mind, and with all seriousness, that is how I have seen myself. There was never a moment, from the time I figured out what life was and who my old man was, that I did not want to be, more or less, him.

Even right this minute, with my dad dead, with that job having killed him, with my mother being petrified of this very thought, this is the very thought I have: I am a firefighter. It's not even a choice.

There is a big hole in the world that is the size and shape of my father. I intend to fill that hole.

The official world, though, does not know that I already am a firefighter. They have requirements, rules, qualifications, hoops to jump through and mettle to test. I appreciate that. A firefighter appreciates that, more than probably anybody on earth. You cannot just let any old gump step in and claim a position of this immense responsibility. You have to be trained for this, you have to be committed to learning every angle and following every guideline and knowing the precise best way to perform in every critical situation and then to perform even better. You have to be shown where above-and-beyond is and then go above and beyond that.

“Dad, I can't do that.”

“Of course you can do that, Russell.”

We are standing at the crest of a wheaty-grassy hillock overlooking acres and acres of retired rolling farmland. It is going to be housing, but right now it is in that overgrown halfway-back-to-nature state that is the type of place we seek out and stare at for hours, me and Dad.

“Look at the sign, ya big dummy. It says right on it
,
DANGEROUS BUILDING
—
KEEP OUT
.”

Building
is a funny word for it, though so is its actual name, the Teahouse. It's a miniature yellow stone round-tower castle, twenty-four feet high. It's built like one big can settled on top of a fatter can, only with all the castle trimmings: keyhole windows and carved faces and with the added cool of overhanging vines and waving wildflowers growing on the wraparound balcony. There is some tasteful graffiti about a guy called Friendly Jed, and some seriously strong metal strapping pulled all around it like a belt holding the thing together. There are also a few huge carved stones tumbled down along the base. My dad wants me to climb this.

“That sign does not pertain to us, Russell,” he says with all the confidence he has, which is all the confidence in the world. “They never meant that for the likes of you and me.”

“Is that a fact?” I ask, taking one backward step for every step he takes toward the Teahouse.

“It is a fact. Let me tell you, my kid, that some of my most memorable runs were scored when I ignored the third base coach and ran right through the stop sign. I have told you what a stellar baseball player I was in high school.”

“You have, Dad. But you can tell me again if you want to.”

He only ever boasts when he is in a certain kind of uppy mood. I never know when this mood is coming, but it is a mood I always want to prolong. I don't mind at all if it means rehashing hardball glory days. And it sure beats dying in the rubble of the Teahouse.

He waves me off, modesty coming back to him. “Ahh, pfft,” he says, marching up to the little castle and its sign for other people. He raises a foot, touches lightly in a seam, a crevice, feels around with the foot the way an elephant does with its trunk, until he finds the spot he wants and he is up off mother earth and living on the surface of the Teahouse.

“I wish you wouldn't do that, Dad,” I say.

“And I wish you would,” he says.

He is not a small man. He's not light, or lithe, or anything that would make you think he had any business two feet off the ground, never mind twenty. He is a substantial man.

And he is also up the side and to the top of the crumbling stone Teahouse before you can say mountain goat. Not a pebble is dislodged in his ascent.

“Now, you do it, son.”

“Do what?” I demand. “Fly? I can't do what you do, Dad.”

“Course you can,” he says, laughter of real disbelief wafting down toward me. “You my boy.”

Damn. I hate it when he says that. Because, of course, I love it when he says that.

I approach the Teahouse with caution, like any sane person would. My dad stands there up top with his hands on his hips and his grin on his face looking very much like the Jolly Green Giant.

“That's the boy,” he says. “Test it, find the stability. Feel it.”

I do what he says, but partly I am doing what my bones already know. I can feel the stability. I get my toes into crevices that will hold me. I work my fingers into spaces I can pull from. Misstep, misstep, nothing serious, some crumbs fall, tumble along the wall to a crackling landing in the rubble at the base. I feel a big stone wiggle in my hand, then shift substantially, fifteen feet off the ground.

“Russell!” Dad calls, the first note of real concern coming out as a full symphony.

I look straight up into his face looking down, worry and gravity folding his features into an unmade bed with a mustache. I grin up at him.

“If it's all too much for you, old man, maybe you should just look away until the scary part is over.”

He returns my smile now. “You my boy,” he says, as I pop up in his face at the top of the tower.

“You are indeed,” he says, giving me a two-slap back-pat hug.

We turn, not quite together, looking out over the roll of the landscape. Dad's scanning in the direction where the small regional airport has grown to take up about one-third of the old farmland. I look off the other way, to where the hill farm is still almost obvious but obviously fading.