The Firebug of Balrog County (16 page)

The Mayor's Corner

Dear Residents of Hickson,

Fall is in full swing and with the changing of the seasons our streets and gutters are filled with dead leaves and twigs. Please make sure you get that lawn raked before the snow falls. I happened to drive around last week on yard waste collection day and noticed many lawns still covered with fallen leaves. I have to say, I was a bit disappointed. Whatever happened to the get-up-and-go that made this country great?

For those of you still mowing your lawn, please remember to
NOT
blow grass into the city streets. Our hard-working municipal workers already have their hands full with seasonal street cleaning without dead grass adding to the mess.

Finally, Halloween is approaching fast and I know the kiddies are busy working on their Halloween costumes. To celebrate the season, the Hickson City Council has decided to hold a special celebration in Robinson Park. The Hickson American Legion is sponsoring a haunted house and boy, it's going to be a doozy, so make sure you bring the kids by for frights and fun.

The haunted house opens on Friday and runs through Sunday from 5-10 p.m. each night. We are still looking for “ghoulish” volunteers, so please contact city hall if you're interested in helping out.

Have a safe and happy Halloween, everyone. If you see vandalism of any shape or form, please call the police immediately. Remember: where there's smoke, there could be an arrest.

Sincerely,

Mayor George Hedley

The Graveyard Party

E
very year Sam threw a party for his parents on the anniversary of their passing.

Usually the party consisted of only Sam and I, setting off fireworks and guzzling a filched bottle of his grandmother's apple schnapps, but this year Sam invited Haylee and Katrina to join us and, surprisingly, both females accepted the invitation. On Friday I called in sick to both the hardware store and the Legion and picked everybody up in the Olds, driving slow while recalling the deer I'd hit the night before. I drove us to the peninsula graveyard that jutted out onto Baker Lake and we parked near the entrance, the four of us piling out of the car like it was a day at the zoo.

It was already dusk and night was coming on fast. Haylee and Katrina started on ahead while I got the bag of fireworks out of the trunk and Sam fucked around with something in his backpack. As I shut the trunk, Sam appeared at my elbow holding a liquor bottle.

“Whoa, sailor. That's not schnapps.”

“Somebody gave my grandma vodka last Christmas. I don't think she even remembers getting it anymore.”

“I should have brought some mix.”

Sam grinned and pulled a second bottle from his backpack. “I hope you like generic citrus soda. I've even got ice and plastic cups.”

“Well shit. You're pulling out all the stops this year, my friend.”

The ladies had walked ahead of us and looked pretty intensely involved in conversation. Sam and I made a beeline across the peninsula for his parents' graves, which were set beside each other in the graveyard's newish front section. The graveyard's lawn was short and brown from the prolonged drought and a ring of dead leaves had piled around each gravestone like a leafy halo. Sam unpacked the cups and drinking materials as Haylee and Katrina slowly made their way over to us. Katrina said something, waving her hand in the air like she was shooing away a bee, and Haylee actually laughed.

Sam poured ice into four plastic cups. “This is the life,” I said. “Out drinking in nature.”

“A fancy man's picnic,” Sam said. “We're like a Monet painting.”

“We should be wearing white.”

“Yes. White everything. And I wouldn't mind a monocle right now.”

“And a long-stemmed pipe carved from the finest briar. I would smoke it expertly and rings of smoke would rise around me in the classiest fashion.”

“Shit. That would be classy.”

The ladies joined us and sat down in the grass. We were all wearing jeans and warm jackets and had prepared for the cool October evening. A fisherman in a little boat buzzed around on Baker Lake, heading home as the sky darkened.

“Welcome everyone,” Sam said, raising the bottle of vodka. “Welcome to the seventh annual Jim and Penny Chervenik Memorial Party.”

Sam bowed and we clapped politely. The breeze picked up and you could smell Baker Lake in all its algaeic glory.

“As is tradition,” Sam said, “we shall begin with a pour out for my homies.”

Sam broke the seal on the vodka, unscrewed the cap, and gave the grass above each of his parent's graves a three second pour. We all clapped again.

“They were good people,” Sam said, growing damp-eyed as he stared at the ground. “They weren't rich, good looking, or good at sports, but they'd help a dude out. My dad liked to whittle gnomes and trolls and grilled steak and hamburgers every night, even in the winter. My mom liked reality television and enormous jigsaw puzzles.”

Sam took a pull from the bottle and wiped his mouth. I glanced at Haylee and Katrina and noted they were both watching Sam with a hundred percent of their attention, their feet tucked beneath them cross-legged style.

“My parents didn't deserve to die, but they died anyway. They died because an overworked trucker fell asleep and swerved into their lane and smashed them to Kingdom Come. And you know what? That's life, my friends. That's life. Shit happens.”

Sam wiped his eyes and handed me the bottle. He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled loudly.

“Okay, Mack. Why don't you prepare the celebratory libations for our guests.”

“Yes sir.”

I poured three vodka/lemon-lime cocktails, adhering to a ratio of two-thirds mix to one-third vodka, and made a fourth with just soda in it, which I handed to my sister.

“Hey. I want vodka.”

“Sorry, Haystack. You're a minor.”

“We're all minors.”

“Yes, but you are even more minor. Also, Dad would cut off my head if he found out I gave you hard booze.”

Haylee scowled, her jaw setting as she stared into her cup. I could feel a smacking rage building up behind her eyes.

“Here,” Katrina said, holding out her own cup. “You can share with me.”

Haylee raised her head and took the cup. She stared me down as she took a gulp, handed the cup back to Katrina, and swished the cocktail around inside her mouth. Then her green-flecked eyes widened, locking on to a new thought, and she sprayed the drink into the air, coughing and sputtering as she grabbed her throat.

“It burns!”

The rest of us laughed as she writhed on the ground,
making a real scene of it. We drank our libations and watched the bats come out.

It was already the best party I'd ever been to.

We started setting off fireworks when it was dark enough and we all had a solid buzz going. We didn't have anything too big or bright—just bottle rockets and sparklers. Hardly anything for the cops or even the firebug to get excited about.

But still.

The firebug was paying attention.

“We should visit Mom while we're here,” Haylee said to me, waving a lit sparkler in the air, her elfin face serious in the dark. “She's right up front.”

“I need more to drink first,” I said. “We all do.”

“Your mom was awesome,” Sam said, waving his own sparkler in the air. “You remember that bat? The one we caught?”

Katrina pulled out her pack of cigarettes and lit one, studying Sam from across her spot in the circle. “You guys caught a bat?”

“Yeah,” Sam said, still studying his sparkler. “Five or six years ago Mack and I were watching a late-night movie in his living room when this bat came out of nowhere and started flapping around. It was kind of freaky because Mack's dad was out of town and everybody else but us was sleeping, right? So we grabbed a broom and a tennis racket and we chased the bat around for, like, ten minutes. Finally Mack swatted it out the side door and we were all hell yeah, bat, this is our tur
f!
”

Sam laughed.

“Then Mack's mom got up and we had cookies and hot chocolate to celebrate. Even though it was so late at night.”

I pictured the three of us at the kitchen table, Sam and I happily dunking cookies in the hot chocolate while Mom drank her herbal tea, smiling a happy Mom smile. She never minded getting up in the middle of the night. She liked the company.

“She called them Victory Cookies,” I said.

“Right,” Sam said. “Victory Cookies. Like she was so proud of us just for catching a stupid bat.”

The sparklers had fizzled out, leaving us in the dark. You could see the end of Katrina's cigarette glowing red.

“Maybe she's still around,” Haylee said, her voice sounding soft and small. “Maybe Mom's watching us right now.”

“Like a ghost?” Sam said.

“I don't know. Like something.”

I took another drink as my buzz threatened to leave me. Beyond the graveyard you could see the surface of Baker Lake shimmering faintly with starlight, the darkness of its shoreline broken by the occasional house light. A train whistle sounded a mile away, most likely passing through our own backyard.

“I believe in spirits,” Katrina said. “When I had a bad fever once, I saw my grandmother sitting beside my bed. She'd been dead for two years but she was there, knitting a blanket for me. She asked me how I was feeling and I turned over and went back to sleep.”

“Really?” Haylee said.

“Really. When I woke up, she was gone but my fever had broken. My mom said I'd been up to one hundred and three degrees. She smiled when I told her about Grandma, but I knew Grandma had been there. I could still smell her perfume.”

The train whistled again, sounding closer.

“That's cool,” Sam said. “I wish my parents would come visit me.”

I took out my lighter and reached around in the grass until I found a pack of sparklers. I lit one, used it to light two more, and stuck all three sparklers into the ground in the center of our circle, where they burned fresh and bright for a few fleeting moments, showing how serious everyone had gotten as they turned inward to their own thoughts. Around us, the dark night waited patiently to take over again.

Beechnut

S
ix miles southeast of Hickson is a micro-town called Beechnut (pop. 89) which is basically a gas station, two blocks of houses, and a little graveyard.

I once sat next to a kid from Beechnut in civics class. When I asked him what he did out there, he said he liked to fool around with a chubby neighbor girl who was so bored she'd let him do just about anything. The first time they fooled around, she pulled her pants down all the way to her ankles while they were out ditch-walking and let him finger her about a hundred feet from her mother's front door. He said she bled like crazy because she hadn't popped her cherry yet.

Whenever I imagine this scene, I can't help adding the sound of a fierce prairie wind, howling and lonely and ever present.

Recon

O
n Saturday night I
called in sick again to my gig at the Legion, which did not seem to surprise nor bother my boss Butch very much. After a nourishing dinner of pizza and cola I took a shower, threw on my least smelly clothes, and picked Katrina up at seven sharp.

Katrina smoked as I drove, looking out at the dark town like an empress surveying one of her lesser territories.

“Does this count as a date?”

Katrina blew smoke through her nostrils and considered the smoke. “Why, Mack? Are you trying to fence me in?”

“I don't know,” I said, turning left toward the park. “I wouldn't mind knowing where we stand.”

Katrina smiled and knocked cigarette ash through the crack in her window. “We're having a good time. I guess that's where we stand.”

The Olds bounced as it struck a pothole. It occurred to me that Katrina was not the type of girl who would enjoy fucking a clingy, whiny, high school bitch boy and that it would be best to keep my cards close to my chest for the time being. Not that I really had any cards to play, anyhow. One night of bourbon-inspired passion was already far more than I'd expected. As far as I or any other non-wealthy, average-looking small town Joe was concerned, I had already run the table in this particular hottie encounter and anything else that came my way now would be a bonus, like finding a quarter on the street after winning the state lottery.

We ran into traffic and had to park several blocks away from Robinson Park. It was cold out and we were bundled in fall coats and stocking caps. The street that led to the park was filled with parents and their kiddies, the younger grubs latched on to their parents' hands while the older ones ran ahead, free-range style. The air was filled with much shouting and laughing and unheeded motherly admonishments. It reminded me of the county fair in Dylan.

Katrina hooked her arm through mine. “Opening night's big around here, huh?”

“Well, Hickson's not known for a plethora of cultural events.”

“Those kids are cute.”

The kids were cute, from what I could make out in the light of the streetlamps. Many wore costumes though Halloween wasn't until the next day. I saw a shorty Batman scoop a pile of leaves from the gutter and drop them on a shorty pink princess. As the shorty princess twirled and screeched, shorty Batman cackled and sprinted into the night, one more good guy gone bad.

We turned off the street and entered the park's parking lot, which was crammed with cars and trucks and folks chatting in the slim spaces in-between. Kids darted around and played tag. Katrina slapped her sides, a happy little jumping jack.

“Hell yes. Are they actually tailgating this shit?”

“Looks like it.”

The playground was packed with kids. The swings, the jungle gym, the sandbox, the merry-go-round—there was action everywhere. A line of parents and kids ran from the edge of the playground all the way down to the castle on the baseball diamond. Katrina and I skirted the playground, eyeing the swarm of kids warily, and got in the back of the line.

The haunted castle was impressive. It was no longer a glorified hayride; they'd built an actual wooden frame for the structure, two full levels with two front towers. Gaps had been left in the walls to serve as windows and you could see strobe lights flickering inside. Halved straw bales formed a crenellated battlement that ran from tower to tower, which were also crenellated. People stood on top of the towers and waved down to the line below like royalty.

“Whoa. Your gramps has been busy.”

I rubbed my hands together and blew hot air into them. “Grandpa Hedley doesn't do anything half-assed. You should see their backyard. It's like Italy exploded.”

The line moved as a group of giggly teens exited the castle. We passed through a gate in the baseball diamond's fence and walked onto the infield. You could hear screams coming from the castle, both recorded and real.

“You think your grandpa really did all this just to catch you?”

“It's likely.”

“Huh. My grandpa reads Westerns all day and barely leaves his recliner. I guess you should be happy yours is staying involved.”

I noticed a black flag protruding from the castle's battlement, snapping crisply in the cold wind. At first I assumed it was a pirate's flag, or something equally devilish, but as I looked closer I saw it was an old POW/MIA flag.

I pointed the flag out to Katrina. “Look how serious he is. This is his War of the Worlds. His Siege of Gondor.”

“What?”

“Fuck me silly. You know what? I think he got that flag from the Legion.”

The mom ahead of us in line turned around and glared at me. She had big hairspray-lady hair.

“There are children here,” she hissed. “Watch your mouth.”

I held up my palms. “This is a haunted castle. You don't think the Devil lets a salty word fly now and again?”

“The eternally danged,” Katrina said. “Little heckians.”

The lady made an angry horsey sound and turned back around, clutching her two chunky fledglings to her waist.

“Tough crowd,” I said. Katrina laughed and slid her hand into the back of my jeans, cupping my ass. When the ticket lady reached us, I paid for two and the line surged forward again. Lo, soon we had passed beneath that Unsettling Black Flag and entered those Mighty Straw Walls, where we were subjected to Numerous Ye Olde Terrors that would drive Many a Mortal to the Brink.

It was the kind of corny shit Mom would have loved.

After we'd recovered from our Mortal Terror, we headed back to Katrina's house and found her roommates throwing a loud party. Her roommates were as hipster and dramatic as advertised—I counted five fussy arguments in the first half-hour—but I was in the mood for drinking and threw myself into the festivities with the best of them.

Around midnight I found myself standing outside the house with a bunch of dudes I didn't know. More than half-drunk, I suggested we get a bonfire going. This idea was greeted with a bunch of fuck yeahs but the only firewood we could find was a starter log in the house's fireplace. The dudes were disheartened but I remembered the basement, crammed full of flammable shit, and led us downstairs while everyone else was busy arguing about the various cinematic adaptations of
Les Misérables
. I directed the dudes toward whatever looked like it would burn best, making certain they left Katrina's birdhouses alone, and we started hauling the more flammable junk upstairs, careful to stay on the party's perimeter. We brought out three loads before Katrina and her roommates caught on to our game, but by then we'd created a tantalizing pile of burnables in the backyard. Everybody pitched in for one more load and we hauled more basement junk out
en mass
and piled it high.

“Jesus, Mack,” Katrina said, tossing a cardboard box full of magazine onto the pile. “My birdhouses aren't in there, are they?”

“Nope. I kept the drunkards away from your workshop.”

The partygoers around us started chanting fire, fire, fire, which rattled the firebug's cage and rebooted my highly suggestible brain. The college dudes looked at me, their self-appointed leader, and I knew the time had come. I used a lighter, a few twists of newspaper, and the starter log to kindle the junk heap's center. The moldy boxes and lacquered furniture took a while to catch, but I had the dudes scoop up dry leaves and twigs from the yard and toss them into crucial spots, warning them not to choke the fire. Eventually, with the help of the wind, the flames found an ugly wicker chair that went up like a torch and the heap erupted.

Sometime around three a.m. I noticed Katrina standing outside the group, talking on her phone. I ambled over to her, feeling drunk and unusually cool after the fire's success.

“ … I don't care, Mom. No. I don't care.”

I took a pull from the beer in my hand. Katrina's brow was furrowed and her eyes gleamed with firelight.

“Who the fuck knows? He was at a bar, right? Maybe he got in a car accident. Maybe he's dead on the side of the road.”

“Maybe he hit a deer,” I drunkenly interjected, wondering who we were even talking about. “I hit a deer recently and it was quite traumatic.”

“You always do this. You always want sympathy when he pulls shit but then you take him back. Every fucking time you do this.”

Katrina rolled her eyes as a squall of static sound erupted from her phone.

“I'm hanging up now, Mom. Yes, I am. Sorry. Give Bill my worst.”

Another squall of static noise. Katrina powered off her phone and slipped it into the front pocket of her jeans.

“Jesus Christ. My mom's, like, the drama queen of the century. She and Bill fucking deserve each other.”

I nodded agreeably, regretting having left the bonfire's comforting warmth and my new carefree drinking buddies. Katrina glowered and stared off into the night, arms crossed.

“Beer?” I said, offering her the half-full can in my hand.

Katrina looked at me as if noticing me for the first time and accepted the beer. She downed it in one gulp and chucked the can into the dark.

“Let's go in, Mack.”

“What about—”

“Come on.”

Katrina's hand gripped my own, pulling me toward her house. She brought me inside, up the stairs, and in
to her bedroom. She took my clothes off so quickly I almost fell over and suddenly she was naked, too. We smelled like wood smoke. Katrina tasted like salt and lime. From time to time I raised my head, looking out the window to check on my crackling work below.