The Firebug of Balrog County (17 page)

You Are My Sunshine

O
ur family remained in the meeting room while they removed Mom's respirator tube, crumpled in our chairs.

We'd voted to let her go.

It was time to let her go.

We did not want to let her go.

A nurse came to get us. She asked who wanted to be with her at the end and I rose from my seat without thinking. Haylee stood up too, though her skinny legs wobbled, threatening to spill her. We followed the nurse out the door, and when I looked back I was surprised to see nobody else trailing us. Not Mom's brothers, not Grandpa and Grandma Hedley. They stared at the floor, as limp as if someone had cut their strings. They'd already said goodbye, I realized. Even Dad, good old Dad, sat hunched over in his chair as if he'd been socked in the stomach. His blurry red eyes met mine and dropped back to the floor.

Haylee took my hand and pulled me forward. We followed the nurse down a long hallway I didn't exactly recognize and entered another I knew all too well. We were kid explorers, Hansel and Gretel in a hospital. We entered a room and there was Mom, lying on a hospital bed. As advertised, her breathing tube had been removed and the respirator was finally silent. Her eyes were still closed—they'd pumped up the sedatives and morphine to just this side of fatal. Her skin had turned yellow, her hands were as water-bloated as ever, and she was gasping.

Great, hitching gasps. An animal reduced to its purest form. Her entire emaciated frame writhed with each inhalation, her head convulsing slightly to the left. So much oxygen in the room and she couldn't use any of it.

I breathed deeper, as if I could breathe for her, and cheered her on with every molecule in my useless body. Haylee circled the bed and took her right hand. I stepped up and took the left. It felt so warm and heavy.

“We're here, Mom,” Haylee said. “We love you.”

It could take several minutes, the doctor had warned us. The body fighting on after the war had been decided.

The hitching got worse.

More desperate.

I told my mom I loved her. That we all loved her so much. The nurse came up and put her arm around Haylee, who'd started to cry and smile at the same time. I was not crying. I was too busy trying to breathe and channel the breathing. I felt a coldness fall upon my shoulders and knew Death had entered that sterile room.

Not movie death, not book death.

Death.

“Does your mother have a favorite song?” the nurse asked. “We could sing it to her.”

Haylee sniffled and nodded. She wasn't fourteen anymore—she was four. “‘You Are My Sunshine.'”

I frowned, unable to understand why Haylee had picked that song. Mom had sung that to us when we were little but her favorite stuff had been '60s classic rock, like Joplin and Hendrix.

Then Haylee and the nurse started singing the goddamn song and it was too late to argue. I started singing too, though I was filled with a new and powerful rage, a rage stronger than anything I'd ever felt in my entire life. Who was this old lady nurse, who was she to intrude on our last moments with Mom? Why did Haylee have to pick this fucking song? Why couldn't Mom FUCKING BREATHE—

I noticed movement in the corner of my eye.

Dad had poked his head into the room. Just his head, as if the hospital bed inside were radioactive. His eyes were big and full of so much love I felt my rage blown apart, a pile of leaves scattered by a gale force wind. Dad stepped inside the room, came up to Mom's bed, and wrapped his hands around one of her feet. He didn't say anything. He just stood there, holding her foot and watching, while the rest of us sang like a bunch of cheesy singing assholes. The spasmodic hitching breaths worsened, then lessened, then lessened in an alarming way. We ran out of song and fell silent. Mom's body sank into the bed, remained still for a good thirty seconds, and gave one last gasp before she was thoroughly gone.

The Windmill

T
here's a southeastern patch of Balrog County where even trees don't feel like growing. It's mostly grassland lumped with rocks and notable only for an enormous windmill a hippie built in the early 1970s. He'd been smoking peyote and drinking bathtub gin when Don Quixote spoke to him in a thunderous voice, demanding that he build a working windmill fit for giants.

The hippie built the windmill by himself in one summer, sleeping only three hours a night. He charges people five bucks to visit and take the windmill tour. Besides windmill-related maintenance, he hasn't worked a day since.

The Castle

H
alloween arrived like a flaming-scream skull and I found it mighty difficult to concentrate on anything. Time passed slowly and the firebug paced restlessly inside my heart. An impatient creature at best, it knew the time of our greatest triumph was at hand and saw no reason for delay. It wanted nothing more than to see the straw castle burn, radiant as an atom bomb, and feel its skin-bubbling heat warm the late October air.

But I fought the firebug off and spent the evening calmly handing out candy to the neighborhood kids, wearing a Yoda mask and valiant in my self-denial.

This wasn't amateur hour.

We were going to do this shit right.

At midnight, long after the trick-or-treaters had stopped calling, I went up to my bedroom and put on gray cargo pants, a black sweater, a black stocking cap, and black hiking boots. I turned off the light and opened my bedroom door, cocking my head to listen to our silent house. Dad was definitely asleep—he'd gone to bed two hours earlier. Haylee was either asleep or watching something on her laptop with headphones on.

I went downstairs and left the house. The night was calm. Haylee's bedroom window was dark. My footsteps crunched on the driveway as I made my way to the Olds and opened its massive trunk. I took out my backpack, which was already packed for the mission, and softly shut the trunk. I headed down the driveway, turned left at the sidewalk, and went two blocks before stopping beneath a streetlight. After a minute or two, Katrina's black VW Bug pulled up in front of me. I opened the passenger door and slid in, setting the clinking backpack on my lap.

Katrina leaned over and kissed me. Colorful pops and fizzes filled my mind, darting frantically like water bugs.

“Hey,” she said, pulling back. “You're dressed like a cat burglar.”

“Burglary is for the greedy,” I said, rubbing my tingling jaw. “Arson is for the pure of heart.”

Katrina grinned and put the car in gear. The souped-up Bug rumbled as we rolled along.

“You have everything?”

I patted the bag on my lap, watching as far as the headlights reached. I felt as if an invisible hand were pushing me from behind, propelling me along. We left town on a county highway, turned onto the first crossroad, and circled back toward Hickson in a wide arc. We'd decided that parking in the Robinson lot, or anywhere in that neighborhood, was too obvious, especially if the Mayor or one of his cronies was on patrol. Instead, Katrina was going to drop me off north of the park and wait for me there. I'd need to drag myself through a half acre of scrubby woods and approach the castle from that direction. Luckily the castle was still lit up like a spaceship, even at two a.m. We could see it glowing from the road.

Katrina parked the car on the edge of the highway and turned off the headlights.

“You sure you don't want me to come with?”

“You're the getaway driver. The getaway driver gets to sit comfortably in the vehicle and smoke cigarettes.”

“But you might need help.”

“I appreciate that, but I work best alone.”

Katrina smiled, a friendly ghost girl in the blue dashboard light. I reached out and gave her knee a squeeze.

“Jesus, Mack. This is crazy, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You're really going to do it?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“You don't have to do this if you don't want to. Don't do this to just, you know, impress me.”

“I know.”

Katrina unbuckled her seat belt. She leaned over and gave me another kiss. I copped a feel.

“All right, firebug,” she whispered in my ear. “Go do your thing.”

The woods bordering the park's north side were patchy but still dense enough to poke your eyes out if you weren't careful. I went slow, keeping my head down as I bumbled through, my hands extended to fend off branches and possible bear attacks. I hadn't brought a flashlight. This was a black-ops mission and all possible stealth was required. Grandpa Hedley had once told me about a friend of his in Vietnam who'd smoked a cigarette while on watch and gotten his head blown off by a sniper who'd spotted the cigarette's cherry.

“See, bucko,” Grandpa Hedley had concluded, “smoking really will kill you.”

Ha ha.

I didn't have a flashlight, but I did have the castle itself to guide me. All those floodlights trained on the two-story stack of straw bales had been installed with security in mind, no doubt, but they also happened to serve as a beacon, drawing me through the woods like a lanky man-moth. My eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and I got better at dodging trees, though I still got my fair amount of scratches. The closer I came to the castle, the brighter the forest around me became.

With perhaps fifty feet of woods left, I was startled by a smudge of color in the corner of my eye. When I turned, I saw only the base of an old tree with a fat, distended trunk. Like anybody else who'd grown up in Hickson, I thought immediately of Alfred James Hickson and wondered if it'd been a tree like this he'd tied himself to after getting bitten by that rabid raccoon. For all I knew, this was the tree itself—the official spot of Hickson's death had never been confirmed.

“Hello?” I whispered, feeling only half stupid. Ground leaves rustled and I continued forward, pushing away a serious case of the crawlies as I focused on the luminous structure ahead. More trees, more scraping branches. I reached the edge of the woods and crouched down, examining the scene.

A gap of ten open yards ran between the woods and Robinson Field. I was behind left field. The outfield wall was a regular chain-link fence, painted black and eight feet tall. Beyond the fence, about fifty additional feet distant, was the castle itself in all its flammable glory.

I unhooked the backpack from my shoulder and set it on the ground, dropping to my knees as I sifted through its contents. I took out my field binoculars, a birthday gift from Grandpa Hedley. I scanned Robinson Field for sentries but saw nothing but an empty baseball diamond. Nobody stood guard along the field's fence, drinking from a flask or smoking a night-watch cigarette. Nobody sat on the aluminum bleachers, whittling a walking stick to help pass the night's long hours.

If the park had been under guard earlier, it had been abandoned since. I now had two choices: I could prepare my little Molotov cocktails from the safety of the woods, chuck them over the outfield fence, and pray they hit castle, or else I could cross the exposed area, climb the fence, and run up to base of the castle itself, where I'd be able to start the burn at my leisure.

I eyed the distance between the outfield fence and the castle. I tried to imagine a bottle flying from my hand, covering all that distance, and landing at a suitable burn point. No, it was impossible. I was a string-bean man, with a string-bean arm. This would have to be up close and personal, a burn worthy of the great Firebug of Balrog County.

I zipped up the backpack, hooked its strap over my shoulder, and stood up. An owl hooted from deep inside the forest and I repressed an urge to hoot back. I ducked one last branch and stepped into the clearing. No searchlight snapped on to reveal me so I kept moving, keeping my head down as I ran to the outfield fence. I climbed that chain-link fucker in three seconds flat, dropped to the other side, and crossed the fifty feet to the rear of the castle, nestling up to it in a patch of darkness.

I sat back against the castle wall, a stitch forming in my side. I smelled dusty straw and freshly mown grass. The woods I'd just exited looked dark and wild and ominous, a place you wouldn't venture without a damn good reason.

I opened the backpack and took out three liquor bottles I'd filled with gasoline. The firebug zipped around my heart, ready to rock. I uncapped the bottles and the smell of gasoline instantly obliterated any scent of straw, grass, or anything else. I felt around the bag and pulled out the rags I was going to use as wicks. I doused a rag and stuffed it into the neck of the first bottle. This was it. The point of no—

Something whistled in the dark. A wooden stick appeared in the castle wall, about two feet from my head. I reached out and touched it, wondering if I'd started to hallucinate. The stick was smooth except for a trio of feathers on its rear end.

An arrow.

It was a motherfucking arrow.

I turned and peered into the night. A patch of grass in deep right field was moving toward the castle—a man done up in full jungle camo, carrying a high-tension recurve bow.

Instantly terrified, I chucked the liquor bottle in his general direction and hustled toward the left-field fence, leaving the backpack and my beautiful dream of haunted castle hellfire behind.

I sprinted at top speed, my long, bony legs churning beneath me. I didn't duck my head, didn't think. I just ran like hell, ignoring the whistling of additional arrows tearing through the night sky. I was the wind. I was the wind shot out of a cannon.

My eyes watered as I reached the warning track. I leapt onto the chain-link wall one-two-three and I was on the other side. An arrow clanged off the fencing. I swore and sprinted for the woods. I made it about five feet past the tree line before I tripped over a root and plunged face first into a mound of dirt. I rolled over and leapt to my feet, swatting at my face and chest.

I'd fallen into an ant hill. Fire ants, and damn if they weren't bitey.

An arrow plunged into the ground at my feet. I swore again and stumbled deeper into the woods. When I looked back through the trees, I saw the camo man climbing the outfield fence. He'd swung his bow around his shoulder and was moving with stiff certainty, an old timer who could still hump it when he needed to.

I wanted to shout something, something taunting and obscene, but I knew camo man would recognize my voice and then I'd be screwed no matter how fast I got through the woods. I could hear my own breathing, loud and obvious, and wondered if I'd finally gone insane. Was this wooded chase actually happening? Had my grandfather really spent the entire night lying on his stomach in Robinson Field? Did that make him crazy, too? Was our entire damn family crazy? Would a mental health expert suggest group therapy, individual therapy, or a mix of the two?

The sound of motivated branch-snapping grew louder behind me. I picked up the pace and prayed my feet wouldn't betray me a second time. I expected an arrow in the back at any moment but still believed this was preferable to being found out—the crestfallen look I could expect from my grandmother when she learned of my degenerate tendencies. Those big, milky blue eyes, all sad and disappointed.

No. I would keep running. I would risk impalement. The firebug and I had not come this far to pussy out now.

I pushed through a hundred branches and endured a hundred cuts. At long last, I emerged from the woods and stepped onto the county road, which ran straight and true like a blacktop river. I saw no car waiting for me. I saw only a dark road, in the middle of a dark night, and heard more branches snapping in the woods behind me.

I was lost. Forsaken.

An engine rumbled to life and headlights lit up the road. It was Katrina's Bug, having apparently disabled its cloaking mechanism. I raised my hand to shield my dazzled eyes and the Bug roared toward me. I hunched my shoulders and thought small thoughts. When the car finally reached me, slowing but not stopping, I flung open the passenger door and leapt inside, shouting GO-GO-GO like a bank robber in a movie.

Katrina stepped on the gas and the Bug lurched forward, eager to fly. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the camo man step onto the road, his hunting bow slung over his shoulder.

“Fuck,” Katrina shouted, her long black hair whipping in the wind. “What happened?”

Camo man grew smaller in the mirror, then receded into the night altogether.

“I ran into an unexpected impediment,” I said. “The mission had to be aborted.”

Katrina glanced at me and frowned. I looked down at my scratched forearms, the cut lines gummy blue in the dashboard light. Disappointment filled the car like an invisible yet poisonous gas and I could feel Katrina growing distant even as she remained seated beside me. In the brief span of twenty minutes, I'd gone from lovable local renegade to just another loser who'd let her down. Not only had the firebug failed, failed like a scared little bitch, but it had also been identified
by a man who did not take such transgressions lightly.

I leaned back in my seat as we hurtled through the night. A new and terrible darkness had fallen upon the land.