The Firebug of Balrog County (20 page)

The Pit

B
y
Thursday afternoon the
Great Conflagration was considered under control, if not totally out. Dad and I convinced Haylee to come with us to see if we could salvage anything from the house. The police had cordoned off the last two blocks of our street and we had to park the van on a side street. When we stepped outside it felt as if we were astronauts landing on a strange and possibly hostile planet. The burnt smell was stronger here, like bacon charred in a cast-iron skillet
.

We went up half a block and turned onto our street, stepping around the traffic sawhorses.

“Holy shit,” Haylee said.

We stopped and took in the scene. As reported, the homes on the street's north side were in various states of ruin while all the south side homes appeared untouched except for a heavy coating of soot, as if a protective force field in the middle of the street had deflected all flame. It was like something out of the Old Testament, a Passover of fire. I noticed lights on in the south houses, a curtain pulled back.

We walked on. Two of our neighbors were already poking through their own wreckage, heads down as they scowled at what they found. Dad waved, but they didn't notice us.

“This is why you pay those premiums,” Dad said, cramming his hands into the pockets of his new jacket. “Just look at this mess. One lunatic decides to go off and you get all this.”

The last three houses on the street, including ours, had burned to their foundations. Our basement, now exposed to the sky, was a murky pit of charred trash and dirty water. An unlucky red squirrel had fallen into the mess and now lay floating among the debris, his little belly a spot of white amid the dark.

Haylee walked away from us and began to circle our house's foundation, slowly picking her way through the rubble. Our garage was gone and the blackened metal shell of my Oldsmobile was clearly visible. The scene reminded me of old footage from bombed-out war zones like Beirut or Dresden. The forest that had once surrounded our neighborhood was now a field of skeletal wreckage with a scorched train track running along its edge. A dead forest that went on for miles.

Dad blew into his hands. It was a cold day and you could smell snow mixed with the burnt.

“Your mother loved this house so much,” Dad said. “This would have killed her all over again.”

I stared at the floating squirrel. My heart felt hollowed out. The firebug was either dead or had gone far, far underground. The game was over and in it I would find solace no more. I would apply to college. I would force myself into the wide world and get along as best I could.

That would be my penance.

“Dad,” I said, raising my head. “I was the one who set fire to Ox Haggerton's woodpile. I burned down Teddy Giles' boathouse, too.”

My father turned to look at me. I watched as trusting, stir-fry-cooking Pete Druneswald realized what had been under his nose all this time. The devil he'd harbored on the second floor.

“Haggerton chose our house because of me. He figured out what I did and wanted revenge.”

I pictured a prisoner standing before a firing squad and smoking one last cigarette, bravely awaiting his fate with open eyes.

“I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't think this would get so out of hand. I was just trying to have some fun.”

My father pursed his lips, his face flushing red. A sharp north wind gusted through the dead forest and bits of ash fluttered around us like snowflakes.

“You selfish … jerk.”

“I'm sorry.”

“You selfish … little … snot.”

“I know—”

Dad stepped forward, his chest puffing out. “You
know
? What do you know, Mack? Do you know how frightened she was before they put her under sedation? Before they shoved those tubes down her throat?”

Dad shoved me in the chest. I staggered back, surprised.

“No, you don't know, do you? Because you weren't there, Mack. You missed her leaving us because you wanted to do what you wanted to do. You had to take that stupid history test. You always have to have your way. You're willful. You're a willful little jerk.”

Dad shoved me again, but I was ready for it this time and stood my ground. I could feel my sister watching us from across the basement pit, her eyes like twin black holes absorbing it all for later, for the rest of her life.

“She asked for you, Mack. Did Haylee ever tell you? Your mother was scared and she asked and you weren't there.”

I shuddered and bowed my head as a cold wind blew through me. I took a step back, and then another. I could feel the watery pit looming at my heels, dirty and disgusting and shallow—the kind of place I belonged. I let my body go loose and pitched backward.

As I fell, I could hear my sister scream and a train rumble through my mind. I hit the water first and the basement's concrete floor second, knocking my tailbone and the back of my head before I bobbed up again.

Colorful sparks dotted my vision.

The water was cold enough to stop your heart.

Hayle
e called my name. She ran around the edge of the pit and stood beside my father, who was bent over at the waist with his hands upon h
is knees, like he'd been sucker punched. She was crying. He was crying. They called my name. And then, lo, a bony creature appeared beside them, himself filthy w
ith soot and ash. A creature freshly returned from the shadowlands, from Mordor. He barked and wagged his scraggly tail
, irrepressible as a son-of-a-bitch, and I knew he, too, was calling my name.

One Last Burn

T
he next day, sore as
hell but still in one piece, I drove to Katrina's house to escape my brooding family for a few hours. Although Chompy had returned to us (a little hungry but otherwise fine), relations between my family and I were understandably tense. I felt exhausted and hollowed out and didn't know if I could handle feeling any more goddamn emotions. I just wanted to sleep for a thousand days and magically wake up back in my old house and for everyone to be happy and not totally pissed off at me for being such a degenerate.

Katrina was waiting for me out on her lawn. She had her hair tied back in a workmanlike ponytail and wasn't wearing any makeup, not even her trusty mascara. When she smiled and waved at me I felt like dropping to my knees and falling on a sword, I was so grateful.

Then she did something even crazier—she hugged me in broad daylight.

“That's so crazy about your dog. I'm glad he's okay.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I am too.”

“Haylee must have been so happy.”

“Yeah. She was.”

Katrina took my hand and pulled me along. “Okay. I have something for you, Mack-Attack.”

“Is it sex? Because I don't think I can handle sex right now. I mean, either physically or mentally.”

“No. It's even better than sex.”

“Whoa,” I said, allowing her to lead me across the lawn. “This I need to see.”

We went around the back of her house to the fire pit, which was loaded with wooden boxes that had been stacked in a loose pyramid. I looked at Katrina, then again at the boxes. Katrina squeezed my hand and grinned.

“It's the birdhouses.”

“Your birdhouses?”

“Yep. All of them.”

I stepped closer to the fire pit. “But you love your birdhouses. They're your dark therapy.”

“Yeah, but I don't think I need them anymore.” Katrina whipped out a box of matches from her pocket and slapped it onto my palm. “I thought we could do one last burn together before you go straight. You know. For good luck.”

I stared into the fire pit. Crushed balls of newspaper had been stuffed around its base with loving care.

“What happened to the bird skeletons?”

“I buried them,” Katrina said, pointing to the patch of freshly churned dirt in the garden. “Along with a copy of
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
.”

I smiled at this brilliant touch and opened the box of matches. I took a single stick out and held it up, studying its phosphorus-gelatin head.

Katrina leaned in and gave me a kiss. “Light'er up, dude.”

I crouched down, struck the match, and held it against the balled-up newspaper. We stepped back to watch the show. The firebug, if he was awake, did not offer comment.

Katrina looped her arm around my own and leaned into me. “Where do you think Ox Haggerton went, anyway?”

“I don't know,” I said. “With his personality, I'm guessing Arizona.”

One of the birdhouses popped as the fire really started to take.

“I think I'll do cows next,” Katrina said. “Cows made out of barbed wire. Maybe a barn, too.”

I nodded. I could dig cows.

“What about you? Can I read one of your stories sometime?”

“Sure,” I said. “But I'll have to write a new one first. The rest, you know … ” I nodded at the fire.

“Right,” Katrina said. “Well, you've got a lot of good material now, I guess.”

“Maybe I'll write about a dumbshit kid who burns his own house down.”

“But everybody survives, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess they do.”

It was long past dinnertime when I returned to my grandparents' house. Grandma and Grandpa Hedley had gone to bed but my sister and father were both in the living room, watching TV and eating popcorn. They looked up when I entered the room, and I said hey. They nodded and went back to watching the movie. I'd planned on going directly out to the Grotto but I sat down on the couch instead, on the other side of Haylee with Chompy sleeping between us, lying belly-up as his forepaws twitched.

I stared at the TV but I couldn't focus on the movie. Instead I pictured our house engulfed in flames and the dark end of Haggerton's rifle. My mother lying in a hospital bed, impossibly thin and asking where I was.

Haylee reached across Chompy and held out her bowl of popcorn.

“Here,” she said, keeping her gaze on the TV. “I'm full.”

I took the bowl and set it on my lap. I felt an urge to bury my head in the salted popcorn and weep like a lunatic, like a real firebuggy fucker, but I took a deep breath and the feeling passed. Instead I slowly ate a few popcorn kernels, then a few more, and then I was watching the movie right along with my father and sister. Anyone passing by outside on the street might have looked in and seen a family enjoying the fall evening, cozied up and lit by blue light.

Hickson's Wife

A
lfred James Hickson's wife visited Balrog County ten years after his death. She was a stern, handsome woman with steely gray eyes. She arrived alone, with minimal luggage. She carried a silver single-shot pistol in her purse and spoke with a British accent that made the locals shiver and step to.

Though she'd received her husband's last letter through the post, sent on by the fellow fur trapper who'd found him tied to his death tree, Hickson's remains had already been lost to time and spotty frontier record-keeping. Mrs. Hickson had to settle for hiking around the woods in the general vicinity of his death, shooting the first raccoon she came across, and building a town upon the spot where it died.

Why Ox Saved Chompy

W
e can only conclude that Ox Haggerton released Chompy from his basement kennel and ran the beast off before setting our house on fire. My sister, who has brightened considerably si
nce October, thinks
our mother convinced Ox to do it. Haylee believes Mom's spirit was watching over the house and that our dog's salvation was her way of saying everything would be okay.

Yeah, well.

I don't know if I'd go that far.

What I think is that maybe old Ox once had someone truly good in his own life, somebody who'd poured enough of their love and kindness into him that it sparked forth during even his most vindictive hour. And the idea that love can be transferred, stored among the living throughout great periods of darkness and sorrow, and eventually return to the world is why, I suppose, I bothered with this accounting in the first place.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank his agent, Jonathan Lyons at Curtis Brown LTD, editor Brian Farrey-Latz, production editor Sandy Sullivan, publicist Mallory Hayes, book designer Steffani Pitzen, cover designer Lisa Novak (what a cool cover, right?), and everyone else at Flux. He would also like to thank Mark Rapacz, Geoff Herbach, and Dr. Mike “Miguel” Mensink, all of whom contributed in many, many outstanding ways to this fictional bug reaching the wide and crackling world.

About the Author

David Oppegaard is the author of
And the Hills Opened Up
,
Wormwood, Nevada
, and the Bram Stoker–nominated
The Suicide Collectors
. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with his lovable cat Frenchie. David enjoys starting fires, but usually in a controlled and totally legal manner.

Visit the author online at davidoppegaard.com.