The Firebug of Balrog County (3 page)

The Good Old Days

T
he Ho
use of Druneswald had not always known such troubled
times. We'd once been blessed with a period of goodness and light and mildly ambitious family vacations. A time when my father smiled honestly and without effort. A time when Haylee talked too much and hugged dogs on the sidewalk wi
thout asking their owner's permission. A time when I wasn't q
uite so dopey or lazy, and I was ignorant of the firebug's morally questionable hunger.

Sadly, I didn't fully appreciate this golden epoch at the time. The problem is that when you're little you're a slobbery, bumbling fool, happily knocking things over and ignorant of even the most basic concepts, such as the passage of time and the inevitable decay of all living matter. You simply run about and live so fully in the moment you cannot imagine the future.

When you're little, you get into all kinds of stupid shit, and the person who inevitably pulls you out of that shit is your mother. At least, that's how it went in our family, where everybody had their specialized role.

Simply put:

The firstborn son, I liked trouble and back-talking and things that went boom.

Haylee, the chirpy kid sister, was usually either my unwitting target or my accomplice. She enjoyed drama on a near operatic scale and milked it for every emotive note she could get.

Dad, the fully domesticated adult male, worked in an insurance office where the florescent blandness crept in behind his eyes all day, every day, like an invasive alien life force, and when he came home he just wanted to drink beer and watch PBS programming without being hassled.

And Mom, well, Mom was calm. A steadfast presence, Mom could step into a heated situation and sort it out with an ease that bordered on the miraculous. If you had a complaint, however morose or idiotic, she'd hear you through to the end and offer a perfectly sensible solution, whether you really wanted one or not.

You were bored?

Go mow the lawn. Only boring people are bored.

Your sister was bugging you?

Shut your door.

You hated your homework?

Fine, don't do it. You can be a bum and see how you like living in a cardboard box all winter.

My parents both grew up in Hickson, but Dad was five years older and they didn't meet until Mom was twenty-one. A recent graduate of Thorndale State with a bac
helor's degree in psychology, Mom was volunteering at a church
-
basement dinner, scooping spaghetti out of the spaghetti vat to everybody in line when my father, a hungry young man just starting out in the insurance business, fell in love with her at first sight. Dad got her phone number, called the next day, and proceeded to court our mother with the same steady, workmanlike manner he applied to wooing a new client. My mother said she
'd
liked my father's kind smile, his honesty, and his outspoken dislike of war of any kind, which was a refreshing change from all the Vietnam talk she'd grown up with in Grandpa Hedley's house. They dated for seven months, got engaged, and were married within a year while already expecting me, a not
-
unheard
-
of timetable in Hickson.

Growing up, Haylee and I knew our parents loved each other and that they loved us, too. We were lucky. Our only responsibility was to be kids with other kids. We biked around the neighborhood, explored the woods behind our house, and watched trains roar through the clearing. We'd tear grass and mud from the earth and throw it at each other, laughing, and life was pretty good, pretty fucking good.

When I was seven and Haylee was old enough for
preschool
Mom started working on a master's degree in counseling at Thorndale State. Pursuing the degree, while raising two kids, took her an intense two years. We all went to her commencement and Mom was so happy that day she seemed to glow, outshining even the other glowing graduates on the podium. We could see she'd slain some wicked dragon in her own heart, a shadow that she'd never spoken of outright to any of us.

With her newly minted degree, Mom got a job at Planned Parenthood as a counselor, offering guidance to women, men, and couples forty hours a week. Mostly pregnancy options and post-abortion counseling, with some life coaching sprinkled in. Her calm nature must have served her well in a job like that and I can imagine her at work right now. She
'
s holding a clipboard, small and finely boned like her own mother, and she
'
s dressed in a sensible black skirt, white blouse, and light wool sweater. She
'
s pretty in an understated kind of way.

When we went on car trips, Mom would point out the leaves on the trees, the birds in the air, and the signs along the road. All the shit the rest of us took for granted as bland traveling backdrop she appreciated with a childlike sense of wonder that both baffled our father and, I think, made him envious, having himself looked at the material world for so long as something that either needed to be repaired or would need to be repaired in the future.

Haylee and I took to mimicking our mother from the back
seat, pointing out things and declaring in our best dopey Mom voice:

“Look at that mailbox! The red flag is up!”

“Hey, look at that dead skunk! He looks like a bloody pancake!”

“Oh guys, how about that?! Those are clouds right up there!”

“Oooh, see that? That dog is totally taking a big dump in that yard! Isn't that AMAZING?”

And so on, until Dad turned around from the driver's seat and told us both to shut the heck up already, even if Mom was smiling at our teasing, her eyes continuing to search the passing scenery for the next item of note. She had a way of caring about people deeply but not really caring what they thought about her, in terms of coolness, and this gave her a sort of Zen-type patience with asshole behavior. No matter how big the jerkwad, and no matter what manner of idiocy spewed from his jerkwad head, she could serenely stand her ground in a conversation and make her points evenly, without losing her temper. She was the one her clinic sent outside to talk with protesters, the one you wanted by your side in a parent-teacher conference.

The only problem with growing up with someone like my mother in your life is that you assume she'll always be there, listening to you and supporting you. You never expect there will come a day—say
,
when you're ten—that she'll come home from the doctor's office a week after her annual checkup and sit quietly through dinner, her eyes glassy and far away, and later you'll hear her talking with your father behind their closed bedroom door, which is usually never shut, or that the next day everyone will gather in the living room while your parents announce that your mother has a cancerous tumor in her lungs, a lung cancer situation even though she doesn't smoke. You don't expect your mother might someday punch out early and that her absence will turn into a vast and profound darkness at the core of your being, a nuclear winter you've stumbled into without a proper coat, boots, or even a working compass to help point you in a safe direction.

When you're little, you just think she's your mom, which to you means the same thing as eternal.

Because you're an idiot.

The Dam Store

F
ive miles northwest of Hickson is a town called Running River (pop. 679). Running River has a small hydroelectric dam you can walk along the top of and ponder what it'd feel like to jump into all that rushing water below. Right beside the dam is the Dam Store, which is a combination bait shop and burger joint. The restaurant section consists of five vinyl booths and five cracked vinyl stools running along a greasy soda shop counter. For some reason, the Dam Store makes the best fucking cheeseburgers and apple pie on the planet.

It's worth the drive, if you don't mind the smell of night crawlers and leeches that drifts in from the back
room.

The Grotto

T
he morning after the shack burn, I woke feeling like a greasy, low-down villain of questionable moral fiber. I had burned down an innocent shack—a boat shack! A shack of leisure and good times!—just to subdue a make-believe creature living inside my all-too-real heart. My eyes were scratchy, my throat was raw, and I could smell smoke pouring out of every oily pore in my body. I'd become a freight train heading straight for Fuckupville.

I took a shower and ate breakfast, but I still felt like crap. It was always like this after a major burn—the build
-
up, the pretending-you-weren't-going-to-burn-something-when-you-knew-you-fucking-were, the glory of the burn itself, and then the horrible crash after, which made me feel like somebody had scooped out my guts and replaced them with raw sewage. I didn't
want
to be the immature dick that started shit on fire—I
had
to be him.

In need of some good cheer (and maybe a cookie), I drove over to the east side of town to check in on my grandparents. I found them in the Grotto, which is what they called their fenced-in backyard. The cluttered culmination of forty years of picky landscaping, the Grotto contained a picnic table, a vegetable garden, two flower beds, a hammock, a burbling pond, a seven-foot-tall replica of Michelangelo's
David
, and a winding stone path. The entire area had to be only five hundred square feet total and always made me think of a ship in a bottle.

Grandpa Hedley was sitting at the Grotto's picnic table. A seventy-two-year-old Vietnam vet, my grandfather had been mayor of Hickson for thirty y
ears running. A big man with wispy white hair and a booming voice, he got worked up about stuff like grass clippings sprayed illegally into the street, fire department pancake breakfasts, and Hickson's
Fourth
of July parade. This morning he was holding pruning shears and studying a potted bonsai plant. Several other bonsai also sat on the table, stoically waiting for review like a tiny, carefully assembled forest army.

Grandpa Hedley squeezed the pruning shears, pondering his next move.
“Hello, Mack.”

I stopped short of the table, surprised he'd noticed me. “Hey, Gramps.”

Grandpa Hedley gave the bonsai a snip that appeared to have no result.
“The Vietcong would have a field day with a round-eye like you. They'd hear you coming from a mile away.”

Grandpa Hedley chuckled and gave the bonsai another snip. This time, I
thought
I saw something green slightly move.

“Well,” I said, sitting down. “It's a good thing I wasn't in Nam, I guess.”

Grandpa Hedley nodded his head somberly. “Good thing.”

I scanned the Grotto. The fountain was burbling away and filled with dead bugs.

“Where's Grandma?”

Grandpa Hedley pointed his shears toward the statue. “In back, reading one of those goddamn pornographic novels of hers.”

“Pornographic?”

“You should try reading one. It's hardening member this, stiff organ that.”

Grandpa Hedley gave his bonsai three consecutive snips. He set the pruning shears down and turned the tree in its little pot.

“Is that its back or its front?”

“Trees don't have sides. Trees are trees.”

I nodded. Grandpa Hedley could sneak up on you like that, throwing down profound shit when you least expected it. I think it was one of the reasons he'd been Hickson's mayor for so long and had a death grip on the town's oldster vote. The way he said things made them seem like eternal truths that had been set down in stone tablets long ago, via chisel, by a man on a mountaintop.

“I got you a job at the Legion bar, Mack.”

“I have a job. I work at the hardware store.”

“Right. How many hours do you work a week?”

I leaned closer to the bonsai, wondering what my grandfather was looking for exactly. I saw tiny roots, tiny trunk, tiny branches. Micro-needles that glowed with chlorophyll
ous
radiance.

“I don't know. About fifteen, I guess.”

Grandpa Hedley shook his head sadly and picked up his shears. “That's not enough work for a young man. You need more structure than that. Especially with your mother gone.”

“I don't know,” I said, stretching my arms. “I think I've got a good thing going around here.”

“You're eighteen now, Mack. You should be working your ass off and saving for college.”

I swung a leg over the picnic table's bench. “You never even went to college and you've done all right for yourself, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Backyard Grotto.”

Grandpa Hedley leaned closer to his bonsai. “I didn't go to college because I was getting my ass strafed in the Me
k
ong Delta. You don't want that kind of education, kid. Trust me.”

Now a full-time man with two part-time jobs, I plunged into the depths of the Grotto and found Grandma Hedley rocking gently in the Grotto hammock. She was wearing her straw garden hat and olive green overalls and drinking iced tea. As foretold, she was reading a thick, greasy romance novel with raised gold lettering on the cover.

“Hello, sweetie.”

“Hi, Grandma.”

I leaned over and hugged her small body with one arm, careful to not squeeze too hard. Grandma Hedley smiled. Her eyes were milky blue, like stonewashed denim, and magnified crazy huge behind her trifocals. She had short cropped hair she dyed crimson and a ready smile for anybody. She looked like a kindly lady gnome.

“Did you have a good birthd
ay? We have a card for you.”

“It was pretty good, I guess.”

“How's your story
-
writing going?”

“All right. I started a new one yesterday.”

“That's lovely. I can't wait to read it. Did George tell you about the new job?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And?”

“I start at the
Legion next Friday.”

Grandma Hedley lowered the romance novel to her chest and gave a speedy, hummingbird-like clap. “Oh good. I think it'll be very enjoyable for you, Mack. You'll get to hear all those stories they have. It could even help you with your writing. Maybe you'll write the next
Johnny
Tremain
.”

“Ah—”

“Here, help me up.”

My grandmother held out her hand like she was getting out of a cab. I grinned and took it, extracting her from the fibrous web.

“You missed lunch, but I can make you a sandwich. We've got some rhubarb pie left over.”

We went inside the house. Grandpa Hedley was on the phone in the kitchen. He was listening to the receiver with his good ear, his face darkening to a deep, plum-like purple. Grandma and I waited, watching him. Finally Grandpa muttered something and hung up the phone, his eyes slowly focusing as he noticed us standing there.

“What is it, George?”

“Some hoodlums burned down Teddy Giles' boathouse.”

Grandma Hedley crossed her arms and frowned. “Oh dear.
”