The Firebug of Balrog County (7 page)

The Tornado

B
alrog County gets its fair share of tornadoes. The worst twister in my lifetime showed up when I was twelve and home alone while the rest of my family was shopping in Thorndale. I was watching a movie when my mother called and told me to get in the basement immediately—a tornado had been spotted south of town. Right as she called, the town's emergency sirens sounded and my skin started crawling like it wanted to head off on its own.

I told my mother I'd go into the basement ASAP but instead I went outside and stood in the driveway. The sky had turned a surreal lemon-yellow and an enormous cloudbank was approaching from the south, dark as night and as big as a Magisterium Zeppelin.

The wind was blowing like crazy.

I felt alive, every nerve.

Firewall

T
h
e Saturday night crowd at the Le
gion turned out to be a collection of sullen old men with rough hands and furrowed brows. They sat around the bar in ones and twos, staring into the bar's majestic collection of Budweiser-themed mirrors. They spoke in low, guarded tones, like political radicals, and broke abruptly into lung-rattling coughs.

“Regulars,” Butch said, nodding to the room. “They wouldn't sing ‘Sweet Caroline' if you held a shotgun to their head.”

One old coot named Ox Haggerton sat in the middle of the bar by himself, directly in front of the taps. Haggerton kept himself propped up very stiffly and seemed to constantly be in the process of lowering his drink (whiskey neat) or raising it to his lips. His face was so wrinkled it was puckered, like an anus, and his nose was beet red from half a century of drinking. I never saw him turn to his right or to his left but I could tell he was listening to every conversation in the bar, his hairy ears perked like a cat's. Whenever I crossed his line of sight I could feel Old Man Haggerton's eyes burning a hole through my forehead, searching for what, I did not know.

Finally, around midnight, Haggerton stood up and pushed his bar stool back. The old man hadn't tipped me all night, paying for each whiskey as it came with a series of damp one dollar bills. He cleared his throat, a sound somewhere between phlegm and standard German, and glanced around at the other regulars.

“He's George Hedley's grandkid, right?”

The regulars nodded and murmured amongst themselves.

“Well, kid don't look like no veteran to me. He looks like a goddamn pansy boy who thinks he's smarter than a whore.”

The regulars chuckled. Butch came down from his spot at the end of the bar, holding his hands up. Haggerton waved off the bartender and started for the door, surprisingly steady on his feet.

“Go fuck yourself, hippie, and cut that faggot ponytail while you're at it.”

The regulars fell silent. Haggerton crossed the room, paused to sneer at us, and shouldered open the door, meeting my eyes as he plowed his way out into the night.

“Fucking dickhead,” Butch said after the door had swung shut. “He gets mean drunk every Saturday and thinks it's his goddamn American right because he served two years in Korea flying a helicopter.”

I grabbed a rag from under the sink and wiped down the bar. I thought about helicopters and high grade explosives and how Ox Haggerton lived eight miles north of the Legion, on land he'd cleared himself by chopping down every tree he could get his hands on. Everybody in the area knew where Ox lived because he'd planted a sign on the main highway, advertising firewood for sale, but as far as I knew nobody had ever needed wood bad enough to visit his house and put up with his grumpy-ass bullshit.

Haggerton must have been lonely, living out there by himself like that.

Maybe he could use a visit.

After Butch and I closed the bar and divvied up the night's meager tips, I hopped into the Olds and headed north, shouting along with the radio. I pulled out my lighter and thumbed it a few times, enjoying the small lick of flame and how it reflected off the windshield's dark glass. I wasn't sure I was actually going to do anything at Haggerton's place, really, but I told myself it wouldn't hurt to take a little survey of the property. A little recognizance gander.

Of course, I was a master of hiding my real pyro intentions, even to myself. I was good at pretending I was just being weird, just fucking around, before the firebug suddenly reared up and smacked the good sense out of me. The urge to burn shit always bubbled below the surface of my thoughts, like magma flowing beneath the earth's crust, but it took a good opportunity and a sudden loss of willpower to really set me off.

Ox Haggerton's si
gn appeared abruptly amid the pine trees that lined the highway, a square of ghostly white with black block lettering. The old man
must have gotten the sign professionally made back in the day. It'd been on the side of the highway for as long as I could remember.

GOOD FIREWOOD FOR SALE—CHEAP!

SECOND HOUSE ON THE RIGHT

I turned left at the sign, leaving the paved highway for a lumpy gravel road. The Olds rocked, creaking like a horse buggy, and I slowed to twenty miles per hour to keep the rust bucket from tearing itself apart. I also turned down the radio because it now seemed too loud, out here in the tree-ridden boonies where it was dark as hell.

It took five long, bouncing minutes to reach the first driveway and ten more to reach the second. The pine and birch trees, which up until now had run thickly alongside the road, disappeared on my right. They were replaced by sawed-off tree trunks that protruded from the ground like blunted teeth, the handiwork of a man who clearly didn't care for trees, could handle a chainsaw, and had plenty of free time.

I kept driving, slowly, and went past Haggerton's mailbox and the single lamp that lit the driveway's entrance. With the trees leveled, you could see Haggerton's house about fifty yards down the gravel road, a couple of
windows still lit up, and beyond that a rectangular building that looked like a shed. I drove until the trees reappeared on the right side of the road and swung the Olds back around. I turned off the car's headlights and lowered her speed even further. “Easy does it, baby,” I whispered, patting the Old's dashboard. “This is a black-ops mission.”

I brought the car just short of the clearing and parked it in the middle of the road. I got out and went around to the trunk, surprised at the quiet—even the crickets were subdued tonight, as if they knew some heavy shit was about to go down. I popped the trunk and stared at the gas can. It looked so red and shiny, like fire itself.

I picked the gas can up.

Mmm, gasoline. The closest thing to liquid fire. Wars had been fought over it. Cars combusted it. It made the unholy world go round. I unscrewed the gas can and took a long, woozy sniff. I pictured Ox Haggerton sitting at the bar, drinking his beer and being all surly and shit. Calling me a pansy boy. Telling Butch he looked like a faggot.

Didn't he know a faggot was actually a bundle of sticks used as kindling in the burning of heretics?

I took another whiff of gasoline and screwed the cap back on. I pictured Ox Haggerton sitting on his pile of firewood like the dragon Smaug, hoarding his precious gold beneath the Lonely Mountain.

Fucking Smaug Haggerton.

I started toward Old Man Haggerton's house without closing the trunk, the gas can sloshing in my hand. I decided to cross the maze of tree stumps and avoid the lit driveway. It was like walking through a field of land mines that had already been detonated, annoying in a sloggy, tripping way. I had to walk with my head down, watching my feet. It wasn't until I'd cleared the field and could properly raise my head that I realized that the boxy structure behind Haggerton's house wasn't a shed. It was the largest woodpile I'd ever seen.

“Holy fuck.”

I craned my head back, trying to take it all in. All the sweet, sweet stacked wood, piled high in neat little rows.

And it would be bone dry, too. It hadn't rained in Balrog County for weeks. The drought was all the local boys could talk about when they came into the hardware store.

“Steady, Mack,” I whispered to myself. “Steady, old boy.” I took a couple of deep breaths and waited for the firebug to calm down. I looked at Haggerton's house and realized the interior lights had gone out, leaving only the exterior porch light on. The gas can sloshed promisingly as I started forward again, circling around the back of the house like a good ninja, sticking to the dark and feeling my way forward. I cleared the house, crossed another fifty yards of tree stumps, and found myself at the foot of a pyromaniac's wet dream.

I reached out and touched a cord of wood, one among many covered in rough, dry bark. It felt as if I were stroking a mummy's cheek.

“Hello there. I'm Mack. I've come to—”

A round shape leapt out of the woodpile and dropped to the ground. I swore and jumped back, falling on my ass and dropping the gas can. A huge, very pissed raccoon chit
tered at me, scorning me for my intrusion. Even in the dim light I could see it puffing itself out like a devil's pom-pom, ready for battle. I scrambled to my feet and held out my hands.

“Sorry—”

More angry chittering. For a terrifying moment, I expected the raccoon to jump at my face and claw my eyes out.

“It's cool, man. We're cool.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my lighter. The raccoon watched as I thumbed the lighter and held the flame toward it.

“See? That's fire.”

Jesus, it was big. The size of a bull dog, really. What the hell was it eating around here? Elk?

I took a tentative step forward. The raccoon chittered again, but with less certainty now, and when I took another step it backed away, watching me as it slinked along the woodpile.

“Go on, man. This shit's about to get torched.”

The raccoon turned tail and ran off into the night. I exhaled loudly and looked at the house, praying the windows would still be dark.

They were.

I picked up the gas can and went around the woodpile, using the pile's bulk to shield myself from Old Man Haggerton's house. I could see a dude like Haggerton being paranoid, restless, and prone to the kind of night terrors that made a man leap out of bed and scream into the profound darkness of his country house.

The woodpile must have been forty feet long and twelve feet high. Haggerton had strapped tarps across the top of the pile, protecting it from direct weather. The wood smelled old and moldy, but not so moldy it wouldn't burn. As I walked its length, I imagined the pile's heyday, back when the cords of wood were freshly cut and stacked, sap dripping from their wounds. It must have been twice or even three times as big back then. It probably blocked out the damn sun.

I splashed gasoline on the woodpile's far eastern corner. I wouldn't have enough fuel to douse the whole thing properly, so I'd have to settle for little patches placed at intervals around the woodpile's backside.

The can gurgled happily as I worked. Once I'd nearly emptied it, I yanked a splintered cord out of the pile and doused its knobby end. Then I looked around, considered the safety of the burn, and saw that beyond the woodpile lay only more ugly stumps stretching far into the night in all directions, like the littered battlefield of some brutal woodland war. This setup was too perfect not to burn. The old man was asking for it. Maybe he dreamt of a great fire himself, between the stretches of night terrors. I lit my makeshift torch and craned my neck back to take in the woodpile in all its sweet immensity.

“You shall be seen from the heavens, my friend.”

The world felt hushed and calm and right. The critters were hunkered in their dirt burrows, the birds nestled in their twiggy nests.

I touched off the first gasoline patch and it whoomped immediately, the fire taking nicely to the old wood. That sound, that sound. I stood still for a moment, mesmerized by the blossoming fire, until a loud crackling brought me back to the moment. I touched off the other patches of gasoline, bopping each of them like a fairy godmother with her magic fire wand, and then stuck my torch back into the pile, wedging it between two blocks of wood so it could go up with its brothers.

I could already feel the heat rising. I grabbed the gas can and backed away, careful to watch my feet among the stumps. I walked around the pile until I could see Old Man Haggerton's house. From this side you couldn't see anything burning yet, only an orange aura along the woodpile's top.

I headed back, keeping to the dark as I navigated the stumps. By the time I reached the road, the fire had spread to the front of the woodpile and was catching in earnest.
The firebug cavorted about in my heart as flames ate at the last patches of dark within the woodpile and the burn entered its second, all-consuming phase, illuminating Old Man Haggerton's yard like the torch of Paul Bunyan himself.

I laughed and raised my arms in the air. I imagined I could feel the fire's warmth and thought what a shame it'd be that I'd miss watching it burn all through the night and into the morning, until nothing but forty feet of hot coals remained.

Yes, sir. Who was the smart whore now?

The front door of Haggerton's house flew open and the old man stepped outside, holding a deer rifle and wearing actual honest-to-god long johns. He strode off his porch slowly, approaching the burning woodpile like a man walking in a dream. I wondered if he was thinking about the loss of his property, various courses of action, or if he, like me, was flat-out stupefied by the sight of an actual wall of fire rising amid the dark of night.

Was he amazed?

In awe?

Did he, hardened lifelong bachelor asshole, still think in terms of beauty at all? Or was everything only function at this point?

I walked to my car and tossed the gas can into the Olds
mobile's trunk. I shut the trunk softly, got into the car, and started the engine, fluttering the gas pedal slightly so the old girl wouldn't stall on me. I rolled down my window and accelerated slowly, leaving my headlights off (I didn't need them to see, anyway, since the fire had turned the road's gravel a toasty shade of orange) as the Olds purred down the road.

I couldn't see Haggerton now, even with all the lovely firelight, but I did hear a loud crack followed by something pinging off the trunk of my car. I decided to pick up the pace, potholes be damned.