Blue World (28 page)

It wasn’t until I was in my room that I realized I hadn’t seen any matches or a lighter when Virgil had lit that second cigarette. Was I crazy--or had the flame been growing from his index finger?

Lots of old ones,

Virgil had said.

And ones yet to be.

I went to sleep with that on my mind.

And it seemed like I’d just closed my eyes when I heard my dad say, “Up and at ‘em, Bobby! Factory whistle’s about to blow!”

The next week, the loading dock moved at least thirty-five more crates over quota. We could hardly keep up with them as they came out of the packing room. Dad couldn’t believe how fast Virgil Sikes worked; he said that the man moved so fast between those two machines that the air got hot and Virgil’s red clothes seemed to smoke.

One evening we came home and Mom was all shook up. It seems she got a telephone call from Mrs. Avery from two houses up Accardo. Mrs. Avery had gone nosing around the red house, and had looked into the kitchen window to see Evie Sikes standing over the range. Evie Sikes had turned all the burners on, and was holding her face above them like an ordinary person would accept a breeze from a fan. And Mrs. Avery swore she’d seen the other woman bend down and press her forehead to one of the burners as if it was a block of ice.

“My God,” Dad whispered. “They’re not human.

I knew something was wrong with them the first time I saw them! Somebody ought to run them out of Greystone Bay! Somebody ought to burn that damned red house to the ground!“

And this time Mom didn’t say anything.

God forgive me, I didn’t say anything either.

Lots of old ones. And ones yet to be.

Rumor got around the factory: Virgil Sikes was going to be in charge of three polishing machines. And somebody in that department was going to get a pink slip.

You know how rumors are. Sometimes they hold a kernel of truth, most times they’re just nervous air. Whatever the case, Dad started making a detour to the liquor store on the way home from work three nights a week. He broke out in a sweat when we turned onto Accardo and had to approach the red house. He could hardly sleep at night, and sometimes he sat in the front room with his head in his hands, and if either Mom or I spoke a word, he blew up like a firecracker.

And finally, on a hot August night, his face covered with sweat, he said quietly, “I can’t breathe anymore. It’s that red house. It’s stealin‘ the life right out of me. God Almighty, I can’t take it anymore!” He rose from his chair, looked at me, and said, “Come on, Bobby.”

“Where are we going?” I asked him as we walked down the steps to the car. Across the street, the lights of the red house were blazing.

“You don’t ask questions. You just do as I say. Get in, now. We’ve got places to go.”

I did as he said. And as we pulled away from the curb I looked over at the red house and thought I saw a figure standing at the window, peering out.

Dad drove out into the sticks and found a hardware store still open. He bought two three-gallon gasoline cans. He already had a third in the back. Then he drove to a gas station where nobody knew us and he filled up all three cans at the pumps. On the way home, the smell of the gasoline almost made me sick. “It has to be done, Bobby,” Dad said, his eyes glittering and his face blotched with color. “You and me have to do it. Us men have to stick together, right? It’s for the good of both of us, Bobby. Those Sikes people aren’t human.”

“They’re different, you mean,” I said. My heart was hammering, and I couldn’t think straight.

“Yes. Different. They don’t belong on Accardo Street. We don’t need any red houses on our street. Things have been fine for a hundred years, and we’re going to make them fine again, aren’t we?”

“You’re… going to kill them,” I whispered.

“No. Hell, no! I wouldn’t kill anybody! I’m gonna set the fire and then start yellin‘. They’ll wake up and run out the back door! Nobody’ll get hurt!”

“They’ll know it was you.”

“You’ll say we were watchin‘ a movie on TV. So will your mom. We’ll figure out what to say. Damn it, Bobby, are you with me or against me?”

I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what to say. What’s wrong and what’s right when you love somebody?

Dad waited until all the lights had gone out on Accardo Street. Mom sat with us in the front room; she didn’t say anything, and she wouldn’t look at either of us. We waited until the Johnny Carson show was over. Then Dad put his lighter in his pocket, picked up two of the gas cans, and told me to get the third. He had to tell me twice, but I did it. With all the lights off but the glow of the TV, I followed my father out of the room, across the street, and quietly up to the red house’s porch. Everything was silent and dark. My palms were sweating, and I almost dropped my gas can going up the steps.

Dad started pouring gas over the red-painted boards, just sloshing it everywhere. He poured all the gas out from two cans, and then he looked at me standing there. “Pour yours out!” he whispered. “Go on, Bobby!”

“Dad,” I said weakly. “Please… don’t do this.”

“Christ Almighty!” He jerked the can from my hand and sloshed it over the porch too.

“Dad… please. They don’t mean any harm. Just because they’re different… just because they live in a house that’s a different color-- ”

“They shouldn’t be different!” Dad told me. His voice was strained, and I knew he was right at the end of his rope. “We don’t like different people here! We don’t need different people!” He started fumbling for his lighter, took from his pocket a rag he’d brought from the kitchen.

“Please… don’t. They haven’t hurt us. Let’s just forget it, okay? We can just walk away--”

His lighter flared. He started to touch the flame to the rag.

Lots of old ones,

I thought.

And ones yet to be.

Me. Virgil Sikes had been talking about me.

I thought about gears at that instant. Millions and millions of gears going down a conveyor belt, and all of them exactly the same. I thought about the concrete walls of the factory. I thought about the machines and their constant pounding, damning rhythm. I thought about a cage of gray clapboard, and I looked at my dad’s scared face in the orange light and realized he was terrified of what lay outside the gray clapboards--opportunity, choices, chance, life.

He was scared to death, and I knew right then that I could not be my father’s son.

I reached out and grabbed his wrist. He looked at me like he’d never seen me before.

And I heard my voice--stronger now, the voice of a stranger--say,

“No.”

Before Dad could react, the red-painted front door opened.

And there was Virgil Sikes, his orange eyes glittering. He was smoking a cigarette. Behind him stood his wife and two kids--three more pairs of orange, glowing eyes like campfires in the night.

“Howdy,” Virgil said in his soft Southern drawl. “Ya’ll havin‘ fun?”

My dad started sputtering. I still had hold of his wrist.

Virgil smiled in the dark. “One less gray house in Greystone Bay, Bobby.”

And then he dropped the cigarette onto the gas-soaked boards at his feet.

The flames caught, burst up high. I tried to grab Virgil, but he pulled back. Then Dad was pulling me off the porch as the boards began to explode into flame. We ran down into the street, and both of us were yelling for the Sikes to get out the back door before the whole house caught.

But they didn’t. Oh, no. Virgil took one of the children in his arms and sat down in a red chair, and his wife took the other and sat down beside him in the midst of the flames. The porch caught, hot and bright, and as we watched in fascinated horror, we saw all four of the Sikeses burst into flame; but their fire-figures were just sitting there in the chairs, as if they were enjoying a nice day at the beach. I saw Virgil’s head nod. I saw Evie smile before fire filled up her face, the children became forms of flame--happy fires, bouncing and kicking joyfully in the laps of their parents.

I thought something then. Something that I shouldn’t think about too much.

I thought:

They were always made of fire. And now they’re going back to what they were.

Cinders spun into the air, flew up and glittered like stars, worlds on fire. The four figures began to disintegrate. There were no screams, no cries of pain--but I thought I heard Virgil Sikes laugh like the happiest man in the world.

Or something that had appeared to be a man.

Lights were coming on all up and down Accardo Street. The fires were shooting up high, and the red house was almost engulfed. I watched the sparks of what had been the Sikes family fly up high, so very high--and then they drifted off together over Greystone Bay, and whether they winked out or just kept going, I don’t know. I heard the siren of a fire truck coming. I looked at my dad, looked long and hard, because I wanted to remember his face. He looked so small. So small.

And then I turned and started walking along Accardo Street, away from the burning house. Dad grabbed at my arm, but I pulled free as easily as if I were being held by a shadow. I kept walking right to the end of Accardo--and then I just kept walking.

I love my mom and dad. I called them when the workboat I signed onto got to a port up the coast about thirty miles. They were okay. The red house was gone, but of course the firemen never found any bodies. All that was left was the red station wagon. I figured they’d haul that off to where the junked cars are, and the blind old man who lives there would have a new place to sleep.

Dad got into some trouble, but he pleaded temporary insanity. Everybody on Accardo knew Bull was half-crazy, that he’d been under a lot of pressure and drank a lot. Mr. Lindquist, I heard later, was puzzled by the whole thing, like everybody else, but the clapboard houses were cheap and he decided to build a white brick house across from my folks. Mr. Lindquist had wanted to get rid of those clapboard things and put up stronger houses for the factory workers anyway. This just started the ball rolling.

My folks asked me to come back, of course. Promised me everything. Said I could go to college whenever I wanted. All that stuff.

But their voices sounded weak. I heard the terror in those voices, and I felt so sorry for them, because they knew the walls of their cage were painted gray. Oh, I’ll go back to Greystone Bay sometime--but not until later. Not until I’ve found out who I am and what I am. I’m Bob Deaken now.

I still can’t figure it out. Was it planned? Was it happenstance? Did those creatures that loved fire just fit me into their lives by accident, or on purpose? You know, they say the Devil craves fire. But whatever the Sikeses were, they unlocked me from a cage. They weren’t evil. Like Virgil Sikes said: Fire creates as well as it destroys.

They’re not dead. Oh, no. They’re just… somewhere else. Maybe I’ll meet them again sometime. Anything’s possible.

I may not be a red house. I may be a blue one, or a green one, or some other color I haven’t even seen yet. But I know I’m not a gray house. I know that for sure.

And that’s my story.

Something Passed By

Johnny James was sitting on the front porch, sipping from a glass of gasoline in the December heat, when the doomscreamer came. Of course doomscreamers were nothing new; these days they were as common as blue moons. This one was of the usual variety: skinny-framed, with haunted dark eyes and a long black beard full of dust and filth. He wore dirty khaki trousers and a faded green Izod shirt, and on his feet were sandals made from tires with the emblem still showing: Michelin. Johnny sipped his Exxon Super Unleaded and pondered that the doomscreamer’s outfit must be the yuppie version of sackcloth and ashes.

“Prepare for the end! Prepare to meet your Maker!” The doomscreamer had a loud, booming voice that echoed in the stillness over the town that stood on the edge of Nebraskan cornfields. It floated over Grant Street, where the statues of town fathers stood, past the Victorian houses at the end of King’s Lane that had burned with such beautiful flames, past the empty playground at the silent Bloch school, over Bradbury park where paint flaked off the grinning carousel horses, down Koontz Street where the businesses used to thrive, over Ellison Field where no bat would ever smack another Softball. The doomscreamer’s voice filled the town, and ignited the ears of all who remained: “No refuge for the wicked! Prepare for the end! Prepare! Prepare!”

Johnny heard a screen door slam. His neighbor in the white house across the way stood on his own porch loading a rifle. Johnny called, “Hey! Gordon! What’re you doin‘, man?”

Gordon Mayfield continued to push bullets into his rifle. Between Johnny and Gordon, the air shimmered with hazy heat. “Target practice!” Gordon shouted; his voice cracked, and his hands were shaking. He was a big fleshy man with a shaved head, and he wore only blue jeans, his bare chest and shoulders glistening with sweat. “Gonna do me some target practice!” he said as he pushed the last shell into the rifle’s magazine and clicked the safety off.

Johnny swallowed gasoline and rocked in his chair. “Prepare! Prepare!” the doomscreamer hollered as he approached his end. The man was standing in front of the empty house next to Gordon’s, where the Carmichael family had lived before they fled with a wandering evangelist and his flock on his way to California. “Prepare!” The doomscreamer lifted his arms, sweat stains on his Izod, and shouted to the sky, “O ye sinners, prepare to--”

His voice faltered. He looked down at his Michelins, which had begun to sink into the street.

The doomscreamer made a small terrified squeak. He was not prepared. His ankles had sunk into the gray concrete, which sparkled like quicksilver in a circle around him. Swiftly he sank to his waist in the mire, his mouth open in a righteous O.

Gordon had lifted the rifle to put a bullet through the doomscreamer’s skull. Now he realized a pull of the trigger would be wasted energy, and might even increase his own risk of spontaneous combustion. He released the trigger and slowly lowered his gun.

“Help me!” The doomscreamer saw Johnny, and lifted his hands in supplication. “Help me, brother!” He was up to his alligator in the shimmering, hungry concrete. His eyes begged like those of a lost puppy. “Please… help me!”