Surrender (9 page)

Break it did, although not in equal halves: the greater part of Mulyan’s incensed population sided with my father, who now openly declared the Constable incompetent and rallied the people to take the law into their hands. Some of these people had long disliked my father, his bullish manner, his uppity ways; their offspring were my schoolyard torturers, callers-of-names and tippers-of-chairs. But now we shared a common foe, and our differences were laid aside. At school I enjoyed a sudden immunity, which I savored while it could last. Our policeman was spurned and sneered upon in the street; he was mocked by little children.
The sooner he goes, the better
. A city newspaper ran an article detailing our slide toward mob rule, to the indignation of all except Finnigan, who cackled delightedly. My father, meanwhile, began organizing parties of men to patrol the streets. Posting guards at likely burn sites was clearly ineffective; there was, to my father’s mind, a need — indeed, a
want
— to see the streets roamed by gangs. The more temperate folk of Mulyan were aghast at this turn of events; McIllwraith warned that it was only a matter of time before some innocent had his head stove in with a cricket bat. From the pulpit the priest reminded his flock that nothing is worth the price of a life, no crime unforgivable by God. My father replied that by wading uninvited into the argument, the Church was bringing itself dangerously to the attention of the godless firebug. McIllwraith answered that, with vigilantes on the prowl, he had no choice but to advise everyone to stay indoors at night. Mulyan, he said, was effectively under a self-imposed curfew. The word rocked the reason of the opposing camps: old ladies were frightened to walk to the store; young bucks bolted searchlights to the roofs of their cars and spent the night cruising the streets.

The town was never uglier. It held its breath and rocked perilously on the knife’s edge.

Finnigan, by now, had been stalking McIllwraith for months, and knew him like an old friend; I, however, had little to do with the policeman, who, aware whose son I was, never tried to make a friend out of me. Perhaps he understood the grief it could cause, were I caught fraternizing with the enemy. But when Father became the leader of a gang of vigilantes, things, not unpredictably, changed. McIllwraith now had something to say, and reason to say it. I was sitting on the swings in the park with Finnigan when the outlaw nodded toward the road and said, “Look.”

I looked and saw the Constable striding across the grass. It was Saturday, cold, and the park was deserted but for the three of us. I sucked in my breath, whispered, “Let’s go.”

“No.” Finnigan idled on his swing, his toes scraped the ground. “He’ll wonder why.”

McIllwraith slowed as he reached us, and finally stopped. His shoes were shiny, glossed with rain. Fog unraveled from his mouth. I clutched the heavy chains of my swing, my fingers pink and white; Finnigan sat calmly. “Cold day,” said McIllwraith.

“It’s winter,” answered Finnigan.

McIllwraith looked away; my heart jumped at my ribs. Above our heads a crying crow was blown like black rubbish through the sky. My face burned, chilled by the wind. McIllwraith was looking at me.

“You’re Harry’s son, aren’t you? Anwell?”

He wanted to talk about Father, not the fires. It was a relief; I nodded. Finnigan spun on his swing, smiling. McIllwraith, his hands in his pockets, hugged his coat to him. “Has Harry still got men roaming round town every night?”

“Yes.” The policeman surely knew it. Finnigan and I were both fourteen now, and the Constable must once have been fourteen too, yet he was wary of us, guarded. He feared, I think, that we were untrustworthy. He worried he might say something that could be used against him. He was afraid of being seen with us; he was afraid of my father. I understood how he felt.

“What about it?” Finnigan asked. His voice jarred the silence. McIllwraith looked at him.

“It’s dangerous. They’re terrorizing people, not protecting them. Someone is going to get hurt.”

“He wants to stop the firebug.”

McIllwraith shook his head. “It’s not his job. No one asked for his help. Why is he doing this?”

Finnigan shrugged, and they both looked at me. “I don’t know,” I said.

“He’s crazy?” Finnigan offered.

“He likes everything to be under his control.” I frowned, and held the statement up to the light. I’d never framed my life in so few words.
My father likes everything to be under his control
.

“Including you?” asked McIllwraith.

“Yes,” I answered: including me.

“I don’t want to get you into trouble. Should I walk away?”

Finnigan looked at me; I shook my head slowly. “No,” I said. “This should stop.”

A cloud sighed widely out of the policeman. My hands fell from the chains to my lap. “Tell him,” murmured Finnigan.

“Tell him what?”

“What?” echoed McIllwraith.

“Everything. What they’re getting up to on their little midnight jaunts. Where they go, what they do — you could spoil everything for them.”

I was shocked. “You
want
me to tell?”

“Would you?” McIllwraith’s gaze jumped over me. “Could you?”

I faltered, uncertain. “I don’t know. If he found out I was doing that . . .”

“Then don’t.” McIllwraith set his jaw. “If you think he’ll find out, don’t do it.”

“But what about the fires?” asked Finnigan plaintively. “They need stopping too.”

I nodded to this. “The fires have to be stopped.”

“They will be stopped,” said the Constable. “But not by vigilantes. Not by spreading fear through the town. That won’t stop the arsonist.”

“I agree,” said the firebug. “That won’t work.”

“What your father is doing is wrong, Anwell — he’s just as wrong as the arsonist is.”

“He’s
more
wrong,” said Finnigan.

“His actions are equally dangerous — you know that yourself, don’t you?”

“You don’t have to persuade us,” said Finnigan. “We’ll do it. Why shouldn’t we? The bastard deserves it.”

“It will keep everyone safe,” I said. “That’s why I’ll do it.”

McIllwraith paused, the wind rifling his coat. I could not tell if he was pleased. After some moments he said, “You too, though. Remember: you need to keep safe.”

Finnigan replied immediately, “And you.”

“Yes,” I said quietly, “you too.”

The policeman blinked, and gave a slack nod. “Maybe I’ll see you around,” he said; then he turned and walked away. I leaned against the knotted chain and did not look at Finnigan. When the Constable had gone far enough to be small I said, “I don’t think he knows it’s you. He would have said something if he’d known.”

“He doesn’t know.” Finnigan’s voice was certain. “Anyway, he’s not thinking about the firebug. He hates your father more. . . . McIllwraith is just a man. He has hate and vengeance. We can use that.”

I rocked back and forth, scuffing the ground. The prospect of secretly undermining my father tingled my nerves, made me smug. But if I was to be caught passing information to the police, the consequences would be dire. The runty offspring of uppity parents, brother to a half-wit, the shutter and locker of refrigerator doors — I did not need branding as a traitor as well. It wanted just the smallest error to push me over the hellish edge-of-no-return. I glanced resentfully at Finnigan, who was forcing me to the brink. I felt invaded by him, fatally entwined, yet it was always me — never him — who teetered on the edge: “No more fires,” I said. “Stop this now, Finnigan.”

“Soon. There’s things we still have to do. We can’t make McIllwraith tame without fire. Without fire, there’s nothing to say. You don’t want to disappoint him, do you? You told him you’d help: you promised. The vigilantes are your fault, after all. All of this is your fault.”

“
My
fault! Why?”

“You lit the fires as much as I did. You told me,
go out and burn
. Besides, we’re reflections, blood brothers, remember? What I do, you do.”

The cold wind had brought water to my eyes; I smeared them dry on my sleeve. I could smell, on the breeze, the earthen scent of him. “You remember that, don’t you, Anwell?”

Something dangerous wafted from him — something not to be denied. “Yes, I remember.”

He swayed on his swing. “There’s one other thing.”

“What?”

“It’s time to make your father sorry.”

I glanced up fearfully. “You’ll only make him angrier. What good will that do me?”

Finnigan shrugged. “None, probably.”

He stepped from his swing and walked away, casual as a cat crossing a lawn, leaving in his wake a swathe of shattered raindrops. I watched him until he disappeared in the trees. Watching him, I felt my blood shimmer. In minutes, on a cold afternoon, he had changed my life again. What he did, I must do.

And surely it worked the same in reverse.

I had not thought of that before.

Reflections, blood brothers, twins: therefore:

What I did, he must do.

My father organized his vigilantes in the disused back room of our house. He’d pinned a map of Mulyan to the wall and marked crosses at the burn sites. The men arrived after dinner each evening and stood around very seriously. The room was small and they were big men, so the air was soon made stale. It being assumed I shared my father’s stance on this and every matter, my presence was permitted in the room while they talked. I made myself useful, opening bottles, emptying ashtrays. I nodded and laughed whenever they did, knit my brow, curled my lip: I was the essence of loyalty. I stayed in the room after the men had embarked on their nocturnal crusade, sweeping cigarette ash from the floor, collecting the empty glasses. And Finnigan would creep near, near, sounding no more threatening than a possum or a fox, and halt in the darkness, unseen, all ears. I would open the window and hushly explain where the hunters were lying in wait. Most often it was Finnigan who relayed this news to McIllwraith, trotting down the road to the station, loitering in the shadows. Sometimes, however, his presence was required elsewhere, and it was I who ran through the fog-threaded night, I who knocked on the station-house door before ducking into the dark. “Quotation Creek,” I’d whisper, when the door opened and let out the light. Once “Peyton’s Lookout,” once “Oxford Road.” McIllwraith would nod, glance in the direction of the lookout or road. “Thank you, Anwell,” is all he’d say, before solemnly shutting the door. I would race home then, my heart ripping.

To begin with, I was afraid. I was afraid of getting caught, afraid my treachery glowed like a corona around me. Then, when I did not get caught, I grew to love the fear. It sang in me like wires. I’d say, at the window, to Finnigan, “I’ll go.” I’d fly, my blood speeding. My alliances were like friendships with lions, imperiling, incredible, the foundation of power.
Thank you, Anwell
.

Finnigan had his own use for what he heard at the window. He used the information to map his black travels through the night. Sometimes he put distance between the vigilantes and himself; other nights he followed them as a jackal follows a herd. He would light trails of tiny blazes to guide them where he wished them to go. He occasionally let them near enough to feel the breeze of his slipping away. In the torch-light they would find matches still warm from being struck. He smelled of nothing manmade, of forest and chilled air, and the tracker dogs could not distinguish him from a sapling or a rock. And my father, seeing that his quarry was quicksilver, began to fidget, forgot his flowers, became slapdash with his work. His ongoing failure to snare the arsonist ate at the town’s respect for him. Mulyan had lost its serenity, been riven into factions, turned puerile with suspicion; the streets themselves were now deadly places to be seen after dark — yet still the firebug roamed free. Months wore on, the vigilantes grew bored, the town grew ashamed of how low it had sunk, and there was clearly one person to blame. My father, his glory days sliding away, was twitchy, martyred, sulky, betrayed. One night the howl of the fire bell — the sound of defeat, to Father’s ears — actually made him choke. He doubled over, gagging, swept his plate to the floor. My mother’s nerves were shattered; she fled to her room.

In these dying days of the burnings, I was at liberty. “He’s forgotten who I am,” I told Finnigan. “All he thinks about is you.”

The fugitive yawned, his face to the sun. “Tell him,” he said, “there’s worse to come.”

It was no surprise then, when, two nights afterward, my father’s car exploded in flame.

The ramshackle remnants of the vigilante gang were patrolling a bridge in a fog-filled gully where, that morning, a dented petrol tin had been found. McIllwraith was ghosting them, having had Finnigan knock at the door. Father, however, had stayed home — the night was frosty, and he minded his health. The Wolseley stood, in my father’s affections, on equal footing with his most prized roses. When fire bloomed inside the car, unfurling magician cloths of flame, which scorched the house and lit up the garden with orange and yellow and green, it is fair to say that Father would struggle to believe his eyes.

Hearing commotion I ran from my room and found my parents tilting like totems on the veranda, my mother clutched to my father’s chest, my father pushing her away. The Wolseley was parked in the driveway and its blue bulk was swollen with molten flames, which brightened my father’s pale face. I stopped on the lawn, shielding my eyes, and as the fire banked and swept I glimpsed the warped seat, the dashboard consumed, the bonnet buckled into a scream. The air was dense with toxic stink, and blankets of black smoke surfed up to the sky. Sparks arched across the lawn and fell glowing into the grass. As neighbors rushed from along the street and the hose was whipped from its prim spinning wheel, the heat of the fire forced me back until my shoulders touched the garage wall. I felt the heat slide under my clothes, felt it evaporate the water in my eyes. My hands came unbidden up to my face, and held themselves over my ears. I could not look away from the car, this planet imploding, this living thing killed, this end of some unknown world. There were a hundred people suddenly in our yard; through muffled ears I heard my father shriek as rosebushes were crushed in the press. An alarm bell was ringing and there was raucous shouting, bodies stumbling and vanishing in the dark. The windows of the Wolseley succumbed with a dull crumple. The tap was spun hard and the hose reared, gushing a torrent from its nose: water pummeled the footpath and then the garage, sprayed savagely across my face. The hose was wrestled earthward, the nose pointed at the car, and water speared into the fire’s black heart; sparks raced skyward like demons. The fire hissed, dodging the spray; flames wrapped furiously around the tires and heaved out greasy smoke. The water pummeled from the hose, a torrent like a pickax or a solid blade of steel, yet nothing changed, the car still burned, the fire mobbing as bees mob a man, unrelenting, overwhelming. The hubcaps blew off one after another and clattered across the concrete. The kingly stench of petrol made the air poisonous to breathe. I stood back speechless against the wall, my hands on my ears, my face burning red, and all I could think was that Finnigan was right.
It is wondrous
.