The Firebug of Balrog County (13 page)

I left the bathroom and found Sam alone in the hallway, looking worried.

“All right, Sammy. I'd suggest exiting the school right now if you don't want to get your one good suit wet.”

“What?”

“Run, Orson, run.”

The school's fire alarm erupted and the sprinklers came on in the hallway. Sam swore and started sprinting toward the front doors, moving good for a big man. I went back into the gymnasium, which was now pure chaos as everybody fled, hollering and laughing and shoving each other, the DJ desperately trying to cover his equipment. I found Katrina still sitting in her auditorium seat while sprinkler water rained on her from above, causing her mascara to run and her black dress to cling somehow even more tightly to her body. She grinned as I dropped from the raised gym floor and approached her.

“Did you do this, Mack-Attack?”

I tried my best to look cool, peering off into the distance at the wet chaos by the auditorium's entrance.

“Oh,” I said, “you know me.”

End Times

W
hen someone is put on an artificial respirator, they are transformed into something even more tenuous than your average human being. They need help. They need help to breathe, to push oxygen through their blood stream, to live to see another day. Besieged by one kind of physical calamity or another, a person on a respirator is no longer able to exist within the cage of their body without the artifice and ingenuity of science. They've become dependant on a machine (which itself is dependant on manipulated electrical current) to do something human beings do every day without conscious thought.

What I didn't expect, the first time I saw my mother on artificial respiration, was how it made her look so different that I thought the critical care nurse had directed me to the wrong room. The woman lying in bed in this room had a rattler's nest of wires and tubes running out of her, with the biggest tube of all crammed into her mouth and secured with white medical tape. The woman in this room was so thin you could almost see her lungs rising through her narrow, concave chest and the white blanket covering it.

This woman, I could clearly see, was fucked.

“Mom?”

I stepped up to the side of the woman's hospital bed and placed my hands on its aluminum railing. The respirator made horrible whooshing sounds in the back corner of the room, really working its ass off. The woman had Mom's shoulder-length brown hair. The woman had a face, behind the tubes and the medical tape, which appeared to be a rough approximation of my mother's face, like a wax museum replica.

The ground shifted beneath my feet. I felt as if I might pitch forward on top of the bed. Right on top of her.

My weight would probably crush her.

End everything.

End times.

We had finally come to the end times.

“I'm sorry,” I told her. “I'm sorry I came late.”

My first urge was to hunker down in that hospital room and refuse to get up again until she woke up. I lasted ten minutes before I had to leave the room, unable to stand the sounds of the beeping monitors and the whooshing respirator and the terrible, unnatural hitch in my mother's chest as she breathed. Was forced, forced to breathe, her body air-raped so she could use it again when she finally woke up.

The problem, my father told me as I rejoined everyone in the waiting room, was that the infection had spread deeper into her lungs while her kidneys were failing. She would remain sedated until her body rallied and she was strong enough to breathe on her own again. I tried to imagine what it would be like to wake with a respirator tube crammed down your esophagus. The panic that would seize you, the immediate urge you'd feel to rip the fucker out. It was like something out of
Alien
, really, but medical professionals had done this to my mother on purpose because they'd felt they had no other choice.

“This is bad, isn't it, Dad?”

“It'll be okay, Mack. She's a fighter.”

Haylee, who'd recently turned fourteen, was sitting on th
e other side of my father, clinging to his arm like a koala cub. Her eyes had gone blank and she was staring into the waiting room floor as if she could see through it to whatever lay below. Grandpa and Grandma Hedley were sitting more naturally on her other side, hands folded on their laps. They had the calm, determined air of older folks who'd spent plenty of time in waiting rooms and understood that the waiting never really ended. I felt a heady urge to stand up and slap both of them—SLAP SLAP—and shout an incoherent stream of obscenities in prelude to running out of the hospital, jumping into my car, and driving until I hit water.

Haylee made a tiny, animal-like sound. My head dropped to my chest. A woman's crackling voice paged some dude named Rick Appleton over the waiting room intercom.

“I should have come sooner. I should have come right away.”

Dad put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed me against him. I rested my head against his shoulder.

“Fucking history test.”

“It happened so fast, Mack. It's all right.”

“But—”

Dad squeezed me again, surprisingly strong for a lifelong paper pusher.

“It wasn't very cool there, Mack. Before they put her under.”

Haylee made another animal sound and I closed my mouth, pushing away all the useless talk that wanted to flood out of my mouth. Nobody needed to hear me bitch about myself at that moment—we just needed to wait and steel ourselves for whatever terrible thing came next.

Around ten, a doctor came out and told us we could go home for the night. They expected no major changes in her condition. She could be under for several days.

Nobody went back to school or work the next day. Dad, Haylee, and I visited the hospital and spent an hour sitting beside my mother's bed—a horrible, agonizi
ng hour in which the steady whooshing of her respirator resonated throughout my body. The rest of the day we hung around at home, stuffed into our various rooms/cocoons. After Day Two, Haylee and Dad went back to their regular lives. I understood this. They couldn't tolerate sitting still and doing nothing. They knew, we all knew, that each day that passed with Mom unable to breathe on her own made it less likely she'd come back at all. Better to keep busy, busy busy busy, and think about Mom only ninety percent of the time instead of a full hundred percent. Perhaps a watched mother never wakes.

Bu
t I wanted the pain that came with worrying about her. I craved it. I thought the pain meant that Mom was still with us, that her life was still in play and its length still undecided. I thought about medical miracles, comeback stories. I thought about praying, really, really thought about it, and finally gave i
t a try while sitting on her couch, wrapped in her quilt:

God, please let my mom wake up.

God, please don't be an asshole.

I even tried writing. I wrote a story about a woman who's kicked in the head by a horse and lies in a coma for two weeks on the edge of death. Finally, when everything looks bleak as hell, the woman is visited in the night by a cat. The nurses and doctors in the hospital all know about this cat—it's a hospital legend—but nobody's ever managed to catch it. It sort of haunts the hospital, like a ghost, and when it visits the comatose woman in her hospital room, the cat jumps onto her bed, climbs across her body, and lies down on top of her head, right over her bandages. The cat starts purring, louder and louder, and after a few minutes the woman opens her eyes and asks who left the air conditioning on.

On Day Three, Mom's two brothers arrived with their wives an
d kids. They stayed in a hotel near the hospital in Thorndale and took turns holding vigil beside her bed. They meant well, but their appearance alone was an ominous sign that even I, deluded optimist that I was, could not help but recognize. I called Sam and told him the end was nearing. He surprised me by asking if I'd take him to see her that night, after the other relatives and friends had left the hospital.

Sam's grandmother drove us to the hospital after supper but stayed in the waiting room. Sam and I found Mom alone in her room, surrounded by a small garden of flowers, plants, and get-well cards. She looked smaller than ever, her hands folded across her sunken chest.

“Hey, Mom. I brought Sam.”

“Hey,” Sam said, stepping up to the bed. “Good to see you, Mrs. Druneswald.”

I reached out and held one of Mom's hands. They'd filled with fluid during her forced coma and had grown to three times their normal size, like plastic gloves filled with hot water, or clown hands, and they looked ridiculously huge in comparison to the rest of her. I gave her hand a hard squeeze and imagined I felt a slight squeeze back, a spasm of recognition.

Sam looked around, taking in the machines, the flowers. “She doesn't look so bad, dude.”

“You don't think so?”

“No. She looks like she could wake up any time now. They just need to get rid of that monster tube and all that tape. That's some freaky shit.”

“I know, right?”

Sam sat down. I took out a folded wad of paper from my back pocket and unfolded it, smoothing out the creases. It was a story I'd written a few years before, a funny one about a hobby chicken farmer who loses his farm to a tornado but manages to save all the baby chicks. Bringing the story and reading it aloud to my mother was Sam's idea. He said it would be better than sitting around in silence like a couple of monks.

I started to read aloud, my eyes darting to my mother's face during each pause, and I read the whole twelve-page story, the room around me gradually retreating as I was drawn into the hobby farmer's trouble. The tornado came, the farmer saved what he could save, and when it was over he had a box of chickadees in his arms, chirping away.

When I looked up from the last line, Sam was watching the heart rate monitor with wide eyes.

“Her heart line changed. It blipped during the funny parts.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

I folded the pages back up and stuffed the story back into my pocket. We watched my mother, wondering.

On Day Five everybody knew the score. Mom's kidneys were failing, her liver was failing, and her heart was weakening. The long siege that had started with a spot of cancer on her lung was winding down and it was up to us to see it mercifully ended. Our entire immediate family, except for the little kids, met with Mom's doctor to discuss taking her off the respirator and letting nature run its course.

We met in a rectangular room that could have been a corporate boardroom except for the overwhelming orange tang of hospital disinfectant and a porcelain washbasin at the far end of the room. We sat in comfortable, high backed leather chairs and stared balefully at the doctor, who'd taken one side of the long table all to himself. He recited the litany of Mom's ills, one by one, and we listened as the list piled up like shovelfuls of dirt all around us.

I felt split by two ideas at once, one rational and the other not:

Mom could no longer go on living.

Mom could not die. Not now, not at thirty-seven.

The two ideas waged war inside my mind, equally powerful, and I understood for the first time what schizophrenia might feel like. I leaned back and gazed at the ceiling, trying to think of nothing. The doctor finished his speech by recommending that we take my mother off artificial respiration and let nature play out while keeping her fully, mercifully sedated. The room was silent for a while. One of my uncles raised his hand, as if he were in school, and asked a question about the sedation. He was stalling, filling the silence. The doctor replied, in excessive detail, and the room went quiet again.

“I want everyone to be on board with this,” the doctor said. “I'd like a formal vote, please.”

So we went round, one by one, and voted to take Mom off artificial respiration. The only person who voted no was Haylee, who'd started crying.

“She can come back,” Haylee said, looking at the rest of us, looking at me. “She can, you guys. She can.”

“Honey, it's best this way,” Dad said, touching Haylee's arm. “She's been in so much pain.”

“No. I don't want to let her go.”

My sister wiped her nose with the sleeve of her shirt. Her eyes were bright and feral, like a cornered animal's. She stared us all down like she'd blink us out of existence if she had the power. Like if only we'd believe.

Part Two

The Emergency Lunch

I
felt oddly disconnected as Sam, Katrina, and I watched the commotion from the high school parking lot. My little bathroom fire had definitely got the attention of the authorities—fire trucks, cop cars, and ambulances showed up to Hickson High while everybody stood outside watching in soggy semi-formal wear—but it didn't really provide the thrill I'd been expecting. It was fun for about ten minutes, like a fire drill, but I knew they weren't going to find anything worse than a scorched trash bin.

No. This wasn't exactly
Carrie
. This was amateur hour, really, nothing compared to the fierce wall of fire I'd started at Ox Haggerton's. The firebug had barely gone thumpity when I'd started the trash bin fire and he'd gone back to sleep as soon as the authorities had shown up. He knew pale fire when he saw it.

Something had shifted.

The firebug and I needed more.

When I got home Dad was sitting on the couch, frowning at the TV.

“Mack.”

“Father.”

“I'm sure you know all about your sister's fight at the dance.”

“I heard reports.”

“Haylee's having trouble, Mack. Real trouble. She could be suspended.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

My father muted the TV and turned his full attention on me. “You're all wet.”

“Yeah. Somebody tried to smoke in the school bathroom or something. The sprinklers went off. It was crazy.”

Dad stared at me for a long time. Then he said, “We're going out for an emergency lunch tomorrow, bucko. The whole family.”

“An emergency lunch?”

“You heard me.”

“I did. It just sounded a little crazy.”

We stared at each other some more. I could tell Dad was pretty pissed, so I decided to cut my losses and call it a night.

“Okay. Lunch it is.”

I went up to my room and got out of my soggy clothes. The usual post-burn emptiness came over me, with the accompanying self-loathing. If I couldn't control myself, how could I expect my kid sister control herself? Shit. How could I even expect to graduate before I accumulated some serious felony charges?

I went into the bathroom and put my ear to the tiny door above the bathtub, but I couldn't hear anything.

Somehow the silence was worse than crying.

The next morning we took the van into Thorndale. Dad drove, I sat in the passenger seat, and Haylee sat in back, texting on her phone. Chompy lay wedged on the floor between van's front seats with his paws extended, sphinx-like, and drooled profoundly on the van's carpeting.

“Why's the beast along again?”

Dad gave Chompy a scritch on the head. Chompy nipped at his hand and continued drooling.

“He likes riding in the van. He finds it stimulating.”

“Yeah, that's what this dog needs. More stimulation.”

We came up on an old man driving a rusted pickup truck. Dad changed lanes and accelerated past the oldster, who was a wearing the obligatory camouflage baseball cap and blue denim shirt.

“Who was that?”

“Hell if I know. Your grandpa's the social butterfly, not me.”

“You get out,” I said. “You sell insurance.”

“I mostly supervise these days. Fieldwork is a young man's game. I have an office to run.”

Dad turned up the radio and started whistling along with Fleetwood Mac. He always whistled when he was nervous. He must have been a shitty poker player.

“So,” I said, glancing back at Haylee. “What happens at an emergency lunch? Are we all going to start a trust circle and share our feelings? Or is Haylee going to teach us bathroom self-defense?”

Dad scowled. “Don't act like that, Mack.”

“Act like what?”

“You know. Flip. Like everything's a joke.”

Chompy opened his maw and clamped down on my calf. When I didn't slap him away he gave it a few exploratory chews. I could feel his teeth through the fabric of my jeans, seeking purchase.

“I use humor as a defensive mechanism, Father. Humor is the shell that conceals the tender, meaty pistachio within me.”

Dad frowned. “You're full of crap is what you are. I think you like messing with people just to mess with people.”

I looked out the window at the passing woods. I knew every roadside billboard, every highway sign. I knew when the highway would dip and rise and dip again as we entered the outskirts of Thorndale. We'd driven this route hundreds of times together, though usually I'd been in the back seat reading a book. The enduring sameness of the drive was both comforting and wildly maddening. I wouldn't have minded seeing the entire route engulfed in flames, in smoke and dragon fire.

How much would such a fire take to start, exactly?

It hadn't rained in a long time.

“You're a good kid, Mack, but you think you're smarter than everybody else and that's not real appealing all the time. Most people don't give a dang how many books you've read. They just want you to be straight with them. You be straight with someone and they'll respect you for it.”

I reached down and rapped on Chompy's head. He released my leg and looked up, confused by the interruption.

“Stop chewing on me.”

The beast cocked his head.

“Lay down.”

The beast barked, waited, and returned to his slow gnawing. I reclined in resignation and looked out my window. Dad whistled off-key and Haylee maintained her silence in the back, rather sphinx-like herself.

We went to Serafina's, the best restaurant in Thorndale and our family's favorite. We sat in a vinyl booth by a window. Serafina herself came out to greet us, all smiles and Italian warmth.

“Well, well! What a handsome family we have here.”

Dad slid out of the booth, gave the restaurateur a hug, and stood with his arm around her, smiling. Serafina inspected Haylee and me, her smile fading as she focused on my sister. Stout and middle-aged, her dark hair pinned back, Serafina looked capable of heaving a barrel of wine onto her shoulder and hiking up the nearest rocky mountain.

“Mio dio
. You are so thin, Haylee.” Serafina glanced at Dad and clucked her tongue. “You need to feed this girl more, Peter. She's still growing. She needs meat on her bones.”

“I eat,” Haylee protested. “I eat a lot.”

Serafina nodded, still scanning my sister with her Italian lady radar. Dad's face went tight and he shifted on his feet, dropping his arm from Serafina's shoulders and letting it fall limp to his side. Serafina, noticing our collectively weird mood, announced they'd renovated the kitchen and invited Dad back to check it out. Suddenly Haylee and I were sitting in the booth alone, the table's tea light candles burning between us.

I tossed my menu aside and peered back toward the kitchen. “What do you think they're really doing in there?”

“Who cares.”

“I bet they're making out. Lots of heavy crotch petting. Lascivious ear licking.”

Haylee sighed and crossed her arms. “Fucking Madison Lambert.”

“You really smacked her good, huh?”

My sister glanced out the window at the restaurant's parking lot. Chompy, who was not allowed in fine Italian dining establishments, was sitting bolt upright in the van's passenger seat and watching us.

I reached toward one of the table's candles, sweeping my index finger through the flame. Swipe, swipe. It didn't hurt at all. It was nothing. Amateur hour.

“She called me a mommy orphan.”

“What?”

“Madison. She called me a sad little mommy orphan, so I hit her.”

No victorious smile from the Haystack. Not even a tiny, wry one. Just a deep, Russian-sounding sigh.

“You know what? As soon as I hit her, I thought about Mom. I knew that when I got home later, Mom wouldn't be around to talk about the fight. She wouldn't be on the couch, watching TV with a blanket on her lap and a box of Kleenex by her feet. We wouldn't have tea.”

“I loved having tea with Mom,” I said, forcing my hands to lie flat on the table. “She was good at having tea.”

Haylee blew her nose into her napkin. “She was. She was the fucking best at it.”

The candles flickered. I smelled garlic frying in the kitchen. Dad would be back soon, full of more false cheer and fluffy conversation, trying to make this domestic clusterfuck work out.

“Chompy really loves you, you know.”

More sniffles and nose-blowing. Haylee's eyes had grown damp and enormous, the flecks of green in each iris glowing in the candlelight.

“He does?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I had a talk with him. We agreed, actually. We both think you're pretty awesome and that Madison totally had it coming.”

Haylee looked out at the van. Chompy saw us watching him and whirled around in the passenger seat, pink tongue flying.

Finally, a little smile from Haystack.

Maybe the emergency lunch hadn't been such a dumb idea after all.