The Firebug of Balrog County (15 page)

Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

It's me again, that pesky firebug who's been running circles around the elected officials of Hickson!

First of all, can I say what a great October it's been so far?! Happy October, everybody! What a great month, right? A wondrous time for bonfires and leaf burning and the smell of wood smoke on the air ... sorry, there I go, getting all worked up again!

The reason I'm writing again is to clear up a point that's been nagging at me: No, we did not anticipate the scarecrow on Mrs. Klondike's lawn transforming itself into a burning cross. That surprised us as much as it must have shocked poor Mrs. Klondike!

So we're sorry about that. We in no way endorse racist behavior. Actually, we consider ourselves progressive, despite our caveman-like love of the flame, and want everyone to know that none of our actions are in any way politically motivated.

Yours in Christ,

The Firebug

P. S. And that recent fire at the landfill? Yeah, that was me,
[censored]
!

Robinson Park

S
o, what are you going to show me?” I asked.

“The coolest thing ever, that's what. Or at least it could be.”

“It has cool possibility?”

“A shitload of cool possibility.”

It was Wednesday. Katrina had texted me to meet at Robinson Park so here we were, rendezvousing like two spies in a noir movie. Before us lay a shadowland of playground equipment that consisted of a sandbox, an elaborate plastic jungle gym, a tetherball pole, a basketball court, and a swing set. Beyond the kiddy park, down a long grassy slope, was a full-sized baseball field, complete with aluminum bleachers, enclosed fence, and outfield scoreboard. Past the field's outfield wall were dense woods.

“My grandpa helped build this park,” I said. “He's the town mayor.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“So you're basically Hickson royalty.”

I stretched out my arm and put it around Katrina's shoulders. “Sure am, miss.”

She gave me a soft elbow to the ribs and shrugged off my arm. “C'mon.”

We walked into the park. We sat on the swings and started pumping our legs slowly, warming up. The swing's chains felt cold and lumpy in my fists.

“So you wanted to show me the playground in Robinson Park?”

“Close.” Katrina added some leg to her swing, pointing out her toes. “It's nice to be out of the house. My roommates are driving me crazy.”

“Yeah?”

“They're always trying to be so fucking cool. So hipster. One's a film major, one's a theater major, and one's a visual art major.”

“Jesus.”

“I know. Every house meeting is like a reality TV episode. I can't even keep track of who's pissed at who anymore and we've only lived together for, like, two months. It's ridiculous.”

I pumped my legs faster, gathering velocity. The swinging made me feel queasy but I still liked the lift. The sense that I could, at any moment, leap off and propel myself into space. Soon we both reached the zenith of the swings' height, really rocking it, and Katrina counted down from three as the swing set's metal frame creaked loudly, as if it might collapse at any moment.

At one, we both let go and flew forward. We hovered above the earth, weightless, and then we landed, thudding feet-first into the sand.

Katrina whooped and pumped her fist in the air. “Hell yeah. Did you feel that lift?”

“I did.”

“That lift is what my roommates don't get. They wouldn't have even got on those swings unless they were being ironic about it. Like they were cheesy characters in a rom-com or something.”

“You're saying they wouldn't be able to enjoy the swings as swings, per se. They would dismiss the inherent joy of simply flinging yourself across a sandpit.”

Katrina punched me in the shoulder. “Right! They'd be embarrassed by actually liking it.”

“They've lost touch with their inner child.”

“Exactly.” Katrina sighed and took my hand. “That's what I like about you, Mack. You're past all that fronting bullshit. You're so honest you're like a simpleton.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean it,” Katrina said, squeezing my hand. “You like fire, so you go out there and light some fires. You don't give a fuck what society says about that, or how much shit you could get into if you got caught. You listen to your heart.”

“Yes, but my heart may be insane.”

“Who gives a shit? You're not really hurting anyone, are you?”

I scratched my head with my free hand and tried to follow this reasoning. I'd never imagined lighting shit on fire to be admirable in any way—more like a furtive pleasure on par with masturbating in a movie theater.

Katrina led the way down the grassy slope to the baseball field. When we were behind the backstop, she let go of my hand and pressed up against the chain-link fencing. The field had a single streetlamp of its own.

“Check it out.”

I came up beside her and peered through the fence. A dark rectangular shape lay out in center field.

“What the hell is that?”

“That's the base of it. They're building a haunted castle for Halloween.”

“The city is?”

“Yep,” Katrina said, nodding and turning to me. “And guess what? They're making it out of straw bales. Straw bales piled two stories high.”

I licked my lips, squinting at the murky shape in center field. I reached out and grabbed a handful of chain-link. It felt real.

“Something like that would light up the whole night,” Katrina said. “One little match.”

I closed my eyes, imagining the profound glory of such a blaze.

“It's a setup,” I said. “My grandpa's trying to catch the county firebug. I bet this whole thing was his idea.”

“So? This is what you do, Mack. You're like me: a primal soul hell-bent on enjoying existence at its very source. We're artists. I build goth bird houses, you write stories and light shit on fire.”

I opened my eyes and surveyed the field.

She had me there.

The Trouble with Drinking

H
aylee seemed to do all right with
her first week of therapy an
d nobody gave her much shit at school, as far as I could tell. Dad, on the other hand, appeared thrown by the homecoming incident in a way that seemed vastly out of proportion to the event itself. I don't know if it was because of what he was discussing with Haylee's therapist, or if the fight had dredged up some sad stuff about Mom, but the man was seriously off-kilter. He didn't go to work, he didn't call Bonnie. He ate a lot of Captain Crunch and pizza, which was no long
er a special Friday treat but
our nightly meal, and he watched countless hours of PBS programming, keeping the volume so low that it felt as if the Devil were whispering sweet evils in your ear. This was not the Pete Druneswald I'd known my entire life: a steady, hardworking man who'd seen his beloved wife through five years of complicated ailments without losing hope.

By Thursday night I couldn't stand it anymore. “Dad,” I said, grabbing the remote and turning off the TV. “We're going out.”

“Mack, I don't feel—”

“I don't give a goddamn monkey how you feel. We're going out, and we're going to have fun.”

“What about your sister? We can't just leave her home alone.”

“She left twenty minutes ago. She's sleeping over at Staci's house.”

“What? On a school night?”

“You said she could. Like, at dinner.”

“Oh. I did?”

“Jesus, man. Shave that crappy beard and let's go.”

“Are you sure—”

“Rise, O Ancient One! Rise!”

Dad
spruced himself up, I put Chompy in his kennel, and we hit the highway in the van. I drove and Dad sat in the passenger seat, peering out his window. I turned left off Main Street and onto the four-lane highway, headed south. The sun had already set and creatures of the night were emerging.

Dad glanced at me. “We're not going to Thorndale?”

“No sir. That town's got too many haunts in it.”

“So … Dylan?”

“That's right, buddy.”

Dad grunted and turned back to his window. We turned onto a winding two-lane that led to Dylan. Trees crept toward the road and remained thick all the way into town, another fifteen miles of classic rock radio, slow moving pickup trucks, and the occasional bat fluttering across the road.

The road dipped and we descended into a wooded valley. Dylan, home to twelve thousand and change, lay spread out on the valley floor, brightly lit amid the dense, woodsy darkness. Night or day, Dylan was a surprisingly pretty and well-organized burg, especially by Balrog County standards. A sawmill was set on its northern edge, right off the highway, so the lumber trucks servicing the mill didn't need to drive through town. South of the mill sat two gas stations and three fast food joints, followed by a handful of bars and restaurants, with a few stores and a grocery outlet bringing up the rear. Residential homes, a K-12 school, and a town park covered the rest of the valley floor. The town's nicest homes, and some of the oldest, sat perched along the wooded valley ridge so their owners could look down on the commoners below. Mom had often joked that she'd move us to the Dylan hillside someday so she could send us off in the morning dressed like lumberjack royalty.

“Which glorious tavern shall it be, Father?”

“I don't care, Mack. You pick.”

“Ah, come on. Don't be like that.”

“All right. How about the Log Jam?”

“An excellent choice, sir.”

We pulled into the Log Jam's parking lot, which was crowded for a Thursday night, and parked between two mud-spattered pickup trucks. Smokers stood huddled in clumps of twos and threes outside the bar's entrance. I stood tall and fell into step beside my father, who was walking like a
condemned man across the parking lot, eyes fixed on the ground. I could feel the smokers watching us as we approached, scanning us for familiar features and finding us lacking, outsiders on their Dylan turf, men not to be trusted. A sad middle-aged man and his goofy string-bean son.

The smokers parted for us, nodding politely enough as we passed. I nodded back, unable to decide if I should smile or if they'd see that as a sign of weakness. Dad opened the bar's front door and I followed him inside.

The Log Jam was warm, loud, and filled with a surprisingly large amount of youngish, attractive-ish ladies.

“Fuck yeah,” I said, slapping Dad on the back. “Watch out, Dylan. The motherfucking Druneswalds are in town.”

“Please, Mack,” Dad said. “We're in public.”

The best thing about Dylan was the bars in town never carded you, at least not if you were as tall as I was and accompanied by an adult. Dad and I sat at the bar like true drinking men. Like sailors on shore leave, or cassocks at happy hour. Looking around, it was clear that
the Log Jam's rugged décor made the Hickson Legion look like Pussyville, USA. The walls were covered by a delightful collection of circular saw blades, some as big as hay bales, and framed black-and-white photos of old-timey loggers doing their thing: bare-chested muscle men with curling mustaches chopping down trees, standing on top of fallen trees, and hauling trees with teams of horses. Life in Dylan had ap
parently involved an epic multigenerational war against the area forests.

“You know, I think Katrina would love this place.”

Dad turned on his stool. “Who's Katrina?”

“Ah … she's this girl I've been seeing.”

“Dating?”

I scratched my head. “Not exactly. I just see her from time to time, around town. When that happens, we hang out. Usually.”

“Well, wear a condom.”

“Dad—”

“Your mother had the sex talk with you, right? She said she did.”

I laughed and took a sip of my whiskey neat. Dad was nursing one sad little bottle of lite beer.

“Yeah, Dad. We got that all settled, like, ten years ago.”

“Good. I've got my hands full enough with your sister right now without adding some unexpected teen pregnancy to the mix.”

“You got it, Pops. I'll lay off the baby-making.”

A lady shrieked loudly at the back of the bar, having a good time. The room had grown louder in the short time we'd been sitting at the bar. It was only seven o'clock, but I figured Dylan was the sort of burg where the weekday carousing peaked by ten. You didn't want to show up to work at a sawmill too hung over, not if you valued your fingers and limbs.

The waitress swooped by with two beers and two shots of whiskey, though we hadn't ordered another round yet. “Thanks,” I said, cutting Dad off before he could protest the extra drinks. I nudged a whiskey into his hand and held up my own.

“I'd like to propose a toast.”

Dad eyed the whiskey.

“C'mon, man. Don't leave me hanging.”

Dad picked up the shot and held it tentatively in the air.

“To Haylee standing up for herself,” I said.

Dad frowned. “No, Mack. To Haylee finding peace.”

We clinked glasses. Dad threw his whiskey back like an old pro and I choked on mine in a rather uncool fashion.

“That's good,” I said, sputtering. “That must be the good stuff.”

“That was shit,” Dad said. “Well whiskey.”

“Really? I liked it.”

Dad sipped his second beer and looked up at the ceiling. “Well, Mack. If your mother only saw us now.”

I looked around the room, as if my mother could be hiding behind one of the burly locals. Stowed away in their shaggy beards, perhaps, made small and pocket-sized by death.

“This isn't so bad, is it?”

“I don't know, kid. You tell me.”

“We're all still together. She'd like that. And Haylee's going to be fine. We'll get her all therapied up and she'll be as good as new. And we've got a dog now, too. Good ol' Chompy.”

“I thought you hated that dog.”

I drummed on the bar. “Just sort of. He can fucking hunt some pheasants, anyway. You should have seen
that beast out with us, running hither and yon. Even Grandpa Hedley was impressed.”

Dad took another sip of his beer. He'd begun to hunch over the bar, like a pill bug curling inward.

“The old codger blames me, you know.”

“For what?”

“For her dying.”

“What?”

“I was supposed to take care of her. His baby girl.”

“But it was cancer—”

“Doesn't matter. It's not a rational thing, Mack. I married his daughter and she died on my watch. That's all he cares about.”

I drank my beer and tried to summon a counter argument.

“We had an unspoken contract,” Dad said, taking a long sip of his beer. “A gentleman's agreement.”

The evening softened as we settled into some serious drinking. Time passed in waves, speeding up and slowing down for no apparent reason. Locals joined us at the bar, their outsider-related shyness melting with each passing round. I found myself saying, “You know, I think Hickson is actually a town on the rise,” and ridiculous shit like that while the Dylanites told us stories about union strikes, horrific chainsaw accidents, and rogue logs breaking free and crushing men from the waist down—it was as if we'd stumbled into an old Bruce Springsteen song.

Then it was two a.m. and I was driving the van down a foggy highway. Dad was in the passenger seat, conked out. “We're going home,” I announced to no one in particular. The highway had two lanes and was lined with trees. It would … connect us to the four-lane, which would … lead us back to Hickson.

Dad started to snore.

A Rush song came on the radio and I sang along, feeling fine.

A blur shot onto the highway, twenty yards distant. I screamed like a girl and slammed on the brakes, throwing the minivan into a hard spin. Something thumped off the van, I screamed some more, and the van came to a rocking stop.

Dad stared out the windshield in dazed shock. I turned down the radio.

“You okay?”

Dad grunted and fumbled with his seat belt, his arms T-Rex clumsy.

“Deer,” I said. “Came out of nowhere.”

More fumbling and Dad finally got himself unbuckled. He opened his passenger door and flung himself out, landing hard on the road.

“Je
sus,” I said, unbuckling myself. My entire body was vibrating. I opened my door and stumbled out of the van, using the door to steady myself. The van itself didn't look so bad—some crumpling along the hood. A big
dent.

“Dad?”

My father was standing on the edge of the highway ditch, looking down. He was lit up by the van's headlights like an actor on stage. I commanded my legs not to buckle and staggered to his side. A brown, furred creature lay at the bottom of the ditch, partially obscured beneath a screen of fog. It looked unbloodied, yet was twisted at an unnatural angle.

“Shit, Mack,” Dad said. “It was a doe.”

I stumbled into the foggy ditch and knelt beside the deer. It had four white spots on its side and two more on its flank. I touched its side. It wasn't breathing, but it was still warm.

I heard my father's footsteps crunching up on the road.

“All right,” he shouted. “I'm driving.”