The Firebug of Balrog County (5 page)

The Legion

T
he Hick
son Legion was two miles north of town. Like many other American Legions across the United States, it served a multi-functional purpose: it provided a headquarters for Legion members, a dance hall Hicksonites rented for weddings and other events, and, best of all, it featured a dimly lit bar where you could get a cold beer without worrying about some damn commie trying to stab you in the b
ack.

I'd been to the Legion before, but I'd never hung out in the bar. The bar's lights were covered by emerald glass shades, the kind you normally saw on banker's lamps, and they cast an ominous pall over the room, as if everyone who drank there had a touch of jaundice. The wooden floor was covered in an ancient, sticky film of spilt beer and the walls were lined with the mounted heads of deer, elk, moose, and one pissed
-
looking bear. Three enormous flags—American, Legion, and POW—hung on the wall in heavy glass frames.

When I entered the bar, five or six steely-eyed old guys turned on their stools to examine me. The bartender was
a slim, fifty
-
ish dude with a salt
-
and
-
pepper beard, thick black glasses, and a salt
-
and
-
pepper ponytail. He would have made a good 1950s Beat
nik.

“You Mack?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You really eighteen?”

“Yes, sir.”

He waved me over.

“Come on back. I'm Butch.”

Butch turned out to be a good guy, totally mellow with a rumbly bullfrog's voice. He started me on washing beer mugs (the dishwasher was broken) and went back to chatting with the old guys sitting at the bar. The sink's warm, sudsy water felt good on my hands and I dove into the work, really washing the hell out of those mugs, and when I looked up from the sink over an hour had passed and the place had started to get busy. Not packed, but busy. More men had shown up, old and not so old, and some had brought their wives and girlfrie
nds.

I asked Butch about the crowd and he told me karaoke started at eight.

“Really?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do I get hazard pay for this shit?”

Butch rubbed his stubbly cheek with the flat of his hand and surveyed the crowd.

“Nope. But they tip pretty good.”

As far as karaoke systems went, the Legion had sprung for a nice setup. The singer stood on a small raised pl
atform in the corner of the bar, where a karaoke stand was set
up with two microphones and a TV monitor, which acted as a teleprompter for the singer. The stand was wired into a big computer-looking deck
,
which an orange-haired lady named Judy
operated
from across the room, programming the karaoke playlist from slips of paper given to her by the crowd. Three ceiling
-
mounted speakers cranked out the backing melodies for each song and two flat
-
screen monitors, also hung from the ceiling, displayed lyrics so the crowd could sing along themselves.

The
later it got, the more the crowd was into it, clapping and hooting and singing along to “Piano Man” and “Sweet Caroline” and all that rip-roaring cheesy shit. I helped Butch keep the beer flowing, whistling as I darted around. I got lost in the busy flow of a b
ar on a Friday night, a fl
ow I was in part responsible for maintaining, and it dawned on me that this gig wouldn't be so bad at all. The worst part of working at the hardware store was all the sitting around. You never forgot about the drag of time passing, how it pulled you under with every slow minute and stole a little bit more of your im
mortal soul.

You never forgot it was a job.

Lisa Sorenson's Inferno

B
utch let me off early and I drove back to town. Sam was waiting for me outside his grandmother's house, sitting hunched over on the stoop. He didn't move when I pulled up, so I laid on the horn and Sam jumped to his feet like he'd been zapped.

“Jesus,” Sam said as he got in, slamming the passenger door. “You probably woke the whole neighborhood.”

“Do you really care about this neighborhood and its sleeping?”

“No.”

“All right then.” I honked the car's horn again and peeled the hell out of there.

Sam scowled and peered at the Old
s'
dashboard, looking very Orson Welles-ish in the electric white light, the deeper pockets of his face cast in shadow.

“Oh, I get it,” I said. “You're worried about me waking your old lady. Your very, very old lady.”

Sam snorted and looked out his window, smiling despite himself. We passed the trailer court and headed south on the highway.

“So, how was the Legion? You pick up any cougars?”

“Not yet, but I remain hopeful.”

“That's good. Hope is good. Hope will save us all.”

I nodded, unable to tell if Sam was serious or not. It was always hard to tell with him. One minute he could be cracking wise, the next he'd start ranting about how the human race was growing water
-
soft and how it was inevitable that we'd all be wiped out sooner or later. Sam's parents had died in a car accident with
a
semi-truck when he was ten years old and he was still broken up about the whole thing, even if he never talked about it. Sometimes we drove to Thorndale to visit the sports bars and play Big Buck Hunter until the waitresses kicked us out. Watching Sam expertly kill digital bucks with a plastic orange shotgun was a magnificent thing to behold, even if he never wanted to go hunting in real life.

I turned left at a lit-up Jesus billboard. Two miles later, we came upon dozens of cars parked along both sides of the road. I slowed the Olds down and we checked out the scene, noting the well-lit house a half-mile off the road and the lurching, vaguely humanoid forms in the distance. When we reached the end of the parked cars, I added the Olds to the lineup and killed the engine.

Sam rubbed his eyes and made an “urrrrrrrrrrrr” noise. I pressed the knob that turned off the car's headlights and dropped us into countryside dark.

“Second thoughts, Sammy boy?”

Sam slumped against the passenger window. “I don't know, dude. I'm not so good at this type of shit.”

I sat back. The roof's fabric was sagging so close to my face I could have licked it. “Once you get drunk enough, every party's the same,” I said. “There's the loud stupid guys and the loud stupid girls and after a couple of beers everybody's best friends.”

Sam straightened.
“That's true.”

“Trust me,” I said, opening my door. “Four beers in and showing up will seem like the best decision we've ever made.”

I got out of the car before Sam could say anything else. What was needed here was motion, the sort of continuous momentum that allowed bookish wallflower dudes like us to venture out into the night and enjoy the company of our fellow man, not to mention college girls. We needed to stop thinking—we already thought too much, by the minute, and it was burning our circuits out.

Sam got out, slammed his door, and staggered out of the ditch and onto the road. Cars were wedged into Lisa Sorenson's driveway like Tetris blocks. We could hear voices in the dark, girls laughing. Party people were clustered in groups of four or five all around the front of the house, smoking cigarettes and blowing smoke into the air.

Inside the house, we were bombarded immediately with hot, sweaty air and loud country music. About thirty people were crammed into the living room, shouting at each other and drinking from red plastic cups. Lisa Sorenson, a big, bubbly girl who liked everybody, stood in the middle of
the
room, holding court. When she saw Sam and me standing in the entryway, her whole face lit up and she came bounding over.

“Oh my God! Mack and Sam!”

Lisa gave me a sweaty hug before I could defend myself. Sam, who wasn't a big hugger, took several steps back and held up his hands in placation. Lisa laughed and wiggled her fingers at him.

“I can't believe you guys came! You never show up at anything.”

I hooked a thumb toward Sam. “It was his idea. Sam cannot stop himself from partying.”

Lisa smiled and nodded. “Awesome! I'm so glad you made it.”

I smiled and glanced at Sam, who was glowering at everyone.

“So, like, the keg's out back,” Lisa said, holding up her red plastic cup. “There's a bonfire, too. Huge one.”

The firebug perked up and sniffed the air, sensing smoke.

“Sweet,” I said. “We'll go check that out.”

“Cool beans,” Lisa said, nodding again. “Then come back
and dance, you guys. We're just getting started!”

Somebody in the living room whooped, setting off a round of copycat whoops. Sam and I pushed forward into the crowd, using the noise as cover, and dodged our way through the living room, past the kitchen, and out the back door. Outside, it was quiet again. To our right,
just
off the back steps, sat a full-sized keg and two plastic coolers. In
the distance was the promised bonfire, surrounded by a ring of people.

“Look at that keg,” Sam said, pushing his way past me. “It's like a giant silver grenade begging to be fallen on.”

I nodded, fixated on the fire. The roaring blaze amid the cold night. The light out of the dark.

A plastic cup appeared in my hand, filled with beer. Sam also had a beer and was smiling for the first time that night. “Here's to liquid courage,” he said. “May it guide us faithfully on this cold fucking
night.”

“Here, here.”

Sam chugged his beer
. He b
elched and wiped his mouth.

“Damn, Mack. That's good stuff.”

I could feel the heat of the bonfire on my face as we approached it. I closed my eyes, enjoying the dancing red light as viewed through my eyelids.

“Fuck!”

Cold beer splashed my face and ran down the front of my coat. I opened my eyes and saw a girl outlined by the fire—a short girl with dark hair. Her mouth gaped as she looked at me, trying to process my idiocy and turn it into words.

It was the Pale Girl.

“Sorry,” I said, whisking the spilt beer off my coat. “I didn't see you.”

“No shit,” the Pale Girl said, flicking her hair back over her shoulder. “You walked right into me. Like a freaking zombie.”

“And your beer.”

“Right. You zombied that, too.”

Sam laughed from behind me. The Pale Girl looked even prettier in the firelight than she had in the hardware store, her skin extra pale and angelic, her high leather boots more kick
-
ass. I could feel my fight or flight instincts kicking in, threatening to take over and fuck the situation up worse.

The Pale Girl's forehead scrunched together.
“You're the hardware store guy, aren't you?”

“Yep. I'm Mack. Mackity Mack.”

“Well, Mack, I'm Katrina—”

“Mack-Attack, Big Mack, Mack-a-Lack, Whack-a-
Mack
…
”

Oh, Jesus. I was babbling.

“Sorry,” I said, trying to shift gears. “You're Katrina. You bought some Vermont American plain
-
end scroll
-
saw blades, used primarily for intricate wood carving projects such as the construction of doll houses or Christmas mangers.”

Katrina laughed.
“Holy shit, Mack-Attack. You know your hardware.”

“It's my job.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, at least ten hours a week. I also work at the Legion slinging brew.”

Somebody shouted at us from Lisa's house. They'd propped open the back door and you could hear the music booming inside, leaking out into the night like a poisonous audio fog. I could feel Sam watching us, waiting to see what foolishness I'd come up with next.

Katrina looked longingly at her beer cup.

“Here,” I said, holding out my cup. “Have mine.”

“Your beer?”

“I only took one sip. I'm not sick.”

Sam coughed and muttered something that sounded like “herpes
.
” Katrina took the cup from me, drai
ned it
in one impressive swallow
, an
d handed it back. “Thanks, Mack-Attack. Who's your buddy?”

Sam stepped forward.

“That's Sam. He hates people.”

“You do?”

Sam nodded. “Most of them.”

“I hear that,” Katrina said, turning and looking back at the bonfire. “Just look at all these preppy assholes enjoying themselves. How dare they?”
She
pushed her hair back and sighed. “Right now a child is starving to death somewhere, I bet. Probably getting raped, too. Getting raped
while starving to death.”

Sam and I looked at each other.

“Okay,” Katrina said, burping into her fist. “Talk to you later, Mack-Attack.”

“All right,” I said, looking into my empty cup. “See you, Katrina.”

Katrina swept by me, leaving a faint smell of bonfire in her wake. Sam drank his beer as we watched her go.

“Well, Whack-a-Mack, at least you didn't drop your pants and wave your penis around.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Probably too cold for that.”

We reloaded on beer, found two stumps amid the gathered crowd, and hunkered down close to the bonfire. Whoever had made the fire knew their shit—they'd started with a log cabin frame of firewood, right in the middle of the pit, and it was now the luminous core of a properly roaring fire. The heat was intense enough that everybody had taken their coats off, lending a summertime vibe to the scene, like a beach party in California.

Sam and I drank and eyed the crowd around us. I didn't recognize many people.

“Just look at all these fancy college kids,” Sam said. “Slumming it with us local yokels.”

A girl across the bonfire raised her hands in the air and whooped. It was turning out to be a big night for whooping.

“O Sammy Boy,” I said, “the flames the flames are burning.”

An ember popped and we stared into the fire. Party talk buzzed around us, loud and incomprehensible, like background noise in a movie. I thought about Sam living with his grandmother, what it must
be
like to go through your teens with a septuagenarian as your only trusted source of adult council.

Sam picked up a handful of twigs and tossed them in
to
the fire. I felt an urge to whoop and dance wildly around it.

“You know, Katrina's probably one of the college girls.”

“I figured,” I said, sipping my beer. “She's out here slumming it with the rest of them. Patronizing our hardware stores and bonfire parties. Making the local girls jealous.”

Sam shifted on his tree stump and listed to the right.

“That means she'll leave,” he said. “End of this semester, maybe the end of next. Whenever she gets bored or graduates.”

“Yep.”

The wind picked up, whipping the fire around and sending sparks sailing into the dark sky. The countryside crickets were singing. They sounded the same as the crickets at Teddy Gile
s'
boat shack, the same as the crickets I'd grown up with chirping below my bedroom window. The whole county was filled with these crickets, the backyards and the forests and the fields and the wetlands. We had enough crickets, mosquitoes, and deer for everybody.

Sam stood and swayed like a tree in the wind. “I'm going to get another beer. You want one?”

The back of my hands began to itch. I wanted to extract a flaming branch from the fire and run back into Lisa Sorenson's house, whooping madly as I torched her entire backwoods McMansion and sent my drooling classmates scrambling into the night.

But that would be wrong. That would be evil, evil, evil.

Ahhhhhh.

Evil.

“Sure,” I said, killing my beer. “Why the hell not?”