The Fireman (25 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

14

There were too many people in the ward. Carol and Harper squeezed through a crowd that included Allie and the Neighbors girls and Michael and a few other Lookouts. Some of them were holding hands. Mike had stripped to the waist and a red slick—blood and sweat—glistened on his chest. With his head bowed and his eyes closed and his lips moving in silent prayer, he looked like an Age of Aquarius seeker in a sweat lodge. A girl sat on the floor hugging her knees to her chest and sobbing helplessly.

Candles crowded the counters and bristled around the sink, yet the room was still only dimly lit. Tom Storey was stretched out in one of the camp beds. In the shadows he could’ve been a discarded overcoat lying on top of the sheets. Don Lewiston stood at the head of the cot.

“Young people,” Harper said, as if she were decades older than Allie and Michael, and not a twenty-six-year-old who had finished school only four years ago. “Thank you. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done.” She had no idea if they had done anything, but it didn’t matter. It would be easier to steer them if they felt their important contributions had been recognized, if they believed they had made all the difference. “I have to ask everyone to leave now. We need air and quiet in this room.”

Allie had been crying. Her cheeks were flushed, but hot white lines traced the passage of tears. Her Captain America mask, grimy and battered, hung around her neck. She gave Harper a small, frightened nod and squeezed Michael’s hand. The two of them began to herd the others back into the waiting room, all without speaking.

Harper caught Michael’s upper arm, drew him back. In a low voice she said, “Take Carol, too. Please. Tell her you want to sing with her. Tell her Nick is upset and needs his aunt. Tell her whatever you like, but
get her out of this room
. She can’t be in here.”

Michael moved his head in the slightest gesture of assent, then called back, “Miss Carol? Will you come sing with us? Will you help us sing for Father Storey?”

“No,” Carol said. “I need to be with my father now. He needs me. I want him to know I’m here.”

“He will,” Michael said. “We’ll sing together and call him to the Bright with us. If you want him to feel you close, that’s how to do it. If you draw him into the Bright, he’ll know you’re with him, and he won’t be scared or in pain. Nothing hurts there. It’s the one thing we can do for him now.”

Carol trembled in nervous bursts. Harper wondered if she was in shock.

“Yes. Yes, Michael, I think you’re right. I think—”

Father Storey called out to them, in a voice that was good-humored but strained, as if he had been talking for a long time and his throat was worn out.

“Oh, Carol! When you sing I feel so in love with you my heart could crack.” He laughed, sarcastic, un-Tom-like laughter. “After that last song, my heart is cracked just like a window! And a good thing, too! It’s hard to see anything through stained glass.”

Carol stood transfixed, staring toward him, a fixed look of pain and astonishment on her face, as if someone had stuck a knife into her.

Don Lewiston cupped Father Storey’s skull, holding white cotton padding to his wound. Michael’s shirt was wadded up on the pillow, the flannel already stiffening with blood.

Father Storey’s eyes were open wide, each one looking in a different direction. One stared down and to the left. The other was pointed at the toes of his boots. He smiled with a certain low cunning.

“A thousand prayers every minute everywhere and what does God ever say back? Nothing! Because silence never lies. Silence is God’s final advantage. Silence is the purest form of harmony. Everyone ought to try it. Put a stone in your mouth instead of a lie. Put a rock on your tongue instead of gossip. Bury the liars and the wicked under stones until they say no more. More weight, hallelujah.” He took another little sip of air, and then whispered, “The devil is loose. I saw him tonight. I saw him come from the smoke. Then my head caved in and now it’s full of rocks. More weight, amen! Better watch out, Carol. This camp belongs to the devil, not to you. And he isn’t alone, either. Many serve him.”

Carol stared at her father with a horror-struck fascination. Father Storey licked his lips.

“I brought this on myself. I called weakness kindness and told lies when I should’ve kept a stone in my mouth. I did the worst thing a father can do. I had a favorite. I am so sorry, Carol. Please forgive me. I always loved Sarah best. It is right and proper that I should go to her now. Give me another stone. More weight. I’ve said enough, amen.”

He exhaled a long, dreamy breath and was silent.

Harper caught Carol’s eye. “He doesn’t mean it. He’s suffering from a subdural hematoma. If he’s talking nonsense, it’s because of the pressure on his brain.”

Carol looked back at her with a strange lack of recognition, as if they had never met before. “It isn’t nonsense. It’s a revelation! He’s doing what he’s always done. He’s showing us the way.” Carol reached out, blindly grasping backward, and took Michael’s hand. She squeezed his fingers. “We’ll sing. We’ll sing and call him to the Bright. We’ll give him all the light he needs to find his way back to us. And if he can’t come back to us—if he has to go—” Her voice choked. She coughed, and her shoulders shook spasmodically, and she went on: “—if he has to go, he’ll have our song to guide him and give him comfort.”

“Yes,” Harper said. “I think that’s just right. Go and sing for him now. He needs your strength. And sing for me, because I need your strength, too. I’m going to try and help him, but I’m scared. It would mean the world to me if you could raise your voices for both of us.”

Carol gave her a last, wondering look, then stood on her tiptoes and kissed her on the cheek. It was perhaps the last kindness she ever showed Harper. A moment later she brushed through the curtain and was gone, taking the others with her.

Don Lewiston was getting ready to walk out, too, pulling his sleeves down to button them.

“Not you, Don,” Harper said. “You stay. I’ll need you.”

She circled behind the cot, taking Don Lewiston’s place behind Father Storey’s head. She gently lifted his skull in both hands. His silver hair was drenched in blood. She could feel the place behind his right ear where he had been struck, a warm wet lump, and another place, higher up, where there might’ve been a second blow.

“How did this happen?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Don said. “I didn’t get the whole tale. Mikey carried him into the camp, found him fackin’ half-dead in the woods. I guess it was one of the convicts. That’s the early word. Ben is working on them right now.”

Working on them? What did that mean? Didn’t matter. Not now.

“And Father Storey couldn’t say anything about what happened?”

“Not that made sense. He said it was a judgment. He said it was what he had coming to him for protecting the wicked.”

“That’s the pressure on his brain. He doesn’t have any idea what he’s saying.”

“I know’t.”

She looked at Father Storey’s pupils, sniffed his lips, and caught an unsurprising whiff of vomit. She thought about what she had to do and felt nauseated herself. Not the notion of doing it—it had been a long time since she had been squeamish about blood—but at the thought of getting it wrong.

In the waiting room, she heard voices warming up, heard the Lookouts humming together, trying to find the same note.

“I need a razor to shave away the hair back here,” Harper said.

“Yes’m. I’ll get’cha one,” he said, and took a step toward the door.

“Don?”

“Yes’m?”

“Can you get your hands on a drill? Maybe from the wood shop? A power drill would be ideal, but I don’t imagine you’ll find one that has any charge. I’ll settle for one I can crank by hand.”

Don looked from her to Tom Storey—his white hair shampooed in red froth—and back.

“Oh, Jesus. Anything else?”

“Just hot water to sterilize the drill bit, please. Thank you.”

When he didn’t reply, she looked up to tell him that was all and that he should go, but he was already gone.

In the next room they began to sing.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

15

Harper wiped Father Storey’s face clean with a cool, damp kitchen towel, taking off soot and blood in long swaths to reveal the lean, curiously lupine face beneath. Now and then his left eye would well with another drop of blood. It would trickle down into his ear and she would wipe him clean again.

He seemed attentive, listening to the voices in the next room. They were singing the same song Harper had heard the night she first came to camp. They sang they were one blood and they sang they were one life. Harper was sure she would not be drawn into the Bright herself—she could not afford to drift away into that shimmering brilliance, where everything was easier and better. Her place was here, with the dying man. She wondered, though, if Father Storey might not be carried away, and if it might not be a real help to him after all, a replacement for the sedatives and the plasma she didn’t have.

His Dragonscale, though, remained cold, dark swirls and scrawls on his old, loose flesh.

“God is a good story,” he told her, all of a sudden. “I like that one and I also like frying pan and Wendy. We read that one together, Sarah, when you were little.”

In her mind’s eye, Harper glimpsed a serene, lovely face shaped in flame. She squeezed his hand.

“I’m not Sarah, Father Storey,” Harper said. “I’m your friend, Nurse Willowes.”

“Good. Nurse Willowes, I have a private medical blather to insult you with. I’m afraid someone has been playing us like a ukulele. Someone has been singing new words to old songs. It’s important to act now. These savings won’t last.”

She said, “First we have to fix your head. Then we can worry about the thief.”

“I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains,” he said. “Anyway stones taste better. I think I hit my head on something and knocked my shadow off. Are you going to stick it back on, or did it get away?”

“All I need is a little needle and thread and we’ll have you right as rain.”

“Or at least right in my brain,” he said. “I’m going down the drain. You know my little Sarah was an awful thief, too. She stole away from—stole away from all of us. Even the Fireman. Poor John Rookwood. He tried not to kill her. I guess he’s going to try not to kill you now. Probably he’s in love with you, which is tough luck. Out of the frying pan and into the Fireman.”

“Of course he tried not to kill her, Father Storey. He
didn’t
kill her. I heard he wasn’t even on the island when Sarah—”

“Oh! No. Of course not. He was an innocent grandstander. So was Nick. You can’t blame the boy. They were both her unwilling accomplices. What she couldn’t get from one she got from the other. She was a very accompliced woman. I know John blames himself, but he shouldn’t. He’s been incinerated for a crime he didn’t commit. The bride died and we all cried. Not that they were married. They never would’ve married. All Firemen are wedded to cinders, in the end. You ever ear that old hopscotch? John and Sarah, sitting in a tree, B-U-R-N-I-N-G.” He paused, then his left eye fixed on something beyond her shoulder. “There’s my shadow! Quick! Stitch it back on.”

She looked. A dark form bobbed its head on the other side of the green curtain between the ward and the waiting room. Don Lewiston pushed through it, holding a steel pail of steaming water in one hand and a paper bag in the other.

“H’ain’t gonna believe our fackin’ luck,” Don said. “I came up with a fackin’ power drill, battery in it, still good. There’s a old cuss what pull’t in camp this week, had it in his pickup. I got the bit in the hot water right now.”

“Do you have a razor? Scissors?”

“Yes’m.”

“Good. Come over here. Father Storey? Tom?”

Tom Storey said, “Missed will owes?”

“Tom, I’m just going to give you a nice little haircut. Bear with me.”

“What kind of beer? I’m not shally much a drinker but I ad go fuh a beer. I’m sull shirty.”

Don Lewiston said, “You followin’ any a this?”

“Don, I hardly follow you most of the time. Lift his head.”

In the next room the song ended on a last deep note of harmony. Carol murmured to her small attentive flock. Carol and her faithful were deep in the Bright now, casting enough light to make the green curtain in the doorway glow an irradiated shade of lime.

Don held Father Storey’s head between his crooked fingers while Harper clipped hunks of bloody hair away from the spot behind his ear where he had been struck. The scalp beneath was purplish-black, like eggplant.

In the waiting room their voices rose again. The Beatles now. The sun was coming, the long, lonely winter was over.

Father Storey stiffened and began to kick his heels.

“He’s having a grand mal,” she said.

“He’s goin’ t’choke on his tongue,” said Don Lewiston.

“Anatomically impossible.”

“We’re losin’ him.”

Yes, Harper thought. If this wasn’t a final convulsion, it was close to it. Foam dribbled from the corner of his mouth. His left hand grabbed fistfuls of the sheets, let them go, grabbed again. He couldn’t do anything with the right hand. Harper was holding his right wrist, monitoring his erratic, racing pulse.

The song in the next room rose to a high, sweet, perfect note and Father Storey’s eyes sprang open again and his irises were rings of gold light.

His back had been arched right off the mattress, so only his head and heels touched, but now he relaxed onto his bedsheets. His heartbeat began to slow. Squiggles of dull red light pulsed in his Dragonscale, faded, pulsed again.

He almost seemed to smile, the corners of his mouth rising just slightly, and his eyelids sank shut.

“He’s out,” Don said. “B’God, it helped. They sang him outta the worst of it.”

“Yes, I think they did. Put the bit in for me, will you, Don?”

“Are we doin’ this?”

“He doesn’t have much strength left. If it’s not now, there won’t be another chance later.”

She shaved the rest of the hair off the back of Father Storey’s head, to reveal the outraged flesh. It was no good giving herself time to think. It wouldn’t help to dwell on maybe killing him, or lobotomizing him, slipping and driving the drill in deep enough to throw curds of brain.

Don stuck his hand in the nearly boiling water without any sign of distress—Harper thought those hands were just slightly more sensitive than a pair of canvas gloves—and brought up the dripping bit. He clicked it into a Black & Decker power drill straight from Home Depot and gave the trigger a squeeze. It whirred to life with a sound that made her think of eggbeaters and cake frosting.

He looked at the blackening bruise on Father Storey’s scalp and swallowed.

“You aren’t goin’ ta ask me—” he began, then caught himself, and swallowed again. “I don’t know how many fish I’ve put an end to, gutted and cleaned, but—a person—
Tommy
—I don’t think I can—”

“No. I won’t ask you to do it. It better be me, Mr. Lewiston.”

“ ’Course. You’ve done’t before.”

It was not quite a question, the way he put it, and she didn’t think he required an answer. She held out her hand for the drill. The bit steamed.

“I will need you to hold his head. Do not let it move in any way while I’m operating, Mr. Lewiston,” she said, in a tone of cold command that hardly seemed identifiable as her own voice.

“Yes’m.”

He spidered his fingers over Father Storey’s head, lifting it off the pillow.

She examined the drill, found the dial that controlled the power settings, and turned it up as far as it would go. She gave the trigger a test squeeze. It startled her, the bit spinning up to a chrome blur, the vibration shooting down her arm.

“I wish we had better fackin’ light,” Don said.

“I wish we had a better fackin’ doctor,” she said and bent and located the tip of the drill two inches to one side of Father Storey’s right ear, where the bruise was ugliest.

She pressed the trigger.

The bit chewed up the thin layer of skin in an instant, turning it to what looked like flakes of wet cooked oatmeal. The bone smoked and whined as the drill worked down into it. She applied pressure slowly, determinedly. Sweat sprang up on her face but Don was occupied holding the head still and she could not ask him to wipe her brow. A single drop of sweat caught in an eyelash and when she blinked, the eye began to burn.

Blood welled from the hole in the skull and raced up the grooves of the bit. She thought, obscenely, of a child sucking red Kool-Aid up through a Krazy Straw.

Without opening his eyes, Father Storey said, “Better, Harper. Thank you.”

Then he was silent, and he did not speak again for two months.