The Fireman (43 page)

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

5

Harper needed to clear her head, needed to do some quality thinking, so she walked out of the infirmary into the bitter chill. No one stopped her. They were all in the chapel together. Harper could hear them singing, could see their mystery lights flickering around the edges of the closed red doors.

The funny thing was that they were all singing “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” which didn’t seem like the kind of rag they’d go for in chapel. Almost everyone in the congregation had seen someone they loved devoured by fire, lived in fear of burning themselves. But now their voices rose together in hopeful praise of ashes and soot, voices that quivered with a kind of hysterical delight. She left them behind.

The air was clean and sharp and the walking was easy. Harper had left her big belly, and the baby inside of it, back at the infirmary, needed a break from being pregnant. It felt good to be thin again. She let her thoughts wander and in no time at all found she had reached the place where the dirt track from camp joined Little Harbor Road. That was farther than she had meant to go, farther than was necessarily safe. She glanced at the rusting, battered blue school bus, expecting to be yelled at by whoever was on watch. A gaunt dark figure slumped behind the steering wheel. She guessed whoever it was had to be dozing.

She was going to turn around and walk back when she saw the man in the road.

There was a guy right in the middle of Little Harbor Road, not a hundred feet away, pulling himself arm over arm, like a soldier wriggling under barbed wire on a battlefield. Or, no: really, he was pulling himself along like someone whose legs didn’t work. If anyone came along in a hurry, he was going to get run over. Aside from that, it was awful, watching him struggle along across the icy tarmac.

“Hey!” Harper called. “Hey, you!”

She lifted the chain draped across the entrance to Camp Wyndham and started briskly toward him. It was important to get this done—deal with the man in the road—and back out of sight before a car turned up. She shouted at him once more. He lifted his head, but the only streetlight was behind him, so his face remained in shadow: a round, fleshy, fat face, hair thinning on top. Harper hurried the last few steps to him and knelt down.

“Do you need medical attention?” she asked. “Can you stand up? I’m a nurse. If you think you can stand up, give me your hand, and I’ll walk you to my infirmary.”

Nelson Heinrich lifted his head and gave her a sunny smile. His teeth were red with blood and someone had removed his nose, leaving a pair of red slots in the ragged flesh. “Oh, that’s all right, Harper. I’ve made it this far. I can lead them the rest of the way without your help.”

Harper recoiled, fell back into the road, sitting down hard. “Nelson. Oh, God, Nelson, what happened to you?”

“What do you think?” Nelson said. “Your husband happened to me. And now he’s going to happen to you.”

The headlights came on down the street, flashing over both of them. The Freightliner awoke with a boom of combustion and a grinding of gears.

Nelson said, “Go on, Harper. Go back.” He winked. “I’ll see you soon.”

She held her hands up over her face to shield her eyes from the light and when she lowered them she was awake, sitting up on her elbows in bed in the infirmary and having another contraction.

“These are dreams about the baby coming,” Harper said to herself, in a low voice. “Not about Nelson Heinrich leading a Cremation Crew to camp. Nelson Heinrich is dead. He was torn apart by machine gun fire. You saw him dead in the road. You
saw
him.”

It was funny how the more she said it to herself, the less she believed it.

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6

It was five days before Father Storey spoke again.

“Michael?” the old man muttered, in a muzzy tone of bemusement and curiosity, and a moment later Mike Lindqvist pushed the curtain back and ducked into the ward.

“Did you call for me, ma’am?” he asked Harper.

The sound of Father Storey’s voice jackknifed Harper’s pulse, made her blood strum with surprise. She opened her mouth to tell Michael that it had been the old man, then thought better of it. Michael would carry the news to Allie, would not be able to help himself, and who knew where that would lead.

“I did,” Harper said. “I need your help. I need you to carry a note to Allie.”

“That’s no trouble,” he said.

“I’m afraid I require a bit more than that. I want to get together with the Fireman again. And I want Allie to go with me. Allie and Renée and Don Lewiston. You should be there, too, if it can be managed. And—if at all possible—Gil Cline and the Mazz. Is there a way . . .
any
way . . . such a thing could be done?”

Michael paled. He rested one cheek of his ass against the edge of the counter and lowered his head and plucked at the copper wires of his little goatee. Finally he looked up.

“What’s this meeting about?”

“The possibility of leaving. The possibility of staying. It’s past time for some of us to make plans about our future. Father Storey is stable for the moment. But if his condition changes suddenly, we’ll want to be ready.”

“For the worst?”

“For whatever.”

Michael said, “If Carol finds you all out on the island together, making secret plans with the Fireman, she’ll lock every one of you up. Or worse.”

“We could face worse even if we do nothing.”

Michael swiped one hand across his freckled forehead and bowed his head in thought again. At last he nodded, uneasily.

“I know how to do it. It isn’t exactly like breaking them out of San Quentin. Renée visits the prisoners for lunch every day . . . that’s when they meet for their little book club. That’s the only time those boys ever come out of the meat locker. Renée cleaned up a far corner of the basement, put down carpet and some easy chairs, so they’d have a nice place to read and talk. While they’re meeting, whoever is on guard steps into the meat locker to clean up. Empty the bucket they pee in during the day. Gather up the dirty clothes. That sort of thing. So maybe while he’s in there, the Mazz comes back, says,
Oops, I forgot my book
. And then on his way out closes the meat locker door. The guard is stuck in there for the whole hour. He can kick and shout all he wants. That meat locker is pretty soundproof with the door clapped shut. They’ll never hear him during a noisy lunch, not with the trapdoor closed.

“But Renée and the men would have to walk out past all the people in the cafeteria.”

Michael shook his head. “There’s another way out of the basement. There’s some steps that lead up to the parking lot out back. I guess that’s where the trucks brought in supplies. Those doors are locked from the outside with two padlocks, but I could make sure they were unlocked. Renée and Gil and the Mazz would have to be back by one
a.m
., when their little book club wraps up for the day. Renée lets the guard out, says, ‘Oops, sorry, we didn’t know you were stuck in here, couldn’t hear you over all the noise from people above us.’ Whoever pulls meat locker duty will be some pissed, but I bet they won’t even tell Ben Patchett. Too embarrassed. Also, who wants to wind up sucking a rock for two days, when no one got hurt and everything turned out fine?”

Nick sat watching them both, his knees drawn up under his chin. He couldn’t know what they were talking about, didn’t read lips, but his face was as ill as if he were watching the two of them handle sticks of TNT.

“Good, Michael. That’s good,” Harper said. “It’s simple. With this kind of thing, the simpler the better, don’t you think?”

He ran his thumb along the tight twists of his beard. “I think it’s just great . . . as long as the prisoners don’t decide to knock Renée down and run for it as soon as they’re out of the basement.”

“They wouldn’t
need
to knock her down,” Harper said. “If they decided to run, Renée would run with them. But I think . . . I think she can convince them they have a better chance of long-term survival if they ally themselves with the Fireman. They don’t just want to escape, they want to last.” She had not forgotten about the way Gil spoke of the Fireman, with a mix of quiet admiration and something approaching reverence.

“Yeah, well. Maybe. But maybe when they get out of the basement, it would be best if Allie was waiting for them out in the parking lot, with a rifle over her shoulder. She doesn’t have to point it at them. It’s enough just for her to have it on her. When Allie isn’t confined to the girls’ dorm, she’s usually doing one punishment assignment or another. I could arrange it so she has to scrub pans that night. Ben Patchett works out the daily punishment details, but he lets
me
hand them out. So Allie collects all the pans from the kitchen and goes outside and finds the gun I’ve left for her. She’s waiting by the basement doors when Renée comes out with the prisoners. She’d have to be back by one
a.m
., too.”

Anxiety tickled Harper’s stomach. It seemed like there was a lot that could go wrong.

“What about Don Lewiston?” Harper said.

“He’s easy. He spends most of the night down along the water, tending to his fishing poles. No one minds him. He’s not under observation. He can meet you at the dock, row you across.”

“And
you
?” Harper asked. “Will
you
come, Michael? I’d like it if you were there. I think Allie would, too.”

He showed her a small, apologetic smile and gave his head a curt shake. “Nope. Better not. I’ll make sure I’ve been assigned guard duty here in the infirmary, so I can slip you out and cover for you while you’re gone. I don’t need to be a part of your conference, anyway. Allie can fill me in later.” He looked sidelong at Nick and said, “Take the kid, too. Bet he’d love to see his sister. And John.”

Harper said, “I’m fighting the urge to hug you very, very hard, Michael Lindqvist.”

“Why fight it?” he asked.

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7

But in the end Nick didn’t want to go.

When the hour came, he was sitting in the worn-out chair beside Father Storey’s cot, reading a comic book: a man made of flame did battle with an enormous yellow-and-orange robot that resembled a walking Freightliner, headlights for eyes and shovels for hands. He said he wanted to stay with Tom.

“What if he wakes up and we’re gone?” Nick asked her in sign. “There ought to be someone here if he opens his eyes.”

“Michael will be here,” Harper said.

Nick shook his head, his face solemn. “That’s not the same.” Then he added, “Grandfather’s been moving a lot. He could wake up anytime.”

It was true. Sometimes Tom Storey took a deep breath and heaved a great, satisfied-sounding sigh . . . or he would produce a sudden humming noise, as if he had just had a quite surprising thought. Other times his right hand would drift up to rub his breastbone for a moment or two before falling back to his side. What Harper liked best was the way, sometimes, Tom would lift one finger to his lips, in the
shh
gesture, and smile. It was an expression that made Harper think of one child inviting another to share a hiding place during a game of hide-and-seek. Tom had been in his hiding place for months but maybe was almost ready to reveal himself.

Harper nodded, smoothed down Nick’s hair, and left him to the company of his comic book and the silent old man. Michael was in the waiting room . . . and Don Lewiston was with him, had turned up to escort Harper down to the water. Don wore a plaid winter coat and a cap with earflaps, and his nose was pink from the cold. He stood in the half-open door. Michael was on his feet, too, didn’t seem able to sit down, but instead paced the waiting area, twisting a
Ranger Rick
in his hands. The magazine was rolled into a tight, crooked tube.

“Nick’s not coming,” Harper said. “Maybe it’s just as well. If Ben Patchett comes by on a spot inspection, he won’t think anything of it if you tell him I’m napping. Us pregnant ladies sleep whenever they can. But if he doesn’t see any sign of me
or
Nick, that’s going to make him suspicious.” When she mentioned the possibility of a spot inspection, Michael seemed to visibly sicken, so much color leaving his face that even his lips looked gray. She wondered if he was having second thoughts, now that the moment had come. She asked, “How we doing?”

She was asking about Michael’s state of mind, but Don answered instead as if she had inquired about the evening’s acts of subterfuge. “The others are already on their way to the island. I met Allie and Renée in the woods with the prisoners. Chuck Cargill is shut into the meat locker. He hollered his head off and kicked the door a bunch of times, but Renée says after you get halfway across the basement, it just blends with the noise from upstairs in the cafeteria.”

“Go if you’re going,” Michael said. “I’ve got things covered here. You don’t have to worry, Ms. Willowes, and
you
don’t have to rush. I can cover for
you
until the shift change, just before the sun comes up. But those others don’t have much time. If the prisoners aren’t back across the water in forty-five minutes, we’re all cooked.”

Harper stepped toward Michael and put her hands on his, to make him stop twisting his
Ranger Rick
. She leaned in and kissed his cold, dry brow.

“You are very brave, Michael,” Harper said. “You are one of the bravest people I know. Thank you.”

Some of the tension went out of his shoulders. “Don’t overrate me, ma’am. I don’t see I have a lot of choice. If you love someone, you have to do what you can to keep ’em safe. I wouldn’t want to look back later and think I could’ve been of use, I could’ve helped, but I was too scared.”

Harper cupped his pink cheek. Michael couldn’t meet her eyes. “You ever tell Allie this? That you love her?”

He shuffled his feet. “Not in so many words, ma’am.” He risked a glance into Harper’s face. “You aren’t going to say anything to her, are you? I’d appreciate it if you’d kind of keep what I said between you and me.”

“Of course I won’t say anything,” Harper said. “But don’t leave it too long, Mike. These days, I’m not sure it’s ever a good idea to leave anything important for tomorrow.”

Don held the door for her and she stepped out into the dark and sharp, stinging cold. Every star stood out with a bitter clarity, a needle-tip brightness. Pine boards still zigzagged between buildings, providing walkways, but the snow was gone, and now the planks crossed a humped wasteland of mud.

They stepped off the boards to make their way down the hill, through the trees. There was no chance of leaving tracks. At that arctic hour, the earth was frozen solid, a billion flecks of opalescent ice gleaming in the dirt. Don Lewiston offered her his arm and she took it, and they made their way like an old married couple over the frozen ground.

Halfway to the beach, they paused. A girl was singing, from the steeple of the church, her voice sweet and sure. Harper thought it might be one of the Neighbors twins. They both had sung a cappella in high school. Her song carried on the cold, clear air, and the melody was so innocent and sweet it raised gooseflesh on Harper’s arms. It was an early Taylor Swift tune, a bit of fluff about Romeo and Juliet . . . which reminded Harper of another, older song about those unhappy, luckless lovers.

“There are a lot of good people in this camp,” Harper said to Don. “Maybe they’ve gone along with some bad ideas, but only because they’re scared.”

Don narrowed his eyes, squinted toward the steeple. “She has a lovely voice, sure. I could listen to that all night. But I wonder if you’d still think so well of this camp if you had heard everyone singin’ together in chapel a couple hours ago. Or at least, it was singin’ when they started out. But after a while everyone was just hummin’, this one long idiot note. You feel like you’re inside of the world’s biggest beehive and everyone around you looks like they’re burnin’ from the inside. Their eyes just fackin’ . . .
blaze
. They don’t smoke, but they throw heat, so much heat you could just about pass out from it. Sometimes they all get hummin’ so loud, I feel like my skull is vibratin’ and I just about have to stick a fist in my mouth to keep from screamin’.”

They resumed walking, the stones and dirt crunching under their feet.

“And you can’t join in? You don’t shine with them?”

“Once or twice. But it ain’t treated me right. It’s not how hard it hits you—though when I come up out of it, my skull is always ringin’ so fackin’ hard it’s like I slammed down a quart of Jack. The worst part isn’t forgettin’ who I am, either. That’s bad, though . . . but thinking I might be Carol is worse. It’s like your own thoughts are a faraway radio station, and Carol’s station is closer, broadcasting her music right over yours. Hers gets louder and clearer and yours gets fainter and thinner. You start thinkin’ Father Storey is your
own
dear dad lyin’ in the infirmary with his head mashed in, and the idea that whoever done it hasn’t been punished will make you so sick and angry you feel like you’re boilin’. You’ll wonder if someone is goin’ to come bash
your
head in next, if there are secret forces and whatnot workin’ against you. What you feel in your heart is that if you have to die, you want to die singin’, with the whole camp around you. Everyone holdin’ hands. You almost
hope
it will happen . . . that a Cremation Crew will come. ’Cause it’d be a relief to get it over with, and you aren’t scared of the end, because you’ll be burnin’ up with all the people you love right close beside you.”

Harper shuddered and leaned into Don for warmth.

They made their way out onto the dock and Don helped Harper into the rowboat. She was glad to have his hand clutching his arm and she stepped down from the dock. She had made the trip across the water often enough over the last few months, but now, for the first time, she felt unsteady on her legs and uncertain of her own balance.

In a few deep, steady strokes, they had left the beach behind. Don sat on the thwart between the oars, leaning into each pull and rocking back, his whole body extending into a straight line. He was old, but like beef jerky: knotty and tough.

Would the eye in the steeple (which sees all the people) observe them now? Don had mentioned to Ben that he might take the boat out to fish tonight. Hopefully their movements on the water this evening would be accepted as Don Lewiston paddling around, looking for flounder . . . if they were spotted at all.

Without any prompting, Don seemed to pick up where he had left off a few minutes before.

“It’s bad, having a head full of Carol. It’s bad not knowin’ my own name, not knowin’ my mother’s name. But I’ll tell you. A month back, we all had a big hard sing, like we do. And then Carol gave a kind of sermon, about how there is no history before we got Dragonscale. That a new history started for each of us when we got sick. That the only life that matters is the life we have now, together, as a community, not the life we had before. And then we sang again and we all lit up—even me—and we hummed real hard, and afterward we staggered out of there like drunk sailors on New Year’s Eve. And I forgot”—his breath hitched as he leaned forward to pull against the oars once more—“I forgot my mate, Bill Ellroy, what fished with me for thirty years. He was snatched right out of my head. Not just for hours. For days. I had the best years of my life out on the boat with Billy. It’s hard to tell you how good they were. We’d fish three weeks hard, come back and unload our catch in Portsmouth, then take the boat out to the Harbor Islands, drop anchor, and drink beer. I’d hate goin’ home. I liked every minute of bein’ with Billy. I liked who I was when I was by his side.” He had stopped rowing for a moment. The boat rocked in the swell. “Bein’ with him was like havin’ the whole ocean under you. We didn’t talk much, you know. We didn’t need to. You don’t talk to an ocean and it don’t talk back. You just . . . let it carry you.” He began to stroke the oars again. “Well. When I suddenly realized I had lost him for a while—that he had been wiped out—that was when I decided I had enough of this place. No one gets to take Bill Ellroy from me. Nobody. Not for no reason. No one gets to take our friendship. There was a thief workin’ in this camp last fall, and if Carol had ever caught her, she would’ve fed her piece by bloody piece to wild dogs. I’ll tell you what, though. The things that are stolen from us every night, when we all sing together, those are a lot more important than most of what the thief took. And we know who’s takin’ ’em, and instead of lockin’ her up, we elected her head of camp.”

He fell silent. He had taken the extra precaution of rowing them around the northern tip of the island, to the far side of the rock, so he could beach the rowboat where it couldn’t be seen from shore by the casual observer. Harper spied two canoes already pulled up on the gravel. Beyond, set back from the water, was the thirty-three-foot cruising sloop, sitting in its steel carriage and covered by its taut white tarp.

“What do you think happened to the thief, anyway?” Harper asked. “I don’t think there’s been a theft all winter.”

“Maybe she ran out of things to steal,” Don said. “Or maybe she just finally got what she wanted.”

Harper watched Don lean and pull, lean and pull, and thought the power of the Bright couldn’t compete with being close to someone you loved with all your heart. One took away; the other gave you access to your best, happiest self.
I liked who I was when I was by his side,
Don Lewiston said, and Harper wondered if there had ever been anyone in her life who made her feel that way about herself, and at that moment the boat ground onto the sand with a wet crunch, and Don said, “Let’s go see the Fireman, huh?”