The Fireman: A Novel Part 14

"I don't care if I miss lunches." Renee watched Ben turn up his collar and exit the cafeteria without a look back. "They were pretty terrible anyway, and I was hoping to lose ten pounds. Of course, he's got it all wrong. People weren't angry at him when he took away the cell phones. They were glad! They were relieved someone was thinking about how to keep us all safe. They don't hold one single thing he's done against him. Not even what he did to Harold Cross. The only person who blames Ben Patchett for what happened to Harold is Ben Patchett."

"Harold Cross," Harper said. "I've heard that name before. Who's Harold Cross and what did Ben do to him?"

Renee blinked, staring at Harper in surprise. "Shot him. You didn't know that? Shot him right in the throat."

9.

There were little triangles of coconut custard pie on a graham cracker crust for dessert, the best and sweetest thing Harper had eaten since she came to camp. She closed her eyes after each spoonful, to better concentrate on the creamy taste of it. It was so good she felt a little like crying, or at least writing Norma Heald a sincere thank-you card.

Renee was gone for a bit, helping to prepare cocoa for the children, and when she returned she had two mugs of black coffee, and Don Lewiston and Allie Storey in tow. Nick Storey was there, too, trailing along in his big sister's wake. He carried a mug of hot chocolate before him, with a kind of reverence, not unlike a child bearing the wedding rings at a marriage.

"Are you all right?" Renee asked. "You're making a face."

"That's my o.r.g.a.s.m face," Harper said, around her last bite of pie.

"I don't think it's any accident that a slice of pie comes in the exact same shape as a slice of p.u.s.s.y," Allie said.

"Do you girls want to talk amongst yourselves?" Don asked. "I could come back another time. This conversation is headin' in a direction what might be upsettin' to the ears of an innocent like myself."

"You can sit down," Renee said, "and tell what happened to Harold Cross. I think Harper ought to know about it, and the both of you can tell it better than I can. Don, you worked with him. Allie, you knew him better than most. And you were both there at the end."

"I wouldn't say I knew him all that well. It got to a point where I couldn't even stand to be in the same room with him," Allie said.

"But you tried," Renee said. "You made an effort. There aren't many other people here who can say that."

Nick perched on the bench to Allie's left. He looked from Allie to Renee and back, then moved his hands in the air, asking something of his sister. Allie furrowed her brow and began to make minute gestures with her fingers.

"My mom was a lot better at sign," Allie said. "I'm only really confident about my finger-spelling. He wants to know what we're talking about. One good thing about the little guy being deaf. We don't have to worry about him overhearing the really rotten bits and getting sad."

"And he doesn't read lips at all?" Harper asked.

"That's only in movies."

Don sipped at his coffee and grimaced. "Tell you what, nothing will cure a case of feeling good faster than a sip of this coffee. Except maybe for talkin' about Harold Cross." He set his mug down. "Harold was pretty much always alone. Kind of a fat kid no one liked. Too smart for his own good, y'unnerstand? Smarter than everyone else and happy to let you know it. If you were diggin' a latrine, he'd tell you a better, more scientific way to do it . . . but he wouldn't pick up a shovel himself. Would say his back hurt or summin'. You know the type."

"He wore this striped T-shirt and a pair of black denim shorts and I never saw him wear anything else. He had a booger on that shirt once that was there for three days. Swear to Jesus," Allie said.

"I remember that booger!" Don said. "He had that thing on his shirt so long he shoulda given it a name!"

Nick was still watching, and now he asked Allie something else, in a few slow, careful gestures. Allie's reply was faster this time, and involved a knuckle screwed into her nose, miming the act of digging for boogers. Nick grinned. He dug a stub of pencil out of his jeans and wrote something on his turkey-shaped place mat. He pushed the mat across the table to Harper.

He'd get smoky sometimes, too. Not bad, but like if you throw a lot of wet moss on a campfire. Just a little nasty smoke coming out from under his shorts. Allie said it was coming from his b.u.t.t-chimney.

When Harper looked back, Nick had a hand clamped over his mouth and was making a thin, quavering whistle. He might lack the power of speech, but the giggles, it seemed, remained available even to the mute.

Renee said, "He was a former med student, and when I came to camp, he was in charge of the infirmary. I'd guess he was twenty-four years old, maybe twenty-five. He went around with a little reporter's notebook and sometimes he'd sit on a rock and start scribbling in it. I think that worried some people. You felt like he was taking notes on you."

Allie said, "Now and then one of the girls would try to s.n.a.t.c.h his notebook away, to see what he was writing. That would get his Dragonscale acting up and he'd storm off in a haze. Literally fuming, you know?"

"From the b.u.t.t-chimney," Don Lewiston said, and this time they all laughed, except for Nick, who had lost the thread, and could only smile quizzically.

"The first time he joined the Bright, he lit up fast," Allie said. "Some people get it right away and some people don't. In Harold's case, it maybe came over him too quickly. He fell into the Bright so fast and hard it scared him. He screamed and dropped to the floor and rolled around like he was burning. Later he said he didn't like how it felt, having other people in his head. Which doesn't really happen. It isn't telepathy. No one gets inside your head. It's just a good feeling, coming off the people around you. It's like being held. Like the perfect hug. After that first time, Harold just about never lit up. He kept himself at a distance from the rest of us. He wasn't partic.i.p.ating-he was just watching us."

"Yuh. That's right," Don agreed. "Then, one day, after he'd been in camp about two weeks, he stood up at the end of services and said he'd like to address the room. Kinda dumbstruck everyone. As a rule, if there's any talkin' to do in chapel, Father Storey or Carol are the ones to do it. It was like watchin' a TV show and suddenly one a the extras decides to deliver a speech ain't in the script."

"Father Storey," Renee added, "G.o.d love that man, he just poked his thinking rock in his mouth and sat down to listen, like a student settling in for a lecture on his favorite subject."

Allie rasped a hand over the bristly curve of her head. "Harold told us we had a moral obligation to let the world know about our 'discovery.' He said we didn't belong in hiding. He said we ought to be on cable news, that we ought to go public about what we could do. He said our process of subduing the Dragonscale was of scientific interest and there were lots of people who wanted to know more about us. Aunt Carol said, 'Harold, darling, what do you mean, lots of people want to know about us?' And Harold said he had been texting with a doctor in Berkeley who thought our community might represent a real breakthrough. There was another doctor in Argentina who wanted Harold to take blood samples of people when they were in The Bright. Harold said all this like it was no big deal. He didn't seem to have any idea what he had done."

"Oh, Harper, it was bad," Renee said. "That was a bad night."

"Mr. Patchett jumped up and asked how many people he'd been texting with and if he'd been texting from inside camp. Mr. Patchett said tracing the location of a smartphone was the easiest thing in the world and for all Harold knew he was drawing a big X on a map for the local Quarantine Patrols. People started crying, grabbing their kids. We were like people on an airplane who have just heard from the pilot that there's a terrorist in the c.o.c.kpit." Allie's gaze came unfocused. She wasn't seeing Harper anymore, but was looking back into a summer night of alarm and commotion. "Mr. Patchett made him give up his cell. He spent three minutes scrolling through Harold's texts. It turned out he had been in contact with thirty different people, all over the country. All over the world! Sending them photos, too, stuff that would make it easy to identify where we were hiding."

"Harold wanted the camp to have a vote," Don Lewiston put in. "Well. He got one all right. Ben led a vote to confiscate every cell phone in camp, had Allie 'n' Mikey collect 'em all in a great trash bag."

"I didn't like what happened to Harold after that," Renee said. "If we ever did him wrong, it was then."

Allie nodded. "After the phones got taken away, it was like Harold was a poisonous bug, and the whole camp wanted to keep him under a jar, where he couldn't sting anyone. Little kids started calling him Horrid instead of Harold. No one would sit with him in the cafeteria, except for Granddad, who can get along with anyone. Then, one day, one of the girls chucked a Frisbee right in Harold's face and smashed his gla.s.ses. She pretended it was an accident, like she meant for him to catch it, but it was really s.h.i.tty, and I told her it was s.h.i.tty. I felt like someone had to try and stick up for him. I felt like it was bad for all of us, not to care about him. So I helped fix his gla.s.ses and I started sitting with him and Granddad at lunch. I signed up for ch.o.r.es with him, so he wouldn't have to work alone. I had this whole idea I was going to unearth the real Harold. Only I did and it was as nasty as the rest of him. We were doing dishes together for Mrs. Heald in the cafeteria one day, and all of a sudden he stuck his hand down my shorts. When I asked him what the f.u.c.k he was doing, he said there was no reason for me to be picky about who I screwed, since the whole human race was going down the toilet anyway. I shoved him so hard his gla.s.ses fell off and broke again. So that was Harold."

Nick was looking from face to face with great, fascinated eyes. His cocoa was mostly gone, and there was a smear of chocolate around his mouth, and he was the most Norman Rockwell thing Harper had ever seen. He showed Allie something he had written on his place mat. She borrowed his pencil to reply. Nick nodded, then bent, wrote something more, and pushed it across to Harper.

I tried to warn Allie she couldn't trust him. He used to make his nastiest b.u.t.t-smoke whenever he was around her. Deaf people can smell things most peeple can't, and I could smell the evil in it.

Harper turned the place mat so Renee could read it. Renee looked at it and looked up at Harper and the two of them erupted into laughter. Harper quaked, surprised at the force of her own jollity; she felt unaccountably close to tears. Nick watched them with bewilderment.

She had a swallow from her mug to calm herself down, then felt a bubble of hilarity rising in her again, and almost coughed coffee up her nostrils. Renee pounded her on the back until her choking fit had pa.s.sed.

Don read what Nick had written and one corner of his mouth lifted in a wry smile. "Funny, that. I never smelt evil on him. But I smelt somethin' else on him, once . . . and in a way, that was the first domino in the chain that led to him gettin' kilt. Harold took a job workin' under my direction, diggin' up bloodworms for bait. It was funny, him volunteerin' for a physical job. Kinda like the queen offerin' to scrub out toilets. No one else wanted him, though, so I took him on my crew. He tolt me he knew a spot south of camp, a marshy flat where the bloodworms were easy to find. He knowed what he was talking about, too. Lots of days he'd come back with more bait than any of the other boys I sent out diggin'. But then other days he'd show up with maybe two worms in his bucket and just shrug and say his luck was bad. Well, I figured on those days he was goin' off to nap somewheres, and didn't worry myself too much about it. Till one day, middle a August, he shows up with nothin', and as he's puttin' down his empty pail, he lets a burp slip, and G.o.dd.a.m.n if I don't smell pizza on his fackin' breath. That didn't sit easy with me. You may have noticed, pizza ain't on the menu here in Camp Wyndham. I slept an uneasy sleep, and the next day, I decided I had to pa.s.s a word along to Ben Patchett. Ben wasn't no more happy about it than I was. He got real stiff and pale and sat rubbin' his mouth awhile, and finally said he was glad I spoke up. Then he asked me if I'd mind making Michael a part of my bait team for a week. I knew what Mikey was goin' to be diggin' for, and it wasn't worms, but we had to find out what Cross was up to, so I said ayuh. Well, Mikey took to trailin' him at a distance. The first few days, the worst thing he seen Harold do was take a dump and use the pages from one of the camp library books for toilet paper."

Renee winced. "It turned out to be The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Our only copy. If I had known what he was going to do with it, I would've given him a copy of Atlas Shrugged."

"On the fourth day, though, our boy Mike followed Harold to an abandoned summer cottage a half mile away, place with a generator and Internet. The boy is in there on a laptop, typin' e-mails with one hand and crammin' down a pepperoni Hot Pocket with the other. Not only was Harold right back to the same tricks, spillin' our secrets to the same people, but he had a whole deep freezer full a chow he was keepin' to his own self."

Don pa.s.sed the job of telling the story to Allie with a sidelong look. She nodded and went on, "I was there when Mike showed up. This was over at the House of the Black Star, where my aunt lives with Granddad. This wasn't so long after my mom pa.s.sed away." Allie spoke quietly, neither hiding her pain nor making a display of it. "Aunt Carol had some of Mom's things and she asked me to look through them and see if there was anything I wanted for Nick and myself. There wasn't anything, really, except this." She touched a finger to the book-shaped gold locket at her throat. "When Mike came in and said what he had seen, we stopped what we were doing, and Granddad sent me to find Mr. Patchett. By the time I got back with Ben, Aunt Carol was sitting in a chair with her face in her hands and she had gray threads of smoke coming off her. She was so stressed.

"She said we needed to force Harold out of camp. But Mr. Patchett said that would be the worst thing we could do. If we sent Harold away and he got picked up by a Quarantine Patrol, they'd make him tell everything he knew about us. Mr. Patchett wanted to lock Harold up somewhere, but Granddad said it would be enough to make Harold promise to remain on camp grounds and stop contacting outsiders. Carol and Mr. Patchett gave each other this look, like: Which of us is going to tell him that's the most senile thing he's ever said? But the thing about my granddad is . . . it's kind of hard to convince him people won't just do the right thing. You hate to say anything that sounds hostile or untrusting or small-hearted around him. You feel like he'd be disappointed in you. Mr. Patchett gave in. He got Granddad to agree to keep Harold under close watch and that was it."

Allie put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in the cradle of her hands. She wasn't looking at any of them now, had lowered her gaze to stare disconsolately inward. Harper felt they had just about come to it, now. The end of Harold Cross's story . . . which also happened to be the end of Harold Cross.

At last she went on, "After Mr. Patchett confronted Harold about what he had been up to, Harold came down with stomach pains and took himself to the infirmary. Mr. Patchett made sure there was always a Lookout stationed there, day and night, to guarantee Harold didn't wander off. If they weren't stationed right in the ward with him, they were in the waiting room. When it happened, it was on my shift, during the day, when the whole camp was asleep. At some point near the end of my watch, around dusk, I had to pee, and the only way to get to the bathroom is to walk across the ward. I crept through on tiptoe, real careful, trying not to wake Harold up. He was in one of the part.i.tioned-off sleeping areas. I could just see him under his sheets, through a crack between the hanging curtains. I had almost made it to the bathroom when my hip b.u.mped a bedpan and it fell with a loud bang. Harold didn't even roll over. Suddenly I got a cold sick feeling and I pulled aside the curtain to have a closer look at him. It was just pillows under the sheets." She looked up and met Harper's eyes, and her gaze was wounded and ashamed. "See . . . I was asleep most of the afternoon, while I was supposed to be on guard in the waiting room. I told myself it wasn't hurting anyone. I figured if Harold tried to sneak out past me, I'd hear him. I thought I was too light a sleeper for him to get by me. Some light sleeper. I must've been in a low-grade coma. Maybe Norma Heald slipped a roofie into my tea, hoping to get lucky with me." The corner of her mouth tweaked up in a little smile, but her chin trembled.

Don put a leathery hand on the back of her neck and gave her a gentle, awkward sort of pat. "You ever think if you woke up when he was trying to sneak out, he might a belted you one? He was goin' out that door, one way or t'other."

"Harold couldn't fight his way past Nick," Allie said, brushing roughly at her eyes with the back of one hand.

"Who says he would a fought? He might a called you into the ward and then socked you with a wrench. No, ma'am. He was goin' to depart our company, by hook or by crook. It was mad to think we could hold him prisoner without lockin' him up. I'd fistfight sharks for your grandpap, but he was wrong about how t'handle Harold, and Ben Patchett was right."

Nick had noticed Allie rubbing at her eyes. He scribbled something on the place mat. Allie read it and shook her head.

"No, I don't want your last marshmallow."

He wrote something else, then stuck a spoon in his mug and dredged out part of a melted marshmallow. Allie sighed and opened her mouth and let him feed her.

"He says it's medicine for misery," Allie told them in a m.u.f.fled sort of way, chewing gummy marshmallow. A bright tear skipped down one cheek. "It does make me feel better, actually."

Don Lewiston leaned in, elbows on the table. "I can tell the rest, I s'pose, quick enough. Allie got Mike, and Mikey ran for Ben Patchett. My cot is next to Ben's, and all their whisperin' woke me up. When I heard they were all settin' out to see if they could bring Harold back, I offered to go with 'em. Maybe I felt like I had to go. Harold had been part of my crew. My lack of supervision is what gave him the chance to get back in contact with the outside world. I don't remember who went and got a rifle from the range, but I think it was on all our minds Harold might not come back of his own free will. I remember this one"-he patted Allie's shoulder-"was tolt to stay here. As you might guess, that did about as much good as shoutin' at clouds. We covered probably three miles of hard trail in twenty minutes, makin' a beeline for Harold's little hideout, and Allie was out in front the whole way. And it was still a d.a.m.n'd close thing. When we got there, it was pretty much the worst-case scenario. Maybe some a the people Harold had been e-mailing with were who they said they were. Maybe most of 'em were. But one of 'em wasn't. When we got to the cabin, there was a van parked out front and men with guns. Not a state-run Quarantine Patrol. Cremation fellas. We saw the whole thing from behind this old stone wall that was out behind the cabin. They had Bushmaster rifles and were thumpin' Harold with the b.u.t.ts. Shovin' him around. Havin' fun. Harold was down in the dirt, clutchin' his laptop, and beggin' them not to kill him. He was sayin' he wasn't dangerous, that he could control his infection. He was tellin' em he could lead 'em to a hidin' place where there were lots of people who could control the Dragonscale. That was when Ben asked Mikey if the rifle was loaded."

"I thought we were going to fight for Harold," Allie said. "Like on a TV show. Four of us against twelve of them. Pretty stupid, huh?" Her voice was rough and strained, and Harper was conscious of Allie trying to hold back her tears.

"Mikey's hands were shaking so hard he spilled bullets all over the ground, but Ben-he turned into a different man altogether. He was a cop in his former life, you know. You could see the cop in his face. He went calm, but he also went hard. He said, 'You better let me do this, son,' and took the rifle out of Mikey's hands. He put the first one in Harold's throat. He put the second in the laptop. The Cremation Crew hit the dirt and for all I know they're lying there still, because we got up and ran like h.e.l.l and never looked back." His coffee was gone. He rolled his mug between his palms. "Ben Patchett looked icy enough out in the woods, but when he got back, he cried his eyes out. Sat on one of the pews with Father Storey holdin' him like a child. Father Storey shushed him and told him if it was anyone's fault it was his own, not Ben's."

Nick was frowning, writing on the place mat again. He pushed it to Allie, who read it, then turned it toward Renee and Harper so they could read it.

Mr. Patchett shouldn't have sent someone to get a rifle. He should've sent someone to get JOHN. He could've saved Harold.

"Maybe so," Don said, who was reading the place mat upside down. "We were in a h.e.l.luva rush, though. And it was a good thing we moved fast, as it turned out. If we were even two minutes slower, Harold might've coughed it all up. Then instead of one dead kid, we'd have a camp full dead kids, and dead grown-ups, too." He set his mug down on the table with a gla.s.sy clink. People were up on their feet, filling the room with a lot of loud, happy conversation. It was time for chapel. Harper felt the familiar bunched knot of dread tightening in her stomach. Another song was coming, another harmony she wouldn't be able to join, another overwhelming blast of noise and light.

"I guess that's all of it," Renee said. "The sad ballad of Harold Cross."

Harper didn't want to go, and so when she spoke, it was more to stall for time than anything else. "Maybe not quite all. There is one thing I'm wondering about. What was in his notebook? Did anyone ever find out?"

"I've wondered that myself," Don said, getting to his feet. "It never turned up. Maybe he had it on him when he was kilt. If so, it didn't reveal the location of camp, or this whole place would be burnt to the ground by now." He clucked his tongue, shook his head. "I don't expect we'll ever know. Some mysteries ain't ever gonna be solved."

DECEMBER.

10.

Two sisters, Gail and Gillian Neighbors, were having a spat.

They shared a single bottle of red nail polish, which had gone missing, and each accused the other of losing it or maybe h.o.a.rding it. They were twins and barbaric with each other by nature. Gillian already had a twisted nipple, and when Harper separated them, Gail was clutching a dirty sock to a b.l.o.o.d.y nose. Gillian had jammed her thumb at least an inch up one nostril.

Harper patrolled the dorm, asking around. It felt good to think about someone else's problems. Better than worrying about lights-out, when she would lie in her cot, desperate to sleep and sick at the thought of what might happen when she did.

She figured Allie would know who, if anyone, might've helped themselves to the nail polish (the shade was called "Incendiary," which the Neighbors twins didn't seem to realize was funny). Allie and another girl were playing rummy on a stack of suitcases. Harper wandered over and stood behind this other girl, Jamie Close, and waited to be noticed.

"I'm glad I'm not sleeping next to her," Jamie Close was saying to Allie.

Jamie was one of the older Lookouts, nineteen going on twenty. She had close-set eyes and an upturned nose, which conspired together to give her an unfortunate swinish mien.

"Sleeping next to who?" Allie asked absentmindedly over her cards.

"You know: Nurse Sunshine." Jamie went on, "She woke up coughing smoke last night. Did you hear her? I'm, like, burn already, so some of us can sleep. I'm, like-"

Allie stepped on Jamie's foot, hard. A child might've imagined it was an accident; a very small, very naive child. Jamie stiffened and went silent.

After a moment, Allie's gaze drifted up and she appeared to see Harper for the first time. "Hey! What's going on, Nurse Willowes?"

"The Neighbors twins lost a bottle of nail polish. Just asking around to see if either of you might have seen it."

Jamie Close sat rigidly on an upturned bucket. Her T-shirt was hiked up to show the tramp stamp on the small of her back: a tattoo of the Confederate flag, above the word REBEL. She didn't have the nerve to look back at Harper. "Sorry, ma'am. I don't do nothin' with my nails but chew on 'em."

Allie looked like she wanted to say something-her eyes were apologetic and worried-but she just opened her mouth and closed it and shook her head.

Harper smiled effortfully, thanked them, and walked off. Her Dragonscale pulsed with a disagreeable warmth, in a way that made her think of someone breathing on coals.

11.

She dreamt she wore a gown of wasps and woke when they began to sting.

The bas.e.m.e.nt was stuffy and dim in the late morning and she lay motionless, still feeling wasp-stung: on her collarbone, on the inside of her left thigh, between two of her toes.

Harper pressed her chin into her chest, looking down, and saw a red spot burning through her T-shirt above her left breast, as if someone were pressing the tip of a cigarette into the cotton . . . from the inside. A silky thread of white smoke trickled up from the growing burn. Harper watched, in a state of horrible la.s.situde, as the hole expanded, the edges a bright orange lacework. At last she rubbed it out with her thumb and brushed the sparks off her chest.

Her body throbbed from nearly a dozen of those wasp-sting burns. She flapped back her blanket, to see if her clothes were burning anywhere else, and a gush of black smoke drifted toward the ceiling. She was reminded of her childhood fascination with smoke signals. What would this message translate to? Probably: Help, I am going to be burned alive.

Enough, she thought.

She sat up, very carefully, iron bedsprings creaking. She did not want to wake anyone, did not want to cause any trouble. In those first moments, she was not clear about what she meant to do, only that she didn't want to have to talk to anyone about it. That enough indicated some kind of decision, but it was not immediately clear to her what she had decided.

In the next bed, Renee slept on her side, deep in her own dreams, smiling at some imagined event. Harper half had an urge to lean over and kiss her forehead, to have one final moment of physical contact. Final moment? Harper found she couldn't look at Renee for long. Enough represented some kind of betrayal of their friendship. Enough was going to hurt Renee, would leave her-what? Bereft was the word that came to mind. Bereft and enough went together like bride and groom.