The Fireman: A Novel Part 15

Harper considered packing The Portable Mother and her clothes into her carpetbag, but enough was a destination that required no baggage. Enough was a reverberation deep inside her, a kind of ringing emptiness, as if she were a steeple in which a bell had been solemnly struck. Ask not for whom it tolls.

She rose and paced across the cool, dusty concrete. Harper paused at the bottom of the steps for a look back at the maze of cots, a labyrinth of sleeping women. In that moment she loved them all, even awful Jamie Close with her ugly mouth and upturned nose. Harper had always wanted a tough friend like Jamie, someone rude and mouthy, who would cut a b.i.t.c.h for talking smack. She loved Renee and the Neighbors girls and little Emily Waterman and Allie and Nick. Nick most of all, with his bottle-gla.s.s-green eyes and articulate hands, which drew words on the air like a boy wizard sketching spells.

She climbed three steps to the door, eased the latch up with a click, and slipped out. She blinked at the watery sunlight. She hadn't seen any in a while and it hurt her eyes.

The sky was high and pale, like the dingy canvas roof of a circus tent. She went up more steps, trailing wisps of smoke behind her. The 'scale had burned holes in her sweats, holes all through her Rent T-shirt. She had seen Rent with Jakob and he had held her hand while she wept at the end. She was surprised to find herself longing for Jakob now, for the wiry strength of his arms when he held her around the waist. It didn't seem to matter that the last time she had seen him he had been waving a gun at her.

She supposed Jakob had been right. It would've been much easier to do things his way. He had known how awful it would be to burn to death. He had only wanted to spare her. For that she had carved open his face with a broken gla.s.s and wasted their special bottle of wine.

Harper had told herself she was staying alive for the baby, but the baby never had anything to do with it, not really. She was holding on because she could not bear to say good-bye to her life and every good thing in it. She had selfishly wanted more. She had wanted to hold her father again and smell his Eight & Bob cologne, which always made her think of sea-soaked rope. She had wanted to sit by a swimming pool somewhere, with the sun glowing on her mostly bare skin, drifting half awake while her mother gabbed on and on about all the funny things Stephen Colbert had said on TV the night before. She had wanted to read her favorite books again and revisit her best friends one more time: Harry and Ron, Bilbo and Gandalf, Hazel and Bigwig, Mary and Bert. She had wanted another good hard lonely cry and another pee-your-pants laughing fit. She had wanted a whole bunch more s.e.x, although, looking back, most of her s.e.xual history involved sleeping with men she didn't much like.

She had told herself she was going on with her life because she wanted her son (she was curiously certain it was a boy, had been almost since the beginning) to experience some of those good things, too; so he could meet her parents, read some good books, have a girl. But in reality, her son was never going to do any of those things. He was going to die before he was even born. He was going to roast in her womb. She had lived on only to murder him. She wanted to apologize to the baby for ever conceiving him. She felt like she had already failed to keep the only promise she had ever made him.

When Harper reached the top of the steps, she realized she had forgotten her shoes. But it didn't matter. The thin crust of the first snow had melted away, except for a few lumps under the pines. The wind lashed the high tangles of dead gra.s.s and ruffled the sea into sharp-edged wavelets.

Harper wasn't sure she could bear the wind off the water for long, not in her thin, raggedy things, but for a few moments, anyway, she thought she could use a blast of sea air. She wasn't supposed to be out in the daytime-Ben Patchett would be upset if he knew-but Camp Wyndham was sere and cold and empty, and no one was around to see.

Harper set out for the sh.o.r.eline, tramping across damp, rotten gra.s.s. She paused once, to inspect a white rock the size of a baby's skull, streaked with black, mica-flecked seams in a way that made her think of Dragonscale. With some effort, she was able to force the large stone into one pocket of her sweats.

She made her way through a band of evergreens, past the boathouse, collecting a few more interesting-looking rocks as she descended to the waterfront.

Harper crooned to herself disconsolately, chanting the words to a song she had overheard some of the smaller kids shouting at each other. She wondered if they even knew the tune it was parodying, "Hey Jude." Probably not.

'ey yooooou, don't start to cry if you fry now it will be shiiiiiity, A pity!

If you turn into a heap!

Cos it's my turn to sweep!

And take out the ashes.

She smiled without any pleasure at all.

She had wanted to believe in Aunt Carol's miracle, had wanted so badly to believe she could sing her way out of trouble. It worked for all the others, kept them safe and filled them with contentment, and it should have worked for her, too, but it didn't, and she couldn't help it: she resented them for doing what she couldn't. She resented them for pitying her.

Out here, alone in the bitterly cold clear light of the morning, she could admit to herself that she found them repugnant when they all lit up in church. To stand among them when their eyes shone and their Dragonscale pulsed was almost as awful as being fondled in a crowd by a strange hand. Of all the things she wanted over, she wanted an end to morning chapel, to the sound and the fury, the song and the light.

Harper padded to the splintery expanse of the dock. Here at the open ocean, the salty air came at her in battering, cleansing strokes. The boards, worn soft by a decade of spray and damp, felt good under her feet. She walked to the end and sat down. The stones in her pockets clunked on the pine.

Harper stared out at the Fireman's island, her toes trailing over the water. She dipped a big toe in and gasped, the water so cold it made the knuckles in her feet throb with pain.

Someone had left a length of fraying green twine wrapped around one of the posts. She began, almost idly, to unwind it. She felt it was important not to think too closely about what she was out on the dock to do. If she looked at it straight on, she might lose her nerve.

On some half-conscious level, though, she knew the cold of the ocean would be almost as unbearable as the wasp-sting sensation of the Dragonscale going hot, and instinct would drive her back to the sh.o.r.e. But if she tied her wrists, she wouldn't be able to swim, and the cold would ease from pain to dullness soon enough. She thought she would open her eyes while she was underwater. She had always liked the blurred darkness of the aquatic world.

The overcast haze thinned to the east and she could see a streak of pale blue. She felt as clear and open as that blue sky. She felt all right. She began to loop the twine around her wrists.

The breeze carried a distant cry.

She hesitated and c.o.c.ked her head to listen.

At one end of the little island was the ruin of a single-room cottage. Only two walls still stood. The other two had collapsed along with the roof. Charred beams crisscrossed within.

A second, smaller building, some kind of windowless shed-painted green with a white door-had been built on the crescent of sand that faced Camp Wyndham. It had a turf roof, and a dune had blown into a high drift against the far wall, so it half resembled a hobbit hole burrowed into the side of a hill. A tin chimney pipe vented a trickle of smoke all day and all night, but as far as Harper knew it had never drawn any attention from the outside world. You could not scan the sh.o.r.eline without seeing a dozen little coils of smoke just like it.

Now, though, the chimney carried the echo of a strained, small, faraway voice.

"No! No, you won't! You can't!" the Fireman shouted. "You don't get to give up!"

Her heart sprang like a trap. For one alarming moment, she was sure he was speaking to her.

But of course he couldn't see her from inside his shed. He didn't have any idea she was there.

"Haven't I done everything you wanted?" he cried, the wind catching his voice and carrying it to her clearly by some perverse trick of acoustics. "Haven't I done everything you asked? Don't you think I want to quit? But I'm still here. If I don't get to go, you don't."

She felt she should run-she had no right to be hearing any of this-but couldn't move. The fury she heard in his voice ran through her like a pole, holding her in place.

A great iron clang crashed inside the shed. The door shook in its frame. She waited, helplessly, to see what would come next, hoping with all her heart he was not about to step outside and see her.

He didn't and there was no more. Smoke trickled peacefully from the chimney, thinning quickly as it rose into the general haze. The wind thrashed the wiry tufts of sea gra.s.s on the island.

Harper listened and waited and watched until she realized she was shivering from the cold. She dropped the twine she had been winding around her wrists. A gust s.n.a.t.c.hed it, floated it into the air, flipped it into the sea. Harper drew her knees to her chest, hugging them for warmth. The stone like a baby's skull was digging painfully into her hip, so she worked it out of her pocket and set it on the edge of the dock.

Too close to the edge. The stone toppled over the side. Bloosh, went the sea, as it swallowed the rock.

It was such an agreeable sound, Harper dropped in all the other stones she had collected, one by one, just to hear that sound again and again.

Norma Heald said there were ghosts out there, ghosts made of smoke. Maybe John had been yelling at one of them. Maybe he was yelling at shadows. Or at himself.

Ghosts carried messages from beyond, but they didn't seem like they would be terribly good listeners. John sounded so wretched and hurt, Harper thought someone ought to listen to him. If the ghosts wouldn't, she would.

Besides, Jakob had always thought he knew what was better for her than she did, and if she killed herself, it would be admitting he was right. That alone was reason to persist-just to stick it to him. Now that she was more awake, she was feeling less forgiving about the gun.

No one heard Harper letting herself back into the bas.e.m.e.nt of the chapel. Her blankets smelled like a campfire, but they were so cozy she was asleep in minutes . . . and this time there were no dreams.

12.

On the night of the first lottery to see who would eat and who wouldn't, Harper pulled kitchen duty. Norma planted Harper just beyond the serving window, behind a folding table set with thermoses and mugs and a big rectangular tin of sugar.

"You can sweeten the coffee for the losers. One spoonful each, no more. And let 'em see that belly of yours, remind 'em what they're skippin' lunch for: your precious little miracle," Norma said.

This did not make Harper feel better. It made Harper feel fat, ent.i.tled, and lonesome. Of course she wasn't fat, not really. Yes, all right, she could no longer b.u.t.ton the top of her jeans, a fact she hid by wearing loose hoodies. But it wasn't like the furniture shook when she crossed the room.

Lunch was watery porridge with a side of peaches, dished out from yet another can. It fell to Nelson Heinrich to dispense the lottery tickets, and he turned up to do the job wearing one of his Christmas sweaters: dark green with gingerbread men dancing across it. He wore a Santa cap, too, an obscene touch in Harper's opinion; as if he were handing out candy canes and not taking away meals.

The tickets were piled in a woman's brown leather purse. The losing tickets had black X's marked on them. Harper thought that purse was some kind of karmic opposite to the Sorting Hat. Instead of being sent to Slytherin or Gryffindor, you were sent off to go hungry with a cup of sweet coffee. You wouldn't even be allowed to stay in the cafeteria with the others.

I don't think that would be a good idea, Ben Patchett had explained. If we let the losers stay, folks will take pity and start sharing. Normally I'm all for share and share alike, but in this case, it would defeat the whole purpose of the lottery. There's so little to split, if people begin dividing their portions, it'll be like no one's getting fed at all.

Then he said there would only be twenty-nine losing tickets in the purse. He had decided to take the thirtieth, to show he wasn't asking anyone to do anything he wasn't ready to do himself.

At 2:00 A.M.-their normal lunchtime-Norma slid back the bolt on the cafeteria doors and stood aside as people began to push in, snow dusting their caps and shoulders. It was coming down again, in a fast, light, powdery flurry.

Don Lewiston was at the head of the line and he made his way up to Nelson Heinrich. Nelson blinked at him in surprise. "Don, you're sixty-three! You don't need to draw a ticket! I didn't and I'm only sixty! Go on and get your peaches. I already had mine. Gosh, they were yummy!"

"I'll draw a ticket, same as any t'others here, thank you, Nelson. I've never been a big eater anyway and would almost rather a cup of coffee with some sugar."

Before Don could stick his hand in the purse, Allie slipped up alongside him and grabbed his wrist.

"Mr. Lewiston, I'm sorry, if you could just wait a minute. We've got a mess of Lookouts who have been out in the cold all night, sweeping off the boards between houses. Father Storey said it would be all right if they drew first," Allie said.

She looked away from Don, down along the line, and gestured with her head. Teenagers began to shuffle toward the front.

Someone shouted: "Hey, what's with the cutting in line? Everyone here is hoping to get some lunch."

Allie ignored him. So did Michael, and the kids coming along behind him. Michael eased around Don Lewiston with a nod, reached into the purse-and came up with a white stone, the size of a robin's egg.

"Huh," he said. "Look at that. I think I drew a loser!"

He popped the stone in his mouth and walked past the line of serving windows, on to the coffee bar. There he silently poured a cup of coffee for himself and held out his ceramic mug so Harper could dump in his sugar.

Nelson Heinrich stared after him, mouth lolling open in a rather witless way. He looked down into the purse, trying to figure out where the stone had come from.

Allie began to whistle a jaunty little tune.

Gillian Neighbors drew next. Another stone.

"Just my luck!" she said happily, and plopped the stone in her mouth. She walked on to Harper, poured a coffee, and waited for her sugar.

Behind her, her sister, Gail, was reaching into the purse, and this time Harper could see she already had the stone in her palm, even before she began to dig around among the tickets.

Harper wanted to laugh. She wanted to clap. She felt like a girl filled with helium, so light she might've come free from the floor and b.u.mped up against the ceiling like a balloon. She ached with happiness-a fierce, bright happiness of a sort she had not felt in all the time she had been sick with Dragonscale.

She wanted to start grabbing the kids, the Lookouts, Allie's friends, and squeezing them. And not only because of what they were doing: forgoing the lottery and simply volunteering to do without, taking it upon themselves to skip lunch so others could eat. It was just as much what Allie was whistling, a song Harper recognized from the first three bars: a melody so sweet she felt it might break her in two, just as a gla.s.s can be shattered by certain musical tones.

Allie was whistling "A Spoonful of Sugar," the very best song from the very best movie ever.

Gail Neighbors drew the white stone, made a clucking sound, and walked on to get her coffee. All of the kids were doing it: Allie's kids. All the teenage girls who had shaved their heads to look like her and all the teenage boys who had signed up for Lookout duty just to be around her.

Don Lewiston pushed back his Greek fisherman's cap and scratched his forehead with his thumb and began to whistle himself. He nodded as each Lookout walked past to collect a stone and skip lunch.

Father Storey was whistling, too. Harper had not seen him enter, but there he was, standing to one side of the door, smiling enormously, but blinking at tears. Aunt Carol stood beside him, her head resting on his shoulder, whistling with the rest of them, and her eyes were gold coins. Almost a dozen people were whistling the song now, the melody as lovely as the first warm perfumed breath of spring, and their eyes shone like lamps. Burning gently on the inside. Burning with song, with the Bright.

Gail Neighbors held out her mug for sugar. As Harper dumped it in, she began to sing.

"Just a spoonful of sugar," Harper sang, her voice thick with emotion, "makes the medicine go down, makes the medicine go dow-own . . ."

She sang and for a moment forgot all about being pregnant, being fat, being lonely, being covered in some kind of flammable spore that was ready to ignite. She sang and forgot Jakob's awful book and Jakob's awful gun. She forgot the world was on fire.

A spoke of heat flashed up from the base of her spine and spread over the ribbons of Dragonscale on her skin, in a sweet, shiver-inducing rush. She swayed on her heels without being aware of it. The world possessed a new, liquid quality. She was conscious of a tidal rocking in her blood, as if she were afloat in a pool of warmth and light, as if she were an embryo herself, not the carrier of one.

The next time she poured sugar, the glittering grains seemed to fall in slow motion: a cascade of riches. Brightness cascaded along the Dragonscale around her wrists and throat, a silvery-white trill. She was a kite, filled and rising with song instead of wind. She was as warm as a kite in the sun, too, her skin blazing-not painfully, but with a flush of pleasure. Her hand wore a glove of light.

The Lookouts came and nodded to her and took their coffee or tea and went on and they all shone; they were all lit up like ghosts. She was glad for each of them, in love with each of them, although she could not remember who any of them were. She could not remember anything that had come before the song. She could not think of anything that mattered more than the melody. She did not believe that any spoonful of sugar, no matter how sweet, could be as fine as the melting sweetness running through her then.

Father Storey was the last to come up for coffee. He had drawn a stone himself, of course. He hadn't put it in his mouth yet, was just holding it.

"There is Miss Willowes!" he cried. "Happy at last. Happy and looking well!"

"Miss . . . Willowes?" she asked, her voice as slow and dreamy as sugar spilling from a spoon. "Who's Miss Willowes?"

"It'll come back to you," he promised.

13.

It did, too. Her name returned to her just before dawn, came back to her almost as soon as she stopped trying to remember it. Her subconscious coughed it up without any warning, in much the way it would sometimes supply her with the answer to a question in a crossword that had been stumping her.

She did not wake coughing smoke again. There were no more hot flashes burning up her T-shirts in the night. At the next chapel, Carol sat at the pipe organ to play "Spirit in the Sky," and the congregation rose to sing. They roared and stamped like drunk sailors in a Melville story, full of grog and scaring the seagulls with their sea chanteys, and Harper bellowed with them, bellowed till her throat ached.

And they shone, all of them together, Harper, too. Her eyes blazed like lamps, her skin hummed with warmth and pleasure, her thoughts soared away from her like a kestrel rising on a hot summer updraft, and for a few weeks everything was almost all right.

BOOK THREE.

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL.