The Fireman: A Novel Part 55

"Oh, this nutty b.i.t.c.h," Harper said. She wouldn't toss around the word b.i.t.c.h sober, but she was a lot less prim when she was drunk, which was how she felt now. "You know, every time she mentions this guy Ian Judaskiller, she gives him a different t.i.tle. One minute he's grand marshal, the next minute he's field general. One of these days she's going to say he's been anointed the mighty m.u.f.fsucker-"

"Shh," he said, holding up one hand.

She listened. The woman on the radio said His Honor had promised to send twelve fully manned trucks into Maine to fight the resurgent wildfires, with the crews ordered to depart at noon Friday, praise Jesus and the holy host- "We'll go with them," the Fireman said.

"Go with Jesus and the holy host?" she said. "I thought that's what we were trying to avoid."

"The fire crew," he said, his eyes large in his bony face. "We'll drive right across the bridge and into Maine with them. They'll wave us right through with the others." He turned his head and met her gaze. "They're leaving in two days. We can be on Martha Quinn's island by this time next week."

10.

When it was time, John woke her with a touch, his knuckles lightly brushing her cheek.

She rubbed her face, sat up on her elbows. "I don't-what? Isn't it too early? I thought they weren't moving out until noon on Friday."

Allie sat up on the floor. Nick was asleep on his side next to her. She yawned hugely into the back of her hand. "Is it noon?"

"Is it Friday?" Harper asked.

"Yes to Friday, no to noon. Only about eight. But if you come outside, you can hear them. I told you we'd have plenty of advance warning when they were ready to go. Why do you think so many little boys want to be firemen when they grow up? So they can blast the siren. A dozen trucks were bound to make enough noise to wake the whole city."

He wasn't kidding. Harper heard them even before she stepped out into the smoky, slightly chill morning air: the whoop and shriek of competing sirens, going off less than half a mile away. One would blurp and cry out for a few moments, then go silent, and another would take its place. John had predicted they would ma.s.s up at the central fire station, just beyond the town offices, and only a short jog down the road from the cemetery.

"How much of a rush are we in?" she asked the Fireman.

"We don't want to cross the bridge ahead of them, obviously," he said. "But we wouldn't want to be too far behind them, either. Come along. Let's get the kids in the truck." As if they were old hands at parenting and were referring to their own children and a planned drive of some distance to see disagreeable relatives. Harper supposed Allie and Nick were their children now.

Renee was already at the back of the truck, opening the wooden cabinets located above the rear fender. The engine had rolled out of a Studebaker factory in 1935, forty-eight feet long, as red as an apple, and as sleek as a rocket in a Buck Rogers strip. It would always look splendidly like the past's idea of the future, and the future's idea of the past. The cabinets were full of filthy fire hose, rows of steel fire extinguishers, heaps of coats, and ranks of boots, extending away into a cavernous darkness. It seemed perfectly possible that Narnia might be found somewhere at the back of one of those compartments. Renee lifted Nick up and he scrambled in.

"Get under the hose," Renee told him, and then tsk-ed herself for trying to talk to him. "Harper, will you tell him to bury himself under the hoses?"

Harper didn't need to. He was already at it. Allie leapt up on the chrome b.u.mper, scrambled in beside him, and began to help, artfully arranging coils of hose on top of him.

"This is almost exactly how Gil got out of jail," Renee said.

"Where do you think John got the idea?" Harper asked. "Gil's still helping us, you know."

"Yes," Renee said and squeezed Harper's hand. "I'll get my things, such as they are. And the radio. Don't leave without me."

Harper loaded the Portable Mother in the right rear compartment, setting it behind three rows of chrome fire extinguishers, next to a bag of groceries. There was s.p.a.ce back there for Renee and Harper to cuddle together out of sight, beneath a mover's blanket.

And the Fireman-the Fireman would drive.

"I hate that part of the plan," she said to him.

The Fireman was on the running board, next to the pa.s.senger side of the cab. He had a bucket of coals in his hands. He set it next to the exhaust pipe, which protruded into the air from a ledge behind the cab. John leaned in and she saw the tip of his pointer finger light up, turning red and transparent-Harper thought inevitably of E.T.-brightening until it hurt to look at. Sparks spat as he welded the pail to the outside of the exhaust pipe with his finger.

"What part of it?" he asked, absently.

"The part where you try to drive this thing across the bridge. They're hunting you. There are people who have seen you, who know what you look like."

It had even crossed Harper's mind that the whole thing was only a ploy to draw them out, this well-advertised caravan of fire trucks heading to Maine to fight the fires there. The more she considered it, the more she thought it was quite possible they were driving into a trap and would all be dead by teatime.

In the end, what made up her mind to risk it was a series of contractions that lasted half an hour and made her womb feel like a ma.s.s of swiftly hardening concrete. At one point, the pain was so sharp and so rhythmic, and her breath was so fast and short, she was sure the baby was coming. In that precise moment of near-total certainty, the contractions began to abate, and soon they had pa.s.sed entirely, leaving her in a nasty sweat, with trembling hands. Two weeks-only two weeks till her due date, give or take a few days.

What they were doing now was a desperate lunge, like soldiers in the First World War heaving themselves out of a trench and sprinting into no-man's-land, never mind that the last four waves of soldiers to go over the top had been cut to pieces. But they could not stay, because you could not raise a baby in a trench.

It wasn't just a matter of safely delivering. It was about what happened in the minutes, hours, and days afterward. Especially if the boy didn't have the 'scale. It had been months since she had last seen any data, but back in the days when she still had Internet, there were some numbers to suggest as many as 80 percent of the children of the infected were born healthy. The little guy was going to be pink and clean, and the only way to make sure he remained that way was to find someone healthy who could take him away . . . a thought she refused to give close consideration. First she had to find a place she could bring the baby into the world. Then she would work out the next part, locating a home for her uninfected child. Presumably the doctors on Martha Quinn's island were not carrying 'scale. Perhaps one of them would take the infant. Perhaps her baby could even remain on the island with her!

No. That was probably too much to hope for. She was determined to accept whatever would be best for the child, even though she thought that meant it was likely the day of his birth would be the last time she ever saw him. She had already decided that when the moment came, she would handle it like Mary Poppins. She told herself the child was only hers until the west wind blew . . . and when the gale came, she would calmly open her umbrella and float away, leaving him in the care of someone loving and trustworthy and wise, if such a thing could be managed. She could not have him, but he could have her, in a sense. The Portable Mother would go with him.

"I don't think Nick knows how to handle a vehicle with a standard transmission. Renee has never driven anything this big. Allie is too young. You are too pregnant. Besides-the f.u.c.kah they're lookin for talks like Prince fackin' Charles, not like Don fackin' Lewiston," the Fireman told her, his vowels going long, his R's disappearing, so that all at once he sounded as if he were from Manchester in Maine, not Manchester in the United Kingdom. "I can sound like I'm from around here for a few minutes, long enough to get us through the checkpoint."

"What about your wrist?" Harper asked, touching his right arm. The wrist was still bound in filthy tape.

"Oh, it's well enough to use a gearstick. Don't worry yourself, Willowes. I'll get us through the checkpoint. You forget how much I enjoy performing."

But Harper was only half listening to him.

Renee had come to a stop ten paces from the truck and stood bent at the waist, holding her knuckles down so a long-haired cat with golden stripes could sniff at the back of her hand. The cat had come out of the gra.s.s with bits of dead leaf stuck in its fur and its tail in the air. He purred so loudly it sounded like someone had started up an electric sewing machine.

Nick had crawled out from under his piles of hoses to stare. He looked back at Allie with sudden excitement and began to gesture with his fingers. She came forward on all fours.

"He says that's the cat he's been feeding since last summer," she said.

When Harper looked back, the big tom was in Renee's arms. It narrowed its eyes in contentment. Renee had set the radio down in the dirt and was gently running her fist down the cat's spine.

"This is my cat." Renee looked dazed, as if someone had just woken her up from a deep sleep. "My cat that I let go last May. It's Mr. Truffles. Well, Truffaut, actually, but Truffles to his friends."

The Fireman hopped down off the running board. His face was stony. "You sure of that?"

"Of course I am. I think I know my own cat."

"But he doesn't have a collar or tags. You can't be positive."

Renee flushed. "He came right to me. He jumped into my arms." When John didn't speak, she added, "Why shouldn't it be him? This is my neighborhood. I use to live right on this street, you know. A mile south of here, but still this street."

"The cat stays," he told her.

Renee opened her mouth to speak, caught herself, and stared at him-first with incomprehension, and then with a dawning look of acceptance.

"Of course," she said. "It's absurd to think-of course, you're right."

She rubbed her nose against the cat's and set him gently in the dirt.

"No!" Allie cried. "What are you doing? We can take him."

"That's right. I can keep him with me," Harper said.

She was thinking about the expression she had glimpsed on Renee's face when she recognized her cat. It had been more than a look of pleasure-it was a flash of shock. Harper thought some part of Renee had given up on happiness-had left it behind in the tomb with Gilbert-and the possibility of delight had blindsided her. Nick, too, had already jumped down out of the truck and dropped to his knees in the dust, was carefully creeping toward it with an intent, almost mesmerized expression. The cat twined between Renee's ankles and watched the boy with wary jade eyes.

"And if they look in the rear cupboards and discover him?" the Fireman asked.

"They'll think a cat stowed away in your truck. They'll laugh over it."

"No. They'll start digging around, is what they'll do."

"Let's vote," Harper said.

"No f.u.c.king vote! It isn't safe. The cat stays."

Harper said, "Mr. Rookwood, I have had my fill of people claiming the unique authority to decide what is and isn't best for others. I tried marriage, and had five years of being told the things that made me feel like a human being were no good for me. I tried religion-the scared church of the holy sing-along, temple of the Bright-and got more of the same. We're on to democracy now and we're going to vote. Don't pout, you get one, too."

"Three cheers for the electoral process!" Allie cried.

The Fireman swept a hostile glare across her and her brother. "Most societies recognize that children are not well enough informed to partic.i.p.ate in public debate."

"Most children haven't saved your scrawny and ungrateful a.s.s from a public stoning. We vote. All of us. And I vote cat," Harper said.

"I vote for a feline-free future," the Fireman said, and stabbed a finger at Renee. "And so does she. Because unlike you, Renee Gilmonton is a woman of reason, logic, and caution, aren't you, Renee?"

Renee wiped the back of her hand against a wet cheek. "He's right. If anything happened to the kids because we brought the cat along, I couldn't bear it. It's an unconscionable risk. And besides I-I suppose it might not be my cat after all."

"You are lying, Renee, and I see right through you," Harper said. She turned her head and glared with a righteous fury at the two children. "How do you vote?"

"I vote cat," Allie said.

Nick put his thumb in the air.

"You are both outvoted!" Harper cried. "Mr. Truffles comes with us!"

Renee shivered. "Harper. No. Really. You don't-we can't-"

"We can," Harper said. "We will. Democracy, motherf.u.c.kers. Get used to it."

Mr. Truffles rubbed his spine up against Renee's ankle and looked at Harper with an expression that suggested the matter had never been in doubt.

11.

Harper stretched out in the dark beside Renee with the cat nestled between them, in the s.p.a.ce behind three rows of fire extinguishers. Allie and Nick had settled under the hoses in the other compartment. Harper's face was buried in Mr. Truffle's fur and with each inhalation she smelled the last nine months of his secret cat life: must, dust, grave dirt, bas.e.m.e.nts and tall gra.s.s, beach and drainpipe, Dumpster and dandelions.

The truck droned and thudded. They were on South Street now, Harper could tell by their slow progress and all the swaying. There were a lot of curves on South Street. They hit a pothole and her teeth banged together.

"It used to be five hours to Machias. How long do you think it takes now?" Renee asked softly.

"We don't know what the interstate is like. The fire last fall burned from Boothbay Harbor to the border. Thousands and thousands of acres. Who knows if we'll be able to drive the whole way. If we have to walk some or most of it, it could take us-well, a long time."

Mr. Truffles's purrs echoed in the wooden cabinet, a rhythmic rattling that made Harper think of someone playing a washboard in a bluegra.s.s band.

"But if the road is clear, we could be on the island tonight."

"We don't know how long they'll need to process us. Or how often they send over the boats."

"Wouldn't it be something to take a shower in hot water?"

"That's crazy talk. Next you'll be daydreaming about food that doesn't come from a can."

"Have you slept with him?" Renee asked, out of the blue.

The fire truck shifted gears and began to accelerate. They were off South Street now and on Middle Road. The blacktop was newer under the tires, Harper could tell from the smoothness of the ride.

"No," Harper said. "I mean-we've been in bed together, but we've only ever just held each other. His ribs. His bad arm." She didn't know how to explain about the other woman who was always in the room with them, the one in the flames. "More recently, I've been very pregnant."

"I guess you can straighten that out when you're on the island." The fire truck rocked and clattered. "I wish Gil and I had that. I wish there had been a way-but the Mazz was always watching, always in the room with us. I know I'm not so much to look at. I mean, I'm fat and I'm almost fifty. But he had been in prison a long time, and-"

"Renee, you are adorably f.u.c.kable," Harper said. "You would've rocked his world."

Renee clapped a hand over her mouth and quivered helplessly.

The fire extinguishers clattered and rang, chiming against one another.

When Renee had control of herself again, she said, "You've kissed him, though? And used the L-word?"

"Yes."

"Good. Gil never said it to me, so I never said it to him. I didn't want to say it and have him feel like he was obliged. I wish I had now. Risked it, I mean. I don't care if he said it back to me. I just wish he had heard it from me."

"He knew," Harper said.

The sound under the tires changed, became deeper and hollow somehow. Harper thought they might be on the ramp, climbing to I-95 now. Any minute, she thought. Any minute. Any minute. When they went up onto the bridge, it would make a steely, rushing roar. There would be no mistaking it. The checkpoint was located a third of the way across the bridge.

"I wish I had said it to him this morning. If they stop us and find us, I might not get a chance," Harper said. Her pulse quickened as the truck sped up. "I do very much love you, Renee Gilmonton. You are the most thoughtful person I know. I hope I can be like you when I grow up."