Fire (22 page)

Something vague at the back of his conscious mind . . . something about germs?

A blank.

And then, suddenly, an image that seemed to come from nowhere: some strange insectlike creature on a dark sphere, the creature cherry-red as though it were afire. And suddenly the thing exploded, and in explosion there was light enough to see that the sphere was the earth, and the force of the blast split the world asunder.

Yes, that was it: a germ that was going to destroy the world — and that same germ was the reason Luke was now alive. That was it.

Someone screeched, off to the left of the schoolgirls, and the scream seemed to go on forever. Luke turned and saw that the scream came from a small boy sitting on the stoop of a tenement building. The boy was staring at him, looking him right in the eye, and his face looked unsettlingly familiar to Luke.

Screaming as though he’d seen a ghost. Maybe I am a ghost, and that’s why he’s screaming.

Luke worked his right arm up out from under the sheet and waved at the boy. “Hey,” he said, “don’t be afraid.”

The girls had spotted him, now, too, but they didn’t look afraid, so much — a little confused, but not afraid.

The boy’s scream faded away, but he still looked scared half out of his mind. Luke stepped out, away from the trees. Toward the boy. “What’s wrong? I’m not anything to be that scared of, am I?”

The boy just kept staring at him, transfixed, as Luke walked toward him. He didn’t say a word until Luke was almost close enough to touch.

“I’m not anything that bad, am I?” Luke asked.

And the boys said, “You were dead, horrible dead, and I saw you. I helped my Daddy carry you out to the graveyard. Your whole back side was charred away from the fire in that bus. You were dead, mister.”

“I was?” Luke frowned. Thought hard, still trying to make sense of himself. “I was, wasn’t I.”

“Uh-huh.”

The quiet went long and thick, but the boy did seem to calm down. “I’m sorry,” Luke said, even though he wasn’t sure why he was apologizing.

Then, suddenly, the boy’s face went angry. “How come you had to go and get yourself killed like that? I brought my Daddy down, and we were going to help you, we were going to take you to the hospital, and when we got downstairs you weren’t anyplace to be found. Then the next day we find what’s left of you in that burned-out bus. You ain’t got no right to go and get yourself killed that way.”

“I don’t?” Luke’s memory was so shaky that he wasn’t sure enough about anything to argue. Even so, it felt wrong to be blamed for his own misfortune. “I guess I don’t,” he said. “I already apologized, didn’t I?”

The boy shook his head and made a small sound somewhere between a snort and a sigh. “Yeah. You said you was sorry.”

The boy was staring off into the distance — staring at the graveyard, Luke saw when he followed the boy’s line of sight. “It’s a nice cemetery, isn’t it?”

The boy blinked, and looked up at Luke. “Are you some kind of a holy man or something? My Momma’s always talking about holy men, and always reading out loud from her Bible. I heard her talking the other day about holy men who wake up again after they’re dead. Like Jesus Christ, or something.” The boy took a good look around, to make sure no one else could hear them. The only people anywhere nearby were the schoolgirls, but they’d long since lost interest in Luke and the boy. “Are you Jesus, Mister?”

The question all but knocked Luke off his feet — partly because he knew that he wasn’t, partly because he couldn’t prove that he wasn’t, not even to himself.

When Luke’s heart had slowed enough to let him speak, he said, “No,” and, “Well, no, I’m not . . . well, tell me, son, what’s your name?”

“Andy Harrison. And your name’s Luke Munsen, I know that because we found your wallet with your drivers’ license picture in it, only there wasn’t any money or any credit cards because whoever did that to you took it all. Even though your name is Luke Munsen, that still doesn’t mean that you couldn’t be Jesus Christ. Jesus did just like you did — he died on Friday, and then on Sunday he came back to let everybody know they was saved.”

“Andy —” Luke started, and then his tongue stumbled all over itself, and he had to begin all over again. “Andy Harrison, I don’t remember anything very clearly about what I was before I died. If you tell me long enough and hard enough that I was Jesus, I might even start to believe it, because I just can’t be sure of anything. But I think that if I was someone as good and important as Jesus was — I think if I had been, I’d remember that. You understand what I mean?”

Andy just shook his head and stood and took Luke’s hand. “C’mon,” he said, “we got to go tell my Momma. She’ll set you straight — Momma sets everybody straight.”

Andy Harrison turned and led Luke up into the tenement building. On the third floor he stopped in front of the door to an apartment and motioned for Luke to wait. Then he burst inside, shouting, “Momma, Momma, I found Jesus,” and Luke felt a sudden and powerful need to crawl under a rock and hide.

A woman — her voice was as familiar as the boy’s had been, but Luke had no idea why — sighed and then she said, “Child, you’ve had Jesus with you since the day you were conceived. What kind of an epiphany have you brought yourself to now?”

Andy harrumphed. “No, Momma. Not I found him like ‘I Found It.’ I found him like . . . like . . . I found him like he’s standing right outside our door.”

“What? Andy, child, I declare — that imagination of yours. . . !”

The sound of cloth rustling, of a heavyset woman walking across the floor, toward Luke. The door swung open, and Luke felt ridiculous, standing in front of a strange woman dressed in nothing but a bed sheet, and there the woman was, her face painted by annoyance . . .

And she looked at Luke . . .

And seemed to recognize his face.

And Andy Harrison’s mother screamed. Not a long scream, nor even a loud one. She was much too controlled a woman to lose herself for long; she covered her mouth with her hand to stop the sound.

She couldn’t cover her bulging eyes, or the way her dark skin seemed to pale slightly.

“Dear God oh my dear God,” she said. Her hand trembled as she lowered it from her face.

“No ma’am — honestly, I’m no one’s Savior. I’m sorry your son’s got that idea into his head. I’ve sure tried to convince him otherwise.”

“No,” she said, “not Jesus. Not Jesus.”

She took Luke’s hand and led him into her apartment, led him to the kitchen table and sat him down.

“I told you, Momma,” Andy said. “I told you I found Jesus. He’s the man I tried to help last Friday, the same man we had to carry away from the bus.”

“Hush, child.”

She looked at Luke carefully, staring into his eye so hard that he began to wonder if there were some strange blemish on his cornea. She lifted her hand to his face, touched him, probing him so gently that it was almost a caress, but too purposeful. She lifted the curly-shaggy hair up away from his forehead, and touched there, too, and more forcefully.

“Not a single scar,” she said, “There isn’t a scar on this man.”

“If I’m causing some kind of trouble,” Luke said, “I can move on. I don’t mean to be a disturbance.”

The woman frowned and shook her head. “ ‘And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.’” She whispered the words, her voice all full of awe.

“But Momma,” the boy said, “he wasn’t dead any three days and an half — only two days and an half. Like Jesus, not like any old prophet. And he ain’t all that scary, not once you get used to seeing him alive.”

“Really, ma’am — please. I’m honestly not anybody that special. I feel like I’m about as ordinary a man as I could possibly be.”

She shook he head again. “No. Whatever you are, you’re a miracle just because you’re alive. I haven’t ever heard about a miracle that was an everyday kind of thing.”

“See, Momma? Jesus is miracles, and so is Mr. Luke Munsen. I told you he was Jesus.” Andy smiled a self-satisfied smile. “Say, Mr. Luke Munsen Jesus, you want your wallet? We was going to give it to the police and tell them what happened to you, only the police haven’t stopped hiding yet.”

“Please. Don’t call me Jesus. I’m not God. I don’t want to be God.”

“Okay. You want me to get your wallet or not?”

Luke blinked, trying to shake away the confusion. “Uh . . . yes. Sure, I’d like to see it.”

The boy got up from the table, almost ran from the room. A moment later he was running back, his face so full of fun that it threw Luke off-balance. He spread the wallet out across the table and looked gravely at Luke.

“It was like this when my Daddy found it,” he said. “Somebody really bad must have got hold of you.”

Luke examined the wallet. There was nothing in it but a driver’s license, a bank card, and a couple of grocery store check-cashing cards. Not enough to tell him much about himself. He looked carefully at the photo on the license, trying to get used to the sight of his own face. It was his face, all right, and he recognized it, but even that recognition was . . . uncertain. If the boy had looked up at him at that very moment and told Luke that it wasn’t his face at all, Luke would have believed him.

There was a signature underneath the photo — a clear, crisp, easy signature, Luke Munsen — and even though Luke knew it was his name and knew that it had to be his signing, he didn’t recognize it. The letters weren’t even remotely familiar, and the whole effect of the signature was somehow alien.

Luke pushed the wallet away, sighed. Looked around, looked to see anything but the wallet and its evidence of his own alienated identity. Saw the sheet still draped around his shoulders, held tight at the center of his chest with his left hand. And for at least the dozenth time in the last half hour Luke Munsen was embarrassed at his own nakedness. Or near-nakedness.

“I need to get myself some clothes,” he said. “There isn’t any money here, but I know I have money someplace. I’d remember being broke — it’d be a tough thing to forget. Not that it does me a whole lot of good when I can’t get at it.”

The woman sighed. “It doesn’t matter whether you have any money or not. There isn’t anyplace open for you to spend it.” She shook her head, pushed her chair away from the table, stood. “Let me get you some of Robert’s clothes. Would you like to use our shower?”

Luke flushed, embarrassed; he hadn’t meant to be asking for anything, but suddenly he realized that it must have sounded as though he were. He didn’t want to be a beggar, or a sponge, but the truth was that he needed any help he could get — he wasn’t in a position to be proud. He was lost, and naked, and filthy, and he wasn’t even sure who the hell he was — not positive, anyway. “Yeah — if I could, I’d appreciate it. I . . . uh . . . I don’t really feel too comfortable about taking from you, though. Is there anything I can do to . . . earn the favor?”

The woman scowled. “Don’t be silly. The hand of God has touched you. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but I know it has. It’s an honor to have you in our home.”

“Maybe so, ma’am —”

“My name is Barbara. Barbara Harrison.”

“Maybe so, Barbara. Just the same I’d be happier if I didn’t get too deeply in your debt.”

“You’ll find a way, I’m sure,” she said. And turned and walked from the room.

A moment later she was coming back, her arms full of clothes and a clean towel. She led him to the apartment’s bathroom, and told him that he shouldn’t take his time since the hot water didn’t tend to hold out very long, and handed him the bundle of clean clothes. And then she left him there, the bathroom door still open for him to close, and Luke feeling stupid and awkward and a lot like a mooch. What could he do? He couldn’t do anything, except the obvious, and he knew it. He closed the door and set the towel and clothes on the edge of the bathroom sink. Let the towel fall to the ground, and took a good look around him.

The bathroom was spotless, tidy and scrubbed clean right down to the deepest crack in its tile. But it was the bathroom of a tenement apartment; it was a hundred years old, at least, never renovated, and its construction was unsound. No one had ever intended the pitted porcelain sink to last a hundred years — nor were the crazed tiles that covered the walls, nor the tub with its long, deep copper-rust-green water stains, nor the chipped pull-chain toilet, meant to do service for a century. Barbara Harrison kept her home clean, and she kept it as well as anyone could possibly imagine, but no matter how well she kept it the place was still old, and marked by time.

Luke Munsen couldn’t possibly have put words to that thought. He’d lost too much of his self and his experience of the world. He did still have his prejudices, his unconscious assumptions about the nature of the world, even had the ability to do those things he could previously have done without bothering to think about them, but he didn’t have enough of his own experience of things to analyze and sort an idea that complex. Still, if Luke couldn’t have explained the apartment’s oldness, he felt it — knew it with his gut even if he couldn’t have told another soul what he knew.

And as he turned the water taps to find a comfortable temperature, found it, and turned the knob that forced water up through the shower head, he thought about oldness. Thought about growing old and being old as the tenement building. Imagined his body somehow untouched by age, just as it’d somehow been unscarred after a death by fire. Thought about his self being that old, older than a self was ever meant to become. Maybe, he thought (and he thought this too without the words to convey it), his self would be somehow like the contents of this room: still functioning, somehow, against good sense and all probability, but desperate to fade into dysfunction and disuse. Crying out to be retired and abandoned. What if he got so old that being alive became a chore — an unhappy chore — but there wasn’t any way for him to die?

What if he honestly wanted and needed to die, but couldn’t die?

The idea made Luke sad. So sad that it still haunted him when he finished washing and turned off the tap. It even distracted him a long while after that.