The Firebug of Balrog County (12 page)

“I started with the fires a couple of years ago, after my mom died. It's been mostly little stuff out in the country until lately, I guess. It's weird, but somehow the fires help, you know? Like it helps to destroy something. To step back and watch it all burn.”

Katrina lowered her hand from her mouth and grinned, her dark eyes gleaming. “Fuck yes. I do know how that feels. I know exactly.”

“You do?”

Katrina turned off the lantern and the attic went dark, lit only by a faint scrim of starlight coming in through the windows. I heard rustling and my own breathing magnified. I thought of the skeleton birds roosting in the basement, propped up by modeling wire for all eternity. Did the skeleton birds dream? Had the birds dreamt while they were alive?

“Katrina?”

The pale outline of a girl appeared amid the darkness, crawling toward me on the floor. “So,” she said, arching her back and kissing my chin. “What do you say we haunt this attic ourselves, firebu
g?”

Football

F
ootball is big in Balrog County. Really big. You cannot escape this fact and simply must live with it as best you can.

High
school football games draw big crowds and grown men allow their moods to be altered by their outcomes. I've never been what you'd call football material but I did enjoy the games when I was little. This was because all the kids would stop watching the game after the first quarter and we'd congregate in an open corner on the visitor's side, near the concession stands. We'd run around tagging and tackling and it was kind of exciting, wondering if certain girls liked you and if you liked them. Seeing how many friends you could get to cluster around you at
once.

The Fog

I
wandered throug
h the next few days like a
man who'd take
n opium and proceeded to wander into a thick fog. Everything around me appeared haloed, almost fuzzy, and I found myself stroking various types of fabric and marveling at their texture, at the rich variety of their weave. Not only had I finally lost my pesky virginity, but the idea that I, skinny/dorky/underemployed Mack Druneswald, had slept with a girl as beautiful as Katrina was a marvel I could barely process, something that needed to seep in over a large period of time with the additional reassurance of physical proof.

Luckily, I had one of the metal clip barrettes she'd been wearing in her hair. It had fallen out during our glorious roll-around and I'd come across it during the post-game dressing and fumbling about. I'd tucked it into my pants quickly, like a master thief, and brought it back with me to the house.

Now I kept it in the front pocket of jeans, clicking it every now and then with a goofy smile on my face.

Click-click.

Click-click.

I went on walks early in the morning and late at night. I wandered the streets of Hickson alone, fallen leaves crackling beneath my feet as I hummed Van Morrison songs and wondered what Katrina was doing at that moment. She hadn't contacted me since our attic rendezvous but she'd seemed to enjoy herself at the time, exuding none of the after-sex shame you might have expected from a sudden hookup, only a satisfied sleepiness that made her even more attractive and caused me to imagine her reclining in an actual bed, her dark hair fanned across a pillow.

I received my share of looks as I ambled around Hickson grinning like an escaped mental patient, but I didn't mind. Everything turned me on. I got hard-ons from sitting on stools, from turning up the radio in my car, from watching sitcoms on my living room couch. In fact, it got so bad I had to consciously avoid going into full-on stalker mode and kept to one iron-fast rule: I avoided the city block Katrina lived on as if it were a quarantine zone infested with vampires, rabid dogs, and bright-eyed college kids holding clipboards. I believed if she saw me passing her house she'd realize what a true loser I was and lose all interest in me immediately. Then she'd move on to someone more her type, like a rich stockbroker or a Navy SEAL.

I managed to keep our tryst secret for three days before I broke down and told Sam about it. We were at Sunburst Lanes, a bowling alley in Thorndale we liked to hang o
ut at when the general Hickson ennui grew overwhelming. We'd already bowled two games and had started into our second pitcher of Coke as we rested up for the third game, sprawled comfortably in the lane's plastic seats.

“Damn, Mack. You've got to be kidding me.”

“No, sir. I am not.”

“She let you fuck her in the attic?”

“Let me? It was her idea. I would have settled for some groping. Shit. I would have settled for holding hands.”

“An attic is not a very classy place to make love.”

“Yeah.”

“But it sounds awesome. Congrats, dude. Goodbye virginity.”

I nodded and sipped my soda, not wanting to rub it in. Sam rested his hands on his plump stomach and steepled his fingers, looking more like a young Orson Welles than ever.

“Have you talked to her since?”

“Nope.”

“This is a tactical stance?”

“Nope. I don't have her phone number.”

“Fuck.”

Three lanes down, a middle-aged woman in mom jeans picked up a 7/10 split. She was good, and she'd been making everyone else look crappy since she'd shown up a half-hour before with her pink bowling glove, sparkly pink ball, and gritty look of determination. She might have been a school bus driver or a cleaning lady, but in this glossy bowling world she was a goddamn queen.

“This must be karma,” Sam said, sitting up. “Katrina must be a reward for all the crap you've gone through.”

“You mean my mom?”

“Yeah, dude. Katrina is your cosmic reward for all that painful shit. For the cancer.”

I pictured an enormous balance scale floating in outer space. Sitting in one pan was an oxygen tank, a hospital bed, and my mother's gravestone. Sitting in the other pan was Katrina, wearing her leather jacket and holding a bird house under one arm.

“That's insane, Sam. If anyone needed to be rewarded, it was my mom. She was the one who had cancer.”

“How do you know she wasn't? She could be chillin' in heaven right now, drinking heaven margaritas by the side of the heaven pool. Katrina is, like, your side reward. Not heaven, maybe, but pretty good, right?”

I stood up. “You're getting too mystical for me, dude. Let's roll.”

“You think I'm wrong?”

“No. I think you've been spending too much time watching evangelical Christian programming with your grandma.”

“She likes it when I watch TV with her. She finds it
comforting.”

I grabbed my twelve-pounder and stepped onto the hardwood floor. Three lanes down, Mom Jeans rolled a thunderous strike and walked back calmly to the conveyor, looking up at the flashing X on the screen. I took a step back, wound up, and rolle
d.

For a moment it looked like a perfect bowl, a straight-on strike, but after some wobbling indecision the five pin refused to go down and remained standing, pointing like a middle-finger right back at me.

“You should take Katrina to homecoming, if you guys are such good fuck-buddies now. Parade your college girl around the school. Make all the assholes jealous.”

I scratched my head, imagining the scene. “Maybe I will and maybe I will. A man can only take being called ‘Drunesdick' so many times before he froths over.”

“Shit,” Sam said, rising from his plastic chair. “Maybe I'll go to the dance myself to see this shit.”

An uneasy peace had fallen over the House of Druneswald. On Wednesday night, Dad, who'd been trying to play it cool with Bonnie, invited her over for dinner a second time. My sister appeared much calmer this time around and made it through the entire meal without going batshit crazy. But later, when I was brushing my teeth upstairs, I could hear the TV downstairs (some romantic comedy Dad and Bonnie were watching) and the noise rose up from the stairwell like an artifact from an impossibly distant, sun-blessed past, as if the previous terrible years had not happened and I could simply bound downstairs and find Mom and Dad on the couch, snuggled together beneath a quilt.

Dad said something and Bonnie giggled like a woman who'd been nibbled upon. I imagined Haylee sitting in her room and hearing this flirty giggle sifting through her door. I saw her face scrunch and her eyes flare, her jaw setting in anger. She had no clear opponent, really, and I think that just made everything worse.

The Mayor's Corner

Dear Residents of Hickson,

Unfortunately, I write with more bad news. The seasonal yard decorations of local resident Shirley Klondike were recently destroyed in what police believe to be an act of criminal arson. Not only were her decorations ruined but the resulting image created by the arson (whether intentional or not) was a burning cross, which nearly gave poor Shirley a heart attack.

Once again, I find myself infuriated by the lowlife(s) who persists in attacking the property of innocent, law-abiding citizens. The fact that they've chosen to publish a retort to this mayoral column, in this very newspaper, shows exactly how brazen they are, while the fact that they've sent the reply anonymously, with no return address, reveals their true cowardice.

For those of you who do not know Shirley personally, I can tell you she is a swell woman who takes great pride in keeping her lawn tidy and decorated in accordance with the changing seasons. She also makes a mean beer-cheese soup, as anyone who has ever attended a soup supper at the Methodist church will agree.

To the residents of this fine town, I again ask for continued vigilance until these perpetrators are caught and dealt with appropriately. If you see anything do not hesitate to call the police or myself.

Also, I would like to remind everyone that the city will be picking up yard refuse bags this Thursday, so make sure you get outside and rake that lawn!

Sincerely,

Mayor George Hedley

Popping the Question

S
o … Katrina.”

“Yeah?”

“Sorry I haven't called or anything. I really did have fun the other night. You know, in the attic. Also, I need your phone number.”

“So that's why you've showed up on my doorstep with flowers, like we're in the 1950s? Are these jerkwad apology flowers?”

“Urrrr … ”

“Jesus, Mack. Are you sweating?”

“I … I … uuuhhhhhhh … ”

“For fuck's sake, dude. What is it?”

“Well, you know. Homecoming is tomorrow night. Homecoming homecoming homecoming.”

“Ah.”

“Football game, boring parade. Big dance in the old gymnasium. Lots of bunting, I imagine.”

“Are you high right now?”

“And a man, Katrina, a man needs a date at times like this. Someone to lean on in case he pulls a muscle.”

“Are you, like, asking me to your high school homecoming dance?”

“Yes?”

“Fuck, dude.”

“I know it might seem puerile—”

“I'd fucking love to go!”

“Really?”

“Shit yeah. I never went to any dances when I was in high school. I was too busy being cool and, y
ou know … ”

“Goth?”

“Right. Goth. But now, you know, I think I'll appreciate it more now. Actually enjoy the corniness of it.”

“Are
you
high right now?”

“I'll get us more brandy. I'll wear my slutty black dress. And you better have a goddamn corsage when you pick me up.”

“Okay. Corsage store, here I come.”

“That's right. I'm a princess, Mack Druneswald. A fucking princess.”

Homecoming

H
omecoming week was a big deal at Hickson High and to the weirdly supportive parents of its students, many of whom stopped by the hardware store for parade float supplies. Big Greg loved homecoming too, and not only because he could sell a shitload of two-by-fours and rubber cement. He'd played football for the Hickson Wildcats and considered this period of his life a golden age, a time when men were men and the women downright magical. He'd played both offensive and defensive tackle and had been named to the All-Conference team at both positions, which was apparently a rare feat and had given him endless fodder for manly hardware store conversations.

Business was brisk all week and I also had a shitload to do at school. By the time I got off work on Friday, I was tired and not exactly excited to cram myself into a suit and tie, even if I'd gotten a night off from the Legion because of the dance. I found my sister upstairs, running around in her underwear as her bedroom stereo blasted excruciating club music. I stood at the top of the stairs, bewildered, and caught Haylee by the wrist as she darted past.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

“I'M GETTING READY FOR THE DANCE, DUR.”

“TURN DOWN THE DAMN MUSIC.”

“FINE. LET ME GO.”

Haylee turned the music down and I retreated to my room. I lay down on my bed, hoping for some pre-dance shuteye, but found any chance I had at sleep destroyed by the skittering about of my sister as she got ready, her hair dryer roaring while Chompy, himself revved up, barked steadily at the heels of his mistress. The best I could do in lieu of sleep was cram a pillow over my face and picture Katrina naked. This was a coping mechanism I'd been using all week when faced with the choosier customers at the store, the ones who wondered why a small-town hardware store didn't have a larger selection of colored crepe paper.

I'd almost managed to drift off when I heard a rapping upon my chamber door.

“Mack.”

“What?”

“Will you come out here a second?”

“Why?”

“Please?”

I groaned into my pillow and flung it to the floor. “Damn, Haylee. Can't a man get some sleep around here?”

I opened my door. A pretty girl in a wispy lilac dress was standing in the hallway, holding Mom's old digital camera. Her brown hair was carefully pinned up, revealing the magical power of her elfish ears, while the freckles on her nose stood out beneath a light sheen of sparkly powder.

“Yowza. You look real pretty, Haystack.”

My sister blushed and held out Mom's camera. “Will you take my picture?”

“Sure.”

I took the camera and turned on the hallway lights. Haylee stared straight ahead for the first four pictures, unsmiling, as if posing for a driver's license photo, but then Chompy jumped up and photobombed the fifth one, his big, slobbery head eating up the foreground while my sister cracked a grin.

“This one's a winner,” I said, handing the camera back to her.

“Thanks. You're really going to the dance, Mack?”

“Yep.”

“I didn't even know you had a girlfriend.”

“We're not labeling it.”

“But she's coming with you?”

“Yes.”

“And she's real?”

“Ha. Her name's Katrina. She's in college.”

Haylee tilted her head, squinting at me like a tiny, elfish gunslinger. Chompy barked uncertainly and grabbed my ankle in his maw, seeking toothy reassurance. Soon I would need to take a shower and ready myself.

“Who are you going with, Haystack? Some captain of industry? A fellow future big shot corporate lawyer?”

“Just Staci and Bridgette. We don't need men to validate our lives, Mack.”

“So, what you're saying here is hos before bros?”

“God, you're a dork.”

The homecoming dance was held in our high school's gym, which was basically a raised basketball court wedged between wooden bleachers and a four-hundred-seat auditorium. The basketball court also served as a stage—enormous black velvet curtains could be pulled across the basketball hoops and wooden risers to hide them from the auditorium crowd. Every big school event was held in this multi-use space: terrible plays, boring basketball games, endless band concerts, iffy talent shows, lame pep rallies, and sniffly student memorial services.

Tonight the gym was gussied up for homecoming. The ceiling above the basketball court was filled with hundreds of silver and blue helium balloons, as if some enormous spider creature had laid its eggs there, and both the auditorium and the wooden bleachers we
re decorated with streamers. The hired DJ had set up a light-and-sound show, complete with a smoke machine and an enormous freestanding disco ball, and the floor was already populated by clumps of students dancing. It was a big crowd. Unlike prom, which was only open to seniors, juniors, and their dates, anybody in grades nine through twelve could attend homecoming. Also, it was only a semi-formal, which meant plenty of
dudes wearing their father's ill-fitting suits and girls done up like they were going clubbing in New Jersey. The freshmen, I noticed, looked particularly terrified, choosing to hang back on the edges of the raised court as if they'd come solely to chaperone the dance themselves.

As Katrina and I stood at the edge of the auditorium, with all this pseudo-glamour spread out before us, I wondered if I'd made perhaps the greatest mistake of my spastic life. It was one thing to attend your school's lame dance alone or with another student from your school; it was quite another to see the whole freak show through the eyes of a stranger. An older, way cooler stranger.

“Wow.”

“Katrina—”

“I mean, wow. Holy shitfuck.”

“We can leave if you want.”

“Leave?” Katrina turned to me and grabbed my hand. “No way, Mack-Attack. This is good clean fun. This is high school distilled.”

“Yeah, unfortunately.”

“Aw, shut up.”

Katrina dragged me through the auditorium and up onto the dance floor. She danced in a funky, uninhibited way while I tried to boogie without looking too much like I'd been electrocuted, which is hard to do when you're ninety-percent elbows.

“Mack.”

“What?”

“Stop grinning like that. You look like an idiot.”

“Sorry.”

I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the music. I was groovy, I was groovy …

Somebody hip-checked me, knocking me out of the groove. I opened my eyes, expecting one of our school's resident douche nozzles, but instead I found Haylee standing in front of me, stock still in the crowd of dancers.

“Hey,” my sister shouted. “Is that her?”

I looked at Katrina. She was watching us but hadn't stopped dancing. She was wearing a little black dress that fluttered when she moved. She reminded me of a gypsy minus all the rings and bracelets.

“She's so old,” Haylee shouted. “Is she twenty-one?”

“I like your dress,” Katrina shouted back across the dance floor. “Lilac's a good color for you.”

Haylee stared at Katrina, pursing her lips so tight they almost disappeared entirely. I had no idea what her deal was, but she definitely didn't look like someone who was enjoying a homecoming dance.

No. More like someone who was going to bomb a homecoming dance.

The fast song ended and a slower song started, some terrible heartstring of a country song that made the girls whoop and rush the dance floor. A sophomore girl grabbed Haylee by the hand and pulled her into the crowd, shouting something unintelligible. Katrina stepped closer and put her arms around my neck. I put my hands on her waist and we started slow dancing. I could feel the warmth of her hips through the fabric of her dress.

“Who was that girl?”

“That's Haylee. She's my sister.”

Katrina nodded. “I like her. She seems tough.”

“Oh, she's a real badger, all right.”

Even though Katrina was in heels, I loomed over her shoulder with my tottering height. So this was a high school dance without the loneliness, alienation, or the terrible, cellular-level despair. This was dancing with the prettiest girl in the joint while your heart went thumpity-thump in your chest and your mouth dried out and sweat welled along your hairline, just waiting to break free and stream down your face.

“I could get used to this,” I said.

“Yeah?” Katrina said. “Well, don't.”

I forced myself to focus on the crowd as a steadying measure as my fellow Wildcats drifted around the dance floor. Fog drifted knee-high around the room, obscuring ankles and shoes, while the mirror ball dotted the darkness with luminous white flares. I noticed Haylee dancing at the edge of the floor with some ginger-haired dude with broad shoulders and I gave her a nod, some brotherly hey-there support, but she didn't notice me. She was frowning in concentration, the boy handling her like he was dancing with a mannequin or his favorite blow-up doll, and when the song ended my sister pulled away from him and practically sprinted out of the gym.

“Ugh,” Katrina said, stepping back and scowling at the DJ. “I hate this song. Let's go sit down.”

We went to sit in the auditorium. Watching the dancing couples and clumps of dancing friends wasn't that different from taking in a basketball game or a really loosely plotted play.

“So this is it,” Katrina said. “These are the days of our lives.”

“You really never went to a school dance? Not once?”

Katrina shook her head. “I didn't like boys much. I thought I might be a lesbian but I kind of hated girls, too. I hated everybody except my cat, Bauhaus.”

“We just got a dog. He's a lunatic.”

“I liked to lie on the floor of my bedroom and pretend I was dead. I imagined what my funeral would be like and waited to see how long it would take Bauhaus to find me on the floor. He'd come up and meow in my face. If I didn't get up, he'd curl up under my chin and start purring.”

“What was being dead like?”

Katrina shrugged and took out her cell phone. “Quiet, I guess.”

The song changed and Katrina started texting someone. I left her and walked up to the entryway to get us punch. I'd filled one plastic cup when Sam appeared, sweating and wearing the same black suit he'd worn to my mother's funeral. It was a wee bit tighter on him now.

“Hey dude. You did show up.”

“Mack, you need to come with me.”

“What?”

“Just come on.”

I tossed the punch back and left the cup on the table. Sam was clearly agitated, his lunky head bobbing between his shoulders, and he walked at double-time speed. He led me out of the auditorium's entryway and into the school's main hall. Couples were whispering against the wall, cozied up in corners. Sam ignored them and kept walking down the main hall, passing the principal's office and the gym's side entrance.

“What is it, Sam? Katrina's waiting for me.”

“It's Haylee. She got in a fight.”

“What?”

We reached a crowd of students huddled outside the girl's bathroom. You could hear a woman talking sternly on the other side of the bathroom door and then, as sudden as a car bomb, Haylee screeching back at her.

“Oh shit,” somebody said, and somebody else laughed.

The screeching increased and the bathroom door flew open, almost bashing me in the face. Haylee shot out of the bathroom, her eyes gleaming and her gauzy lilac dress rippling behind her like a war banner. She pushed through the crowd of students and started running down the hall. Mrs. Daly emerged from the bathroom with her arm around a junior girl named Madison Lambert, who was crying into a bloody wad of paper towels. Mrs. Daly frowned at the gathered crowd and led Madison down the hall toward the principal's office.

“Oh yeah,” Sam said, grinning. “Haylee smacked her good.”

According to Sam (who sure loved his hallway gossip for such an anti-social dude), Madison Lambert's date had danced with Haylee without asking Madison's permission. Perturbed by this, Madison approached my sister in the bathroom, ugly things were said, and suddenly Haylee smacked Madison so hard her nose started to bleed. Mrs. Daly got called in and there you were: Haylee “Haystack” Druneswald was in deep shit.

The crowd hovering around the bathroom dispersed, but I knew this was only the beginning. These seven or eight students would fan out through the school, repeat the story of the fight to anybody who'd listen, and fifteen minutes from now everybody in Hickson High would know about the fight. A fight over a boy Haylee probably didn't even give a flip about. Everybody would laugh and mock and everything would be about a hundred times worse for little old Haystack.

The only thing that could stem such a gossipy tide would be a bigger story …

A tale of smoke and fire.

“Sam, I need you to watch the bathroom door. Keep everybody away.”

“Why?”

“Just do it, man.”

I pushed opened the door and went into the girl's bathroom. I gazed at myself in one of the mirrors. I was looking pretty good in my charcoal suit. Like a classy undertaker.

“You shouldn't do this, Mack,” I said to Mirror Mack. “This is stupid.”

We stared at each other.

Neither of us was backing down.

“You're just trying to justify your dirty little urges. This is not a solution to anything.”

Mirror Mack was right, of course. This was the kind of ill-considered stunt that could get me expelled from school, or at least seriously affect my college application if I ever went that route.

Yet the moment was here for the taking. Right now, tonight. Smoke bubbled inside my heart, waiting to escape and rise up.

Was I going to live forever?

No.

Nobody lived forever. Mom sure hadn't.

I grabbed the bathroom's trash can and set it in the center of the room, beneath the fire detector. The can was half full of wadded-up paper towels and tissues and I filled the rest of it with dry paper towels, yanking them from the dispenser in greedy pulls. I pulled a lighter out of my pocket and lit the top strata of towels in several places. While they began to burn I went into a stall and unspooled an entire roll of toilet paper, swathing it around my hand. I fed the smoldering fire with scraps of toilet paper until flames rose steadily from the bin and smoke drifted toward the ceiling.