The Secrets of a Fire King (38 page)

Suddenly the room seems so sweet to me, stifling, that I have to get out. I feel I am inhaling sugar, and it hurts. I leave the fax on the carpet with the other papers, and outside I lean against the narrow black banister, breathing deeply. I am so grateful for the clean lines, the clarity, the sudden black and white. Because it is obvious to me now that what I have taken to be the story of my life is not that at all. It is not my life, but my mother’s life, her long an-252

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ger and relentless ambition, that has brought us to this moment, to where we are.

Kansas City swelters in the heat, and every day my mother speaks of sin, her voice a fl aming arrow. The crowd listens and ignites. The National Guard spills out of trucks and the nation waits, to see how this protest, the longest and ugliest in the history of the movement, will end. I wait too, watching from the fringes as she steps from her cluster of bodyguards, smiling shyly at the crowd, which cheers, enraptured, ready to believe.
I am
just a sinner,
she begins, softly, and I look right at her as the crowd responds; I whisper,
That’s right, you are a sinner and a manipulat-ing liar, too.
She goes on speaking to the nation. I watch her, as if for the first time; I see and even admire her skill at this, her poise.

For the very first time I see her clearly. I watch her, and I wait to see if she will make me do this evil thing.

It is on the third day that she leaves the stage and comes to me.

It is late afternoon and her face is tanned dark. There is sweat on her forehead and above her upper lip. When she puts her arm around me her skin feels slick. She seems tired, but exhilarated too, for the protest is going very well.
Don’t ask,
I think. Maybe she just wants to go for dinner.
Please, don’t ask.

“Come on, Nichola,” she says. “It’s time for you to do that favor.”

We take two cars, the one with me and Gary and my mother, the second with tinted windows and three men I’ve never met. We drive for a long time, it seems, maybe half an hour, and as we reach the suburbs they tell me what they want me to do. It is, as my mother said, a simple task, and if I did not know better I would do it without flinching, I would not think twice.

“Okay, Nichola,” Gary says, stopping on a suburban block where lawn sprinklers are hissing against the sidewalks and the trees are large and quiet. The other car parks in front of us. “It’s about a block down, number 3489. She comes out every night at 8:30 to walk the dog. You know what to say?”

“Yes,” I tell them, swallowing hard. “I know.”

“Good luck,” my mother says. “We’ll be praying.”
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“Yes,” I say, getting out of the car. “I know.” I walk slowly through the dying sunlight, feeling their eyes on me. Number 3489 is big but ordinary, with fake white pillars and a wide lawn, flower beds. There is no sign of a teenage girl. I keep walking, but slowly, because I am scared and because I do not know yet what I’m going to do. Behind me in the car my mother trusts that I will keep my word, and before me in the house the doctor and his family finish dinner, do the dishes, glad that today, at least, no protestors have gathered on the lawn. You can see where the flowers are all crushed from other times. There are bars on the lower windows, too. In a few minutes the daughter will come out of the house with her Scottish terrier on a leash and take him for a walk. My job is simple. I must walk with her, make her pause, and talk to her. About the dog, about videos, about anything that will distract her so she doesn’t see them coming. That is all. Such a small thing they have asked of me, a fi ve-minute conversation. They have not told me the rest, but I know.

At the end of the block I pause, turn around, start back. It is 8:35 and I can see the sun glinting off the chrome edges of the two parked cars. This time when I near the house two people are outside, on the lawn. I hesitate by the hedge. A man is squatting by his car, soaping up the sides. A bucket and a hose lie next to him on the ground. The car is old and kind of beat up, too, more like Sam’s car than my mother’s. On the thick grass a small white dog is running here and there, sniffing at bushes and spots in the lawn, while the young girl whistles and calls to him. The dog’s name is Benjy. I do not know the girl’s name, though her father is Dr. Sinclair. At the demonstration they emphasize his name.
Sin
clair,
Sinclair. His daughter has short hair and is wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. She is holding a leash in her hand.

Suddenly, her father, who has been washing the car with his hose, stands up and sprays a little water at her back. She shouts out in surprise, then turns around, laughing, letting the water rain down around her. The little dog runs over, jumping up, trying to get in on the fun, and suddenly I wonder what it would be like to be that girl, to have grown up in this ordinary house. I know I should walk away, but I can’t. I can’t get enough of looking at
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them. In fact, I stare so long and so hard that the father fi nally sees me. Our eyes meet and he turns his head, suddenly alert. I start walking across the lawn then, trying not to think.

“Hi,” I say, when I get close enough.

“Hi,” the girl says, looking at me curiously. Her father smiles, thinking I’m a friend of hers. I had this idea that they would know me right away, like I know them. I thought that they would look at me and see my mother, but they don’t. They just stare. I’m so surprised by this that for a moment I can’t think of what to say. So I just stand there, looking at this doctor. I have only seen him from afar, as he darted from his car into the clinic. Now I notice how small his ears are, how many wrinkles there are around his eyes.

His smile fades as the silence grows between us. He takes a small but perceptible step closer to his daughter.

“Can we help you?” he asks. Despite his wariness, he is kind.

“Look,” I say. I glance back at the road and then reach up and release my hair, shake it out to my shoulders. They ought to know me now, it should strike their faces like ice water. They should turn and flee without another word from me. But they do not.

The doctor gives me an odd look, true, and glances past me then, to the quiet street, the row of bushes that hides his house. There is nothing there. Not yet. They are waiting. He looks back at me, and after a long moment more, he speaks.

“What is it?” he asks. His voice is very gentle.

His daughter picks up the little dog and smiles at me, to help me speak. She is younger than I am. I think about how they want to shove her into the back of the second car and drive away. A few hours in a dark place, and then they’ll let her go. They don’t want to hurt her, though I’m sure they are prepared for anything to happen. Scare her yes, they want to do that. They intend to show her the wrath of the heavens, and to this end the men in the car are waiting with their ski masks and their Bibles. Perhaps she will be saved, but that’s not the point. What they really want is to terrify her father, to make him repent for the lives that he has taken. They want the world to know that there are no limits in this battle.

I look straight at the doctor then. I don’t smile. “Dr. Sinclair,”
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I say. “You should know better than to trust a stranger. It’s very dangerous. Especially tonight. I wouldn’t walk that dog.” I’m ready to say more, but he understands at last. He reaches for his daughter, and they hurry to the house, leaving the bucket of water, the hose still running. I see the front door close and hear it lock behind them, and I wonder if they watch from their barred windows as I walk through their backyard to the alley, then out of sight. I walk for miles like this, between the quiet yards of strangers, and when it’s finally dark I get on the first city bus that I see.

It’s hard to do this. I know I’m leaving everything behind. My mother and Sam, my whole life until this day. But it was not really my life, I know that now, it was always just the refl ections of the lives of other people. I finger the letter my grandmother wrote, the money folded neatly. Seventeen years is a long time. They may not be there anymore. They may not want to see me if they are. But it is the only place I can imagine to begin.

Already, though, I miss my mother. I will always miss her, the force of her persuasion, her strong will. I wonder how long she will wait before she realizes that I’ve failed her, that I’ve gone.

Outside the window Kansas City rushes past. The air is black and hot, and sprinklers hiss against the sidewalks. The bus travels fast, a lean gray shadow between the streetlights, and elsewhere in the dark Sam gives up on me and turns away. I imagine that my mother waits much longer. It seems to me I know the exact moment when she finally sees the truth. She sighs, and presses her hands against her face. Gary Peterson starts the car without another word. They drive off, and at that moment I suddenly feel the pressure ease. The other people on the bus don’t notice, but all this time I have been growing lighter and emptier, until at last I feel myself emerge.

See me then, for the fi rst time.

You do not know me.

I am just a young woman, passing through your life like the wind.