Firestorm

by David Klass

  “Fine. I’ll take both of them.”

  The man cracks up. “Your dog sleeps in a bed?”

  Your mother eats with silverware?

  “We’re in a rush. How much is it?” I peel hundreds off my roll. At the sight of the large bills he stops laughing and making wisecracks and gives us our tickets.

  “You’d better hurry. Train leaves in ten minutes.”

  We head for the stairs to the platform. Uh-oh. Stop short at the same second. I instantly spot him. Getting better at this. Dressed as a security guard. Standing on steps. Scanning crowd. Don’t think he saw us.

  I don’t think so either But we’d better get on another train.

  What are you talking about?

  Seeing Eye dog yanks blind boy down wrong stairs.

  This is a train to Montreal. Leaves in two minutes.

  I know.

  I don’t want to go to Montreal.

  Neither do 1. Too cold.

  Our train leaves in seven minutes.

  Six. That’s it over there.

  Cold prickle. Gisco. He saw us. He’s coming.

  just keep running. Don’t look back.

  I look back. Glimpse security guard climbing onto train and chasing us. He’s fast.

  “ALL ABOARD.”

  When I say “now,” jump out the door.

  I look back again. He’s gaining on us. Raising some kind of gun. In full sprint. Awkward aim. He fires.

  FZZZT. Empty blue seat near us melts like wax candle.

  Now.

  Gisco jumps out just as train’s doors start to close. I dive out after him. Doors clip my right ankle, but I make it. Sprawl onto platform.

  Security guard is trapped in mid-car. By the time he makes it to the closed door, the train is rolling.

  Tall man. Nasty face. Tries to pry doors apart. No luck. Train gathers speed. Ferocious scowl at us. Can’t blame him. He’s off to Montreal.

  We sprint back up stairs. Down the next stairwell. Hear “Last call, five-sixteen to Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Raleigh, and all stations to Miami.”

  Friends and family of departing travelers are walking up the stairs. We dodge them, fighting our way down. Gisco loses footing and tumbles like snowball on mountainside. People get out of his way. Canine avalanche.

  I follow and jump down last twenty steps. We tear across platform and dive onto our train just as the doors shut.

  Made it. Whew. Then we see black shoes. And uniform.

  Female conductor right there, looking down at us. Cute. Slightly chubby. Red hair. Glasses. “Sorry. No uncaged pets allowed.”

  “I’m blind and this is my Seeing Eye dog.”

  “I just saw you running along the platform.”

  “Yeah, but I’m legally blind. My dog is trained to catch trains. We just made it.”

  She considers. “Where’s your luggage?”

  “Somebody stole it out of our taxi. To hell with New York. We’re going back home to where folks are friendly.”

  She shrugs. “There are bad people everywhere. Let me see your tickets.”

  I produce them. “This way,” she says.

  We walk through train. Reach our private little sleeper compartment. Small but comfy. I pretend I can’t see. Let Gisco lead me in. Feel for chair. Sit down carefully. “Thanks,” I say. Open wallet and give her a tip.

  “Thank you,” she says. “I’ll come by later and show you how the beds fold out.”

  “Don’t bother,” I tell her.

  “It’s no bother,” she says. “Enjoy the ride, Mr … . ?”

  I hesitate. “Smith,” I tell her.

  Great imagination you have.

  “I’m Jinny. See you later, Mr. Smith. See you later, Mr. Smith’s dog.” She smiles.

  Either you tipped her too much or she likes you.

  Jinny closes door.

  Train speeds through long tunnel.

  It pops out into daylight. New Jersey. Swampland. The skyscrapers of New York recede into the late afternoon shadows.

  We’re finally alone. And safe.

  Now I need some answers.

  9

  Locked sleeper compartment. Man and dog rolling through wastelands of New Jersey. Chemical plants. Oil and gas refineries. Befouled meadows and polluted swamps.

  Dog staring fixedly out window, as if pondering deep puzzle. Boy looking impatiently at dog. Talk to me.

  How can they stand to live around such a smell? Yet they don’t clean it up. They keep going and going …

  I yank curtain closed. Goodbye, view. The sightseeing portion of this journey will commence after the conversation. Now, let’s have some answers.

  Big mutt shifts uneasily. What do you want to know?

  Start with the basics. Who am I? Why are people trying to kill me? Who are they and, for that matter, who are you? Are you from the Twilight Zone or some top-secret government experiment? What the heck is Firestorm?

  Sorry. Can’t tell you any of that.

  Don’t screw around with me, dog.

  I’m not, human. I feel for you.

  But you don’t know the answers to my questions?

  I know the answers. I just can’t give them to you.

  I lose it. Jump forward. Try to grab dog around neck.

  Gisco growls. Shakes me off.

  I grab fore and hind leg and try to flip him over.

  He bares teeth. Warning snarl. Let go now.

  Talk! I try to flip him over.

  Teeth close around my right arm. Not biting me yet. Not breaking the skin. But I can feel jaw muscles tighten. Feels like steel vise. Last chance. Let go.

  I pummel Gisco with left fist. To hell with you. Who am I? I have a right to know.

  Dog surges forward. Unexpected thrust. Must be the sled-dog part of his ancestry. I am jerked forward and bang my head against metal wall so hard that I nearly black out.

  You okay?

  No.

  Sorry I had to do that. Never grab a dog around the neck. Very old impulse to protect jugular vein. Also, don’t grab a dog’s legs. Equally old impulse to remain upright.

  You seem to be my friend. My only friend right now. Why won’t you tell me what I need to know?

  I shouldn’t even tell you that. But I pity you.

  Okay. Why?

  Because the human brain is a powerful but notoriously delicate and unstable mechanism.

  Meaning?

  You couldn’t handle the truth.

  Try me.

  Can’t risk it.

  What’s the worst that could happen?

  Jarring dislocation from your own past. Identity loss. Deep betrayal. You might melt down.

  I may be a human but I don’t melt down easily.

  Read Oedipus.

  You’re gonna tell me I’m destined to kill my father and marry my mother?

  Sad dog eyes looking at me. Much worse than that. Sorry, kid. Don’t you think I’d tell you if I could?

  The awful thing is that I do. I sink down to dirty blue rug of sleeper compartment. Curl up into fetal ball. Break into tears. This breakdown has been a long time coming.

  Now the grief hits like a thunderstorm. Horrific images. Dad shooting off his foot. His face twisted in agony. Raising the gun to his head. Do I have to blow my brains out to get you to go? Reilly-thing with my blood on her lips. Long jumping between buildings. The face of death watching me. Constantly being chased and tracked, by a nameless, faceless army. Can’t trust anyone except big fur ball of a dog who won’t answer any questions because he says if I learned the truth about my fate it would be worse than what drove Oedipus to strike out his eyes.

  Tap, tap.

  Go away. Leave me alone. Don’t know how long I’ve been lying on the floor, crying and shaking.

  Gisco is next to me. Snuggled against me. There, there, kid. I feel for you. So lost. So isolated. I really get it. We’re all in much the same predicament …

  “We” who?

  Forget it. Slip of the tongue.


  No it wasn’t. “We” who? Come on!

  Me. The people chasing you. The people helping you. The Gorm. The couple who raised you.

  I know you can’t answer all of my questions, but just answer one. Where are you all from? I beg you to tell me.

  The big dog hesitates. Not from the Twilight Zone. And not from a government experiment, either.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Then where?

  Here. And not here.

  So far you haven’t answered anything.

  Long wet dog tongue licks my cheek. Perhaps meant to be consoling. It would blow your mind. And there’s no time now. Someone’s at our door. You are the beacon of hope. Pull yourself together. A lot of people are counting on you.

  Yeah? Well, tell them to go jump in a lake. I want my parents back. I want my life back. I want to go to sleep in my room with the sports posters taped to the wall and my stereo on the table near the desk with the picture of a smiling P.J. and the view out the window of Mom’s garden.

  Tap, tap, tap, tap. “You okay in there? Open up.”

  Look, kid, you can cry yourself a river, but you can’t have those things back. They’re gone for good. We’ve got problems in the here and now. Someone’s trying to get in.

  Growl at them. They’ll get the message.

  No, you’ve got to open the door and convince them that we’re okay. The salient point I’m trying to get across is that this is not such a great time to be having a breakdown. We can’t risk calling attention to ourselves.

  The word “salient” does it. Dog using fancy SAT word. Like a puff of breeze that blows away the fog. He’s right.

  Key turning in our door. Jinny standing there in her conductor’s outfit. “Are you okay?”

  Brave grin. “Sure.”

  “What are you doing on the floor?”

  “Napping.”

  She steps inside. Concern in her voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” I look up at her. “I always nap on the floor.”

  “You’ve got tears on your cheeks. Your eyes are red.”

  I fumble for my sunglasses and put them on. Look back at her through dark lenses. “Now they’re not red anymore. We paid for a private compartment because we didn’t want to be disturbed. If you don’t mind.”

  “We? That would be you and your dog?”

  “I think I answered enough of your questions, Jinny.”

  “Okay,” she says, and her eyes harden. “Okay, Mr. Smith. It’s just that I had some information for you.”

  What information? Sounds ominous.

  She steps out and starts to close door.

  “Stop, Jinny. What information?”

  “Forget it. I’ll give you your privacy.”

  She closes door.

  I get up to chase her.

  Where do you think you’re going?

  To find out what she knows.

  If you go alone she’ll see that you’re not blind.

  The human brain may be delicate and unstable, but apparently it can register nuances of meaning that the dog brain can’t distinguish.

  Meaning?

  She already knows that I’m not blind, Purina face. The question is what else she knows.

  10

  Dispense with sham of cane and dark glasses. Hurry through train. Searching car to car. Jinny, where are you? What did you come to tell me? Reach the cafe car. People eating sandwiches. Reading newspapers. Stench of stale bread and beer. Not the most appetizing odor in the world, but my stomach responds.

  Rumble rumble. Last meal was hot dog in Riverside Park. A stale sandwich would sure hit the spot.

  Spot a conductor. Old. Stooped. Tired and bored. Waxy complexion. Punching tickets. “Excuse me, sir. I’m looking for Jinny? She works on the train and I’ve—”

  “Rawlings,” he drawls out of the side of his mouth, as if he answers a thousand stupid questions a day and can’t be bothered to open his lips more than partway.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Virginia Rawlings. Next car, last door on the left.”

  Hurry to next car. Find last door. Knock. No answer.

  Open door a crack. “Jinny?”

  Voice from semidarkness. “Go away.”

  “It’s me. Mr. Smith.”

  “I know who you are. Go to hell, asshole.”

  Peek inside. Storage space. Blankets. Bedding.

  Jinny leaning against a stack of pillows near the one small window. Crying her big brown eyes out.

  Enter storage room. Close door behind me. “Actually, my name isn’t Mr. Smith. And I’m not blind.”

  “Could I possibly care less?”

  Refreshing sarcasm. I step toward her. “I know this sounds hokey, but I can’t stand to see a woman cry.”

  “Then why don’t you leave.”

  “Tell me what’s wrong?”

  “No,” she says.

  “I’m sorry I was rude before. Can I sit next to you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you one of those girls who say no when they mean yes?”

  She glances at me. “No. I mean yes, I’m not. Don’t confuse me. I’m miserable enough.”

  “That makes two of us,” I say, and I sit down next to her. Shoulders touching. Jinny stops crying. We look out the one small window at the landscape that flashes past.

  Polluted swamps have given way to woods and farmland. I remind myself this is called the Garden State. Pretty October sunset overhead. Furrows of purple cloud stretch to the horizon, as if the sky has been plowed over.

  “‘Barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,’” I whisper.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It sounded like poetry.”

  “Yeah.” I hesitate. “‘Ode to Autumn.’ John Keats.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Jinny says. I can’t tell whether she’s still being sarcastic. Don’t think so.

  “He’s one of my favorites,” I tell her. “I think he had the most musical turn of phrase of any English poet ever. He wrote a poem addressed to Autumn, as if he’s talking to the season. It has a line about ‘barred clouds.’ This view reminded me of it. Sorry. I wasn’t showing off.”

  Jinny relaxes slightly. Her shoulder is now pressed against mine. I can feel her warmth through her conductor’s uniform. “Keep going,” she says. “Keep talking.”

  I’m getting something from her. Don’t know what it is. Sadness? Anger? Regret? Can’t quite make it out.

  So I keep babbling away about the poem. “Keats tells Autumn it doesn’t have to be jealous of Spring, because Autumn has its own special music. Small gnats mourning. Hedge-crickets singing. Grown lambs bleating on the hillside.” I hear myself rambling on and shrug. “It sounds a lot better when Keats describes it.”

  “It sounds okay when you describe it,” Jinny says softly. “Keep talking. Please.”

  “That’s about it,” I tell her. “Keats only wrote a few odes. Dashed them off in one burst of genius, in his early twenties. Then he got sick. Traveled to Italy to try to recover his health. Died in Rome at twenty-five. I used to think that was so young. Imagine dying at twenty-five? Never having gotten married. Never having kids. Now it seems so old. I’ll consider myself lucky to make nineteen.” My voice cracks. I shut up. Saying too much.

  Silence in the car. Jinny’s breathing. Train sounds. Outside the window barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day over a New Jersey pine forest. “I knew you were in trouble the first time I saw you,” Jinny whispers.

  “How did you know it?”

  “I’ve been chased myself,” she admits. Honest girl. This isn’t easy for her. But she wants to talk.

  “By the police?”

  “No. By a guy.”

  “He was in love with you?” I probe gently.

  She moves her head, somewhere between a nod and a shake. “He wanted to marry me. Then he wanted to kill me. He almost did both. So when I saw you I knew.”

  I’m getting somethi
ng very strong and personal from her that I can’t figure out. Some sort of connection. Sympathy? Deeper than that. Empathy? Darker than that. Fear?

  “Is that why you took this job on the train?” I ask. “To get away from him?”

  She turns to look at me. Wet brown eyes, big as saucers. Russet hair shimmering like a bleeding vein of gold in dusk light. “Hold me,” she whispers.

  I start to hold her, then pull back. “You’re not a Gorm?”

  She looks angry and baffled. “Is that like a ho?”

  No one could be such a good actor. I chuckle and hug her gently. “Not at all,” I tell her.

  Feels good to have my arms around Jinny. She’s a big girl. There’s a lot to hug, and she hugs back. Her hair brushes my neck. We’ve both been crying recently, so our cheeks feel cool and a little wet as they brush together.

  Not quite sexual attraction. Not quite friendly companionship. Some interesting place in between.

  “Who’s after you?” she whispers.

  “You’d never believe me.”

  “Bet I would.”

  “I was living a normal life in this little town.”

  “Uh-huh,” she says.

  “Then people came to kill my father.”

  She sucks in a breath. “Oh my God.”

  “He told me to flee. Ever since then strange life-forms have been chasing me. Some of them look like giant bats. Then there was this girl who brought me home, but it turned out she was a Gorm. That dog and I escaped from her apartment, but he’s not a normal dog. We communicate by telepathy. And the weirdest thing is I don’t know why he’s helping me and I don’t know why they’re chasing me, but it seems like I’m the critical player in some kind of gigantic, secret war.”

  Jinny trembles. I hug her harder. Is she afraid? Freaked out by what I’ve told her? No, she’s giggling. Trying to hold it in, but her body is shaking with mirth. “Okay, wise guy,” she finally gasps. “You don’t have to tell me who’s chasing you. It’s none of my business.”

  Can’t blame her for not believing me. But I decide to take advantage of this change in mood. “Jinny, what did you come to my compartment to tell me?”

  She stops laughing. “Doesn’t matter. It’s okay. I took care of it.”

  “Please. I need to know.”

  She hesitates. “Someone’s asking questions about you.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask quickly. Jinny feels me tense up. “Who?” I demand.