Harry Flammable

by Frank O'Keeffe

  HARRY FLAMMABLE

  a novel

  Frank O'Keeffe

  For my wife Patricia who knows who she is, with my love always

  For Kevin who toiled in many a hotel kitchen

  For Iván Guevara our Cuban son

  and

  In memory of Martyn Godfrey

  1

  “OKAY, HARRY. TELL ME again. Where were you when the equipment shed burned down?”

  Mr. Shamberg slowly put his large hands together like he was going to pray, rested his chin on the tips of his fingers, closed his eyes, and waited.

  I took a deep breath and accidentally swallowed my gum. Not much for a condemned man’s last meal, I thought. Mr. Shamberg, my judge and executioner, still had his eyes closed. His huge body filled the space behind his tiny desk and his massive head blocked most of my view of the poster that hung on the wall behind him. Despite the trouble I was in, I couldn’t help smiling at the way Mr. Shamberg’s frizzy tufts of red hair blended with those of the orangutan on the poster. That was all I could see of the orangutan, but I knew it was hanging from a branch of a tree by one arm, and I knew the poster’s caption by heart — “Hang in There Baby!”

  Maybe Mr. Shamberg had fallen asleep. No such luck. One big, hairy red eyebrow moved upward and I quickly wiped the smile off my face. The eye opened and regarded me. “Well, Harry, where were you?”

  “I was at home in bed like I said. Honest.”

  Mr. Shamberg’s other eye popped open. Then he started that tuneless whistling that he always does when he thinks someone is lying. It’s the only time he ever whistles and he’s hopeless at it. He thinks he’s whistling some real old song called “They Wouldn’t Believe Me.” I know that’s supposed to be the song he’s trying to whistle. He told us in class one day because Barbara Law had given him a really dumb excuse for not getting some assignment done on time. He’d started whistling the tune and asked Barbara if she knew the name of it. She guessed it might be “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” It could have been anything. Mr. Shamberg’s whistling is so bad, it’s more like a boiling kettle’s whistling than anything else. We’d all started guessing the name of the tune then, just to waste time, and Mr. Shamberg finally had to tell us.

  “Home in bed, Harry? Really? And I suppose your whole family will swear to that?”

  “I guess so. It’s true.”

  “Then how do you account for this?” He reached down behind his desk and picked up something black from the floor. I stared at it. The way Mr. Shamberg held it between his thumb and forefinger, I thought it must be something disgusting. He let it drop onto the edge of his desk in front of me and a small cloud of black dust rose into the air. It looked like a dead cat.

  “But I don’t own a cat,” I leaned away from the thing. It smelled bad.

  “Cat?” Mr. Shamberg looked puzzled. “Don’t you mean cap, Harry?” He reached out and gingerly picked up the blackened lump again, turned it slowly and then let it fall back onto the desk. Another puff of black dust drifted upwards.

  Although it was slightly melted, I could still recognize the Second World War silver metal badge of the Luftwaffe, the German Airforce. I was the only kid in the school who had one. The black smelly thing on the desk was the remains of my black leather and cloth Dutch fisherman’s cap. I’d found the cap in the sporting goods catalogue a year ago and sent away for it, and I’d bought the badge in a store that sold war memorabilia. The store owner told me at the time that the badge was a hard to find item and it had cost me twenty bucks. I’d worn that cap with its badge every day. It was my trademark.

  “Your cap was found in the remains of the shed, along with, I might add,” here Mr. Shamberg took a deep breath, “my brand new, just paid for, thousand dollar mountain bike.”

  I gulped. The shed was just an old shack. As far as I knew it was used to store a few track and field items like the poles for the high jump, a bunch of traffic cones for marking the field boundaries, and the old machine the school used to paint the white lines on the grass.

  “So, Harry. Why did you do it?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “This is your cap. It was found in what’s left of the shed. You might as well tell me all about it.”

  I sighed. Mr. Shamberg wasn’t a bad guy. He taught us a course called Life Skills, was in charge of the work experience program, and was also the school counsellor. It was his job as school counsellor at Crestwood High that had landed him the problem of sorting out who started the fire, and, now that his mountain bike had been destroyed, he had a special reason to find out who did it. I knew he was never going to believe me. I had been at home in bed, but with the remains of my cap found in the smouldering ruins, I was a dead duck. It was useless to claim I’d been framed.

  The trouble is my reputation. My real name is Harry Flanagan but nearly everyone called me either “Harry Flammable” or “Highly Flammable.” The younger kids in school think my real name is “Harry Flame-Again” because they get names wrong sometimes.

  I guess you could say I earned my reputation, but it wasn’t always my fault. I just got blamed or suspected whenever a fire broke out. Just like now, with the shed.

  I’d started working on my reputation way back in second grade. Then, I’d wanted to be a movie actor or at least a stunt-man. I still do. I’d seen a guy in the movies riding a motorcycle through a flaming wall and it looked really neat. I thought I’d try it. I didn’t have a motorcycle, but I did have a bicycle.

  With the motorcycle, they get a big sheet of wood, put a ramp in front of it, pour gas or something on the wood, light it, and when it’s really blazing well, the guy on the motorcycle races up the ramp and bursts through the flaming wall. I couldn’t find a big enough sheet of wood but Leonard Wooleys’ parents had just bought a new fridge and the cardboard box that the fridge came in was in their backyard. Leonard’s mom said we could have the box.

  We found a plank and a couple of bricks to make a ramp, and took the box to a piece of rough land a few blocks from our place. There are new houses there now, but then it was an open, grassy spot with a few trees. We used it as our private playground, building forts and playing war. Matthew Beagle got a book of matches and siphoned a little bit of gasoline from his dad’s lawnmower into a pop bottle. All the way to the vacant lot he kept spitting to get the taste of the gasoline out of his mouth, and he kept saying he wasn’t going to light the match because he might blow up.

  We got everything set up. Leonard splashed the gas onto the fridge box and tried to light it, but the matches kept going out. We had only one match left when I got the idea of lighting some dry grass first and then using it to light the box. It worked. There was a loud whomp. Matthew was sure he was blowing up and dove for cover as flames shot up all over the box. I raced back to where I’d left my bike and got ready. Leonard had a piece of red rag tied on a stick to give me the signal to go. Matthew came out from behind a tree to watch when he realized he was still okay.

  Leonard gave me the signal and I raced towards the box. I know now the motorcycle guys who do this stunt wait until the wood is almost burned through and they go a lot faster than a bicycle. The fridge box was burning fiercely but, unlike a flat sheet of wood, it had four burning sides and a big space in the middle.

  I pedalled like mad at the flaming box, aiming at the foot of the ramp. Close to the plank, my front wheel skidded on some loose sand and my wheel knocked the plank off the bricks. I was going sideways when I hit the box.

  My bike stopped but I didn’t. I flew off it through the front wall of the box and landed in a heap inside it. Smoke filled my nose and eyes and I felt the heat from the flames. I smelled the stench of burning hair as I scrambled to my feet. I plunged through the other side of the box wi
th a piece of it dangling and blazing around my neck. I rolled on the ground and beat at my chest where my t-shirt felt hot. When I could see, I found a large black hole in my shirt.

  Leonard had managed to drag my bike from under the collapsed box. He was pointing at my head and laughing.

  The top of my hair was all crispy, and bits flaked off like dust when I touched it. Under my chin the skin was smarting where the cardboard had burned me. Matthew pointed out that my eyebrows were gone too.

  But that wasn’t all. The dry grass that covered the piece of land had caught fire and a breeze had sprung up, fanning the flames. We did our best to beat the flames out with our jackets, but it was hopeless. The fire was out of control and we had to retreat. We retreated even further when we heard the sound of sirens and a fire truck raced up the street.

  When we went back later we found that our tree fort was a blackened ruin. Of course the word got out. I couldn’t hide my singed hair and eyebrows and Mom took me to the doctor to have the burn on my neck treated. A fireman came to the school a few days later to give us a talk about the danger of fires and, during his whole talk, all the kids stared at me. Then they nicknamed me “the Fireman.”

  That was the beginning. Other fires broke out from time to time, and, even if I was nowhere near when they happened, there were always whispers. Okay, I admit it. It was me in seventh grade who turned on the Bunsen burner in the science lab and stood it in the window in the sun so you couldn’t see the flame. It made a really great roaring noise and the flame was invisible. But how was I to know we were going to have a substitute teacher that day and he was partially deaf? It wasn’t my fault he decided to sit on the lab counter right in front of the Bunsen burner and caught the back of his sweater on fire.

  By that time I was known as Harry Flammable and I think it was around then that some kid threw a cigarette butt into a garbage can in Ms. Maltin’s French class. We were ten minutes into the period when flames started shooting out of the can. Ms. Maltin and some of the kids got the fire out and we got back to the lesson, but when Ms. Maltin was walking past my desk, the book I was reading at the time happened to fall out of my desk, right at her feet. It was Firestarter by Stephen King. It was pure coincidence — I happen to like Stephen King. But as Ms. Maltin put the book back on my desk, I knew what she was thinking.

  “Well, Harry. I’d say you don’t have a leg to stand on.” Mr. Shamberg was still waiting for an explanation.

  It was useless to tell him that yesterday, just after school, Joe Straka had grabbed my cap off my head and taken off with it. I’d chased him, but he ran around the side of the school and when I got there, he’d disappeared.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t do it,” I repeated.

  Mr. Shamberg started whistling his version of “They Wouldn’t Believe Me” again.

  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a thin column of smoke rising from the remains of my cap. Mr. Shamberg didn’t notice. He was whistling away and staring at the ceiling. When he’d picked up my cap and twirled it around on his desk, there must have been a small ember still smoldering. He’d given it just enough oxygen to get it started again.

  I was about to say something when Mr. Shamberg stopped whistling.

  “Okay Harry. I’ve wasted enough time on this. You’ve been caught red-handed, so to speak. You might even say, ‘If the cap fits, wear it.’” He chuckled at his little joke. “And in this case it certainly does. Now what I suggest …”

  “But Mr. Shamberg, my cap …”

  “Just let me finish. What I suggest is you …”

  “But Mr. Shamberg, my cap is on fire!”

  It wasn’t just my cap anymore. Mr. Shamberg had dropped my cap right beside a pile of papers on his desk and, even as I spoke, a tongue of flame shot up.

  “How did you do that?” Mr. Shamberg hollered.

  He still sat there, not doing anything as the flame spread and began to eat a hole through the pile of papers.

  I had to do something. I slapped my hand down on top of the papers and my smouldering cap. All that achieved was to scatter little black lumps of the black soot of my cap across Mr. Shamberg’s desk where they glowed and pulsed, like they were about to burst into flames and start miniature fires all over his desk.

  By now the papers were nearly a blackened curling pile, and still Mr. Shamberg only stared. I looked around desperately. There wasn’t any jug of water handy but I spotted Mr. Shamberg’s huge Thermos on a shelf beside his desk. I knew it was usually filled with coffee. That would have to do. I grabbed it, quickly unscrewed the lid and emptied the contents onto the desk. That’s weird, I thought. The coffee turned pink. Then I realized that today Mr. Shamberg had decided not to bring coffee. It was tomato alphabet soup.

  He came out of his trance. “Those were the midterm exams for this semester,” he screamed. “Go. Just go. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I put the Thermos down quickly on the only space on his desk that wasn’t swimming in the pink slop of the soup and headed out the door.

  As I made it to the hall, I thought I heard Mr. Shamberg mutter “No wonder they call him Harry Flammable.” Like I said, I have this reputation.

  But my biggest worry right then wasn’t just my reputation. It was Mr. Shamberg. He held my fate in his hands. I’d just poured alphabet soup all over his desk, ruined some exams, was the only suspect in destroying the shed, not to mention his mountain bike, and tomorrow was the day he was going to tell us where we were going to be placed in the program.

  I’d been anxiously waiting for that day to arrive and I knew I’d made a good case to get the job, any job, as long as it was part of the crew at Pocket Money Pictures. A week ago my chances of getting taken on by the film company, who were about to film some epic near Summervale, had looked good. Mr. Shamberg had said that, even though the competition would be tough, he’d put in a good word for me. After today, I don’t think good would be the exact word that would spring to his lips when he mentioned my name.

  2

  I WAS ALREADY LATE for math class and Ms. Havershaw gave me a baleful look as I hurried to my desk.

  I opened my math text and tried to concentrate on what Ms. Havershaw was saying as she wrote something on the chalkboard, but my eyes drifted to Celia Spendlove. She sat in the front row near the door and, from where I sat, three seats back on the other side of the room, I could see her clearly. I sat there admiring her sleek, dark hair, her lovely complexion, and her extraordinary long, dark eyelashes. I loved the way they rested on her cheek when she looked down at her textbook. From where I sat I could only see the one over her right eye, but I knew its twin was equally beautiful.

  She’d come into our class just two weeks ago, and I’d been wondering ever since what my chances were of getting a date with her.

  A few seconds later, they hit zero. It was Ralph that did it. Ms. Havershaw had just finished explaining something about some equation and told us to try the ones on page 168, when he crawled up under Celia Spendlove’s skirt. It wasn’t really his fault. He was only trying to stay warm. One minute he was in the shoebox on the shelf under my desk and the next thing I knew he was giving Celia Spendlove hysterics.

  She gave a piercing scream and leaped to her feet, clutching her skirt just above her right knee.

  I guessed right away what had happened, but I checked quickly to make sure. The lid was off the shoebox and it was empty. I ran to the front of the class where Celia stood, flapping at herself and screaming.

  The rest of the class had frozen. Celia’s screams were ear-piercing and Ms. Havershaw stood staring at her like she was wondering if she was going to have to deal with one of those drug-crazed teenagers she’d heard so much about.

  I reached Celia and had to kneel to retrieve Ralph, my pet iguana. Celia had blocked his further advances by clamping her hands against her skirt. She didn’t resist when I reached above her knee to untangle Ralph from her pantyhose.

  Ms. Havershaw gasped when she saw me holding Ra
lph. “Get that creature out of here!” she screeched and gave a shudder. “Take it out of here at once!”

  I ran to my desk and grabbed Ralph’s shoebox from the shelf as the class burst into laughter. Ralph lashed his tail in anger as I stuffed him into the box and beat a hasty retreat. I put the box in my locker and returned to class. There were a few snickers from the class as I entered and as I passed Celia’s desk, I whispered a quick “sorry.” She was blushing furiously and Ms. Havershaw gave me a frosty look.

  I cursed Ralph but it was really my own fault. I’d brought Ralph to school, intending to make a big impression by letting him ride on my shoulder at lunch time. I thought he would be a sort of conversation piece and Celia would be impressed. Some conversation piece! The class probably wouldn’t stop talking about it for months.

  Celia obviously disliked lizards and now, no doubt, anyone who had anything to do with them. Me.

  If the classroom hadn’t been so cold maybe Ralph would have stayed where he was. Ms. Havershaw believed in keeping the room like an icebox, to keep us awake. Most of us brought along an extra sweater if we remembered to check our timetables.

  My chances of getting a date with Celia got even slimmer that afternoon. She kept giving me these dirty looks and I thought it was because of Ralph. I found out later some jerk had passed her a note signed with my initials that read, “Celia, can I feel ya?” If Celia’s looks could kill, I’d be dead. I vowed to kill that guy if I found out who it was. It was a lousy trick.

  I was getting my stuff from my locker next morning when the P.A. boomed. “If Harry Flanagan is in the school, would he please go to Mr. Shamberg’s office immediately.”

  I groaned. I was probably in for another grilling about the fire.

  “Sit down, Harry,” Mr. Shamberg said as I entered. “But don’t touch anything,” he added hurriedly. As I sat I noticed the chair was as far away from his desk as it could possibly be.