by Cole Savage
“Every day is just a roll of the dice, Nicki... Anyhow, Eamon Flanagan, the coal yard boss, used a wire rope to bring us up. He cast the rope down the upcast shaft, undercutting the loading pocket, and the three of us had to climb out of the kettle bottom with our gloves. Jasper couldn’t climb, so Eamon pulled him up the manway on the ventilation tunnel with a loader. Me, Floyd, and Jasper, were stuck in tunnel three for pertin’ near an hour without lights. The only light we had was our hat lamps.”
“B-o-r-i-n-g,” Mandy said. “Kyle, you think I’m fat?”
“Depends on your perspective on stuff, Mandy.”
“What do you mean, Kyle?”
“Well, I reckon if you were standin’ next to a Bama Black Bear, I’d say you probably wouldn’t look too fat.”
“Kyle be nice,” Mandy ignored the comment and swooned in, closer to Kyle.
“It’s okay, Nicki. Kyle, you know I’ve been on a liquid diet for nearly a month. Do you think my hips look better? I’ve been using this buttercream on the inside of my thighs cause I got this festering rash. Do you think I should cut my hair short? Cindy and Beth told me short hair can take twenty pounds of a girl's hips. Can you see the difference in me, sugar? Those boys called me a heifer. Do you think I’m a heifer? I thought about getting a bikini wax. Would you date a plus size girl with a bikini wax?”
Kyle was looking at Nicki, palms up, wondering how to respond. Nicki looked back at him. She flipped her hands up in the air, pursed her lips and said, “This one’s yours, sugar,”
“Kyle, would you date a thick girl? Would you go out with me?”
“Mandy, you’re putting me on the spot here,” Kyle said turning to Nicki.
“It’s a simple question, sugar.”
“Mandy, it don’t bother me none that you’re a little heavy in the caboose. I reckon I could date a big girl, but I could never date you.”
“What handsome, you don’t think I’m perty?”
“It’s not that, Mandy. I couldn’t go out with a thick girl who can’t stop flapping her gums long enough to take a breath. Jesus, you’re acting like I ain’t seen you in years. Turn the faucet off, sweet stuff.” Kyle said covering his ears. “You’re giving me a headache.”
“Shit, Kyle. Look at the pot callin’ the kettle black. I just sat through sixty minutes, listening to you talk about being trapped in a mine for an hour. You made it sound like H.G Wells narrating War of the Worlds.” Mandy cleared her throat, put her hands up like she was holding a microphone, and voiced her best impression of H.G. Wells.
“Strange to see the children playing at Grover Mills. Strange to see couples holding hands, walking down deserted back roads where the remnants of the alien ships had fallen. There they sat, glistening in the sun, and when it was over, and all the aliens were dead from the dreadful cold virus, the human race had survived, and Kyle made it out of the coal hole safe and sound.” Mandy put the imaginary microphone down and said, “All you really had to say was, Nicki, my little pumpkin, sorry I’m late, where’s the chicken?”
“Hi, Kyle— Hey, Kyle,” said two girls walking by. A blonde with a flipped bob-a-la-dew hairstyle, held in place with red hairclips, wearing a red asymmetrical chiffon dress, draped to the ground on the back, and well above the knees in the front. The brunette with a fishtail haircut, sporting a navy short mini cocktail prom dress that left little to the imagination.
“Hey, Alexa—Hey, Lacey,” Kyle said, turning his head when the girls walked by.
Mandy followed them a few feet and said, “Hey, Lacey. Timmy found your cheerleading spanks under the bleachers— swamp lizard.”
“They weren’t mine, dough girl.”
“You’re the only cheerleader on the squad that wears aqua slut,” said Mandy, shifting her gaze to Alexa.
“What are you looking at, Alexa? Turn your boney ass around before I tell Chad about your casual encounter with a roughneck from Pendleton, a red pick-up truck, and a cucumber.”
“Oh, my. Can you believe this trash, Lacey?” Alexa said, avoiding eye contact with Mandy, who kept following them.
“A tiara, Lacey? Homecoming is ancient history, sausage jockey. How long are you gonna ride that train?”
“Back off, circus freak,” said Lacey.
“I got a suggestion for that tiara, Lacey. Why don’t I shove it up your love cave and when you give Blake face time, he could just say, crown me skank,” Lacey and Alexa gave her the bird and Lacey said, “Mandy, I liked you better when you had one stomach and one chin.” Mandy stopped following them and said, “If I killed every boy you slept with, rag muffin, Kyle and Carmine would be the only boys left in the world, and Carmine is a flamer.” Lacey turned around, and Alexa followed, then, with bedroom eyes, Lacey said, “What makes you think I haven’t slept with Kyle, Mandy?”
“Because nothing gets past me, amazon queen. The only reason you won Homecoming Queen was because you slept with everyone on the committee, including Donna.”
Lacey threw her flowers at Mandy and bolted. Alexa trailed.
“Lacey, that was a compliment. Donna said you’re the best white meat she’s ever had, including Calvin Malloy. In your own words, bitch, and I quote. After Donna, I’m starting to question my loyalty to meat popsicles. Have a nice night, working girls.”
“Jesus, Mandy,” said Kyle. Mandy turned to Kyle, button-holed him in the stomach and said, “If I find out you slept with the leopard twins, Kyle, I’ll snip your knackers right off, and you know I’ll find out. Every Friday I slumber with the gossip queen, Michele Ramsey. If someone passes gas in this town, Michele knows about it, then I know about it.”
“You two quit lookin’ at me like that. I’ve never been with Lacey or Alexa.” Mandy looked back at Lacey and Alexa, and said under her breath, “Those plastic bitches. Walking by, shaking their ass, looking at Kyle like they’re shopping at a meat market. Waving their hands like primidones. H,. I’m Lacey. I’m the Homecoming Queen, and I’m always open for business. If the light is on, please wait three minutes— I’ll be right with you... Now serving number fifty-six.” Mandy drew her fist up to Kyle with clenched teeth.
“Mandy, you gotta relax. Quit letting those girls get to you,” said Nicki.
“Ain’t a thing I said tonight wasn’t true. Besides, look at those two. They look like prissy little Barbie dolls, walking like they got corn cobs shoved up their little ghetto butts.”
“Mandy, you got a thing or two to learn about manners.”
“Shut up, hot stuff. I saw the way you looked at Bambi’s ass.”
“I did not,” Kyle said.
“Bullshit, Kyle. Nothing gets passed me. You did the old look behind first, so you didn’t have to turn your head when the smut twins walked by.”
“Ouch,” Nicki said, and gave Mandy a hand slap.
“Who said you were fat, Mandy?”
“Those nasty boys from Pendleton told me I was good looking for a heifer.”
“Mandy let’s move on. Kyle’s had a long day,” Nicki said pulling Kyle away.
“Nicki are you gonna to tell Kyle what those roughnecks said?” Nicki looked at Mandy, the three of them walking to their table, with a look that would ignite a flame.
“No need to talk about silly boys being silly on this special night, Mandy.” Kyle looked at Mandy.
“Did someone mess with you, Nicki?”
“Nothing me and Mandy couldn’t handle. Right, Mandy?”
“I think Kyle should know the vile things those bush pigs said to you, Nicki.”
Nicki looked incensed.
“What’d they say to you?”
Nicki looked at Mandy sardonically, and Mandy shot off, “They said her ass was sweet, and one guy said he wanted to tell her a story about his dick. Then he asked her for face time.” Kyle’s demeanor clicked like a light switch. He looked at Mandy, shifted his gaze to Nicki and said, “Is that true, Nicki? Did they say stuff like that?”
“It’s no big deal, Kyle. They’re just punks
trying to have fun.”
“Who are they, Mandy?”
“It’s Troy and his goonies.” Kyle cocked his jaw and let out a short laugh.
“Are you talking about Troy Scranton from Pendleton?”
“Yeah. They combined our prom with Pendleton to save money. He thinks his armpits don’t smell— walking around, acting like Kevin Bacon, holding his tiny love shaft,” Mandy said.
“What did he say, Mandy?”
“Kyle, not tonight. Don’t pay attention to those gutter rats.”
“It’s okay, Nicki. What did they say, Mandy?” Kyle asked with a tinge of outrage in his tone.
“Kyle, they called me a trifling bitch, and offered to grease the door frame so I could get through to the other side, while he held a Twinkie in front of me.”
“It’s okay, Mandy, you’re not that fat,” Kyle said, Mandy pointing at Troy.
“Kyle,” Nicki hissed.
“I’m just gonna talk, Nicki. Those boys need to learn how to treat a lady,” Kyle said walking over to Troy, a dangerous calm in his eyes.
“You, Bitch! You promised you wouldn't tell.” Nicki said to Mandy, Kyle approaching the four boys sitting at a table.
“I never promised, Nicki. I didn’t say anything at all. In fact, I told you I can’t make any promises.”
No one paid attention to Kyle as he strolled up to Troy with no sense of urgency. One of Troy’s friends wearing a blue tux, chewing on a piece of chicken, gestured with his hands, alerting Troy of Kyle’s lumbering approach. Nicki stood thirty feet from Kyle, next to Mandy, chewing her nails, watching Kyle. Kyle was five feet from the table when Troy stood up, threw his linen napkin down, turned to face Kyle, and pushed his chair away.
Troy started to say something, and Kyle hit him with a roundhouse punch. Troy’s body reeled sideways, hitting another table with a loud crash, and graduates jumped out of the way. Glasses and ceramic dishes went flying, sending liquid and particles of food through the air, and the table collapsed. The suddenness of the noise quieted the crowd.
In one continues motion, Kyle grabbed one of the boys by the neck and smashed his head down on the edge of the table. His head hit with a loud thud, breaking off the edge of the table; his body went limp and fell to the ground. One of Troy’s friends charged Kyle screaming, like he was going to plow drive him. Kyle caught him by the head, smashed his head down on his knee and threw his limp body next to his feet. Troy managed to stand and hit Kyle in the back with a metal chair that barely shuddered Kyle’s torso. The fourth boy, wearing a black tux and pink shirt, fled from the carnage as Kyle turned to see where the chair came from. Kyle lumbered over to Troy, who was back peddling, his eyes wide, mouth open, and Kyle grabbed Troy by the shoulder. He hit him with three successive right punches that shattered his nose and left cheek. Troy went down to his knees holding his face, screaming, as graduates formed a circle around Kyle— who was looking down at his bloody hands, too ashamed to find Nicki’s eyes after a fight that had taken Kyle thirty seconds to annihilate three boys. Kyle stammered, searching for a friendly face, his hands in a tight fist, standing over Troy’s unrecognizable face. Troy’s face was covered in bile and pools of dark blood; his left eye, filled with busted blood vessels, seemed to protrude out of its socket, as the hushed whispers of the crowd trickled through the gymnasium.
The only sound in the gymnasium was Kyle’s heavy breathing and the faint sounds of approaching sirens. Kyle looked around, his head pounding, tears sucked from his eyes, hands reduced to gnawed flesh, starting to come out of his rage. His face had a devoured expression. He turned to Nicki, blank-eyed and broken, and staggered over to beg forgiveness. Looking around, hands on her cheeks, Nicki was clinging to the hope that this had all been a bad dream. A young man with Jesus' hair spit his gum on the floor, his eyes spinning like pinwheels. Nicki went to her knees crying, Mandy was standing with clenched teeth, terror stricken, like she had just witnessed Katarina Witt land a triple Lutz, combined with a Panchenko twist.
Sheriff Renfro handcuffed Kyle, who had no desire to resist, and set him gently in the back seat of his cruiser. The two ambulances in Franklin transported two of the boys to Grant Memorial Hospital in Franklin; Troy had to be airlifted to Fairmont Regional Medical Center in Morgantown, where he faced a week of rehabilitation, and a total reconstruction of the left side of his face.
Nicki leaped forward in bed, bathed in sweat, and a heinous scream escaped her lips. Her heart was racing after escaping a dream she’d had over and over, post Kyle, invariably reminding her of those horrible days, as her heart and mind adapted to the new reality that percolated in her head, with the revelation of the Cancer. Reoccurring messages of badness; ghastly thoughts and visions of a dark well of evil. The stark reality that monsters of the apocalypse existed beyond the veil of consciousness.
CHAPTER 5
MONDAY
After a lousy night of sleep, Nicki got up early, fixed coffee and toast, and straightened the house. She didn’t want to call Kyle too early, so she called Kyle’s mom, who lived in Bowden, to find out where he was living. Wearing a pink cotton robe tied at the front, that dragged on the floor, sitting on an Oak stool, Nicki called Melba from the kitchen.
Melba sounded excited that Nicki called. They shared pleasantries, but Nicki quickly quashed any hope that Melba had for the two of them to rekindle a relationship. Melba had always been on Nicki’s side of the fence when their relationship had gone south, and she rebuked the awful things that Kyle did to her. They spoke for a while, caught up on past events, and Nicki didn’t see the need to drag the conversation on by sharing the news of her Cancer, and proportionally, Melba didn’t seem anxious to share information about Kyle, so Melba suggested she call Kyle. Melba gave Nicki two numbers. One was his home phone, the other, the number of Fire Station 17 in Morgantown.
Nicki hung up, looked at the number for a second and thought, Fire Station, huh. Kyle sitting at a Fire Station, that’s strange. Nicki called the home phone and got a message machine indicating that he was on shift today, that he’d be back in the morning. Nicki hung the phone up and smiled.
Kyle is a fireman, she thought while she called the fire station.
“Fire Station Seventeen, Sparks speaking.”
“Hi, Mr. Sparks, I’m looking for Kyle Tillman.”
“I’m sorry, Lt. Tillman is out on a call. Can I take a message?”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll try back. Thank you.” She waited an hour, still wearing the robe, she sat on the stool and called back around eight-thirty. She took a deep breath and listened to the dial tone.
“Fire Station Seventeen, Devlin speaking.”
“Hi, I’m looking for Kyle Tillman?”
“One moment, please.”
CHAPTER 6
Fire Station 17
“Hey, B-shift, have fun cleaning and hanging all that hose,” Kyle said getting a cup of coffee in the mess hall, still wearing his bunker boots, after extinguishing a tractor-trailer fire on I-79, and Chief Riley was waiting for him in the kitchen.
“Hey, Chief, shouldn’t you be headed home?”
“We need to talk.”
“Shit. Sounds serious.” They walked down a hall and into Chief Riley’s office, at the front of the Station, adjacent to the watch cage. His office had a small bedroom attached where the chief racked out at night. Kyle loved Chief Riley’s office. It was small, and right in the center of the room, against the back wall, sat a mahogany desk. The wall was painted fire engine red, and mounted in the center of the wall, a chrome plated ax mounted on Mahogany with a plaque underneath, took center stage; a slew of pictures from previous fires surrounded the axe. In front of the desk, on top of a red area rug, sat two brown leather, lightly used arm chairs. On the desk, a gold bell salvaged from an earlier model Engine, no longer in service, created the focal point on the desk. Next to the bell sat a framed picture of his son Bradley in an FDNY Uniform. Behind the Chief’s desk, displayed on the wall, was a triangular
shadow box with an American flag and a plaque honoring Chief Riley’s son who died last year. His son was a New York Firefighter who served his tenure at famous House Ten in Manhattan. Engine Ten and Truck Ten were the first responders to tower one before it fell.
The Chief sat in his leather office chair and gestured for Kyle to sit. Kyle took a sip from his cup of coffee, while the Chief, pensive, tapped a pen on the edge of his desk. An awkward moment of silence was broken by Kyle. “Don’t you hate losing those, Chief (referring to the driver of the semi that lost his life this morning)?”
“You got two weeks left, right, Kyle?”
“Yes, sir. I could stay longer, but camp starts in four weeks.”
“By the way, congratulations on your promotion to offensive coordinator.” Kyle shifted in his chair uncomfortably, still wearing his dirty bunker pants.
“Chief, you could have waited till next shift to congratulate me. I know you didn’t hold over two hours to commend me on my promotion.”
“Here’s the thing, Kyle. I didn’t say anything after the last fire. I figured you were a short timer, and it wouldn’t matter. A couple of shifts blow by, and before you know it, you’re gone— coaching up at WVU...Fires like the one last shift aren’t that frequent anyway— no harm, no foul.”
“Where are you going with this, Chief?”
“Listen, Kyle. I know who you are… I know the man that walks in your shoes… I’ve known a few like you and most of those guys aren’t fighting fires anymore. Their seared flesh is resting six feet under; their widows at home trying to raise kids without a father, including Bradley.”
“Chief?”
“Let me finish, Lieutenant… Now he wasn’t you. I’ve never seen anyone like you, and I can’t think of anybody I’d rather have on a hand line inside of a burning building than you, but you and I both know the consequences of sizing up an incident and making prudent decisions on the battleground to make sure everyone goes home safely.”
“You’re losing me, Chief.”
“Hold on, Lieutenant.”
