The Firebug of Balrog County

by David Oppegaard

  “Oooh, see that? That dog is totally taking a big dump in that yard! Isn’t that AMAZING?”

  And so on, until Dad turned around from the driver’s seat and told us both to shut the heck up already, even if Mom was smiling at our teasing, her eyes continuing to search the passing scenery for the next item of note. She had a way of caring about people deeply but not really caring what they thought about her, in terms of coolness, and this gave her a sort of Zen-type patience with asshole behavior. No matter how big the jerkwad, and no matter what manner of idiocy spewed from his jerkwad head, she could serenely stand her ground in a conversation and make her points evenly, without losing her temper. She was the one her clinic sent outside to talk with protesters, the one you wanted by your side in a parent-teacher conference.

  The only problem with growing up with someone like my mother in your life is that you assume she’ll always be there, listening to you and supporting you. You never expect there will come a day—say, when you’re ten—that she’ll come home from the doctor’s office a week after her annual checkup and sit quietly through dinner, her eyes glassy and far away, and later you’ll hear her talking with your father behind their closed bedroom door, which is usually never shut, or that the next day everyone will gather in the living room while your parents announce that your mother has a cancerous tumor in her lungs, a lung cancer situation even though she doesn’t smoke. You don’t expect your mother might someday punch out early and that her absence will turn into a vast and profound darkness at the core of your being, a nuclear winter you’ve stumbled into without a proper coat, boots, or even a working compass to help point you in a safe direction.

  When you’re little, you just think she’s your mom, which to you means the same thing as eternal.

  Because you’re an idiot.

  The Dam Store

  Five miles northwest of Hickson is a town called Running River (pop. 679). Running River has a small hydroelectric dam you can walk along the top of and ponder what it’d feel like to jump into all that rushing water below. Right beside the dam is the Dam Store, which is a combination bait shop and burger joint. The restaurant section consists of five vinyl booths and five cracked vinyl stools running along a greasy soda shop counter. For some reason, the Dam Store makes the best fucking cheeseburgers and apple pie on the planet.

  It’s worth the drive, if you don’t mind the smell of night crawlers and leeches that drifts in from the back room.

  The Grotto

  The morning after the shack burn, I woke feeling like a greasy, low-down villain of questionable moral fiber. I had burned down an innocent shack—a boat shack! A shack of leisure and good times!—just to subdue a make-believe creature living inside my all-too-real heart. My eyes were scratchy, my throat was raw, and I could smell smoke pouring out of every oily pore in my body. I’d become a freight train heading straight for Fuckupville.

  I took a shower and ate breakfast, but I still felt like crap. It was always like this after a major burn—the build-up, the pretending-you-weren’t-going-to-burn-something-when-you-knew-you-fucking-were, the glory of the burn itself, and then the horrible crash after, which made me feel like somebody had scooped out my guts and replaced them with raw sewage. I didn’t want to be the immature dick that started shit on fire—I had to be him.

  In need of some good cheer (and maybe a cookie), I drove over to the east side of town to check in on my grandparents. I found them in the Grotto, which is what they called their fenced-in backyard. The cluttered culmination of forty years of picky landscaping, the Grotto contained a picnic table, a vegetable garden, two flower beds, a hammock, a burbling pond, a seven-foot-tall replica of Michelangelo’s David, and a winding stone path. The entire area had to be only five hundred square feet total and always made me think of a ship in a bottle.

  Grandpa Hedley was sitting at the Grotto’s picnic table. A seventy-two-year-old Vietnam vet, my grandfather had been mayor of Hickson for thirty years running. A big man with wispy white hair and a booming voice, he got worked up about stuff like grass clippings sprayed illegally into the street, fire department pancake breakfasts, and Hickson’s Fourth of July parade. This morning he was holding pruning shears and studying a potted bonsai plant. Several other bonsai also sat on the table, stoically waiting for review like a tiny, carefully assembled forest army.

  Grandpa Hedley squeezed the pruning shears, pondering his next move. “Hello, Mack.”

  I stopped short of the table, surprised he’d noticed me. “Hey, Gramps.”

  Grandpa Hedley gave the bonsai a snip that appeared to have no result. “The Vietcong would have a field day with a round-eye like you. They’d hear you coming from a mile away.”

  Grandpa Hedley chuckled and gave the bonsai another snip. This time, I thought I saw something green slightly move.

  “Well,” I said, sitting down. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t in Nam, I guess.”

  Grandpa Hedley nodded his head somberly. “Good thing.”

  I scanned the Grotto. The fountain was burbling away and filled with dead bugs.

  “Where’s Grandma?”

  Grandpa Hedley pointed his shears toward the statue. “In back, reading one of those goddamn pornographic novels of hers.”

  “Pornographic?”

  “You should try reading one. It’s hardening member this, stiff organ that.”

  Grandpa Hedley gave his bonsai three consecutive snips. He set the pruning shears down and turned the tree in its little pot.

  “Is that its back or its front?”

  “Trees don’t have sides. Trees are trees.”

  I nodded. Grandpa Hedley could sneak up on you like that, throwing down profound shit when you least expected it. I think it was one of the reasons he’d been Hickson’s mayor for so long and had a death grip on the town’s oldster vote. The way he said things made them seem like eternal truths that had been set down in stone tablets long ago, via chisel, by a man on a mountaintop.

  “I got you a job at the Legion bar, Mack.”

  “I have a job. I work at the hardware store.”

  “Right. How many hours do you work a week?”

  I leaned closer to the bonsai, wondering what my grandfather was looking for exactly. I saw tiny roots, tiny trunk, tiny branches. Micro-needles that glowed with chlorophyllous radiance.

  “I don’t know. About fifteen, I guess.”

  Grandpa Hedley shook his head sadly and picked up his shears. “That’s not enough work for a young man. You need more structure than that. Especially with your mother gone.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, stretching my arms. “I think I’ve got a good thing going around here.”

  “You’re eighteen now, Mack. You should be working your ass off and saving for college.”

  I swung a leg over the picnic table’s bench. “You never even went to college and you’ve done all right for yourself, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Backyard Grotto.”

  Grandpa Hedley leaned closer to his bonsai. “I didn’t go to college because I was getting my ass strafed in the Mekong Delta. You don’t want that kind of education, kid. Trust me.”

  Now a full-time man with two part-time jobs, I plunged into the depths of the Grotto and found Grandma Hedley rocking gently in the Grotto hammock. She was wearing her straw garden hat and olive green overalls and drinking iced tea. As foretold, she was reading a thick, greasy romance novel with raised gold lettering on the cover.

  “Hello, sweetie.”

  “Hi, Grandma.”

  I leaned over and hugged her small body with one arm, careful to not squeeze too hard. Grandma Hedley smiled. Her eyes were milky blue, like stonewashed denim, and magnified crazy huge behind her trifocals. She had short cropped hair she dyed crimson and a ready smile for anybody. She looked like a kindly lady gnome.

  “Did you have a good birthday? We have a card for you.”

&nb
sp; “It was pretty good, I guess.”

  “How’s your story-writing going?”

  “All right. I started a new one yesterday.”

  “That’s lovely. I can’t wait to read it. Did George tell you about the new job?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And?”

  “I start at the Legion next Friday.”

  Grandma Hedley lowered the romance novel to her chest and gave a speedy, hummingbird-like clap. “Oh good. I think it’ll be very enjoyable for you, Mack. You’ll get to hear all those stories they have. It could even help you with your writing. Maybe you’ll write the next Johnny Tremain.”

  “Ah—”

  “Here, help me up.”

  My grandmother held out her hand like she was getting out of a cab. I grinned and took it, extracting her from the fibrous web.

  “You missed lunch, but I can make you a sandwich. We’ve got some rhubarb pie left over.”

  We went inside the house. Grandpa Hedley was on the phone in the kitchen. He was listening to the receiver with his good ear, his face darkening to a deep, plum-like purple. Grandma and I waited, watching him. Finally Grandpa muttered something and hung up the phone, his eyes slowly focusing as he noticed us standing there.

  “What is it, George?”

  “Some hoodlums burned down Teddy Giles’ boathouse.”

  Grandma Hedley crossed her arms and frowned. “Oh dear.”

  The Mayor’s Corner

  Dear Residents of Hickson,

  As you have probably heard already, the boathouse of Theodore “Teddy” Giles has been destroyed in what police believe to be an act of criminal arson.

  This, of course, is a tremendous black eye for our sleepy community. Those of you who know Teddy (and who doesn’t?) know about his exemplary life of service to both Hickson and the United States of America. An all-state quarterback for Hickson High back in the late eighties, Teddy led our beloved Wildcats to not one, not two, but three consecutive state championships.

  Then, despite being offered several college football scholarships, Teddy joined the Marines and fought in the Gulf War, where he distinguished himself by taking shrapnel in his leg and still completing his mission, which was to relay a visual ground confirmation on an Iraqi troop unit in Kuwait, allowing it to be blown to smithereens by an American bomber.

  His leg badly mangled, Teddy returned to our area with a Purple Heart, unable to play football or walk without a limp but still a shining example of everything fine and upstanding about being a man, a soldier, and an American.

  To the coward (or cowards) who burned down Teddy’s boathouse, I can only say shame on you and ask you to look deep inside your soul, which may need to be washed out with soap.

  To everyone else, I ask for continued vigilance until this perpetrator is caught and dealt with appropriately. If you see anything, do not hesitate to call the police. As with any form of terrorism, we are in this together.

  Sincerely,

  Mayor George Hedley

  The Firebug’s

  Legend Begins

  Throughout my pyromaniacal history I’d sought to keep my doings well below the notice of the citizens of Balrog County. I didn’t need popular acclaim, or outrage, to soothe my ego and make me feel like a big big man. My work—the controlled fires, medium and small, that I’d ignited throughout the area—was its own glorious reward, the charred ashes of various flammable objects an end in of itself.

  I wasn’t in it for the money, the glory, or the chattering of the townsfolk.

  I was in it for the burn.

  Still, celebrity often comes to those of us who seek it not. As I read my grandfather’s column in the Hickson Herald, our town newspaper, I could not help but feel the trappings of vanity slip comfortably around my shoulders, as snug and reassuring as a king’s ermine coat. Poor Teddy—how could anyone burn down his precious boathouse? How could such a terrible thing befall such a fine, outstanding gentleman?

  Ha!

  Because this was life, bitches!

  Yes. This was life. Apparently neither my grandfather nor anyone else in Hickson had stopped to consider the idea that the arsonist involved had actually no freaking idea who owned that shack out in the middle of fuckwhere. They could not, or would not, account for the chaotic randomness of chance in the selection process. To acknowledge that Giles’ boathouse was burned to cinders not because he was Teddy Giles, big-time hero, but simply because it was there, unprotected and tempting, would have been the same thing as acknowledging the fact that the universe didn’t give a goddamn who you were and could turn on you in a second, which was absolutely true and terrifying and best not considered too closely, lest one go insane staring into the abyss of time and space etcetera etcetera.

  And this willful blindness, I must say, got me plenty stoked up.

  The following Wednesday, Sam Chervenik ambled into the hardware store right before closing. Sam was in my grade and basically the only dude from school I liked hanging out with or could really tolerate for more than five minutes. Like me, he was a big reader, mostly science fiction and fantasy with some Nazi Germany shit thrown in. He also didn’t plan on going to college, which he considered a racket fit for mindless drones, and worked at a comic book store in Thorndale for ten cents above minimum wage. He lived with his chain-smoking grandma on the north side of Hickson, where he could stay rent-free as long he took out the garbage and mowed the lawn and did other man-around-the-house stuff. Round-faced, broad-shouldered, and intense, Sam looked like a young Orson Welles, which he took as a compliment in his own weird Sam way.

  I lowered the book I was reading. Sam came up and drummed on the front counter, glancing around furtively like he was about to hold the place up.

  “Hey man,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  Sam looked me in the eye. He was always looking you in the eye with mad intensity, but that only meant he was paying attention. Otherwise, he was off in his own private dream world, thinking about dragons and shit.

  “How’s work?”

  “Exhilarating as always.”

  “Yeah?”

  “But we close in ten minutes, so I think I’m going to make it. Another week as an employed member of the American economy.”

  “That’s good,” Sam said, nodding. “Hey, what are you doing Friday night? There’s a kegger out at Lisa Sorenson’s house.”

  I crossed my arms and leaned back on my stool. “You want to go to a party, Sam? Do you have a fever?”

  Sam shrugged. “I heard there might be some girls there from Thorndale State.”

  “Ah. So that’s your racket.”

  Sam wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He’d started to sway slightly on his feet, which meant he was excited.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I start working at the Legion on Friday. I don’t know how late that’ll go.”

  “Shit. Those old fogies go to bed around ten o’clock. You’ll be out of there before eleven and I’m betting this thing’s going to go until two, three a.m. There’s going to be a keg and a bonfire.”

  “A bonfire?”

  “That’s the scuttlebutt, Trixie.”

  A pagan image of college girls dancing before a colossal fire rose in my mind, coeds sexily removing their clothes in a fit of drunken ecstasy. It was exactly the sort of event the firebug and I needed to avoid.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll pick you up after I get off.”

  “Sweet.” Sam rubbed his hands and looked around the store. “Hey, you hear about that Teddy Giles thing? Is that fucking funny or what?”

  “Funny?”

  “I mean, my grandma never shuts up about that goodie two-dick. He makes me want to puke.”

  My stool creaked beneath me as I looked around my friend toward the back of the store, where I expected my football-loving
, patriotic boss to emerge from his office with a howl of righteous indignation.

  “You know,” I told Sam, “you’re all right, man.”

  “You’re fucking right I’m all right.”

  Sam smirked and shot me with both index fingers, a real cool cowboy gesture. I felt a sudden urge to tell him my secret identity, to confess that I was the firebug who’d burned down the boathouse and riled up Grandpa Hedley, but Sam turned on his heel abruptly and walked out of the store before I could say anything, high-fiving the decorative scarecrow near the entrance on his way out.

  The man knew how to make an exit.

  After Big Greg and I closed the store I headed home on foot. As I cut through the business district’s patchwork of off-street parking lots, I noticed that the grocery store’s rear loading dock was stacked with cubes of crushed cardboard bound by twine. The cubes were about four-by-four cubic feet in size and twelve in number. Totally unguarded, they’d most likely been left out for pickup the next day.

  I kept walking, the cogs in my brain turning as I whistled a jaunty tune.

  The Tiny Door

  When I got home from work, Haylee was barricaded in her bedroom and Dad was nowhere to be found. Abandoned by my family, I ate a microwave burrito in my bedroom while I checked my email. Nothing but junk and three new forwards from Grandma Hedley (a long-winded joke about a man on a tractor, a picture of a cat wearing a sombrero, and a list of twenty-five cornpone truisms), so I surfed around a bit and discovered that the Thorndale Times website was reporting that investigators had found a fresh shoeprint at the site of the Teddy Giles boathouse fire. It was a men’s, size twelve.

  I looked down at my feet, feeling a little thrill. Mmm. Not bad sleuthing. I’d be in trouble if they ever got their grubby hands on my sneaks. Next time I worked in soft terrain I’d have to put plastic bags around my shoes and cinch the bags in place with a rubber band, like a hit man in the movies.