The Firebug of Balrog County

by David Oppegaard

  The Windmill

  There’s a southeastern patch of Balrog County where even trees don’t feel like growing. It’s mostly grassland lumped with rocks and notable only for an enormous windmill a hippie built in the early 1970s. He’d been smoking peyote and drinking bathtub gin when Don Quixote spoke to him in a thunderous voice, demanding that he build a working windmill fit for giants.

  The hippie built the windmill by himself in one summer, sleeping only three hours a night. He charges people five bucks to visit and take the windmill tour. Besides windmill-related maintenance, he hasn’t worked a day since.

  The Castle

  Halloween arrived like a flaming-scream skull and I found it mighty difficult to concentrate on anything. Time passed slowly and the firebug paced restlessly inside my heart. An impatient creature at best, it knew the time of our greatest triumph was at hand and saw no reason for delay. It wanted nothing more than to see the straw castle burn, radiant as an atom bomb, and feel its skin-bubbling heat warm the late October air.

  But I fought the firebug off and spent the evening calmly handing out candy to the neighborhood kids, wearing a Yoda mask and valiant in my self-denial.

  This wasn’t amateur hour.

  We were going to do this shit right.

  At midnight, long after the trick-or-treaters had stopped calling, I went up to my bedroom and put on gray cargo pants, a black sweater, a black stocking cap, and black hiking boots. I turned off the light and opened my bedroom door, cocking my head to listen to our silent house. Dad was definitely asleep—he’d gone to bed two hours earlier. Haylee was either asleep or watching something on her laptop with headphones on.

  I went downstairs and left the house. The night was calm. Haylee’s bedroom window was dark. My footsteps crunched on the driveway as I made my way to the Olds and opened its massive trunk. I took out my backpack, which was already packed for the mission, and softly shut the trunk. I headed down the driveway, turned left at the sidewalk, and went two blocks before stopping beneath a streetlight. After a minute or two, Katrina’s black VW Bug pulled up in front of me. I opened the passenger door and slid in, setting the clinking backpack on my lap.

  Katrina leaned over and kissed me. Colorful pops and fizzes filled my mind, darting frantically like water bugs.

  “Hey,” she said, pulling back. “You’re dressed like a cat burglar.”

  “Burglary is for the greedy,” I said, rubbing my tingling jaw. “Arson is for the pure of heart.”

  Katrina grinned and put the car in gear. The souped-up Bug rumbled as we rolled along.

  “You have everything?”

  I patted the bag on my lap, watching as far as the headlights reached. I felt as if an invisible hand were pushing me from behind, propelling me along. We left town on a county highway, turned onto the first crossroad, and circled back toward Hickson in a wide arc. We’d decided that parking in the Robinson lot, or anywhere in that neighborhood, was too obvious, especially if the Mayor or one of his cronies was on patrol. Instead, Katrina was going to drop me off north of the park and wait for me there. I’d need to drag myself through a half acre of scrubby woods and approach the castle from that direction. Luckily the castle was still lit up like a spaceship, even at two a.m. We could see it glowing from the road.

  Katrina parked the car on the edge of the highway and turned off the headlights.

  “You sure you don’t want me to come with?”

  “You’re the getaway driver. The getaway driver gets to sit comfortably in the vehicle and smoke cigarettes.”

  “But you might need help.”

  “I appreciate that, but I work best alone.”

  Katrina smiled, a friendly ghost girl in the blue dashboard light. I reached out and gave her knee a squeeze.

  “Jesus, Mack. This is crazy, you know?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You’re really going to do it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Don’t do this to just, you know, impress me.”

  “I know.”

  Katrina unbuckled her seat belt. She leaned over and gave me another kiss. I copped a feel.

  “All right, firebug,” she whispered in my ear. “Go do your thing.”

  The woods bordering the park’s north side were patchy but still dense enough to poke your eyes out if you weren’t careful. I went slow, keeping my head down as I bumbled through, my hands extended to fend off branches and possible bear attacks. I hadn’t brought a flashlight. This was a black-ops mission and all possible stealth was required. Grandpa Hedley had once told me about a friend of his in Vietnam who’d smoked a cigarette while on watch and gotten his head blown off by a sniper who’d spotted the cigarette’s cherry.

  “See, bucko,” Grandpa Hedley had concluded, “smoking really will kill you.”

  Ha ha.

  I didn’t have a flashlight, but I did have the castle itself to guide me. All those floodlights trained on the two-story stack of straw bales had been installed with security in mind, no doubt, but they also happened to serve as a beacon, drawing me through the woods like a lanky man-moth. My eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and I got better at dodging trees, though I still got my fair amount of scratches. The closer I came to the castle, the brighter the forest around me became.

  With perhaps fifty feet of woods left, I was startled by a smudge of color in the corner of my eye. When I turned, I saw only the base of an old tree with a fat, distended trunk. Like anybody else who’d grown up in Hickson, I thought immediately of Alfred James Hickson and wondered if it’d been a tree like this he’d tied himself to after getting bitten by that rabid raccoon. For all I knew, this was the tree itself—the official spot of Hickson’s death had never been confirmed.

  “Hello?” I whispered, feeling only half stupid. Ground leaves rustled and I continued forward, pushing away a serious case of the crawlies as I focused on the luminous structure ahead. More trees, more scraping branches. I reached the edge of the woods and crouched down, examining the scene.

  A gap of ten open yards ran between the woods and Robinson Field. I was behind left field. The outfield wall was a regular chain-link fence, painted black and eight feet tall. Beyond the fence, about fifty additional feet distant, was the castle itself in all its flammable glory.

  I unhooked the backpack from my shoulder and set it on the ground, dropping to my knees as I sifted through its contents. I took out my field binoculars, a birthday gift from Grandpa Hedley. I scanned Robinson Field for sentries but saw nothing but an empty baseball diamond. Nobody stood guard along the field’s fence, drinking from a flask or smoking a night-watch cigarette. Nobody sat on the aluminum bleachers, whittling a walking stick to help pass the night’s long hours.

  If the park had been under guard earlier, it had been abandoned since. I now had two choices: I could prepare my little Molotov cocktails from the safety of the woods, chuck them over the outfield fence, and pray they hit castle, or else I could cross the exposed area, climb the fence, and run up to base of the castle itself, where I’d be able to start the burn at my leisure.

  I eyed the distance between the outfield fence and the castle. I tried to imagine a bottle flying from my hand, covering all that distance, and landing at a suitable burn point. No, it was impossible. I was a string-bean man, with a string-bean arm. This would have to be up close and personal, a burn worthy of the great Firebug of Balrog County.

  I zipped up the backpack, hooked its strap over my shoulder, and stood up. An owl hooted from deep inside the forest and I repressed an urge to hoot back. I ducked one last branch and stepped into the clearing. No searchlight snapped on to reveal me so I kept moving, keeping my head down as I ran to the outfield fence. I climbed that chain-link fucker in three seconds flat, dropped to the other side, and crossed the fifty feet to the rear of the castle, n
estling up to it in a patch of darkness.

  I sat back against the castle wall, a stitch forming in my side. I smelled dusty straw and freshly mown grass. The woods I’d just exited looked dark and wild and ominous, a place you wouldn’t venture without a damn good reason.

  I opened the backpack and took out three liquor bottles I’d filled with gasoline. The firebug zipped around my heart, ready to rock. I uncapped the bottles and the smell of gasoline instantly obliterated any scent of straw, grass, or anything else. I felt around the bag and pulled out the rags I was going to use as wicks. I doused a rag and stuffed it into the neck of the first bottle. This was it. The point of no—

  Something whistled in the dark. A wooden stick appeared in the castle wall, about two feet from my head. I reached out and touched it, wondering if I’d started to hallucinate. The stick was smooth except for a trio of feathers on its rear end.

  An arrow.

  It was a motherfucking arrow.

  I turned and peered into the night. A patch of grass in deep right field was moving toward the castle—a man done up in full jungle camo, carrying a high-tension recurve bow.

  Instantly terrified, I chucked the liquor bottle in his general direction and hustled toward the left-field fence, leaving the backpack and my beautiful dream of haunted castle hellfire behind.

  I sprinted at top speed, my long, bony legs churning beneath me. I didn’t duck my head, didn’t think. I just ran like hell, ignoring the whistling of additional arrows tearing through the night sky. I was the wind. I was the wind shot out of a cannon.

  My eyes watered as I reached the warning track. I leapt onto the chain-link wall one-two-three and I was on the other side. An arrow clanged off the fencing. I swore and sprinted for the woods. I made it about five feet past the tree line before I tripped over a root and plunged face first into a mound of dirt. I rolled over and leapt to my feet, swatting at my face and chest.

  I’d fallen into an ant hill. Fire ants, and damn if they weren’t bitey.

  An arrow plunged into the ground at my feet. I swore again and stumbled deeper into the woods. When I looked back through the trees, I saw the camo man climbing the outfield fence. He’d swung his bow around his shoulder and was moving with stiff certainty, an old timer who could still hump it when he needed to.

  I wanted to shout something, something taunting and obscene, but I knew camo man would recognize my voice and then I’d be screwed no matter how fast I got through the woods. I could hear my own breathing, loud and obvious, and wondered if I’d finally gone insane. Was this wooded chase actually happening? Had my grandfather really spent the entire night lying on his stomach in Robinson Field? Did that make him crazy, too? Was our entire damn family crazy? Would a mental health expert suggest group therapy, individual therapy, or a mix of the two?

  The sound of motivated branch-snapping grew louder behind me. I picked up the pace and prayed my feet wouldn’t betray me a second time. I expected an arrow in the back at any moment but still believed this was preferable to being found out—the crestfallen look I could expect from my grandmother when she learned of my degenerate tendencies. Those big, milky blue eyes, all sad and disappointed.

  No. I would keep running. I would risk impalement. The firebug and I had not come this far to pussy out now.

  I pushed through a hundred branches and endured a hundred cuts. At long last, I emerged from the woods and stepped onto the county road, which ran straight and true like a blacktop river. I saw no car waiting for me. I saw only a dark road, in the middle of a dark night, and heard more branches snapping in the woods behind me.

  I was lost. Forsaken.

  An engine rumbled to life and headlights lit up the road. It was Katrina’s Bug, having apparently disabled its cloaking mechanism. I raised my hand to shield my dazzled eyes and the Bug roared toward me. I hunched my shoulders and thought small thoughts. When the car finally reached me, slowing but not stopping, I flung open the passenger door and leapt inside, shouting GO-GO-GO like a bank robber in a movie.

  Katrina stepped on the gas and the Bug lurched forward, eager to fly. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the camo man step onto the road, his hunting bow slung over his shoulder.

  “Fuck,” Katrina shouted, her long black hair whipping in the wind. “What happened?”

  Camo man grew smaller in the mirror, then receded into the night altogether.

  “I ran into an unexpected impediment,” I said. “The mission had to be aborted.”

  Katrina glanced at me and frowned. I looked down at my scratched forearms, the cut lines gummy blue in the dashboard light. Disappointment filled the car like an invisible yet poisonous gas and I could feel Katrina growing distant even as she remained seated beside me. In the brief span of twenty minutes, I’d gone from lovable local renegade to just another loser who’d let her down. Not only had the firebug failed, failed like a scared little bitch, but it had also been identified by a man who did not take such transgressions lightly.

  I leaned back in my seat as we hurtled through the night. A new and terrible darkness had fallen upon the land.

  Letter to the Editor

  Dear Editor,

  Do you ever feel sad? Does your heart ever ache inside your chest with longing and despondency at the ephemeral nature of existence? It’s your old pal the Firebug here (if you had not already guessed this from receiving yet another piece of anonymous mail slipped carefully beneath your door).

  Yes, sir, I guess I was feeling down tonight and just wanted to write you a letter. I think we’ve achieved something like friendship these past weeks, you the editor and I the mysterious contributor, so I hope you’ll feel somewhat saddened to know this will be my last missive.

  Yep, you heard me! I am retiring from the editorial letter business and perhaps from starting fires as well. You know what they say: if you play with fire long enough, eventually somebody will shoot at you with a high-tension bow.

  Sincerely,

  The Firebug

  The Firebug Wakes

  On the day we took Mom off life support, I stayed up watching TV until two a.m. I was the only one in the house still awake, which felt strange because my mother was normally up at all hours, catching what sleep she could in small increments, like a cat. I turned on a lamp and examined our living room. I was in the presence of a multitude of Mom-based items. Her slippers peeked out from beneath the coffee table. Her spare eyeglasses sat on the end table beside me. Her box of tissues was by my feet. Her favorite quilt was bunched against my hip.

  I stood up. Her books were in the built-in bookshelves; her favorite paintings were hanging on the walls. She’d gotten Dad to paint the living room a weird deep blue. She’d picked out the couch and chosen the cool blue and white striped fabric to reupholster it with.

  But these weren’t really items anymore.

  They were artifacts.

  My back tightened and my shoulders sunk inward. I took a deep breath, held it until I saw fizzy dots, and let it out slowly. I left the living room and headed down to the basement.

  Our basement was cold and cobwebby, outlaw territory. It flooded occasionally, so the floor was simply painted concrete and chilly to the touch even in the summertime—if you had a troubled mind, you could pace around it for hours without making any floorboards creak. The two biggest rooms were the rec room and the laundry room, with the other two used for storage and spider hoarding. We still had a coal chute in the laundry room, from back in the day when they’d deliver coal for your furnace right to your house. We also had a crappy weight bench in the corner of the rec room where you could reel off a few sets when you felt pissed off.

  Tonight, I’d come to the basement to pace and grieve without worrying about waking my father and sister. Yes, here I had come to feel my skin grow heated, my eyes puffy, and my chest hitch as the initial wave of what had occurred that day, and its utter perman
ence, finally rolled over me.

  Ah, such sob-choked lamentations.

  Even the spiders let me be.

  Two days passed. I ate a lot of cheese-based casseroles, Dad drank a lot of beer, and Haylee existed on oxygen and sleep. Flowers and gift baskets arrived from all over. Our family had achieved a kind of temporary local celebrity status—we were in mourning for a woman who’d died too young.

  She leaves behind two children and a loving husband.

  That kind of business.

  On the evening of Mom’s wake, we piled into the van and drove to the mortuary. Grandpa and Grandma Hedley were already there, standing outside the mortuary’s entrance despite the chilly November day. “We can see her first,” Grandma Hedley said, ushering us inside. “Before the official viewing begins.”

  We took off our coats in a long hallway and hung them on wooden hangers. Grandpa Hedley led the way into the viewing room, which was lit in soft white light and smelled like lavender and old man cologne. Short, padded chairs had been placed around the edges of the room, chairs for sitting and chatting, and a casket sat up front, the room’s dominant centerpiece.

  Haylee glided toward the casket while the rest of us hung back.

  “He does good work,” Grandpa Hedley said, touching the knot on his tie. “I’ve always said he does good work.”

  Grandma Hedley smiled and squeezed my hand. Dad looked from the casket to the floor and back to the casket.

  “I appreciate you arranging things, May,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “You too, George. Thank you for your help.”

  Grandpa Hedley coughed into his hand and cleared his throat, embarrassed by all this display from his son-in-law. He looked toward the hall doorway and hitched up his leather belt.

  I joined my sister by the casket.

  “Jesus,” I said.