Highfire

by Eoin Colfer

  Just talk like you talk, he told himself. Keep on keeping on, same old same old.

  “He sure does, Constable Hooke, sir. I seen it. He’s forever flashing it. Like ‘Waxman, FBI,’ ’ceptin’ it’s a hunting license. A joke, see?”

  Hooke laughed. “FBI? Shit. That Waxman is a funny fella. He was probably around when they established the FBI, old as he is.”

  Squib hid behind the refrigerator door for a second, wondering what the hell was going on and how the hell he could get out of it.

  Hooke whistled. “Say, boy, come on out of there. I need a word.”

  Squib swallowed hard a few times, then poked his head out. “Just saying, Constable. But I’m a minor, you know. And my parent ain’t here.”

  Hooke wasn’t in the least put out by Squib’s legal points. “Hell, son, we can wait for your momma if you prefer. Shoot, the only reason I dropped in at this god-awful hour is to spare Elodie a little drama. She’s got enough going on with her minimum-wage job and that man of hers digging a debt hole all those years. Not to mention all the family tragedy you all have got going on.”

  These facts hit Squib like a one-two combination. It sickened him to know that a man like Hooke had so much information on the Moreau family.

  “But you can’t just come in here.”

  Hooke stood as though about to leave. “That is true, son, but the door was wide-open, and in the spirit of small-town friendship I strolled on in. All I want to do is rule you out of my investigations because your momma assures me, assures me no less, that you have seen the light, so to speak. And maybe she didn’t mention, but you was supposed to call me.”

  Squib nodded slowly while his mind raced. His momma had mentioned the whole dynamiting thing, but of course Hooke knew full well that the swamp explosions had come from his own grenades.

  He’s fishing, thought the boy. He’s trying to find out if maybe I was the kid in the reeds.

  “Momma did say,” said Squib. “About the dynamiting, right? I done learned my lesson there, Constable. A fella’s only got so many fingers.” And he did his nub-wiggling trick to make the point.

  Hooke pulled some kind of grimace that maybe was intended to be a smile. “I believe you, boy. I do. You ain’t top of my list anyways. But I got to eliminate you nonetheless. So I’m gonna need your phone.”

  Squib was puzzled. “My phone? How come you need my phone?”

  “I got to take a swab,” said Hooke. “Like they do in the airport. Check for explosives. See, guys often wash their hands to get rid of trace evidence, but people don’t wash their phones. So usually there’s transfer.”

  “Do I got to give you my phone?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Hooke. “It’s like a voluntary thing. Otherwise, though, I need to make it formal and take you in. This way we’re one and done in half a minute.”

  Squib considered this. It should be safe enough. After all, he hadn’t been near explosives in years, far as he knew. Except the ones Hooke had lobbed at him.

  “I guess it’s all right,” he said, and handed over his smartphone.

  “Password?” asked Hooke.

  “You need that, too?”

  “Affirmative. I wanna check your recent videos. You’d be amazed how many dumb kids video themselves doing illegal shit.”

  Again, Squib had to think, and it was like his thoughts were edged with fever. His phone was clean: Vern had warned him against pictures and videos. All message threads were instantly deleted. It was a deal-breaker if he couldn’t manage his phone, the dragon had said.

  “‘FOOTLONG,’” said Squib. “All caps.”

  Hooke laughed. “In honor of Charles Jr.’s snake, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Squib. “Seems kinda stupid now.”

  “Not at all,” said Hooke, dropping a wink. “Big reptiles need to be celebrated.”

  Squib did not like this wink one little bit. A wink like that had all kinds of connotations. Maybe Hooke had some inkling about the secret swamp dwellers, or maybe he was just tossing out some bait.

  Either way, Squib knew he couldn’t afford to overreact, so he just smiled a bit, like Hooke’s remark was somewhere about a five out of ten on the funny scale and said, “I guess they do. Someday Charles Jr.’s reptile is gonna be famous.”

  “Yep,” said Hooke. “Famous, or shot to pieces.”

  “Shot to pieces?” blurted Squib, before he could button his lip.

  Hooke gave him the wink again, and it was downright creepy. “You know, by a jealous husband or the like. People hear about a lizard like that and they go looking.”

  And the constable turned and walked out the front door.

  HOOKE SAT INTO the Chevy and made a big show of swabbing the phone screen in case Squib was peeking, but the swab was just an ordinary wipe, and there wasn’t no spectrometer in his car in any case, as if the parish would spring for something that expensive.

  What he’d said about checking Squib’s videos had been true, though, which was indeed why he’d needed the password, but a cursory check revealed nothing but the usual bullshit teenage videos and a quick swipe through the recently deleted file revealed even more teenage bullshit, with date stamps all around the night of Carnahan’s murder but nothing from that night. Which didn’t prove or disprove anything other than Squib was smart enough to move any evidence against Hooke off his phone. Either way, the boy would probably have gone to the authorities by now if he had anything.

  So either Squib was not the guy, or he was too scared to talk.

  A week earlier, Hooke would have arranged an accident for Squib, just to be on the safe side, but that was PDS—pre-dragon-sighting. It was a different ball game now.

  A ball of fire.

  Step two in Hooke’s phone plan was a little more technical. He popped the boy’s SIM card into a mini USB cloner and quickly copied it over onto his own phone. Now any text the boy sent would show up on his screen, and he could force-activate Squib’s microphone whenever the phone was powered up.

  Operation Dragon Watch is a go, thought Hooke and went back inside.

  SQUIB WATCHED THE constable dick around in the cab of his truck.

  No way that asshole has an explosives-swab machine in there, he thought, although he couldn’t be entirely sure, not when Hooke appeared to have access to a lot more equipment than your regular constable. It wouldn’t have surprised him if Regence Hooke could call in a SEAL team to blow up the entire shack.

  But judging by the constable’s face when he came back inside, all was well. Though a fella could never be sure with Hooke’s face, seeing as it didn’t arrange itself like normal faces.

  “Looks like you’re off the hook,” he said. “No trace of explosives.”

  “I’m keeping my nose clean, Constable, sir,” said Squib, accepting the phone. “Ain’t no future for me in being bent. Momma is set on me earning an honest living.”

  “So I hear,” said Hooke. “You listen to your momma, son.” Hooke did a fake jab. “And put in a word for me.”

  “Sure thing, Constable,” said Squib, thinking, In your dreams, shitbird.

  But Squib was relieved to be in the clear for now. Hooke had no evidence that he was the boy in the bayou.

  I can get on with earning an honest buck. Ain’t nothing illegal about fetching groceries for a dragon.

  “I guess I’ll be heading out,” said Hooke, tipping his cap. “You play your cards right and you won’t see me again, professionally at least.”

  “Don’t worry, Constable,” said Squib. “Straight as an arrow, that’s Squib Moreau.”

  SQUIB WAS PRETTY certain that Hooke was full of shit in regards to him being in the clear, but as July rolled itself through to August and the temperature nudged up a couple of degrees, the boy had plenty on his plate to occupy him other than worrying about Constable Regence Hooke. And glory be, the constable appeared to have given up his pursuit of his momma—in fact, Squib barely caught sight of the man other than occasionally spotting his
silhouette fussing over paperwork in his office beside the car dealership.

  Elodie even mentioned this development to Squib one morning when they were passing each other at the screen door. Squib’s momma was tuckered out and disheveled as per usual following her shift, but she always had energy for a smile and a hug. Squib thought that maybe her smile was a little brighter this morning.

  “You feeling good, Momma?” he asked her.

  “Matter of fact, I am,” Elodie said. “No one died at the clinic. We didn’t have a single fool drunk showing up with blood on his shirt. I got paid, so lunch is on me if you can slow down long enough. And . . .”

  Squib felt that maybe the “And” might be the real reason for his momma’s smile.

  “And what, Momma?” he asked.

  Elodie waited a moment, like she was weighing up how much Squib needed to know.

  “What the hell,” she said. “You’re a working man, right?”

  “That’s right,” said Squib, and then, since he was a working man, he said, “Damn right.”

  Elodie tousled his hair so it looked more like her own. “Damn right? Okay, big man. I guess you can hear this then.”

  “I guess I can,” said Squib, mirroring his mother’s smile.

  “It’s Constable Hooke,” she said, and for one horrible gut-punched moment Squib thought his mother was about to announce her engagement, even though that made not one lick of sense.

  Elodie put him out of his misery. “I think maybe Regence ain’t as sweet on me as he was,” she said. “I’ve seen him when he was weak as a kitten. A lot of men can’t abide that.”

  Squib was beyond delighted. “You think he’s really cooled off? All it took was you nursing him some?”

  Elodie crossed her fingers. “Sure looks like it. He drove right past me yesterday without so much as a tip of his hat.” Elodie hugged him tight again and felt his ribs. “You’re so skinny, son. You want some grits? I think we have bacon.”

  But Squib was already gone. “Ain’t got time, Momma. I got business to take care of.”

  Elodie called after him, “You take care of business, my big man. Then get back here for dinner. We’re celebrating.”

  Squib threw his hands in the air. “Woohoo!” he crowed. “No more Hooke—goddamn!”

  SQUIB TOOK TO thinking in those seconds between his diverse employments. Maybe things are looking up.

  Mind, those thinking moments were few and far between. The outlying wisps of a tornado lifted a section of roof off the Pearl Bar and Grill, so Bodi Irwin defied the parish’s health and safety guidelines and had every able-bodied teen up on the roof nailing down tiles, which gave Squib a chance to catch up with Charles Jr., which was nice for the boys, and his friend solemnly swore to him that he had given up on the man-whoring and was keeping his pecker behind bars from now on.

  I work for a dragon, Squib wanted to say, but he kept this information to himself.

  Keep the circle small.

  Without a doubt the favorite hours in Squib’s jam-packed schedule were those he spent in Vern’s company. He never tired of staring at the dragon’s person, trying to memorize every scale and armored plate, seeing as photographs were absolutely forbidden. This scrutinizing pissed the dragon off a little, but he tolerated it so long as Squib kept the vodka martinis coming.

  Squib learned pretty quick to avoid the subject of Waxman after he’d motored into Boar Island one evening with a mouthful of questions along the lines of:

  So what is Mister Waxman anyway?

  Is Wax actually a male guy? I didn’t notice no dick, what with the pizza.

  Which made Vern like to choke with surprise. And Squib had more questions in the pipe:

  This whole dragon-shit thing ain’t just another joke? Only I’d hate to be humping barrels of dung upriver every night only for you two to be laughing your asses off next fall.

  Vern eventually made a new rule. “We ain’t talking about Wax, okay? I miss the guy enough already without your fool mouth yammering on about him. Let’s just say he’s on vacation and leave it at that. We clear, kid?”

  Squib saluted. “Clear, boss.”

  “Good,” said Vern. “I ain’t much for prolonged conversation. Maybe half a dozen sentences per evening is fine by me.”

  “Don’t worry, boss. You leave the talking to me.”

  “That ain’t what I was driving at,” said Vern, treating himself to a rare beer. “Didn’t your poppa ever tell you that young ’uns should be seen but not heard?”

  Squib packed away the evening’s groceries quietly for a shelf or two, but pretty soon the boy found himself talking. “My daddies never taught me much. Neither one. The first guy, my real daddy that is, he was mostly in the back room, far as I remember. Had himself a headache every damn day. He showed me some ABC’s one time. The second guy was an asshole and all he taught me was how to dodge a punch, and that’s all I want to say about him. I imagine he’s dead or doing time—either is fine by me.”

  “Shit, son,” said Vern. “You had it worse than me.”

  Squib snickered at the idea that he had it worse than the last dragon and finished off squaring away the groceries, which included a charcoal exfoliator Vern favored and a drum of palm oil to fuel Vern’s own fire. As he folded the bags for recycling, Squib flashed on a little Internet research he’d been doing. “So, I looked up ‘Wyvern’ on Google and—”

  Vern growled, and sparks danced behind his teeth. “Kid, don’t bring that up. You done earned a few sympathy points. Don’t squander ’em.”

  But Squib was a teenager, and therefore curiosity trumped caution. “And the Internet said wyverns were like this runty version of a dragon. I wrote it down.” Squib swiped his phone till he found a note. “According to Wikipedia, ‘Wyverns tend to be smaller, weaker, not as intelligent and ultimately inferior to the much more ferocious and powerful dragon.’” Squib closed the screen. “‘Ultimately inferior.’ Fucking ouch, right, boss?”

  Vern lost his shit at warp speed. He let loose a roar that sounded like there was a lion tussling with a gorilla inside his belly, and stamped a webbed foot right through the shack’s floorboards, and it was only when they’d splintered and he’d punched clear down to the swamp below that Vern stopped stomping. But he wasn’t done fuming; he was simply on to the next stage, which turned out to be berating someone who wasn’t there.

  “‘Ultimately inferior’? Who’s ‘inferior’ now, Jubelus? Who’s still standing?”

  Squib didn’t know who this Jubelus character was, but Vern clearly wasn’t a fan, that much was clear.

  “Who has man hands now, Jube? Not Lord Highfire, that’s for damn sure.”

  And then, as an exclamation mark, Vern turned a funnel of fire on his own La-Z-Boy and melted it to slop.

  Squib decided to state the obvious. “That’s your own chair, boss,” he said, then scooted outside to escape the acrid fumes billowing in toxic clouds from the dissolving leisure chair.

  He sat on the decking counting gators until Vern stomped out and sat beside him.

  “You shouldn’t oughta have brought up that wyvern thing,” he said. “Now you got to get me a new goddamn chair.”

  Squib bit his tongue, holding back the question, on account of the dragon was quick to aggravate and there wasn’t no other furniture handy.

  So instead, he said, “Sorry, boss. I guess we all got our touchy areas. Mine is egg-and-spoon races. I can’t stand even hearing the phrase. This cheating motherfucker by the name of Moon Lipton tripped me in second grade sports day. Otherwise I woulda taken that medal for sure.”

  “Whatever,” said Vern, but he was mollified a little. “I suppose you wasn’t to know.”

  Squib took advantage of the softening in Vern’s tone. “So who’s this fella Jubelus, boss? Some knight guy?”

  Vern lit a cigar with a snort. “I wish. Then I coulda smoked the asshole. Nah, Jubelus was my baby brother. The prick.”

  Squib had heard all about the down
side of having kid brothers from his classmates. “Yeah. Little brothers never get in trouble for nothing.”

  “You can sing that, boy,” said Vern. “Jube was the apple of his mother’s eye. Always the damn favorite.”

  “So you kicked his ass, right?”

  “I wish. Fucker was ten feet tall. We was even-stevens for a year or two, but after that he shot past me. Truth be told, I was the runt of the family.”

  “Yeah,” said Squib, “but there musta been a time there when this Jube fella looked up to you. Before the growth spurt.”

  Vern did a comical double take. He hadn’t thought about little Jubelus in a long time. And no human had ever prompted him to talk about his own family. It was all: Can you grant wishes? Or: For the love of God don’t kill me.

  “I guess,” said the dragon. “We did shit together before it got all competitive. Sat on mountaintops with Granddaddy. Flame-grilled cows. I remember Jube made me a thing once, I guess you’d call it a pendant. Ugly as all hell. Some kind of rodent skull on a string. Rat maybe. Still, I wore that thing day and night until Jube got big enough to kick my ass. Didn’t take too long for that day to dawn. I wasn’t exactly no prize specimen.”

  “You are now,” said Squib loyally, adding, “Also, you got the whole firepower thing going on. And the superhuman strength, too.”

  Vern tapped his forehead. “What I got is the smarts. I keep my head down and don’t make no friends. Well, not too many, leastways.”

  Squib took this as an olive branch. It filled him with something like pride, to have a dragon for a friend. Maybe.

  He took advantage of the moment. “So what happened with Jubelus?”

  “It irked him that I was Lord Highfire. Irked my daddy, too; in fact, he was real irked, so he gave Jubelus plenty of latitude when it came to throwing insults my way. I think they were both hoping we’d get to fighting and Jube would win out.”

  “Sounds real human,” said Squib.

  “‘Man-hands’ was the favorite insult,” said Vern. “‘Hey, man-hands, don’t break a talon lifting up that rock.’ Shit like that, and on a daily basis: Every time he saw something weak or puny, he’d call it a wyvern. Like: ‘That ain’t no real tree, that’s a wyvern tree.’ Or, ‘A dragon is like a wyvern, only better.’ Got to be like a thing.”