Cold Fire

by Craig Saunders

  I nod.

  ‘You can’t burn an entire estate. The houses are brick, there’s a fire station about three miles down the road, and you’ll be in jail or a nuthouse. Don’t be an idiot.’

  I think about the black cat and the buried phone. I think about the chances of someone stopping on a road to help someone in need and the chances of them having the same phone as me. I think about plunging my arm into a kettle of boiling water and taking that hand out with not so much as a blister.

  I think about chance.

  Sometimes you have to take that leap, and hope someone is watching out for you.

  Sometimes, that force, that other, will catch you when you fall. Sometimes, you’ll slip through his hands.

  I think about faith, and about belief.

  I have none. But I’m going to leap, just the same.

  ‘All I want, all I need to know is are you going to help?’

  ‘Come on, Sam. Have your coffee. Talk to Helen.’

  I push the coffee away from me.

  ‘Thanks for the coffee,’ I say.

  ‘Sam.’

  I get to the door, pull it open.

  ‘Sam, I can’t. You’ve got to understand.’

  Sure. I understand.

  I close the door behind me. Thinking.

  Not out loud. Not like a crazy person. In my head. Down deep, where the stranger rests.

  I leave him to the details while I walk to the drive. While I walk, I can feel the darkness coming in at the edge of sight.

  I get in the car. Put my cane on the passenger seat.

  The colour is going from the world. I can only see in black and white.

  Helen comes to the window, but she doesn’t try to stop me.

  When I drive away, I see with my right eye. Nothing but shadows and light and darkness. The stranger’s knocking. I open the door and let him in.

  *

  50.

  I lose time while the stranger takes me over. Maybe I give myself over to him. The distinction is blurred.

  I don’t have time to lose, but it hasn’t been wasted.

  When I come around, I’m in the driver’s seat of our family car. The digital clock says 2.37, the seven just a line on the right, because the top of the number is broken.

  Sunset is late. I wish I’d checked exactly when. It has things like that in my diary. I can’t remember the last time I had a reason to look in my diary.

  I left Frank at half eleven, give or take. I’ve lost three hours.

  I look out of the windscreen and I see the estate before me. The road leads onto another estate, where I’m parked. I didn’t know this estate was here. I’ve never been here before.

  How did the stranger know about it?

  It’s a question for another day, if there should be one.

  I can’t drive straight on. There are three iron posts evenly spaced across the road in front of me. The middle one has a padlock on it.

  The tops of the posts are painted red, the bodies are black.

  I look around and see a woman watering a house plant through the slats of her blinds. She looks real enough. This estate isn’t where I need to be. I need to get over to Townshend.

  Townshend is where it started. It’s where it finishes.

  The stranger must know you can’t drive onto the estate from this end. After all, it was the stranger that brought me to this place.

  He also knows people are looking. I don’t understand why I’m here, but I don’t have time to waste trying to figure it out. There’s a reason. I’m sure of it. I’ll know it when the time comes.

  A packet of cigarettes lays open on the passenger seat.

  Three are missing.

  Apparently the stranger is a smoker. I thought I knew him.

  In the passenger footwell there’s a cartoon of 200 cigarettes. King size.

  I can smell fuel.

  I look in the back...

  Frank might not want to help, but the stranger’s on board. There’s a plastic fuel can with a long bendy pipe for pouring. There are about thirty litre bottles of Evian in the back. Three of them have got cigarettes sticking out of the top, not reaching the liquid, which I know is petrol. The smell is unmistakeable.

  The filters are missing from the cigarettes.

  It’s not complicated to figure out. The cigarettes are fuses. They’re held above the fuel by sellotape.

  The cigarette burns down, through the tape, drops into the petrol. But that won’t work…I seem to remember that petrol needs a naked flame…I’m not sure. Of course I’m not sure. I’m not an arsonist.

  I look at one of the devices. Really look.

  The stranger seems to know more about this than I do. He’s sure. I have to assume that’s the case. That he’s thought this through.

  The stranger has embedded matches into the cigarettes. The cigarette is the fuse. The match is the trigger.

  I don’t know if it will work. It’s time to trust the stranger. I look around for the matches. They’re in the glove compartment. So is a pad, with numbers on it. Odds and evens. I also find a pair of scissors and the packet they came in.

  37 is written on the pad. He’s totted them up.

  Fuck. 37 houses on Townshend.

  Are there enough bottles?

  I laugh. I don’t like the sound of it. It’s creaky. Creepy. I don’t laugh anymore. I don’t talk to myself.

  Of course there are enough bottles. The stranger knows what he’s doing.

  2.52 pm. No time to mess about. I’ve got maybe six, maybe five hours, until sunset. I’m sitting in full view on a street in daytime, with a car full of petrol, and a ton of work to do.

  I start the car and drive away. Slowly.

  Through the estate, out onto the main road. Looking for some privacy. This isn’t the kind of work you do in front of someone’s house.

  *

  51.

  I find a lay-by and get to work. It’s mind-numbingly boring, made difficult by the confines of the car and the care I have to take. If I could do this in a handy workshop, or in my own garage, it would go faster, but I can’t risk it. Helen can’t know what I’m doing. She might hate me now, for the way I treat her. If she knew what I was planning…if she knew what was going on…

  What I’m doing is for a girl called Sarah I don’t even know. For Samantha, for Helen, and Dana, and Frank. And me. I mustn’t forget me.

  I’ve got the tools for the job. I cut, snip, tape, pour out, pour in. The dirt around the driver’s side door turns to mud, then a puddle. I work with the window open. I’m still dizzy. My hands shake. This is a job for two good hands. One of mine is spastic and in a cast.

  I don’t complain. Who would I complain to? Myself?

  Not for the first time I wish I had some help. Frank’s hands would be good. His clever old hands. Hands that have spent a lifetime building things. My hands are making little bombs. Incendiary devices, I suppose. I know by the time I light the first fuse, I’ll have only maybe five minutes. Then the fires will start. How much longer until the fire takes? How long until it’s noticed? How long until the first fire engine arrives?

  There are so many questions. I don’t have any answers.

  I think of Helen. I think about where we go from here. I wonder, not for the first time, if I’m crazy. But I remember the kettle.

  I flex my bum hand, work some more.

  My legs go numb. I let them alone. I don’t need them.

  I think about everything and nothing. My thoughts circle, dive on something tasty, gnaw it for a while, spiral again.

  Snip, cut, tape, pour out, pour in.

  I put row after row of my bombs in the passenger’s foot well, but then there’s not enough room. Plus, they’re too unstable for me to drive with them like that.

  I can’t stack them atop one another. That would push the cigarette down.

  I figure I do need my legs, after all. I work some life back into them, get out, stomp around until the pins and needles come. I swe
ar until the pins and needles go, then I load my bombs into the boot. I pack them as tight as I can. I push an old coat and a blanket against them to stop them falling over. People of a certain age keep blankets in their boots, in case of emergencies. I’m not, perhaps, of a certain age, but old enough to remember when winter was winter.

  I take a break. Tot the bottles up. The filled ones. Spiteful devices. Beautiful little bombs.

  I’ve made too many.

  Fuck. Time.

  Too many’s fine. It might be good to have a few spare, in case the fire doesn’t take. But I spent too long making them.

  I shut the boot with tender care. I’m aware the fumes are flammable, too. I don’t want to go up in flames. That’s not my plan.

  Something the stranger didn’t think about, but I did – I put a hole at the top of each bottle, to let the fumes out. It should give me longer. I don’t want to set fire to myself. I really don’t want to do that. I’ve already spilled enough petrol on my trousers to turn myself into a human torch.

  I look at my phone, for the time. 6.47 pm.

  I look at the sky.

  Fluffy white clouds. Some heavier, mild grey. Maybe rain, but not yet. The sun is behind a cloud, but it’s a way off the horizon.

  I wonder what Helen’s doing. I wonder what Frank’s doing.

  A small part of me, the part that was once a child with no worries and an easy smile, wonders what I’m doing.

  But that part of me is long gone. I get back in the car. Holding my breath, I start the car.

  I don’t explode, which I take as a good sign, so I drive away.

  Slowly. Slowly.

  *

  52.

  I pull over to the kerb when I reach Townshend. I see the sign right there by my window. Odds and evens. Townshend.

  It starts here.

  Number 1, Townshend. Black door. Brass number 1 in the centre of the door, with a brass knocker underneath it. It has double glazed windows. A stunted brick wall runs around the edge of the front garden.

  Frank is sitting on the wall.

  ‘Sam,’ he says.

  ‘Frank.’

  ‘You’re really going through with this?’

  I nod, watch him. The day around us is winding down. I can feel night on the air.

  He sighs. Looks left, right. Purposely.

  ‘Someone’ll stop you.’

  ‘You?’ I ask.

  He sucks his lip. Shakes his head.

  ‘Then you can help, or you can forget you saw me. I don’t have time to argue. The sun’s going down. Then all bets are off.’

  He sits there.

  I can’t waste any more time on him. I walk round the car and pop open the boot. The stranger didn’t think to bring a hammer, or a crowbar. There’s an iron cross in the boot, for taking the nuts off the wheels. I take it out, and a bottle, and a lighter.

  I look at the first house. The curtains are drawn. Like the burning men are afraid of the sun. The windows are going to make a noise.

  I put the bottle down. Only having one decent hand is going to make this hard. I could maybe juggle one of the bottles in my bad hand, cradled against my chest, but when I swing the tire iron the petrol would either soak the cigarette or me. Either way, it’s a no go.

  I pass Frank and head up the short front path. I take the measure of the nearest window as I walk and then I pull my arm back on the move, using my momentum, and swing as hard as I can at the window. The iron just bounces off. The sound is louder than breaking glass would be. It echoes round the estate.

  ‘Sam. Okay. Stop.’

  Frank’s standing beside me.

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  I wind up again. Frank’s hand catches the iron and takes it away from me like I’m a child.

  I wheel round, furious. He holds his hand up in submission.

  ‘Easy, Sam. Easy. That’s not the way.’

  He pulls a crowbar from a pack on his shoulder. I hadn’t noticed it before. I imagine a lot has passed me by lately.

  He hefts the crowbar.

  ‘I thought you…’ I can’t finish the thought, because he looks so sad.

  I wanted to say, I thought you were afraid.

  But I don’t. He’s tired, he is scared, but he’s set. His mouth is a tight line. His eyes are cold.

  I want to ask him why he changed his mind but I don’t because I think maybe he was a man in the dark who just needed someone to show him the way.

  ‘If we’re going to do it, let’s do it right.’

  My shoulders are tight, ready for a fight. He’s here. He’s in it. But I want to get on. The earth’s turning away from the sun. Night is coming and I suddenly know I haven’t got time.

  There’s no way we can do this.

  ‘Time, Frank.’

  ‘I know.’

  He goes to the front door. Puts the end of the bar in the gap between the door and the jamb and heaves. The door cracks and slams open, inwards. It bashes against the wall and comes back.

  Frank stops it slamming closed with a strong hand. Then he waves me in.

  I go back and get the bottle, then head into the house. I look around, and as I was hoping, there’s a cupboard there, under the stairs.

  There’s more wood here than anywhere else, apart from maybe the roof. It seems like the best place to start a fire.

  Frank watches me.

  I light the cigarette sticking from the top of my bomb. I worry it’ll go out without someone to puff on it, but it’s a tailor made and there’s all kinds of shit in those to make them burn. As the stranger knew well enough.

  Watching the cigarette slowly work its way down toward the match, I gain a new, perhaps dangerous, respect for the stranger. He’s been with me all along. Even when I didn’t know, he was there, watching out for me. I don’t know if I would have made it this far without him.

  I remember the kettle and the cold fire in my arm. I thought it was my idea, but that hand, that’s my stupid hand, and that’s where the stranger lives. Maybe it wasn’t my idea at all. Maybe it was his. His way of protecting himself, and by degrees, me.

  I’ve got to trust him. I walk away, but a last doubt makes me turn to go back in. I want to watch. Make sure it works. I don’t know if it will. I’m not an anarchist, or a pyromaniac. What do I know? The stranger...why would he know?

  Frank knows what I’m doing. He just puts his hand on my shoulder. It makes me jump. I’d forgotten him.

  ‘Come on. It’ll work. It’s burning.’

  ‘I’ve got to be sure.’

  ‘No, Sam. We’ve got to move. Keep moving.’

  I stare at the glowing tip of the cigarette, offer a prayer to a god I don’t believe in, and turn away. I know he’s right. We don’t have the luxury of time. I need faith. Maybe I don’t believe in any kind of God, but if we’re all going to get out of this alive, I’ve got to have faith in the stranger.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I say.

  It’s slow going after the first house. Frank’s limping heavily. We move on. Always moving, the sky getting darker all the time.

  Onto the next house. Then the next, and the next.

  We get a rhythm. Frank breaks the door, I go in. Some places have a cupboard under the stairs. Some don’t – they have a small toilet instead. It takes longer in those ones. I put the bottle somewhere with wood, instead. I see furniture, think that’s a good place, but then I remember Frank telling me nobody ever lived here. I don’t know if the furniture’s real, or the carpets, or the curtains. I do know the houses are real, though. I do the best I can. It’ll have to be enough.

  We’ve done five houses when smoke starts coming from the front door of the second house.

  It’s good, but it’s bad, too.

  It’s good, because it’s working. My little bombs are going to work. But they’re too quick.

  ‘Shit.’

  Frank nods in agreement as we stand outside number five, staring back at the smoke.

  ‘New plan. You drive.
I get out. Pop the front doors. Leave the boot up. I’ll take a bottle on my way.’

  There’s no time for finer points. We’re doing this on the fly now. We’re racing the fire brigade and the dark.

  I don’t argue. Frank’s slower than me, but he’s got two good hands. He can do things I can’t. We’ve got 32 houses left to do, and only one crowbar.

  I drive.

  Frank goes as fast as he’s able.

  We’re getting into a rhythm by the time we’ve done a few more houses, but Frank’s limp is noticeably worse. He says nothing when he gets into the car between houses, but I can see he’s struggling. I don’t say anything, either. We’re both cripples, and there’s a job that needs to be done. There’s nothing for it but to do it. We have no other choices.

  Three houses are already smoking. I can’t see the flames, and the smoke is pretty pathetic. Maybe the fires will just burn out.

  A few years back, Helen and me stayed in this country cottage for a weekend. There was an open fire, with some coal in a scuttle. It took three attempts to get a fire going. Starting fires isn’t as easy as it should be.

  Our rhythm slows. Short drive. Stop. Frank gets out, takes a bottle. Goes to the door, breaks it. Back to the car, bottle, cross the street, break, burn. In. Out.

  But the walk to the door takes longer, and longer.

  Some houses, Frank just pushes the door. I guess if I could see, those doors would be hanging off. Even so, it’s too slow.

  The sky is a bright, pure blue. The sun is somewhere out of sight, but from the shade I know there’s a little bit of it, a sliver, still above the horizon.

  Twilight, coming. Coming soon, soaring in from the east, chasing the sun.

  ‘Frank,’ I call, as he makes his way back from number 22.

  ‘What?’

  He gets in. We drive. Stop.

  ‘It’s taking too long. Twilight’s here, Frank. We’ve got to go faster.’

  ‘I can’t go any faster.’

  I think. There’s a limit to what we can do. Physically.

  It’s time to change tack. Heavy smoke pours from the first house. I can’t see the flames, but I can see a glow, a hint of light, down the street. A few more houses, and it’ll be out of sight. Maybe some won’t catch. I’m having doubts.