On Fire (13 page)
I let out a lot of air and lay down flat on my back with my arms folded over my chest like a body in a funeral parlour.
I
WAS WILLING TO START DISTANCE
learning right away, but it turned out I still needed books to do it. Mrs. Stoa and I spent quite a while trying to figure out how to order them on-line. We finally accomplished that but then neither one of us had a credit card to pay for the order. That was half a day wasted.
I decided to take a ride on the Number One to recover. I got on opposite King Koffee and rode to the end of the line. After the bus turned around and headed back toward town, it stopped at the high school and a crowd of kids got on. In the middle of them was the golden cheerleader. She looked almost as amazing in normal clothes as she did in her uniform.
She took the seat in front of mine. I watched while she dug in her purse and got out a mirror. Then she held it up and studied her face in it, section by section.
First she examined her left eye. She got out a little pencil and made a black line on her eyelid. Then she wet her finger with her tongue and smudged most of the line out.
She did the same thing to her other eye. After that she wiped off her lipstick and put it on again.
She took out her cellphone and held it over her head toward me. I didn't know what she was doing. Did she want me to say something into it? There was a tiny click. Then she brought the phone around again and looked at it.
It eventually dawned on me that she had a camera in her phone. She'd taken a picture of the back of her hair to see how it looked. I guess she was pleased. She put the phone away but she went on checking out her reflection in the bus window.
Up until then, I'd thought beauty was something you were born with. It had never occurred to me before how much work it took.
S
INCE
I'
D HAD A FRUSTRATING DAY
I went in to King Koffee to recover. I'd just finished giving my order when someone in line behind me said, “Matti?” I turned around.
“Hi,” Bee said.
I stood there trying desperately to think of an excuse to run out the door when Chuck called out loud enough for everyone to hear, “Cherry lemonade for Matti.”
“Why don't you come and sit outside,” Bee said. “My cousin Virgil's out there, too.”
I hadn't seen Virgil when I came into the shop but it was definitely him at the table. I sat across from him, and Bee scooted her chair up next to his. I could tell from the way the tree branches near us swayed that the wind was blowing slightly, although I didn't feel the air moving on my skin. It was always that way with the weather in Kingman. It wasn't quite real.
“It's Marty, right?” Virgil said.
“Matti,” I told him.
“I wasn't sure you'd stayed in town,” Bee said. “I haven't seen you around school much.”
“I'm not in school the way you are,” I told her. I explained about distance learning, or what I knew about it. I slurped my lemonade fast, hoping to get away.
“You're not missing much,” Bee said. “Kingman Collegiate is very big.”
She and Virgil both had cups of coffee. She sipped at hers. He stirred spoonful after spoonful of sugar into his.
“I'm taking Bee shopping,” he said. “Her mom won't leave the backyard and she's hidden the keys to the truck so I bought an old beater.”
“Mom's mad at Virgil,” Bee said.
“Picks up her gun if I try to come near her.” Virgil stirred in his fourth spoonful of sugar.
“Exactly how I feel about you, Bee,” I thought. In my lap and under the table my hands strangled her.
“What did you do?” I asked Virgil.
“Nothing. But my aunt thinks I helped some kid break into her cabin. She recognized him because he worked for New Mountain when she was there.”
“Those tree planters?” I asked.
Virgil nodded. Then he stopped stirring and looked at me. “Actually, it was your friend who broke in.”
“My friend?”
“Right. The guy with amnesia.”
The lemonade from the bottom of my glass had a sour streak in it. It caught in my throat and I almost choked. “What are you talking about?”
Bee got up and brought me some water. I took a few loud gulps from the glass. “Remember I said my mom was cooking for New Mountain? She recognized the guy who broke in because he worked there too. The only name she knows for him is Useless. I guess he was, where planting trees is concerned.”
I sat there goggling at Bee.
“Anyway,” she said. “He took off one night. I don't know when that was. Then Mom found him in our cabin when she stopped by to pick up some things.”
“But,” I said, “I don't understand how he got over to Cato City.”
Virgil finally stopped stirring and looked at me. “I took him in my boat,” he said.
“And then went off and left him again?”
“Whoa!” Virgil tipped back in his chair. “Now you're mad at me, too.”
“Of course I'm mad,” I said. “When did this happen? When did you take him across?”
Virgil closed his eyes and thought for a minute. “Early in the morning, I guess.” He thought some more. “You guys were evacuated that evening.”
I glared at him. “Why would you do a thing like that?”
Virgil shrugged and sat forward again like he was cool with what he'd done, but I saw a little fire in his eyes. “It's still a free country,” he said, “and he wanted to go.”
This time I got up to get my own water. When I sat down again I said, “And then you took him to Bee's house so he'd be safe?”
Virgil looked from Bee to me and back again. “No,” he said. “I didn't exactly take him to the cabin. I . . . ” His coffee must have been cold by then but he stirred, anyway. “Okay, I screwed up. I was tired because I'd been up all night . . . checking some houses in the village I'd been looking after.” He glanced at Bee out of the corner of his eye. “I thought I'd go back to my place and pick up some things, get a few hours of sleep and then come down here.”
“And you left him there,” I said.
“He wasn't around when I was ready to go.”
“Do you know that if Mrs. Laverdiere hadn't called the Search and Rescue about him, he'd be dead now? That's what the doctor at the Metal Springs hospital told me.”
“He's in Mental Springs?” Virgil said.
I thought that was crude. “You already know that's where he is,” I snapped. I stood up and pointed at Bee. “Or at least she does. She's been out to see him.”
Bee's jaw fell open. “What?”
“Well, haven't you?” I said.
“Matti, I don't have any idea what you're talking about. I've never even met this guy.”
Bee wasn't glamorous compared to one of the Kingman cheerleaders. Her hair was a little messier than theirs. And one of her front teeth overlapped the other, but there was something about her. When I looked at her I knew she was telling the truth. It just came shining out.
“Well,” I said. I sat down. “I don't know what to say, then.”
“I told him I'd give him a ride to Kingman in my boat,” Virgil told me. “But he wasn't there when I got back from my place. I thought he'd gone.”
“Just flew away?”
“I'm sorry,” he said again. “I already said I screwed up.”
“We'll take you out to see your friend if you want us to,” Bee told me.
“Maybe sometime,” I said. “Frank and Marsh are taking me out tomorrow.”
I felt like a balloon with all the air gone out of it. I was embarrassed about the meltdown. Also shocked, and other things I couldn't name so the conversation kind of petered out.
Virgil and Bee left, but I stayed on, trying to make sense out of what I'd heard. I believed Bee when she said she hadn't been out to see Dan. But if they'd never met, how did he know her name?
I sat at the table so long, Prince Chuck came out to see if I was all right. Or maybe he just wanted to sell me more lemonade. He did take his work very seriously.
I'd watched Virgil and Bee as they walked away down the street. When they'd gone a little ways, he took hold of her hand. They kept walking together like that for as long as I watched.
That didn't make sense to me, either.
M
RS
. S
TOA WAS UP ON A
step stool in the palace kitchen when I got back, reaching out as far as she could for something. It brought her skirt up and focused my attention on her legs. I've seen chicken drumsticks that were fatter. It's a wonder they could hold her up.
“What are you looking for?” I asked her.
“A jellyroll pan,” she said. “I thought I'd make us a jellyroll.” She rattled around for a while. Then she climbed down empty handed.
No jellyroll I guess. Whatever that is.
I told her about meeting Bee and Virgil and about what they said.
Then I made the mistake of telling her how Bee and Virgil were holding hands after they left.
“What do you think that means?” she asked me.
“It means they might be . . . you know. But they're cousins!”
Mrs. Stoa clucked her tongue. “A little hand-holding doesn't mean anything, Matilda. You have a lot to learn about affection.”
This from an old woman who walked around on chicken legs.
F
RANK DROVE US OUT TO THE
hospital. Marsh rode in the front with him, and I sat in the back. I didn't talk to begin with. Just turned my head and looked out the window. I wasn't sure what to wish for anymore so I didn't pay attention to the white horses we passed, but I did notice that same appaloosa running along beside us for quite a ways.
Every time I took my eyes away from it, I saw Frank watching me in the rear view mirror. Eventually, I leaned forward so I could stick my head in between the two bucket seats at the front. “I suppose you want me to talk to that doctor again and confess that I made up Dan's name.”
“Not necessary,” Frank said.
“So he's not . . . ?”
“Pressing charges?” Marsh seemed very relaxed riding up in front with Frank. If he'd been a dog he would have had his head out the window with his ears streaming behind him in the wind.
Frank pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. He swivelled around to look at me. Marsh stayed facing the dashboard, but now he watched me in the mirror. “This is how it went down,” Frank said. He loved to sound like he was in the know.
“I eventually got the doctor on the phone. I told him I was working with emergency social services in Kingman, checking up on people missing from the Blackstone Village area after the fire.”
“That's all true,” I said.
“I gave the doctor Marsh's description of the kid.”
“Dan,” I said.
“The doctor told me they had someone matching that description there. Then he told me about the infamous visit by Matti Iverly, who claimed to be his cousin and claimed the kid's name was Dan Iverly. And I said I knew who you were.”
“You said you were my father?”
“I said we were related and that you were usually reliable.” He waggled his eyebrows.
“What did he say then?”
“He said thanks. It sounded to me like he was happy to have one less John Doe on his books. He called me back later and told me the patient in question had regained some of his memory and affirmed that his name was in fact Dan Iverly.” Frank snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”
We drove again for a while and then I remembered I hadn't told Frank what I'd learned from Bee and Virgil. I filled him in. “Mrs. Laverdiere didn't remember exactly when Dan quit planting,” I said, “but he must have been alone out in the wilderness for quite a while.”
“I've got someone checking into missing person accounts,” Frank said. “No one of the kid's description has been reported missing around here.”
He glanced at Marsh. “It would help of course to have fingerprints.”
“Dan wandered in to Mrs. Laverdiere's house in Cato City after he left the village,” I said. “She found him there and tried to take him to Kingman, but he wouldn't go. She's the one who sent Search and Rescue out to find him.”
”Want me to go and talk to the Laverdiere woman?” Marsh asked Frank. “Ask her his name?”
“She doesn't know it,” I said. “I don't think she'll talk to you, anyway. She threatened to shoot Virgil.”
“Lots of people have threatened to shoot Virgil,” Frank said, “mostly fathers. But if she has a gun in the city, maybe we'll just notify the police.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I told you this because I thought it would help Dan. Not so you could go around acting like you're in charge again. Is that what you intend to do when we get to the hospital?”
“Instead of what?” Frank asked.
“Instead of . . . just . . . going along and acting normal.”
“You know me, Matti,” Frank said. “You know me.”
I
STARTED TOWARD BUILDING 3B, BUT
Frank stopped me. “This way, Matti,” he called. “The doctor told me he's been moved.” We walked along the gravel path to a different building with 5A on the front. The door was open on this one and there were no grids on the windows.
Frank gave Dan's name to someone at the desk. She pointed us to his room but he wasn't in it.
“He's in the green space,” another big nurse said. He wasn't wearing white. He had on dark blue pants and a long, loose top with chilli peppers printed all over it.