The Fireman: A Novel Part 64

"Over here!" Allie cried, from somewhere behind Harper.

Harper kicked and waved her arms feebly and got turned around. Allie was making her clumsy way to her, towing her brother by the back of his vest. He was still asleep, his plump, smooth face turned to the sky.

"G-G-G-G.o.d," Renee said when she could speak again. "S-s-so c-c-c-cold. What-what?"

"You were d-d-drugged. The stew. They were going to kill us. John. John." Harper had to stop and catch her breath.

Instead of trying to explain, she pointed at the wreck. The prow of the boat had already dived into the water, the stern lifting into the air. The big rusted blades of the motor, snaggled with seaweed and algae, revolved slowly in the dark. The flames sputtered and seethed as The Maggie Atwood slid into the water. A great black oily bank of smoke mounted into the night. Harper moved her finger from the blazing ruin to the Phoenix, which was now no more than a distant bright glare of yellow in the night sky, like a remote pa.s.senger jet.

Renee looked at her without any understanding at all. She was still half doped, Harper thought, incapable of following any complicated chain of cause and effect.

Allie caught up to them and took Harper's other hand. They were strung out in a line now, the four of them, kicking feebly in the black and icy water. Harper could see her breath. Or maybe that was smoke.

"We'll die," Allie panted. "We're g-g-going to freeze to death."

"S-sing," Harper said.

Allie looked at her incredulously.

Harper lifted her voice and called out, ""In every j-job that must be done, there is an element of fun! Find the f-f-fun and, snap! The job is a game!"

"Why?" Allie said. "Why? This is s-s-stupid! It's over. Does it matter if we die in t-t-ten minutes or in t-t-ten hours? We're going to drown out here."

Harper kept singing. "And every task you undertake, becomes a piece of cake, so sing! I'm not going to f.u.c.king argue with you!" She sang this last part right in key.

Renee, blinking and rubbing at her face with her pudgy hands, joined her voice to Harper's.

They kicked together in the water, their wavering voices rising and falling as their bodies rose and fell in the waves.

Allie's hands, scrawled with Dragonscale, began to s.h.i.+ne, a yellow light spreading up her wrists and under her soaked s.h.i.+rt. A warm brilliance shone from within the hood of her orange rain slicker. Her eyes brimmed with gold.

The light seemed to race across her thin white fingers and up Harper's hand. Harper felt warmth, a deep, cozy warmth, rus.h.i.+ng up her arm and across her torso, as if she were easing sideways into a hot shower.

Their bodies smoked in the freezing water. When Harper looked at Renee, the older woman's eyes were alight. Her blouse was torn at the collar and her throat wore a pretty choker of glowing gold wires.

"What about Nick?" Allie shouted when they had sung through the whole of "A Spoonful of Sugar."

"Keep singing," Harper said. "He doesn't have to be awake. He won't hear us anyway. We're singing for the Dragonscale, not for him. Sing, G.o.dd.a.m.n it."

"This is pointless!"

"Are you alive?"

"Yes!"

"Then there's a point," Harper told her and then couldn't say anymore. She was having contractions, hard ones. Her insides seized up, relaxed, and then seized up again. She had always wanted a water delivery. That had been all the rage not so long ago.

They were singing "A Spoonful of Sugar" a second time when The Maggie Atwood was sucked underwater with a last loud hiss, a blast of gray smoke, and a noisy roil of bubbles.

They sang "Chim Chim Cher-ee." When they forgot the words, they made them up.

"Chim chim-a-nee, chim chim-a-nee, chim-chim-a-chick, paddling in the water sucks a big d.i.c.k," Allie shouted.

"Blow me a kiss and you can blow it out your a.s.s," Renee sang.

"Look," Harper said.

Nick was glowing right through his sweater. Blue lights swarmed beneath his hoodie. The water steamed where it touched his pink, warm, sleeping face.

They started "A Spoonful of Sugar" again. Harper was in too much pain to join them, though. She clenched her teeth together and shut her eyes, weathering another series of contractions. When she opened her eyes, she saw the Portable Mother, her enormous black carpetbag, floating past them. The wide mouth of the bag was open and filling with water. As Harper watched, it revolved in a slow, dreamy circle and sank out of sight, carrying everything she had meant to give her child with it.

She wished the Phoenix had not soared away. For a long time she had been able to find it against the dark horizon, an intense, bra.s.sy gleam, but at some point-around the third run through "Candle on the Water"-she lost sight of it. Losing sight of it felt very much like losing hope. She could not imagine why it would go. Why John would leave them. That vast, monstrous bird-that was John, somehow. It was maybe more essentially John Rookwood even than the man who had gone down with the Atwood. It was the true John: immense, larger than life, a little silly, somehow invincible.

Harper could not tell Allie that she was going to continue singing for as long as she could because John had asked her to live. She wanted to try to do that much for him.

There had been lots of things she had wanted for both of them, simple domestic pleasures that she had started to imagine, in spite of herself. She had wanted a lazy Sunday morning in bed, with the sunlight falling in on them. She had wanted to put her hands on his bony hips and see what that felt like. She had wanted to watch some old sad movies with him. She had wanted to take some walks together in the fall and smell the autumn leaves crunching underfoot. She had wanted to see him hold the baby, and never mind that the more realistic part of her mind had always meant to give the child away. She had a theory John Rookwood would be fantastic with the baby. She had wanted him to have some fresh air and some happiness and to be free of his guilt and sorrow and loss. She had wanted a few thousand mornings of waking up next to him. They weren't going to have any of it, but he had wanted her to live-he had loved them and wanted them all to live-and she thought he ought to get something for all his trouble.

They sang "Romeo and Juliet" and they sang "Over the Rainbow." Allie sang the chorus of "Stayin' Alive" while Renee rested her voice, and then Renee sang "Hey Jude" while Allie rested hers.

When Renee had finished, she shot a frightened look at Allie. "Why is Harper making that face?"

"I think she's having the baby," Allie said.

It had been a long time since Harper was able to sing. She jerked her head up and down in a wretched nod. She felt the baby-a dense, slippery, unbearably painful ma.s.s-shoving his way down through her. It felt like her guts were being pulled out, hand over hand.

"Oh, Christ, no," Renee said, her voice a sickened hush.

Harper was in so much pain, she was seeing flas.h.i.+ng lights. Black dots and silver flecks swarmed through her vision. She had an especially painful glare at the corner of her right eye, a persistent gold flickering. She shook her head to clear it, but it wouldn't go away.

"Look," Allie said, and grabbed Harper's shoulder and squeezed. "Look!"

Harper turned her head to see what Allie was on about.

First she thought Allie was excited because Nick was awake. Nick waved his puffy hands this way and that, gazing blearily about, wiping at his streaming face. But Allie was pointing past him into the east.

Then Harper thought Allie was excited because it was dawn. A line of s.h.i.+mmering copper light lit the horizon. The sky in the east was crowded with fat ma.s.ses of clouds, tinted in hues of cranberry and lemon.

Harper caught a splash of water in the face, blinked her burning eyes. For a moment she was seeing everything in double, and there were two bright, golden points of light in the distance. Then her vision collapsed back together into a single image and she could see a hot, dazzling glow, high in the clouds, growing steadily. She couldn't help it. At the sight of the Phoenix returning, her heart lifted, and she felt a warmth that had nothing to do with Dragonscale. For a moment even the sharp, steely cramps in her abdomen seemed to fade. She blinked at salt water that might have been ocean or might've been tears.

But Allie wasn't pointing at the Phoenix, either.

She was pointing at the sail.

A great white triangular sail, with a stylized red crab printed on it. When the boat crossed in front of the rising sun, that sail became a s.h.i.+mmering veil of gold.

The boat had the wind coming hard off its starboard quarter and was canted over at a forty-five-degree angle, foam frothing over the bow. It came on toward them as if riding on a rail just out of sight under the waterline. Harper thought she had never seen anything glide along with such effortless grace.

The Phoenix dived low as it roared past them, less than eight feet over their heads. It had lost ma.s.s in the hours it was away, had shrunk to no more than the size of a condor, yet still it tore past with a blasting sound like a pa.s.sing truck. A gush of chemical heat, smelling faintly like brimstone, washed over them. It was so close for a moment, Harper could've reached up and touched it. With its long hooked beak and flowing comb of red fire, it looked for all the world like a proud and ridiculous rooster, somehow given the power of flight.

Don Lewiston backed the sail and his long white craft slid the last hundred feet toward them on sheer momentum, the boom swinging loose and the canvas sagging and wrinkling. He threw a chain ladder over the stern, and when Nick began to climb, he reached a bony hand over to help him up. His blue eyes shone with something that was neither terror nor wonder, but both and more . . . an emotion Harper took for awe.

They fell in, sopping and s.h.i.+vering helplessly, one after another. None of them were s.h.i.+ning anymore. They had each ceased to glow almost as soon as they caught sight of the sail, the Dragonscale giving out as if exhausted. The last ten minutes had been the hardest. The cold burned as if they were up to their necks in acid-and then it didn't burn, and the numbness was even worse than the pain, killing the sensation in Harper's feet and hands, creeping up her legs. By the time Don hauled her in-an unlikely catch indeed-she couldn't even feel her own contractions.

Don left, came back with towels, with blankets, with baggy sweats.h.i.+rts, with cups of coffee for Renee and Allie. He had lost weight, was gaunt and cold-looking, the only color in his face the deep red of his nose.

Harper had water in her ears and was distracted by contractions, coming rapidly now, so she didn't get much of what anyone was saying. Renee asked questions, and Don answered them in a low, shaken voice, but Harper only caught pieces. Renee asked him how he happened to be there, close enough to fish them out of the drink, and he said he had been off the coast waiting for days. He knew they were walking into Machias because he had heard all about it on the ham. Harper imagined Don Lewiston holding a ripe roast ham to his face, like a meat telephone, and came very close to laughing, bit down on a hysterical quaver of mirth. "The ham?" Renee asked. "Yes'm," he said. He had a ham radio that got CB. He could pick up signals all along the coast, and he knew all about the woman who was enormously pregnant, walking north with a black woman, a teenager with a shaved head, a little boy, and a desperately ill man who raved in a British accent. The pack of them were making their slow way to Machias, where they would be processed and sent to Martha Quinn's island.

Only Don had been out to Martha Quinn's island, sailed around it and walked on it, and had seen nothing but blasted dirt and blackened skeletons. He had heard ol' Martha on the radio-several times-talking about the pizza parlor and the one-room schoolhouse and the town library, but the place she was describing had not existed for months. Had been leveled.

If Martha Quinn's Island wasn't a refuge, then it was a trap, but Don couldn't see how to keep them from walking into it. He had vague notions of hovering close to the bay, and maybe-maybe-sailing in under cover of dark when Harper and company were close to Machias, trying to intercept them, warn them. But then, in the last couple days, people had stopped broadcasting about them and he hadn't known where they were or what was happening. He had been anch.o.r.ed near the ruin of Martha Quinn's island when he saw the Phoenix sink from the clouds like fackin' Lucifer falling from heaven. Don said he wasn't sure if he had been led here, or chased here.

Harper only distantly heard this last part. She felt her insides were being turned inside out.

"What's happening?" Don Lewiston asked. "The fack is happenin'? Oh s.h.i.+t. Oh s.h.i.+t, don't tell me."

"Breathe, Harper!" Renee cried. "In and out. Baby coming. All done in a minute."

Allie was between her legs. Somehow Harper's sweatpants had come off and from the waist down she was wet and naked to the day.

"I see his head!" Allie shouted. "Oh, holy f.u.c.k! Keep pus.h.i.+ng, b.i.t.c.h! You're doing it! You're making this s.h.i.+t happen, right now."

Nick ran and hid his face in Don Lewiston's stomach. Harper shut her eyes and pushed, felt she was shoving her intestines out onto the deck. She could smell a sharp, briny tang that might've been the sea or might've been placenta. When she opened her eyes for a moment, she saw the Phoenix again, now no larger than an ostrich, floating on the peaceful water beside the boat, wings drawn against its sides. He watched her with calm, knowing, humorous eyes of fire, a burning slick of oil on the sea.

She pushed. Something gave. She was torn open, her crotch a ragged seam of flame that made her sob with pain and deliverance.

The baby waved fat arms and squalled. Her head made Harper think of a misshapen coconut, slicked with blood: a dense thatch of brown hair, smoothed down to a lumpy skull. A fatty red cord dangled from her stomach, coiling on the deck and winding back into Harper herself.

It was a girl, of course. Allie put the child in her arms. Allie was shaking all over, and not from the cold.

The boat rocked at ease and the baby rocked in her arms. In a voice pitched just above a whisper, Harper sang a few lines of "Romeo and Juliet" to her daughter. The infant opened her eyes and looked at her with irises that were bright, s.h.i.+ning rings of gold, the Dragonscale already deep inside her, wound right around the core. Harper was pleased. Now she didn't have to give her up. All she had to do now was sing to her.

Sunlight glinted off the steely blue edges of the waves. When Harper looked for the Phoenix, there was nothing left except a few tongues of flame flapping off the water. Sparks and flakes of ash drifted in the still, cool air, pattering down into Harper's hair, onto her arms. Some of the feathers of ash fell on her daughter, a smear of it across the little girl's forehead. Harper bent forward and kissed her there.

"What will you name her, Harper?" Renee asked. Renee's teeth were clicking together. She was s.h.i.+vering, but her eyes were s.h.i.+ning with tears, with laughter.

Harper rubbed her thumb on her daughter's forehead, spreading a little of the ash around. She hoped some of John was in it. She hoped he was all over her, all over both of them, keeping them still. She felt he was.

"Ash," Harper said softly.

"Ashley?" Allie asked. "That's a good name."

"Yes," Harper said. "It is. Ashley. Ashley Rookwood."

Renee was telling Don about Machias, about their final boat ride and the men who shot John.

Don wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. "They'll be after us. But maybe not for a while. We could have a twelve-hour head start on 'em. We might like to use that time to make ourselves scarce."

"Where?" Allie asked.

Don had sunk down on one knee to be next to Harper. He slipped a hand out of his pocket with a small knife in it, unfolded the blade, shot her a questioning glance. She nodded. He made a loop with the umbilical cord and sawed through it in two strokes. A weak gout of blood and amniotic fluid pumped over his knuckles.

"An Tra," he said.

"Gesundheit," Renee told him.

One corner of his mouth turned up in a weary smile. "It's on Inisheer. Heard about that on the BBC World Service. I'n pull in about thirty different nations on a good clear night. Inisheer is an island off Ireland, An Tra is the town. Eight thousand sick. Full support of the gov'nment."

"Another island," Allie said. "How do we know that's not bulls.h.i.+t, too?"

"We don't," Don said. "And this boat ain't equipped for a transatlantic sail. We'd be d.a.m.n lucky to make it. d.a.m.n lucky. But it's the best I got."

Allie nodded, turned her head, squinted into the rising sun. "Well. I guess we don't have anything else to do today."

For herself, Harper felt no alarm it all. She was sore, but content. Those fat clouds were breaking up, and the sky to the east was an almost perfect, serene shade of blue. She thought it seemed a nice enough day for a sail, and she recalled that John's mother had been Irish. She had always wanted to see Ireland.

Nick had crouched down on his knees to be next to her. He looked at the baby with a sweet, plain curiosity and then moved his hands, writing on the air. Harper smiled and nodded, and then bent close and put her nose to Ashley's.

"Hey. Your big brother has something to say to you," Harper told her. "He says h.e.l.lo. He says it's a pleasure to meet you and welcome to Earth. He says get ready to have some fun, little girl, because it's a big bright morning, and this is where the story begins."

BEGUN ON DECEMBER 30TH, 2010.

COMPLETED ON OCTOBER 9TH, 2014.

JOE HILL, EXETER, NEW HAMPs.h.i.+RE.

Credits.

"Jungleland" by Bruce Springsteen, copyright 1975 by Bruce Springsteen, renewed 2003 by Bruce Springsteen (Global Music Rights). Reprinted by permission. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.

"Chim Chim Cher-ee" and "A Spoonful of Sugar" from Walt Disney's Mary Poppins. Words and music by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman 1963 Wonderland Music Company, Inc. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

"Romeo and Juliet." Words and music by Mark Knopfler. Copyright 1980 Straitjacket Songs Limited. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Coroporation.

"Candle on the Water" from Walt Disney's Pete's Dragon. Words and music by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn 1976 Walt Disney Music Company and Wonderland Music Company, Inc. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

Excerpt from Fahrenheit 451 1953, renewed 1981 by Ray Bradbury, reprinted by permission of Don Congdon a.s.sociates, Inc.

Excerpt from The Ministry of Fear 1943, renewed 1971 by Graham Greene, reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House.

CODA.

"What if There was Just a Bit More Story?" by Joe Hill. Copyright 2016 by Joe Hill. Because there is. A boy saw it first, a serious little boy of six named Caius, who was walking home with his mother. He tugged her hand and said, "Look at the falling star, mama," and pointed. The woman, Elaina, held up, shaded her eyes against the bright of the day, peered out to the southeast and saw: a trim white boat, sail swollen full, the stylized image of a red crab stamped upon it. At first glance it seemed it was pursued by a red blast of flame, a comet-flare that rose and swooped and dove. As the craft clipped swiftly through the water, though, Elaina saw it was not running from a ball of fire at all, but was instead accompanied by a great blazing bird. That falcon of flame was using its heat to drive hot air into the sail, speeding the boat to a giddy, almost dangerous clip. Elaina spied a woman with yellow hair, standing on the pulpit at the tip of the bow. The faraway woman raised a hand in greeting, a hand that glowed as if it wore a glove of pure light. Caius waved in return, his own hand blazing up like a torch, green ribbons of flame trailing from his fingertips. "No one loves a show-off, Caius," Elaina warned him, but her smile suggested she didn't mean it.