The Fireman: A Novel Part 56

"Oh, Harper. Don't ever be anyone but yourself, please. You are perfect just as you are."

The bridge began to ring under the tires and the truck was slowing.

With her eyes closed, Harper could visualize it: the bridge was six lanes wide, three going south and three going north, with a concrete island separating the two. In the old days one swept right across into Maine without pause, but the governor had thrown up a security checkpoint back in the fall. There would be something blocking two of the three lanes headed north: police cruisers, or Humvees, or a concrete barrier. How many men? How many guns? The air brakes squealed. The fire engine rocked to a halt.

Boots clanged. She heard muted conversation, followed by an unexpected outburst of laughter-John's, Harper thought. More chatter. Harper noticed she wasn't breathing and forced herself to exhale a long, slow breath.

"Can I hold your hand?" Renee whispered.

Harper reached blindly through the dark and found Renee's warm, soft palm.

The door at the rear of the compartment opened a quarter inch.

Harper caught her breath. She thought: Now. Now they look in. She and Renee were completely still under their blanket, in the s.p.a.ce behind the fire extinguishers. Harper figured it was simple. If they looked behind the fire extinguishers, everyone died. If they didn't, they would all survive the morning.

The cabinet door crept open another quarter inch, and Harper wondered-with a kind of irritation-why the f.u.c.k the dude didn't just throw it wide.

"Oh G.o.d," Renee said, understanding before Harper by a fraction of an instant.

Harper sat up on her elbows, her pulse jumping in her throat.

It wasn't someone outside opening the door at all. The door was being opened from the inside. Mr. Truffles stuck his head out and stared into the bright morning. He brought his shoulders forward, nudging the door open another six inches, and hopped down. Thanks for the ride, kids, this is where I get off.

Renee was squeezing Harper's hand so hard, Harper's fingers ached.

"Oh Jesus," Renee whispered. "Oh G.o.d."

Harper pried her hand free and sat up on her knees to look over the tops of the fire extinguishers. She saw a slice of glorious blue sky, fading to white in the distance, and the gray curve of the bridge bending back down to New Hamps.h.i.+re soil.

Wrecks lined the breakdown lane, stretching all the way to the foot of the bridge and beyond. There were maybe a hundred empty vehicles back there: all the cars that had tried to run the blockade and failed. Bullet holes cobwebbed winds.h.i.+elds, punctured hoods and doors.

Voices drifted back to them from the front of the truck. Someone was saying, "You're kidding me. When was the last time it saw service?"

Harper gently lifted one of the fire extinguishers and moved it aside. It clinked softly.

"No, Harper," Renee whispered, but Harper wasn't taking a vote on this one. If the cat stepped into view it would draw attention to the rear of the truck.

She moved another fire extinguisher. Clink.

"Oh, we usually bring it out t'garage every Fourth of July. We blast the kiddies with the hose, knock 'em right off their feet, they think it's a scream." A laconic Down Easter was speaking toward the front of the truck. His voice was vaguely familiar. "They wouldn't think it was such a scream if we put it on full pressure. There'd be six-year-olds flyin' up into the fackin' trees."

This was met with a ragged bellow of appreciative laughter, half a dozen men at least. It came to Harper in that instant who was doing the talking. The droll old salt running his yap was the Fireman, putting on his Don Lewiston voice.

She pushed open the door and stuck her head into the day.

The air smelled of the river, a sweet mineral scent with a just slightly rotten odor beneath it. No one was in the road behind the truck. The sentries were standing up by the cab. A white booth with dusty Plexiglas windows stood empty to the immediate right. A CB mounted to the Formica desk crackled and spat.

"Your front end looks pretty banged up. You hit something with it?" asked one of the sentries.

"Oh, that was a couple months ago. I struck what I thought was a fackin' pothole. Turned out I went over a Prius with a couple burners in it. Oops!"

More laughter and louder this time.

Mr. Truffles looked up from the road at Harper, narrowed his eyes, yawned, then lifted a rear leg and began to lick his furry b.a.l.l.s.

"I don't see you on my checklist," one of the sentries said. He didn't sound unfriendly, but his voice wasn't exactly quaking with laughter, either. "I got a list of all the approved trucks headed north. I don't see your plates."

"Can I look?" asked the Fireman.

Papers ruffled.

Harper put a foot down on the blacktop, eased herself out over the b.u.mper.

The line of shot-up wrecks went on and on, following the edge of the road all the way down the bridge and out of sight. Harper saw a station wagon with half a dozen bullet holes in the sagging winds.h.i.+eld. There was a child seat buckled in back.

"Ah, there," said the Fireman. "This one. There's my love."

Harper thought his accent had slipped for a moment, wondered if anyone else had noticed.

"The 1963 Studebaker? I'm no expert, but this fire truck doesn't look like something from 1963."

"No, it sure doesn't. It's not a '63. It's a '36. They flipped around two of their numbers. Wrong fackin' license plate, too. What you've got here was probably the old plates. They were swapped out for antique plates three-f.u.c.k, four? At least four fackin' years ago."

The guy sighed. "Someone's going to eat s.h.i.+t over this."

"Yeah. You can count on that," said the Fireman. "Ah, f.u.c.k it. If someone has to get in trouble, it might as well be me. How they going to yell at me? If someone wants to b.i.t.c.h me out, they're gonna have to come north to Maine and find me. Give me your pen. I'll write in the correct license plate."

"Would you do that?"

"Yep. I'll even initial it."

"Hey, Glen? You want me to call it in on the CB?" someone else asked. He sounded young, his voice almost cracking. "I could clear this up in five minutes with the town office."

Harper picked Mr. Truffles up in both hands. He mewed softly. She started to pivot back toward the fire engine, then froze, staring into the empty booth.

A video camera, mounted under the eaves, pointed back at her. She could see herself, a little out of focus, on a blue-tinted TV screen on the counter inside the booth.

She was still gaping at herself on the security monitor when one of the guards walked into view, stepping into the s.p.a.ce between herself and the dusty kiosk. He was barely more than a kid, with close-cropped, carrot-colored hair and an M16 on one shoulder. His back was to her. If he had looked over his shoulder he would've been staring right at her. If he glanced into the booth, he would see her image on the monitor. But he did neither. The sentry was gazing toward the front of the fire truck. He gestured with one thumb at the booth.

"I know all the guys in Public Works," he said. "They've got a list of all the approved vehicles and there's always someone in the office-Alvin Whipple, maybe, or Jakob Grayson. They could tell us what to do."

Harper pushed Mr. Truffles up into the cabinet. She lifted her foot carefully, stretching her leg as high as she could, and pulled herself into the back.

"Good idea! Do that," the Fireman called out. "No, wait-s.h.i.+t, come back here. You're going to want your clipboard so you can call in the correct plate."

Harper peered out through the cabinet door, still open a crack, and watched the redheaded boy jog back toward the front of the truck. In a moment he had trotted out of sight.

Harper eased the door shut.

She handed Mr. Truffles to Renee and rearranged the fire extinguishers to hide them . . . an unnecessary task, as no one ever opened the back compartments, and in another moment they were moving. Harper laid herself flat. A muscle twitched nervously in her left leg.

Mr. Truffles purred softly. Renee ran her fingers through the fur on the crown of his head.

"You want to know something, Harper?" Renee asked softly.

"What?" Harper asked.

"I don't think this is my cat," Renee told her.

12.

The fire truck hitched, seemed to roll back a foot or two, then lurched forward, almost reluctantly. The metal grooves in the asphalt began to sing under the tires again. Harper distantly heard the ding-ding of the bra.s.s bell, the Fireman ringing it adios.

The truck picked up speed, running north.

"We made it," Renee said. She sat up on her elbow. "I think we're safe."

Harper didn't reply. She lifted her head slightly and banged it back down against the steel floor, thinking of the camera.

"What?" Renee asked.

Harper shook her head.

The truck went on for a while. Harper thought John had it all the way up to sixty or seventy, had a feeling of smooth, fast riding. She thought with enough time, the rock and sway of the truck and that sensation of rus.h.i.+ng along might put her to sleep.

After ten minutes, though, he downs.h.i.+fted. The truck rolled softly to a stop, gravel crunching under the tires and stones pinging the undercarriage.

Harper was on her knees by the time the Fireman opened the back cabinet door.

"We're in trouble, aren't we?" she said.

"No." He had a bad habit-when he was lying, he always looked you right in the eye. "I thought I'd see if you wanted to sit up front with me."

The other compartment opened and Allie put her head out, rubbing a hand over the honey-colored bristle growing back on her skull. "Take Nick too. His feet stink."

"All right, then," he said.

"I don't think you should've pulled over here," Harper said. "We're too close to the border."

"I have to feed the pail," he said.

All of them climbed down and out to stretch. Harper pushed her knuckles into the small of her back, and popped the joints of her spine. A breeze, silted with fine grit, blew her hair back from her brow.

They were north of Cape Nedd.i.c.k, in what had once been a nature preserve. On the Cape Nedd.i.c.k side of the road, it still was. Heavy oaks, splendid with new green leaves, waved their branches. Bees thrummed in the tawny gra.s.s.

On the other side of the road was a moonscape of charred sticks and blackened rock, standing in drifts of ash. The blasted remains of the trees looked like shadows sketched against a background of pale grime. A building of corrugated tin stood a hundred feet off the road, the sides buckled from exposure to heat, so deformed it resembled a five-year-old's drawing of a house. Those acres of desolation went on and on for as far as Harper could see.

"Is it all like this?" Renee asked, shading her eyes with one hand "The state of Maine? Based on what I've heard, no. Farther north it should be much worse." He looked back the way they had come. "I don't have any idea what the roads ahead might be like. The fire crew we're pretending to be part of was only going up 95 as far as York, then were branching off to take a state highway directly north. We're a bit beyond York now, out in the great unknown."

Harper followed him off the road, into the weeds. He foraged around, collecting old, dry tree branches. Nick stood at the tree line, his back to them, taking a leak into the ferns.

"It won't take them long to figure out they shouldn't have let us through," Harper said.

"It won't matter. When they realize their mistake, I imagine they'll just keep their mouths shut. After all, it's much easier to make an example out of them than us. The higher ups don't have to catch them. No, I think we'll be-"

"I don't think you really understand. Something happened on the bridge. There was a f.u.c.kup. The cat jumped out. I was scared someone would see him and they'd decide to do a thorough search of the truck. So I got out to grab him and there was a camera in the booth. They have video that proves you were carrying stowaways."

"If they even watch it," he said. Then he looked back at her and said, "I told you that cat was a mistake!"

"Is there anything in all the world you like better than saying 'I told you so'?" Those words had been favorites of Jakob. She didn't like the idea that John resembled Jakob in any way at all. Just the thought made her want to punch him, hard.

The Fireman turned with his armload of exhausted-looking wood and wrestled his way back through the weeds.

"They won't send anyone after us," he said, finally. "New Hamps.h.i.+re is sealed off-a police state. They can't send anyone after us. They can't risk it. Anyone they send might decide not to come back. This is the problem with police states. The prison guards are prisoners, too, and most of them know it."

But he looked her in the eye the whole time he was lecturing her, which is how she knew he didn't believe it himself.

He climbed on the running board and began to push sticks into the smoking pail. He was still feeding the flames when Nick wandered back from the pines.

"Why is there a bucket full of coals on the truck?" Nick asked with his hands.

She needed to do some finger-spelling to explain. "It's a souvenir of his favorite fire."

"He's as crazy as a s.h.i.+thouse rat," Nick said. "Sometimes I forget."

"Watch your language or I'll wash your filthy hands with soap, young man."

"Ha ha," he told her. "I get it. Very funny. Everyone loves a good deaf joke. Hey, why did G.o.d make farts stink? So deaf people could enjoy them, too."

When they pulled back onto I-95, the Fireman leaned out the window and rang his bell again into the emptiness.

13.