The Next(36)

"You're being hyperbolic."

"I just hauled eight bags of shit down to the sidewalk."         

     



 

"Lots of people … "

He sharply interrupted whatever pathetic crap I was about to dribble.  "Go the corner store and get me a turkey on rye. I'm starving."

I turned away from him. The bitch knew how to hit his target.

Point fucking taken.

"I don't even know how to … "

"What?" he asked adamantly.

" … how to access whatever the hell you want accessed!" I blurted, not  precisely positive why I was so fucking furious. "I can't even get a  grip on when I get hijacked as it is!"

Marzoli calmed his voice for my sake. "Tell me a story."

"What?"

"The Brothers Save Jessie."

How the hell did he remember that phone conversation?

"I haven't read it yet."

"Why did the title surprise you?"

"Because … "

The blond boy stood over the body, looking at me ferociously.

" … because Jessie was killed. We didn't save him."

"Who's Jessie?"

"When we were kids … ."

"Who's we?"

I closed my eyes and tried to put into words all that was coming back to me.

"My brother and I witnessed … we saw … Jessie stabbed beneath the tree. I saw … my brother behind the body … in the brush … I saw … "

The grass crackled in flames.

"What else?" he prodded gently.

"Run, Paul!" I yelled, and the blond boy turned his head just in time to  see Paul disappear in a whisper in the tall yellow grass.

"What's Paul running from?" Marzoli demanded.

The brush sixty feet away swayed just slightly indicating that Paul had  already run too far to be caught. I scrambled to my feet, but the knife  wound in my rib caused me to stumble. The blond boy caught my foot and  dragged me across the dry rough ground, scraping my chin. I stretched my  arms in front of me, but only succeeded in grasping and uprooting  clumps of grass.

Suddenly I was pinned underneath him. The look of anger on his face was  so vicious, I turned my head to the left, staring into the open eyes of  Jessie, wide with the pain and horror he felt as he died. Stone still.  Inches from my nose.

I felt the blond boy's hard-on pressing into my groin. As he dug his  pelvis into mine, I felt a sickness start at my groin and press its way  up to my bellybutton. My stomach started lurching. Anything and  everything I had consumed that morning was forcing its way up my  throat-the tofu, the sprouts, the avocado, the pumpernickel bread, the  sour grass, and the blackberries. I choked for air twice, then gushed  green and cream-colored vomit right into the Blond Boy's mean mug.

Bullseye.

Screaming in disgust, he backed off me. He tripped over Jessie's body  and stumbled toward the tree, wiping chunky slime from his eyes. I  righted myself as best I could and hightailed it toward Paul in the  bushes. The stab wound seared my side. My armpit was gouged raw where  the branch had slammed into it. But none of that impeded my dash toward  the shaded stream where I knew Paul would be hiding.

When I balanced on the log to cross the stream, I heard a soft voice from beneath it. "Is he following?"

I glanced behind. I was not being pursued.

"No."

Paul emerged from the shadow beneath the log. Just like in one of our  Adventure books, he'd submerged himself in a pool of water beneath a  bridge.

Together, we climbed the hill back to King's Rock, where we'd first  spotted Jessie and the blond boy. We were breathing hard. We collapsed  on our rock, grateful for our cool shadowed sanctuary. We only had a  moment of respite before the blond boy came into view.

He dragged Jessie into the glen, propping the body against the tree Paul  and I had been perched in. He pulled tufts of long dry grass from the  earth and piled it around the body. He used his foot to rake oily  eucalyptus leaves into mounds between Jessie's legs.

What was he up to?

I heard Paul gasp before I saw it.

The blond boy withdrew his silver lighter.

God no!

He lit a piece of grass and dropped it on the leaves between Jessie's  legs. The oil on the eucalyptus leaves fueled the tiny flame like paint  thinner. Within the space of a minute, Jessie's jeans were on fire, and  soon after that his body was engulfed in flames so thick we couldn't see  it anymore.

I understood precisely what that dolt thought he had to do to protect  himself. The witnesses to the murder had escaped, so the evidence had to  disappear. By the time I'd finished concluding this, the trunk of the  tree was engulfed in fire. And by the time we saw the Blond Boy dash off  down a path and vanish, orange and red fingers of flame licked the top  of the tree. The surrounding trees began to catch fire, and within seven  minutes the dry landscape in front of us billowed thick with black  smoke, engulfing the entire glen.         

     



 

Paul and I had inadvertently stumbled into being the catalyst for a fire in our park during one of California's hottest summers.

The warm smoky wind began to whip in a different direction.

"Look!"

Paul pointed to a peninsula of tall yellow grass burning with flames,  extending like a rapid flow of lava toward the nearest street … our  neighborhood … our house.

We slid down the hill like skilled snow-boarders, hydro-graveling our  tennis shoes in the long grooves of the water runoff channels, and then  hopping to a new channel to continue our descent. We hit the bottom of  the hill and sprinted through the deer paths toward the fire road carved  out of the hill for emergency vehicles decades ago, bypassing the road  and shortcutting us to the back of our house.

Where were the emergency vehicles now?

As we arrived at our backyard, we could smell the air thick with wood  smoke. We looked behind us. To our astonishment, the wall of oily leafy  eucalyptus trees that lined Wildcat Canyon Road beneath our house, had  already lit up like hundred foot tall matches. They burst into flames as  if the bark was infused with gunpowder. One tree after another, the  fire exploded towards our house.

We burst through the dry rusty fence, through Mother's unsuccessful  weed-infested ivy landscaping, and into the backdoor. Father was passed  out on the couch, cradling a bottle of bourbon in his armpit,  three-quarters empty. The television was blaring a baseball game. Mother  was nowhere to be seen.

We'd never tried to wake our father up when he was passed out. Should we  poke him? Pull his hand? Throw water in his face? We were so accustomed  to getting whacked whenever we disturbed him, we couldn't overcome our  fear even in that moment of emergency. Paul ran to look for Mother. I  ran to the window in the kitchen to see the progression of the fire.

All the eucalyptus trees were bright red, forming a massive tsunami of  flames a hundred feet high. The tops of the flames were so intense with  heat they turned blue. I heard sirens finally approach in the distance,  but they were not on our road! They were on Wildcat Canyon Road. The  fire trucks were too wide for the narrow spidery road that fed our row  of houses.

We had to get out, and we had no time to waste.

I heard Paul screaming for Mother upstairs and his light footsteps  padded toward the master bathroom. I scampered up the stairs. Paul's  screaming stopped.

"Mom?" I heard him ask.

Paul was staring into the bathtub. Mother was fully clothed in her blue  dress and Birkenstocks underneath the running shower. The water hit the  fuzzy patch on her skull where her hair was growing back, then ran down  the side of her face. Her temple was blackened and bleeding. They'd been  fighting again. I could tell even with the running water down her face  that she was not crying. Her eyes were still, with a deadened, withdrawn  listlessness.

"Mom," Paul repeated, reaching out to hold her wet hand, "There's a fire. We need to leave."

Mother did not lift her eyes.

"Please?" he asked.

The power suddenly cut out. The sound of the baseball game stopped.

"What the hell is smoking?" we heard my father roar from downstairs.

Apparently the beast had stirred.

At the sound of Father's voice, Mother's eyes darted back to life. She  grabbed Paul's hand and turned off the water. Smoke was starting to  enter our windows. I ran to the bedroom and looked out the window.

The roof of the first house closest to the park was afire. The old  wooden shingles curled up in the heat as all the dead orange pine  needles that had settled between the cracks caught fire. Since the  neighbors who lived in it were away with their daughter for the week, no  one would even attempt to protect it.

The house between the burning one and ours belonged to the Morrows. I  could see Mr. and Mrs. Morrow running back and forth between their  garage and their blue station wagon with their arms full of computers.  Personal computers were only just coming into their own, and in his  garage Mr. Morrow had stored prototypes of his new computer which he  hoped would compete with an emerging new company known as Apple. Rather  than locate and save their two calico cats that Paul and I had helped  raise since they were tiny, the Morrows desperately loaded their future  into the rear of their station wagon. I was devastated that they'd leave  their calicos to burn.