The Fire-Eaters (16 page)

“Freedom! Freedom! Destroy the missiles! Save the world! Save my dad!”

I felt that I could run all day, that I could run for my whole life. I ran past the Rat and the post office and the scattered houses and down the lane to the beach and toward the sea and I slowed as I approached the house. I
waded through the sand. I unlatched the gate. I took deep breaths. I trembled. What would they say, when so many of their hopes and dreams were lodged in me? I went inside. No one there. Just emptiness. A fire shrinking in the grate. A cold pot of tea. Then I found the scribbled note.

We're at the hospital. Back soon. Mam. x.

I ripped off my uniform. I pulled on old clothes. I gabbled something at Mary and Bernadette. I stabbed a needle into the flesh between my finger and thumb.

“Please,” I whispered. “No! Bloody no!”

Then I calmed myself. I stared out from my window. Down on the shoreline, Joseph was building a bonfire. He was bare-chested. Further south, half a mile away along the beach, the Spinks were in the water getting coal. I saw Ailsa's silhouette dancing on the cart, Losh and Yak and Mr. Spink wielding their massive shovels. The late sunlight glinted off them, the silvery sea gleamed all around them. To the north, from among the dunes, the smoke of McNulty's little fire snaked into the late-afternoon air. The sky above us all was empty but for birds and clouds.

I went downstairs. I added my own note to theirs.

I'm on the beach. B. x.

“J
oseph,” I called, but he didn't hear.

He was bowed forward; he carried great timbers across his bare shoulders. He dragged them away from me, toward the huge pile down by the shoreline.

“Joseph!” I yelled, and he turned at last.

He dropped the timbers and laughed and came to me.

“Bobby Burns! What you doing out this time of day?”

My feet shifted on the sand at the excitement of saying it:

“They hoyed me out, Joseph.”

“You? Bobby Burns?”

“Me, Joseph, and they might not let me back!”

His eyes widened at the amazement of it.

“But what you done, Bobby?”

“Oh … everything!”

He came and held my face in his hands.

“But what about university and all that stuff?” he said. “What about the future?”

“What future, Joseph?”

Then he whispered, “Look!” and he turned around, and I saw that the whole of his dragon had been filled in. Blood still marked the needle points. There was bruising under the garish greens and golds and reds of the beast's body. There were horns and warts. The claws gripped Joseph's sides, the tail whipped down beneath his ice-blue jeans. Flames belched from the open jaws, they flared across the back of his neck, licked toward his throat and beneath his hairline. The dragon seemed like part of him, something growing out from him.

“Isn't it bloody wonderful?” he said.

I reached out and touched it gently and felt how soft his skin was and how tender it was.

“Was agony!” he said.

A tiny scab broke off beneath my touch.

“Should still have it covered up,” he said. “Got to keep it clean. But what the hell?”

He turned to me again.

“It's beautiful,” I said.

“Dad stuffed a wad of notes into me hand yesterday. Gan on, he says. Get the whole lot done at once. No point waiting for nothing now. It took hours! Now I'm getting the bonfire ready. Been doing it all day. It'll be the biggest ever.” He spread his arms against the sky to
show how massive it would be. “We'll not wait for Guy Fawkes Night this year. Set it off early, eh?”

“Aye!”

He laughed loudly.

“They're gonna blast us all to smithereens so there'll be no Guy Fawkes Night anyway! Help us, Bobby?”

“Aye,” I said.

We searched the beach and its hinterland for timber. We dragged logs and dried-out seaweed and fish boxes and tires from the jetsam. There were fence posts and gates in the sand, remnants of disappeared gardens. We dragged fallen branches from among the pines. We went to where the shacks were. We found fallen roof timbers, ruined armchairs, floorboards and doors: anything that was old, anything that was dilapidated. Over the hill of sand, McNulty's smoke continued to rise. We stood for a moment and watched but we didn't go to him.

“Been dreaming about him,” said Joseph. “Been dreaming that I touch the fire, that I feel nothing, that I'm him.”

He tilted his head and breathed powerfully out, as if there was a fire roaring from his throat.

“I want to learn it from him,” he said. “To hell with being a builder!” He laughed. “I want to be a fire-eater!”

We hauled our discoveries back to the shoreline and heaped them up and flung them high. We worked and
sweated and cursed and laughed and I tried to think of nothing but being with Joseph Connor as I'd been with him so many times since I'd been born. Then we rested. Joseph lit a cigarette and grimaced and grinned at the pains in his back. I looked back toward home and saw no movement there. I trembled and my fears for Dad and my memories of the awful time in Grace's office came streaming back. I couldn't control myself and I cried and Joseph put an arm around me and I told him about Todd and Daniel and the school and my dad and I leaned on him, Joseph Connor, the boy I'd known since I was born, the greatest friend I'd had, who'd always been something like a brother. He told me I'd done right and my dad would be fine but I couldn't stop the tears running from my eyes, I couldn't stop the feeling of helplessness and uselessness.

“I feel that little,” I said. “And everything's that big and there's nothing I can do and—”

“What way's that to talk?” he said. “That's not what we expect from the lad that took on the devil of Sacred Heart.”

He pulled me to my feet.

“Howay, Bobby, man!” he said. “At least you can yell and scream and stamp your feet and build a fire high as bloody heaven and you can yell out, No, bloody no, I won't put up with it!”

He glared into my eyes, and his face shone red beneath the reddening sky.

“No!” he yelled, and I clenched my fists and joined in with him.

“No! No! Bloody no!”

“Aye!” he said. “At least make a noise. At least say, I'm me! I'm Bobby Burns! At least if the worst comes to the worst you can say I been here, I existed!”

The Spinks had finished their coal gathering and they headed toward us as we stamped and yelled. The dark and beautiful knotted shape of the family waded the edge of the turning surf.

“Aye, aye!” shouted Yak as they came closer. “It's yelling Brains and Dragonback and a bloody great big fire! Here, have this!” he shouted as they came close by, and he flung a bucketful of soaking sea coal onto our heap. “This'll make the heart as hot as hell.”

“Hope you're not waiting for Guy Fawkes Night,” said Losh, “‘cos there'll be no bloody Guy Fawkes Night.”

Joseph laughed at him.

“Heard the news?” he said.

“Aye,” said Losh. “And it's nowt but bad.”

“No, the real news. Our Bobby's been chucked out of school!”

“No!” said Yak.

“Diven't believe it!” said Losh.

“Tell them, Bobby,” said Joseph.

All their eyes were on me. The words stuck in my throat. Ailsa sat on her perch on top of the coal and
looked me in the eye and knew that it was true. I nodded at her: Aye.

Losh thumped his shovel on the wheel of the cart.

“Howay,” he said. “Get up on this cart and we'll ride down to that school and sort the toerags out reet now. Who we gunning for? Who we going to hoy on top of the fire?”

“It's the new kid,” said Joseph. “It's his doing.”

“Might've known,” said Losh. He picked up his shovel. “Ponces from the South. Howay, let's gan and get him.”

“Now, then, lads,” said Mr. Spink. He stood with his arm around Wilberforce. “Do your mam and dad know, Bobby?”

I shook my head.

“They're at the hospital,” I muttered, and Ailsa jumped down and came to my side and hugged me and something roared far far away and we all stood dead still and didn't dare to breathe till the noise was gone.

“They're home, Bobby,” said Joseph.

And I turned and saw the lights on, and a dark figure moving about inside.

I
shuffled slowly, silently through the sand. Hardly made a sound as I opened the front door. Hardly breathed. Not a soul in the living room. The fire'd been heaped up. I heard them moving in the kitchen. The smell of bacon frying, the sound of the kettle boiling. Mam started singing.

“Oh, weel may the keel row,
The keel row, the kee-el row.
Oh, weel may the keel row,
That my true laddie's in …”

Then hummed the same tune again, higher and sweeter. She laughed.

“Can you not wait till it's on your plate?”

Dad smacked his lips.

“Delicious!” he said.

Then silence from them, then softer voices.

“You big daft man,” she said. She giggled. “Go and see if you can find our Bobby. Tell him it's on the table now.”

He came out of the kitchen, stood in the doorway.

“Talk of the devil,” he said. “And he's black as the roads. What you been doing out there, lad?”

I blinked. Couldn't speak. He grinned.

“He's lost his tongue and all!”

“Dad,” I said.

“That's me.”

“Are you OK?” I said.

“Never better.”

She came to his back. She drew her hair from her face and smiled at me.

“But …,” I said.

“But what?” he said.

“But your coughing, and all the tests, and…”

“They found nowt.”

“Nowt?”

“Just like I knew they would. Nowt. Just like I knew all along.”

“But…But…”

Mam nodded.

“It's true,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

“Mebbes a bug or something, eh?” he said. “Mebbes a little passing germ that's flown away and's looking for another body to land in for a while.” She put her arms
around him. “Now, then,” he said. “Go and wash that muck off, else I'll be eating yours and all.”

I went to the bathroom. I tugged out splinters from my hands and arms. They left little bulbs of blood on my skin. I washed with creamy white soap and scrubbed all the dirt away. The lighthouse light passed across the window, once, twice, three times. I looked into my empty pupils, black as night. I tried to think but had no thoughts to think.

“Thank you,” I whispered. There was no answer. Maybe there was no one to answer. Maybe there was just nothing, going on forever and forever. Out there on the beach, someone laughed, maybe Losh, maybe Yak. Then Ailsa's ringing voice. “Thank you,” I said again.

“Bobby!” Dad called. “I'm starting in on yours!”

We sat around the table, eating our bacon and eggs and tomatoes and swigging mugs of tea. Mam hummed “The Keel Row.” Dad wrapped a slice of bacon in a slice of bread and chewed it and licked the fat that ran down to his chin. Sometimes we laughed gently. Mam said they'd had to wait an age to get a bus out of town, then there wasn't a seat to be found. She was going to complain and get that service sorted out. “It's getting beyond a joke,” she said. She kept topping the mugs up with tea. Dad grinned and grinned at the pleasures of his food, at the pleasures of being with his family. The rattle of the cart and the shadow of the Spinks moved past. I saw Ailsa's glinting eyes look quickly in at us.
When they'd gone, Joseph's bonfire stood like a mountain before the sea.

Mam leaned over and kissed me.

“So, bonny lad,” she said at last. “How was school today?”

And I searched for a lie to tell but could find none.