Mysterium

But that part made no sense. In his tape-loop memory, it looked like this: the gas pumps detonated in a ball of fire… and then something, something like a vast ethereal blue spark, had come down from the sky to touch the fireball; and the spark had coalesced into a cobalt-colored snake about as wide as the Gulf station and twisting up into the night sky as far as the eye could reach. It seemed to Clifford that the column had curved a little to the west, but he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t been looking at it with scientific detachment. With panic, if anything. In that terrible moment it had occurred to him that he might somehow have caused the end of the world itself, because the blue light had not been merely light; it had been full of faces and forms—human faces and forms. One in particular. A grim, bearded face. God or the devil, Clifford thought.

His bike flew through the November darkness like a wild bullet. His legs pumped in a ceaseless fury that would have startled him if he had been aware of it. His only thought was of home; his house, his room, his bed.

He slowed when he reached the suburban part of town. He had to; his breathing was so labored it hurt his lungs, and he had a painful stitch in his side. He let the bike drift to a stop and put one leg down to steady himself. Reluctantly, fearfully, he turned and looked back at Two Rivers.

The pillar of blue flame was gone, to Clifford’s immense relief. Maybe he had only imagined it. He must have. But the ordinary fire burned on; he could see the glow of it reflected from houses on the high ground near Powell Creek Park. What pained him now was the knowledge that none of this could be taken back, not ever—for the rest of his life he would be responsible for blowing up the Gulf station (and please God, Clifford thought, let no one have been inside it)… The memory was part of his permanent luggage, and worse, it would have to remain a secret. This was something he could never be caught at or confess to, not in Two Rivers under the rule of the soldiers. There was no juvenile court in Two Rivers anymore; there was only the executioner.

He pedaled the rest of the way home unaware of the tears on his face. Home, he parked his bike out of sight; he unlocked the door, stepped inside, locked it behind him; unlaced his sneakers and put them in the hall closet; padded upstairs to his room. The sight of the bed made him instantly, staggeringly tired. But there was work yet to do.

He stripped his torn and dirty clothes and took them to the bathroom. He wedged them into the dirty-clothes hamper, down toward the bottom; his mother was lax about the wash these days and she probably wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary—his clothes were often dirty and many of them had been torn since June.

Then he turned on the taps, hoping the sound of running water wouldn’t wake his mother. He stood in the tub and used a washcloth to soak the dirt off his face and sponge the clotted blood from his hands and elbows. Whence seemed clean, front and back, he wiped down the tub, then rinsed the cloth and stuffed it into the hamper with everything else.

He turned off the water and the light and tiptoed back to his room. He put on pajamas: his old ones, a little too tight nowadays, flannel with blue and white stripes. Then, only then, he allowed himself the bed.

The sheets were as cool and welcoming as absolution and the blanket contained him like a prayer. He meant to plan his excuses if anyone questioned him tomorrow, but his thoughts quickly turned to nonsense and a tide of sleep carried him far away.

∞

Tom Stubbs was asleep at the fire hall when he heard the Gulf station blow. He sounded the alarm and made sure his crew was out of their cots, but the truth was he couldn’t do much until the telephone rang.

Mr. Demarch had made it quite clear last July. The Two Rivers Volunteer Fire Department performed a valuable service, and they would be supplied and maintained—but if they left the station after curfew and before this newly installed radiotelephone rang, they’d be shot like any civilian.

Two pumpers and the ladder company were waiting when the call finally came. Tom acknowledged it hastily and ran to the lead truck, which rolled at once.