Beneath the Bonfire (15 page)

HOUR FORTY-THREE

Near hypothermic, Hazelwood was incoherent. Foreman pulled him back inside and set him beside the fire. The captive man smelled awful. Foreman had been unprepared for any of his own failings, and unprepared as well for the fortitude of this captain of industry, the man's resolve. He smacked the back of the man's cold head and the contact felt good, so he hit him again. Then Foreman slunk into a chair and stared at his willful hostage.

HOUR FORTY-FIVE

“The idea come to me one day, not long after the spill,” Foreman said. “I was thinking about my childhood and this memory come to me unbidden. It popped right into my head, like a bubble. And I remembered how when I was a little boy, maybe four or five, my daddy was furious with me. It was because I kept shitting my pants. And I guess he thought I was too old for that. It embarrassed him or something.”

Hazelwood looked up at his keeper, his face dull, smudged.

“And what I remembered was this time in the kitchen, in the kitchen of the home where I grew up. And I'm sitting at this table. This table right here. Only I'm a little boy. And my grandpa is there too because he's telling my daddy what to do. He's saying,
Make him eat that shit. That'll stop it. Make him eat it.

“And then I remember that they put my diaper in front of me. Me sitting in a chair, but I was small, so my eyes were about level with the table, with the diaper, and it was a terrible one, overflowing, and it smelled something awful and then my grandpa dropping a spoon into it and saying,
Do it. He ain't no baby anymore, it's his own goddamned mess.
And my daddy holding my face and that spoon and me thinking, Please don't make me. Please don't make me eat my own mess. Please, Daddy. I remember them pushing my face toward it. My own diaper. And I remember that my mom was in the kitchen and I couldn't understand why she didn't stop them. Why didn't she stop them?”

He gazed out the window, drumming this thumbs against the table, Hazelwood watching him.

“So that's what this is about,” Hazelwood finally said. “You want me to eat my own shit? Some sick revenge fantasy. Some twisted revenge against your father, maybe authority figures in general?”

Foreman said, “Maybe.”

HOUR FORTY-SEVEN

Hazelwood had been smiling at Foreman for an hour, his face and spirits oddly revived.

“You ready?” Foreman asked.

“Bring me over there,” Hazelwood said. “I'm going to beat you at your own game. And then I'm sending you to prison. I've decided not to kill you. Nope. I'm going to send you to prison and keep you alive and in pain for a long time. By the end, if your wife is watching from heaven, she won't even want you.” He spat on the floor and began hopping the chair on his own toward the table. “Free my fucking hand,” he ordered.

Foreman obliged and set the tin cup in front of Hazelwood, then sat down and watched, eyes wide.

Hazelwood raised the cup to his lips now and drank two big gulps. He gagged and held his free hand over his mouth, but spit most of the oil right back out, much of it running down his chin and neck. Some of it sprayed onto Foreman's face and clothing.

“I can't!” gasped Hazelwood. “Christ, it's down my throat. I need water!”

Foreman's chair clattered over as he stood up abruptly. He seized the tin cup and held it to Hazelwood's lips. “Drink! Drink, goddamn it!” Hazelwood choked and Foreman held his nose. The man's throat pumped and then he gagged again and vomited a terrible black mess. Both their faces: masks of black oil and terror. Hazelwood gagging and coughing. Foreman standing over his prisoner, Hazelwood's free hand now on Foreman's thigh in protest and agony.

“Goddamn it!” Hazelwood roared. “Get that shit out of my mouth! I can't do it! I can't!” He spat and spat, looking terrified now, all slick and black, so different than when Foreman had first seen his face on television, sea spray threatening to dampen his yachting clothes, a martini glass held jauntily above and against the legions of Atlantic waves while he laughed like a man who owned the world. And then Foreman thought of the images he had seen of the Gulf. The oil-slicked birds. The pods of dolphins. Turtles dead in their shells. Millions of dead fish afloat. He settled into his chair. Studied the oil left in the tin cup. Remembered a vacation with his wife, dolphins racing the bow of the little charter boat that skipped them over the Caribbean. How he'd never seen a dolphin before.

“No deal,” said Foreman. “But I'll get you some water. You earned it.” He set a glass of artesian water before Hazelwood, who drank lustily.

“Get me a goddamn rag! Something to wipe out my mouth,” raged Hazelwood. “For chrissakes!”

Foreman retrieved a rag for the man and watched as Hazelwood worked the cloth inside his mouth, over his teeth and gums and cheeks. Foreman set three slices of buttered bread before Hazelwood. The man ate ravenously, glaring at Foreman.

“There's still oil in that cup,” said Foreman.

“Fuck you. I drank what I could. I can't do any more.”

“Well. Here we are.”

But the old man was tired and did not know if he could carry out the one thing he had thought himself capable of finishing. There was a tinge of something inside him that questioned what he had begun in the first place. He knew that if the man finished the oil he would have to take him to the hospital and feared that the man might receive more sympathy than punishment from the outside. He could imagine all of those cameras from downtown following Hazelwood, zeroing in on the concerned faces of his wife and children. Foreman stared at Hazelwood. The man covered in oil, only the whites of his eyes bright. Foreman looked at his own clothing, also ruined. They sat looking at each other again, panting. But there was no other course for Foreman, either, and he knew it.

“You know what bothered me most about that spill?” Foreman said.

“I don't give a shit, you sick old fuck. I really don't.”

“Loons. They're my favorite birds. Prehistoric things. You know their bones are solid, not hollow, like other birds. Makes them less buoyant so they can swim underwater. Disappear for minutes sometimes. We had a game, my wife and I. A loon would go underwater and we'd try to predict where it would surface. We used to sit out on that porch and listen to the loons sing. It's an eerie sound, and beautiful. It don't sound like anything else. Well, I ain't a birder or nothing, but I'll tell you something. Loons don't winter here. They migrate. Down to the Gulf. They're soon to head down there. And I can't imagine what they'll see or think. I hope they come back up here, but the truth is, I'll be gone anyway, I suppose.

“I don't have much to live for anymore. The planet gets worse and worse, if you ask me, and nobody does anything about it. So I don't know. Maybe it is worth it. To kill you. To put you down. To be the one who sends you away for all times. Because I don't believe that you do care. I don't think you'd know a loon from a flamingo. I don't think you care about them whales or dolphins, and I suspect you could give two shits for those shrimpers and fishermen down there. But they're people too. With kids and wives. What are they going to do? Take your dirty blood money? Take your money and shut up? Go work at a Walmart. Greeting shoppers, maybe.
Hullo, my name is Dan, and I used to be a captain of a boat. Employed four guys. Brought dinner home every night fresh out of the ocean. Calluses on my hands. I used to smell like the sea. You have a nice fucking time shopping today. Buy a new TV. Buy some ice cream for those kids. Some toilet paper.
”

Hazelwood spat black.

“I don't know anymore about anything,” said Foreman. “Like I said, I used to be a monkey wrencher. A goddamned sabot. I blew up a dam one time. It was beautiful. All that water gone out in one big rush. The river free and unbound. I'll never forget that. Other than marrying my wife, it was probably the best thing I ever did. Sitting on the riverbank, watching that water go where it wanted to go.”

He lowered his head, scratched the remaining fibers that clung to his scalp. He glanced outside and the snow was still falling, though more slowly now—the snow of the cinema. Foreman opposite him at the table, spitting oil onto the floor. The fire had died out and their breaths were visible inside the cabin.

“I'm cold,” said Hazelwood. “I can't feel my feet. I can't feel my fucking feet.”

HOUR FIFTY-FIVE

Foreman and Hazelwood beside the revived fire, the prisoner wiggling his feet close to the flames, a puzzled look on his face.

“I'm moving them, but I can't feel anything.”

Foreman was reading a slim volume of haiku, his thick reading glasses balanced on his nose. He did not look away from his book.

“I think this tape is too tight,” Hazelwood said. “I can't feel my toes.”

Foreman licked his fingers as he turned the brittle pages. The fire crackled on.

“Back in college, I studied archaeology,” said Hazelwood. “But there weren't any jobs in that field, so I began getting frustrated just before I graduated. I wasn't always rich. But then, the spring break before I graduated, a big oil company sponsored a trip for us. We visited four digs out west. Utah, Montana, New Mexico, and Arizona. The oil company covered everything. Our bus, our food, our lodgings. We stayed in cheap motels, but it was great, we didn't know any better. I couldn't've been more than twenty-one, twenty-two. Watching TV in some motel room and drinking warm beer and smoking cigarettes. One of the best times in my life.”

Foreman had turned from his book.

“Well, at the end of the trip, this executive gets onto our bus and we gave him a round of applause. He was an alum of our college, so we immediately liked him even though he was this rich old fucker. But he encouraged us to all apply for jobs at his company. Said that we had similar skills to the geologists they hired. That he liked hiring archaeologists because that was what he had studied. So that's what I did. That fall I was in Houston for my training. Then they shipped me off to Saudi Arabia. To the North Sea. It was great. It was how I saw the world. They took good care of me. They really did.”

He spat into the fire and the fire jumped. He smiled darkly.

Hazelwood looked right at Foreman now. “I swear to you, I am not a bad person,” he said. “I am
not
a bad person.” And then: “My stomach is burning. I can feel that.”

He looked back into the fire and Foreman returned to his poems.

HOUR FIFTY-SIX

Hazelwood hopped his chair away from the fire and began shuffling it toward the old, stained immigrant table. Foreman regarded him from beside the hearth. It took the CEO a good two minutes to cross the small room. When he was finally beside the table he snatched the tin cup and drank the remaining oil down in one quick gulp. Then he clutched his own throat and began gagging again, only this time there was no vomit. He could not even make a scream of protestation. Foreman moved from his chair into the kitchen and poured a tall glass of water, held it to the man's blackened lips. Hazelwood drank quickly and then spit the water out and oil came too, though only a little.

“A rag,” he said hoarsely.

Foreman found a fresh handkerchief and held Hazelwood's head, swabbed out his mouth for him. The man had gone very pale and his body was convulsing.

“Son of a bitch,” said Foreman, and he went out into the falling snow and turned the truck over, its engine revving, black smoke coughing out the tailpipe. He turned the heat on high. “Son of a bitch did it.”

He went back into the cabin and wrapped the man in blankets and carried him to the truck, laying him across the bench seat. “I'll get you there,” Foreman said. “I promised I would.” Though now he was afraid. The gravel drive to the cabin was buried under three feet of snow and there were no chains on the truck's tires. He wondered if there was enough weight in the bed of the truck. He'd thought that he had taken every precaution. He felt, in that moment, a murderer.

He pressed the gas pedal lightly and the truck lurched into the confusion of snow, pressing its front bumper into the wilderness of white, only to refuse further progress. He slid the truck into reverse and went back over their tracks. This time he pressed the gas pedal down a little farther. They went up and over a drift, the truck settling onto a plain of snow like a misbegotten raft, the tires resting on nothing but a drift of snow that offered no purchase.

“Oh, Jesus,” Foreman said. “Oh, I am sorry, brother. Sorry, sorry, sorry.” He slammed the gas pedal, but there was no traction now, just the melt and slide of snow beneath hot rubber. “Oh, goddamn, Hazel, I'll get it. I'll get us out. I'll get you there. I promised you, you son of a bitch.”

Foreman slung out of the truck and into the snow, already crotch-deep, but saw that it was fruitless. He reached into the bed of the truck for the snowshoes and then realized he would need only one pair. Hazelwood was passed out, a rivulet of sweet light crude issuing from his mouth onto the fabric of the seat. Foreman quickly strapped on the shoes and pulled the dying man from the truck. Then he stopped, afraid he would not be able to reload him back in. He pushed Hazelwood back into the warmth of the truck. Foreman slapped at the man's face until his eyelids fluttered open, took a handful of snow and held it to Hazelwood's face and neck, let the snow melt on the man. “Wake up!” he said. “Wake up!”

Hazelwood looked at him dimly.

“That oil could kill you, but I think it's too early. You got time. We can
make
it, goddamn it. Stick with me. Wake the fuck up. You got to get back to your family! Your goddamn family! Wake up, Hazel!”

The CEO pulled himself up on the bench seat, still woozy.

“You're going to drive out of here,” said Foreman. “I'm going to make you a path.”

He shut the door to the truck and moved back to the cabin for a shovel. He came back to the truck with tire chains and a large scoop-bladed shovel. He began digging beneath the tires, sweat pouring off his face. Steadily the truck lowered itself to the earth as Foreman shoveled and the truck's own heat evaporated snow beneath it. Worked the chains on the tires and then Foreman got in front of the truck and began shoveling out two paths, two grooves in the deep white snow. Their spot on earth still many miles from town. The night an impenetrable wasteland. Their going, futile.