The Guardians (41 page)

    
Stay
with us
.

    The
boy holds my hand. On his face an expression of mock relief, a mimicry of
Carl's features when we held hands in the Thurman kitchen the first night we
left the coach alone in the cellar. But unlike Carl's, the boy's hand is cold,
and his grip is meant not to comfort but to hold me in place. To keep me in the
fire forever.

    I
fight him. Or I tell myself I must try to fight him, to wrench myself free. To
not listen.
But all my body allows is a brief spasm, just another of the
symptoms that have no purpose or strength. So tired now the disease is all
that's left. That, and the boy.

    
Stay
.

    And I
will. Perhaps I never had a choice. If home is the place you spend most of your
grown-up life working to forget, then this is mine.

    Overhead,
the sound of timber giving way. I look up in time to see a sheet of plaster
breaking free of the ceiling before it crashes onto me, pinning me flat to the
floor.

    I had
felt the heat before this—had been thickly swimming in it, drowning in it—yet
only now do I lend it my full attention. It's because I'm burning. Trapped
beneath what might be half a ton of century-old debris, the original nails and
mouldings and support beams of the Thurman house. Still conscious, still within
the reach of pain, but all of it to disappear soon.

    The
fire breaks a window. The high tinkle of glass atop the low growl of flames.

    Then
the boy is tugging at my arms. Apparently it's not enough for me to slowly burn
to death. He wants to dislocate both of my shoulders too. When I don't move, he
tugs again, and again.

    Some
part of me shifts. Yet other parts feel as though they are being left behind.
Limbs torn from their sockets.

    I
open my eyes and work to turn my head to an angle where I might see who has put
his hands on me, but the smoke has left me blind. If I am expecting to see any
living thing it is Randy, horrifically burned. Randy, who seeks to pull me
against him so that the two of us might be fused by fire.

    The
hands lift me up, throwing me onto narrow but strong shoulders that carry me
through the haze before tossing me into the air. There is a new pain to go
along with the previous ones. Sharp teeth biting my skin in too many places to
count, like being attacked by a swarm of yellowjackets.

    And
then the ground. Sudden and cool, and me rolling through the grass, clothes
smoking and, if I'm not hearing things, some part of me sizzling. I keep
tumbling in order to extinguish any live flames I've lost the ability to feel.

    Now
when I open my eyes there is the sky, the stars distinct, hovering close. Licks
of flame reach out from the upper floor, as though the house is claiming the
night for itself. It draws my sight to the shattered living-room window. The
same window where
fuckt
had once been drawn in dust. The window I'd been
thrown out of. What felt like stings in fact the cuts of glass teeth.

    Then,
through smoke so dense it is like another part of the wall, the boy leaps out.
Landing on the ground with a thud, his body crumpling. His clothes, his hair,
his skin blackened by smoke. His eyes the only colour—worn denim blue—that he
lets me see.

    "Trevor?"
the boy says, but not in the boy's voice.

    Carl
grabs me by the ankles and, leaning back, drags me through the grass and away
from the house. All of it ablaze now, the fire elbowing windows and bringing
the ceilings down with oddly gentle crashes, as though the floors and walls
have been cushioned by the heat.

    When
we make it to the sidewalk Carl lets go and sits next to me, the two of us able
to do nothing more than watch the Thurman house flare and spit. I have a dim
awareness of others around us—a clutch of bathrobed neighbours, a dog barking
with the excitement of being outside, leashless, in the night.

    No
firetrucks or police yet, though their sirens join the undercurrents of sound.
The murmuring witnesses, the yielding wood frame, the hissing voices rising up
out of the smoke.

    An
ambulance arrives first. Stopping in front of the McAuliffe house, where we
watch as the paramedics tend to someone lying under blankets on the front
porch. Tracey Flanagan, who is able to sit up and tell them who she is.

    Then
Carl is pulling me close to him. His face appears freshly washed, streaks of
white cut into the ash down to his jaw. But as he kneels with me I see that
they are tears. Abundant, unstoppable.

    There
is nothing to do but what we have done all our lives, whether in our dreams or
in our Grimshaw days. We watch the Thurman house and wait for it to show us how
it is unlike other houses, how it is alive. The fire towering over its roof
like a crown. The headless rooster still, as though, after decades of
indecision, northeast was its final determination.

    I
suppose it's possible that someone else sees him other than us, though I hear
no shriek from the onlookers behind us. So maybe it is only Carl and me who see
Randy in the upstairs window. The bedroom where the coach died. Where Roy
DeLisle stood over Elizabeth Worth's body, excited and proud, wanting to show
someone the remarkable thing he'd done.

    Randy
is staring down at us with the false calm of someone trying to hide his fear. A
soldier doing his best not to worry his family as the train pulls away, taking
him off to war.

    He
takes a half step closer to the window frame and he isn't Randy anymore. He is
the boy. Roy DeLisle as we have had to imagine him—a kid like us, looking like
us. A kid expert at playing the same normal act we have played all our lives.

    For a
moment, Randy's face and the boy's face switch like traded masks, so that,
behind the curtain of smoke, their differences are slight, almost
imperceptible.

    Randy.

    The
boy.

    Randy.

    The
boy.

    They
could be the same person, except one is terrified by whatever is to come, and the
other is oblivious to the fire that swallows him. In fact, he may even be
smiling.

    Where
do hospitals buy their paint? Is it wherever the leftover stock goes, the tints
that the buying public have deemed too depressing or nauseating to use in homes
where people actually live? Or is there thought to be therapeutic value to
heartbreaking palettes, a motivation for patients to fake wellness enough to be
discharged early if only to escape the pukey turquoises and hork-spit yellows?

    These
are among the deep considerations I ponder over my days in a semi-private suite
in Grimshaw General. The bad news—aside from the walls, the institutional wafts
of bleach and vegetable soup—is that the fire touched me in a number of spots,
which has left me counting down the last minutes to my every-four-hours pain
meds. The good news is that I know my roommate.

    That
it is Carl and not a stranger I have to hear stifling farts and watching
Friends
reruns and moaning as the nurses change his dressings on the other
side of the curtain makes the time pass less awkwardly, if no less slowly. And
of course, when we're alone, we pull the curtains back to talk.

    Carl
had taken a cab to the train station but not boarded the 5:14 when it pulled
in. He couldn't say exactly why he decided to stay, other than "Something
felt wrong, or was about to go that way." So he had gone to the place
where wrong things were most likely to occur, keeping his eye on the back door
of the Thurman house from his vantage point behind the see-saw. He had seen
Randy enter in the late afternoon and then, some hours later, come running
around from the side. He hadn't wanted to get any more involved than that, only
to see who came out and when.

    But
then he had noticed the smoke. Soon afterward, going around to the front of the
house, he had found Tracey Flanagan on the lawn and carried her to the
McAuliffes' porch, banging on the door and telling Betty to call an ambulance.
When he asked Tracey how she'd got out of there, she said my name.

    "It's
like each of us had a job to do," I tell Carl. "I went in to find
Tracey, and you went in for me."

    Carl
fluffs his pillow, sits up straight, turns on
Jeopardy! "
Well,
that's
just the way it turned out. I see only what's right in front of me, you know
what I'm saying?"

    But
of course he could see more than that. It's why he'd spent the cash I'd given
him on cigarettes instead of a train ticket, why he'd smoked the lot of them
while keeping his eye on an empty house. I didn't need to hear Carl admit to
his belief in fate. It was more than enough to know that an absence of over
twenty years and all the damage he had endured in that time had not slowed his
run from the safe side of Caledonia Street to the other, to me.

    We
have no shortage of visitors.

    On
the less pleasant side, there are the police, who want to know everything and
are frustrated by how little we offer them.

    Carl
and I stick to similarly vague stories. That is, the truth— minus the boy. We
were just old pals who were concerned for Randy's emotional state following the
suicide of a mutual friend, and figured he might try to harm himself.

    "Why
there?" each questioner asks. "Why
that
house?"

    "Because
it's haunted," we tell them.

    In
the end, their curiosity could take them only so far, as Tracey Flanagan's life
had been saved, after all. The only crimes that were known to have been
committed were done by Randy, and he was gone now. Other than the suspicion
that we knew more than we were saying, the police had no charge they needed to
lay, so they moved on, wishing us swift recoveries in ironic tones.

    Betty
McAuliffe brings us corn muffins and homemade raspberry jam, which save Carl and
me from the frightening "scrambled eggs" and "oatmeal" that
would have otherwise had to pass for breakfast. She tells us of her plans to
sell the house. It's too big for her alone, and she doesn't relish the prospect
of months of noisy bulldozers and nail guns across the street. There are some
one-bedroom apartments she fancies over on Erie Street, overlooking the river.
It is all she needs.

    "So
long as you boys drop in sometimes," she says, enticing us with ham
sandwiches and a Thermos of good coffee, though she doesn't have to sweeten the
deal to elicit promises from us.

    Todd
Flanagan comes by to say hello, but within seconds his rehearsed words abandon
him, his gratitude and relief leaving him mute. So I do the talking for both of
us. I tell him that it was an honour to be able to get Tracey out of there,
that it was likely to turn out to be the most proud moment of my life. Then I
tell Todd that his daughter struck me as smart enough and brave enough to
recover from this, that my money is on her turning out fine.

    He
embraces me. Pins me against my pillow for a long hug I'm sure Todd has never
given another man in his life, just as I am unused to receiving one.

    It's
not the only love I receive from the Flanagan family during my stay. Tracey
opens her arms to me when the doctors deem her well enough to permit select
visitors, and when I bend down to her, I am rewarded with cheek kisses.

    "My
dad was right," she says.

    "About
what?"

    "He
always said you were good."

    She smiles
at me, and I recall her telling me how Todd thought I was a pretty decent
hockey player back in the day. I'm not sure I could stand on blades today, let
alone skate around the rink. But I pulled this girl out. Me, the disease guy,
Mr. Shakes.
I pulled her out.

    "I
can see you're starting to like this hero stuff," Carl says when I return
to our room. "Don't bother denying it."

    Why
would I deny it? A guy whose only boasts up until now were owning a disco for a
while and having a decent wrist shot when he was sixteen?

    So
I'll take it. You're goddamn right I'll take it.

    I
look forward to Sarah and Kieran coming by more than just about anyone else.
They're twice-a-dayers, bringers of chocolate and celebrity magazines
("It's all they've got down in that crappy store") and flowers.