Before I could scream, the flames leapt on top of me. In a split second my head was on fire. And then, just as quickly, the wind changed direction and the flames leapt away toward the group of people. This time it kept going.
Though the fire was gone, my eyes and my lungs were filled with smoke and my hair was in flames. I wailed at the pain of it. I tore the clothes off my body, threw myself on the ground, and rubbed my head in the dirt. It took a few seconds to extinguish myself, and by then the fire had devoured an ear and scorched my lips. Through puffed-up eyelids I could see the flaming hurricane sweep over the group of people, my parents included, and devour them. Naked and burned, I dragged myself to my knees and screamed in a helpless, frenzied rage.
Most of the prisoners had made it out, except those in solitary confinement. They were blocked in on the lower level of the prison, and there wasn’t time to save them.
As I suspected, Terry was gone.
While small fires still burned away from the town, the media wasted no time in making a big deal of Terry Dean’s perishing in the prison. He was nothing but a pile of ashes. After the police photographers had taken photos of the cell, I went in. The bones were there too. But all the good stuff was in the ash. With a broom, a pan, and a small cardboard box, I scooped up my brother. It wasn’t easy. Some of Terry’s ashes mingled with the ashes of the wooden bunk beds. Poor Terry. You couldn’t distinguish him from a bed. That’s just sad.
I left the bones. Let the state bury them. I took the rest. Like I said, all the good stuff was in the ash.
Outside the prison, black cinders whirled crazily in the air, climbed into the sky, and when the wind died down settled on the ground and on the cars and on the journalists. Red-hot sparks lay on the hot bitumen. I looked at the smoking black acres of burned grassland and the parched hills. Everywhere was smoldering ashes. Every house was filthy with ash and burned debris. Every smell was acrid. Every color eerie.
Mother dead. Father dead. Brother dead. Harry dead. Caroline gone. Lionel gone. Town gone. Oath gone too; the sacred bond finally broken.
Free.
A man was heard to be barbecuing a steak on the embers of his own home. Reporters were all crowded around him. They thought it was hilarious. I suppose it was.
A brief thunderstorm came. A group of survivors standing in the remains of town were talking about the origin of the fire. What had started it this time? I had just assumed it was arsonists. It’s nearly always arsonists. What is it with these fucking arsonists? I supposed they are less likely to be malignant smudges of evil than just dumb and bored: a deadly combination. And whatever happens in their upbringing, they emerge from adolescence with no sense of empathy whatsoever. These dumb, bored, unempathetic people are all around us. We can’t trust anyone to behave himself. We always have to be on the lookout. Here’s the case-winning example: it doesn’t happen every day, but every now and again, people shit in public swimming pools. That just says it all to me.
But no, the survivors were saying, this time it wasn’t arsonists.
It was the observatory.
My blood turned cold.
I moved closer. This is what I heard:
Over the years, the novelty of the observatory had worn off; the whole thing had gone to seed, left to ruin up there on the hill, abandoned to nature. The roof of the observatory lifted on a hinge. Someone had left it open. The lens had concentrated the summer sun’s rays into a hot beam of light and ignited the structure, the wind came in to do her bit, and we ended with this current catastrophe.
It was the observatory.
My observatory!
The observatory I had suggested into existence was the direct cause of my mother’s, father’s, and brother’s deaths. It was the final nail in the coffin of that odious suggestion box of mine, that slimy box that had turned the town against my family, put my brother in a mental institution, then into a young offenders’ home, and now into the grave (figuratively speaking; literally speaking, into a cardboard box that had once contained seedless grapes). I had thought that with the observatory I could change people’s souls for the better, but instead I succeeded only in accelerating their obliteration. When my brother went into the hospital, I should have destroyed the suggestion box that put him there; and when he destroyed the suggestion box, blinding our only friend, I should have then and there destroyed everything connected to the box, the box that suddenly reminded me of the box that was now in my hands, the box with my brother in it.
I walked on.
I didn’t forget Stanley ’s warnings, or the detectives and their determination to prosecute me. Time to leave for good. Besides, there was nothing more to learn here. Time to travel to new lands to practice old habits. New longings! New disappointments! New trials and failures! New questions! Would toothpaste taste the same everywhere? Would loneliness feel less bitter in Rome? Would sexual frustration be less of a grind in Turkey? Or Spain?
This I thought as I moved through the silence of the dead town, the dreamless town, the town that was charred and black like burned toast. Don’t scrape it! Don’t save it! Toss my town into the garbage. It’s carcinogenic.
The embers of my childhood were fading to cold, hard lumps. No wind could fan them to life now. It was gone. I had not a person in the world. Australia was still an island, but I was no longer marooned on it. I was finally adrift. And it was endless, the sea beyond. No horizons.
No one knew me where I was going, no one knew my story, my brother’s story. My life was reduced to no more than a secret anecdote I could reveal or keep hidden for all time. That was up to me.
I walked the long, windy, dusty road out of town.
I had the feeling of leaving an amusement park without having been on any of the rides. While I’d always hated the town, the people, their lives, I had existed beside them nonetheless, and yet I had not immersed myself in the stream of life, and that was regrettable, because even if it’s the worst amusement park in the world, if you’re going to take the trouble to spend twenty-two years there, you might as well at least have a go. The problem was, every ride made me sick. What could I do?
Then I remembered that I still held Terry in a cardboard box.
I was definitely not going to have a nervous breakdown deciding what to do with the ashes of my downsized little brother: I would just get rid of them, quickly, secretly, without ceremony. If a child passed me in the street, I would give him the box. If I saw a suitable ledge, I would leave it on the ledge. I continued this line of thought until I became so fascinated by the overall idea of ashes that I got thirsty.
Up ahead I saw a gas station and grocery store. I went inside. The fridge was at the back. I walked down the aisle and grabbed a Coke. Turning back, I saw beside me a shelf that contained small jars of Indian spices, cayenne pepper, and Italian herbs. Obscured from the shopkeeper’s view, I opened up the jars one by one and emptied half their contents onto the floor. Then I poured Terry’s ashes into the jars with little precision, spilling much of him on my feet, so that when I finished, I walked out with my brother on my shoes. And then- I have this image in my head forever- I wiped my brother off my shoes with my hands and finished him off by washing him into a nearby puddle, thereby leaving my brother’s last remnants floating in a shallow puddle of rainwater on the side of the road.
It’s funny.
People have always asked me, “What was Terry Dean like as a child?” but no one has ever posed the more pertinent question, What was he like as a puddle?
The answer: still, copper-brown, and surprisingly unreflective.
The End!
Out the window I could see a pink dawn sky covering the backyard and probably farther, at least to the corner store. The morning birds, unaware of the concept of sleep-ins, were chirping their usual dawn chirps. Dad and I sat in silence. Talking for seventeen hours and covering almost every minute of his first twenty-two years on earth had worn him out. Listening had done the same to me. I don’t know which of us was more exhausted. Suddenly Dad brightened and said, “Hey, guess what?”