And, instinctively, he employed a brilliant and dangerous technique: instead of laying the blade flat in his hand as he sharpened it, he stood it on end, so one side of the spear point rested against his palm as he chipped the other side straight on. This move was so dangerous, I’d never seen anyone try it. It was like picking up a double-edged razor by the blades, rather than the plane, yet it allowed Gerry to sharpen with more control and accuracy than I’d ever imagined.
“You know obsidian makes the sharpest blade on earth,” I told him. “Sharper than any metal. Its edges regularly flake down to a width of five microns. That’s the thickness of an anthrax spore.”
The stars were coming out, and in the fading light, we could see that the growing plumes, now dark brown and maroon, were glowing inside from superheated mists of grease that burned as they rose. These plumes swelled like anvil clouds whose heads, when they reached the stratosphere, raced off with the jet stream toward blackness. Sometimes, low booms came from within the flames, which made the inmates ooh and aah.
As the dark wore on, I could only see the prison lights glinting off the obsidian’s faceted surfaces. At last, Gerry finished the blade, the final sharpening of which he must have done with his imagination. It wasn’t a spear point, really; it was a chunk of rock with two dastardly sharp edges, dangerous and invisible. I was afraid he’d try to place it in my hand.
“There you go, Hanky,” he said, holding the blade up. “I know you think you know everything, but you don’t. You don’t know about me or my old lady or her kids. I’ve had to do some fast talking all week to erase what you did. I invented a dude-ranch rodeo, and those kids wanted to know every damn thing about it, like what kind of bulls did they have and what color were the clowns. I had to make up a thousand stupid things to keep them from worrying about their mother. And guess what? I just talked to the docs, and they say they’re going to take her tube out tomorrow. I’m the first person she’s gonna see. That’s going to spark her memory, I know it will. That will make her start talking again.”
“Look, Gerry,” I said, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to butt in. It’s just—”
“You did butt in,” he said. “And you don’t sound sorry.”
“Kids, they’re funny. They want to hear good news, but deep down they always know the truth. In the long run—”
Gerry gestured with the blade. “They taught us crap like this in the Boy Scouts,” he said. “They taught us how to make a compass from a needle. In the long run, did I ever end up needing one? Did I ever have to make a teepee in life? No, but stuff like that got me out of the house, got my mind off things. For a while, I could be a kid. That’s what I needed, some time away from all my old man’s troubles. Kids need people to protect them, to let ’em be kids. That’s what I’m doing, Hanky. I’m protecting them.”
Gerry flicked the blade out into the snow. “So stay out of it,” he said, then cast one more glance at the fires before trudging up the icy steps to his dorm.
In the distance, there was a large flash. It swelled, a low boom following, enough to make the windows hum, and then a warm glow came. They’d ignited another pig fire, the initial mushroom of which created its own wind. It looked as if someone had crossed a cyclone with an oil-well fire, as if an inferno were being sucked to the sky. The sight was raw and beautiful enough to lure people from their homes, to make prisoners and administrators float down from their cramped rooms. Those first few days were like that, filled with awe and electricity. Disbelief hadn’t even begun.
On that night, all the citizens of Parkton were drawn to the red glow. Families in the street marveled at the way lava flows of burning grease raced for the Missouri. Old people wanted to witness the sulfur-yellow smoke of incinerating hooves, to speculate, hands over mouths, upon each crackle and boom that sounded from within the flames. Whenever the dark curtains of smoke parted, the fire inside stunned us. Leaping, the flames were streaked blue-green from kerosene and fat, and that same light, corporal and marine, counted coup upon all our faces, prisoner and pilgrim alike.
* * *
Breakfast was otherwise normal. The eggs, I’d say, were undercooked, though I understood some people liked a little yolk sac to run through their food. The bacon I usually devoured with relish was gone; instead, there were two soggy strips of imitation bacon, pressed into shape from soy by-products. I ate quickly, thinking of all that I had to do that day — there was correspondence to be conducted, a couple dry runs were in order for my evening broadcast, and my fingernails had been shamefully neglected. After I bussed my table and stacked the tray, I headed for the cafeteria exit, where an old-timer handed me two sandwiches. He was handing everyone sandwiches.
Outside, Sheriff Dan had a small fleet of pickups waiting.
We were driven in groups of six down the hill, and no alarm sounded when we crossed the buried wire at the edge of campus. We drove toward the fire, the trees becoming more ashen, the roofs less snow-laden, yet things appeared normal enough that when we neared the river I felt a chance the driver would turn upstream, toward USSD and my home. Instead, we veered toward Hormel, whose expansive parking lots, when we entered them, were dark under black clouds, and smoking embers fell like comets from the sky, plinking off hoods and windshields. Red cars were gray. Yellow cars were gray. And there we were, cruising toward the angry roar of the pyres.
Only when our caravan stopped and we were ushered forth did we understand the true volume of the flames. Cloaked inside the general drum and rumble, there were other percussions. From the tall yellow flames came the higher-pitched clap-clap of air, pulsing with the flare-ups. There was also something vascular to the fire, not the beating of a heart exactly, but more of a gassy murmur, like the swooshy flow of blood. And of melodies there was no shortage: deep inside the core were gas releases whose wheezy hasp sounded almost like the colorfully sketchy reception you’d get from Japan, say, or Senegal, on a marine-band radio.
And as for the smell, I would soon come to be on intimate terms with the aroma of the pressure-cooked contents of hog stomachs. For now, the wind spared us. A tide of air, cold and cutting, raced straight for the inferno, shuttling food wrappers and white plastic bags, making antennas, fence slats, and old hunting caps bend toward the flames, like ears leaning in for savory news. The wind was enough to make pant legs clap, to rattle the cigarettes in people’s mouths. I caught a page of newspaper flying by. It slapped my hand, let me read the headline “Governor Orders Calm” before it was stolen toward the flames. Suddenly, from the direction of the fires, a smoldering pig came running. Pigs normally trotted around, ears jingling, surprisingly light on their hooves. This pig careened off parked cars, bolted between bumpers. As it passed us, you could see that the fat on its back was exposed and sizzling.
Up until then, I’d been thinking about sanitation. It was obvious we’d been conscripted into some manner of lousiness, and I was wondering if we’d get rubber boots and gloves, if we’d have surgical masks and, I hoped, some kind of eye protection. But when that pig ran smoking past me, I understood that an engine of death had been started, and it looked wholly unsatisfied by everything it had been fed thus far.