Firestarter(96)

Hockstetter spluttered impotently. Spit bubbled at the corner of his lips.

"Do you understand? I'll kill you." He shook Hockstetter twice.

"I-I-I un-un-understand."

"Then let's get out of here," Rainbird said, and shoved Hockstetter, pale and wideeyed, out into the corridor.

He took one last look around and then wheeled his cart out and closed the selflocking door behind him. In the bedroom, Charlie slept on, more peacefully than she had in months. Perhaps years.

SMALL FIRES, BIG BROTHER

1

The violent storm passed. Time passed three weeks of it. Summer, humid and over bearing, still held sway over eastern Virginia, but school was back in session and lumbering yellow school buses trundled up and down the well-kept rural roads in the Longmont area. In not-too-distant Washington, D.C... another year of legislation, rumor, and innuendo was beginning, marked with the usual freak-show atmosphere engendered by national television, planned information leaks, and overmastering clouds of bourbon fumes.

None of that made much of an impression in the cool, environmentally controlled rooms of the two antebellum houses and the corridors and levels honeycombed beneath. The only correlative might have been that Charlie McGee was also going to school. It was Hockstetter's idea that she be tutored, and Charlie had balked, but John Rainbird had talked her into it.

"What hurt's it gonna do?" he asked. "There's no sense in a smart girl like you getting way behind.

Shit-excuse me, Charlie-but I wish to God sometimes that I had more than an eighth-grade education. I wouldn't be moppin floors now-you can bet your boots on that. Besides, it'll pass the time."

So she had done it-for John. The tutors came: the young man who taught English, the older woman who taught mathematics, the younger woman with the thick glasses who began to teach her French, the man in the wheelchair who taught science. She listened to them, and she supposed she learned, but she had done it for John.

On three occasions John had risked his job to pass her father notes, and she felt guilty about that and hence was more willing to do what she thought would please John. And he had brought her news of her dad-that he was well, that he was relieved to know Charlie was well too, and that he was cooperating with their tests. This had distressed her a little, but she was now old enough to understand-a little bit, anyway-that what was best for her might not always be best for her father. And lately she had begun to wonder more and more if John might know best about what was right for her. In his earnest, funny way (he was always swearing and then apologizing for it, which made her giggle), he was very persuasive.

He had not said anything about making fires for almost ten days after the blackout. Whenever they talked of these things, they did it in the kitchen, where he said there were no "bugs," and they always talked in low voices.

On that day he had said, "You thought any more about that fire business, Charlie?" He always called her Charlie now instead of "kid." She had asked him to.

She began to tremble. Just thinking about making fires had this effect on her since the Manders farm. She got cold and tense and trembly; on Hockstetter's reports this was called a "mild phobic reaction."

"I told you," she said. "I can't do that. I won't do that."

"Now, can't and won't aren't the same thing," John said. He was washing the floor-

but very slowly, so he could talk to her. His mop swished. He talked the way cons talked in prison, barely moving his lips. Charlie didn't reply. "I just had a couple of thoughts on this," he said. "But if you don't want to hear them-if your head's really set-I'll just shut up."

"No, that's okay," Charlie said politely, but she did really wish he would shut up, not talk about it, not even think about it, because it made her feel bad. But John had done so much for her... and she desperately didn't want to offend him or hurt his feelings. She needed a friend:

"Well, I was just thinking that they must know how it got out of control at that farm," he said. "They'd probably be really careful. I don't think they'd be apt to test you in a room full of paper and oily rags, do.you?"

"No, but-"

He raised one hand a little way off his mop. "Hear me out, hear me out."

"Okay."

"And they sure know that was the only time you caused a real-what's it?-a conflagration. Small fires, Charlie. That's the ticket. Small fires. And if something did happen-which I doubt, cause I think you got better control over yourself than you think you do-but say something did happen. Who they gonna blame, huh? They gonna blame you? After the f**kheads spent half a year twisting your arm to do it? Oh hell, I'm sorry."

The things he was saying scared her, but still she had to put her hands to her mouth and giggle at the woebegone expression on his face. John smiled a little too, then shrugged. "The other thing I was thinkin is that you can't learn to control something unless you practice it and practice it." "I don't care if I ever control it or not, because I'm just not going to do it."

"Maybe or maybe not," John said stubbornly, wringing out his mop. He stood it in the corner, then dumped his soapy water down the sink. He began to run a bucket of fresh to rinse with. "You might get surprised into using it."

"No, I don't think so."