The Firebug of Balrog County Read Online Free PDF Page A

all-too-real heart. My eyes were scratchy, my throat was raw, and I could smell smoke pouring out of every oily pore in my body. I’d become a freight train heading straight for Fuckupville.
    I took a shower and ate breakfast, but I still felt like crap. It was always like this after a major burn—the build - up, the pretending-you-weren’t-going-to-burn-something-when-you-knew-you-fucking-were, the glory of the burn itself, and then the horrible crash after, which made me feel like somebody had scooped out my guts and replaced them with raw sewage. I didn’t want to be the immature dick that started shit on fire—I had to be him.
    In need of some good cheer (and maybe a cookie), I drove over to the east side of town to check in on my grandparents. I found them in the Grotto, which is what they called their fenced-in backyard. The cluttered culmination of forty years of picky landscaping, the Grotto contained a picnic table, a vegetable garden, two flower beds, a hammock, a burbling pond, a seven-foot-tall replica of Michelangelo’s David , and a winding stone path. The entire area had to be only five hundred square feet total and always made me think of a ship in a bottle.
    Grandpa Hedley was sitting at the Grotto’s picnic table. A seventy-two-year-old Vietnam vet, my grandfather had been mayor of Hickson for thirty y ears running. A big man with wispy white hair and a booming voice, he got worked up about stuff like grass clippings sprayed illegally into the street, fire department pancake breakfasts, and Hickson’s Fourth of July parade. This morning he was holding pruning shears and studying a potted bonsai plant. Several other bonsai also sat on the table, stoically waiting for review like a tiny, carefully assembled forest army.
    Grandpa Hedley squeezed the pruning shears, pondering his next move. “Hello, Mack.”
    I stopped short of the table, surprised he’d noticed me. “Hey, Gramps.”
    Grandpa Hedley gave the bonsai a snip that appeared to have no result. “The Vietcong would have a field day with a round-eye like you. They’d hear you coming from a mile away.”
    Grandpa Hedley chuckled and gave the bonsai another snip. This time, I thought I saw something green slightly move.
    â€œWell,” I said, sitting down. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t in Nam, I guess.”
    Grandpa Hedley nodded his head somberly. “Good thing.”
    I scanned the Grotto. The fountain was burbling away and filled with dead bugs.
    â€œWhere’s Grandma?”
    Grandpa Hedley pointed his shears toward the statue. “In back, reading one of those goddamn pornographic novels of hers.”
    â€œPornographic?”
    â€œYou should try reading one. It’s hardening member this, stiff organ that.”
    Grandpa Hedley gave his bonsai three consecutive snips. He set the pruning shears down and turned the tree in its little pot.
    â€œIs that its back or its front?”
    â€œTrees don’t have sides. Trees are trees.”
    I nodded. Grandpa Hedley could sneak up on you like that, throwing down profound shit when you least expected it. I think it was one of the reasons he’d been Hickson’s mayor for so long and had a death grip on the town’s oldster vote. The way he said things made them seem like eternal truths that had been set down in stone tablets long ago, via chisel, by a man on a mountaintop.
    â€œI got you a job at the Legion bar, Mack.”
    â€œI have a job. I work at the hardware store.”
    â€œRight. How many hours do you work a week?”
    I leaned closer to the bonsai, wondering what my grandfather was looking for exactly. I saw tiny roots, tiny trunk, tiny branches. Micro-needles that glowed with chlorophyll ous radiance.
    â€œI don’t know. About fifteen, I guess.”
    Grandpa Hedley shook his head sadly and picked up his shears. “That’s not enough work for a young man. You need more