Arthur just stared at me, amazed. He finally proclaimed, “Righteous, cuz,” and clapped me on the shoulder.
We turned and walked back to the Geo Metro, leaving the ice pick, still hissing, in the sidewall of that very big, very expensive-looking tire. Arthur tossed the tire iron into his trunk and slammed it shut. Then we got in the car and drove off.
And we didn’t look back.
Arthur gunned it down the long entrance, laughing all the way. “I can’t believe you, cuz! I can’t believe that act of blatant vandalism. And with an ice pick! That was
“Well, they deserved it.”
He held up a hand to slap, which I did. He slowed down to negotiate the right turn onto Route 16. “Hey! Forget them, right?”
“Right.”
“Forget all of them. Forever.”
“Right again.”
“I have already forgotten them.”
“Me, too.”
“Now tell me: Where are we going?”
“The Friendly’s downtown. It’s across from Kroger.”
“Got it.” Arthur shook his head, bemused. “Those losers are too stoned to change a tire.”
I added, “And too pusillanimous.”
“Yeah. Whatever. Hey! Do you think they belong to triple A?”
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Check it out: We belong to double A; they belong to triple A.”
We slapped five again.
The car kept skidding at every stop sign and traffic light, so Arthur dropped the transmission to a lower gear. Still, we managed to arrive at Friendly’s right after the Weavers.
As soon as we walked inside, I saw Jenny wave to me from a vinyl-backed booth. I cut in front of Arthur and slipped in next to her. The lineup was this: Ben, Jenny, me, and Arthur on the red vinyl side: Mike, Mrs. Weaver, and Mr. Weaver in chairs on the other side.
Ben ordered a sundae with a cherry and nuts on top. He picked up the cherry, held it out to Arthur, and asked, “Can I eat this?”
Arthur assured him, “Yeah. That’d be okay.”
“What about the stem?”
“Ah, no. No stems.”
“Oh, man!”
We all laughed. The Weavers seemed puzzled, but they smiled along with us.
The Weavers started talking about the play and its themes, Mr. Proctor’s themes. They understood that it was all about Blackwater, and that the plague was meth. We talked about meth and what it had done to us, and how we could continue to fight against it.
Mrs. Weaver said, “Your parents have been terrific, Tom. Your father has been so generous with supplies from his store. Your mother has been so generous with her time.”
Mr. Weaver added, “We’re getting more people at the church basement—desperate, desperate people. We’re going to expand our services to food, clothing, and medical care. We’ll need more volunteers.”
Everybody raised a hand, nodded, or spoke up. We would all volunteer. We would have it covered.
I asked, “Medical care? How are we doing that?”
Mrs. Weaver said, “Nurses from Good Samaritan.”
“Is Mrs. Smalls one of them?”
“Oh yes. She’s organizing it.”
“I’m not surprised. She really knows what’s going on. She’s been calling it ‘the meth plague’ for a long time.”
Mrs. Weaver nodded. “We all need to do that. We all need to call it what it is.”
We continued to talk, and eat sundaes, and plan our counterattack against the meth plague for over an hour. When we finally trooped out into the parking lot, I saw that the snow had stopped falling. The sky was now clear and dark, with twinkling stars. The temperature had dropped, though; it had dropped a lot—so much that a runoff from the roof had crystallized, leaving foot-long icicles hanging over our heads, like swords.
Arthur jumped up and snapped one off. He handed it to Ben. “Here. Take this in case you get hungry later.”
Ben took it and stuck it between his back teeth. “Great. I’ll eat this before it melts.”
We all laughed; Mr. and Mrs. Weaver looked puzzled again. Then Jenny gave me a beautiful smile, and they took off.
It was a perfect moment, I thought. On a perfect night.
But if I had known where to look, to the north and west, I might have thought differently. I might have seen a faint red glow in the dark sky.
Yin and yang.
Heaven and hell.
All the things Mr. Proctor had talked about.
If I was thinking that this plague year would end on a happy note, or on a positive note, or even on a not- horrible note, I was mistaken.
Arthur saw the glow in the sky before I did, but he misinterpreted it. “Looks like a fire up in Primrose. Maybe a forest fire.”
“A forest fire? In the snow?”
“No, you’re right. Maybe a grease fire. Or maybe somebody was cooking with propane and the damn thing blew up.”
But as we drove on, Arthur got less sure of that, and less talkative. Something bad was happening, but it wasn’t in Primrose.
It was in Caldera.
He finally said, “Sorry, cuz. I gotta know where that fire is. You okay with getting home late?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Neither of us spoke again as we rose higher into the mountains. The first sign of the tragedy was, oddly enough, something comical. The heat of the fire was melting the snow and ice above us, creating a river of running water. As we slowed to turn onto Arthur’s road, I saw an orange duck—a small plastic one—floating by.
As we accelerated up the road, I saw orange plastic rings floating in the runoff, too, followed by black Transformer parts.
By then, we could see the red flashing lights of a Haven County ambulance up ahead. We could see the blaze by then, too, through the sparse winter trees.
It wasn’t Aunt Robin’s trailer, but it was right behind it.
It was Warren’s.
Arthur slammed to a halt in the middle of the road. He turned off the ignition and bolted out of the car. I got out and followed him as best I could, scrambling up the short hillside, slipping in the river of icy water that was running down.
Jimmy Giles, wearing nothing but jeans and a T-shirt, was standing halfway between his trailer and Warren’s. He looked devastated, broken, shaken to the core.
The ambulance was parked on a spot well away from the blaze. Aunt Robin, Cody, and a paramedic were sitting in the front cab. The paramedic was speaking into a black microphone. A second paramedic, a stocky guy in an orange coat, was standing between Jimmy and the burning trailer.
Arthur ran up to Jimmy. He had to shout to be heard. “Where’s Warren?”
Jimmy opened his mouth slowly, reluctantly. Then he spoke through gulping sobs. “He was the doomed one.
