Firestarter

The men’s-room door opened and Charlie came out. Flanking her on the left and right were men of about thirty in sport coats, open-throated shirts, and dark double-knit pants. Charlie’s face looked blank and shocked. She looked from one of the men to the other and then back at the first. Andy’s guts began to roll helplessly. She was wearing her pack sack. They were walking toward the van. Charlie said something to one of them and he shook his head. She turned to the other. He shrugged, then said something to his partner over Charlie’s head. The other one nodded. They turned around and walked toward the drinking fountain.

Andy’s heart was beating faster than ever.

Adrenaline spilled into his body in a sour, jittery flood. He was scared, scared plenty, but something else was pumping up inside him and it was anger, it was total fury. The fury was even better than the calm. It felt almost sweet. Those were the two men out there that had killed his wife and stolen his daughter, and if they weren’t right with Jesus, he pitied them.

As they went to the drinking fountain with Charlie; their backs were to him. Andy got out of the wagon and stepped behind the van.

The family of four who had just finished their lunch walked over to a new midsized Ford, got in, and backed out. The mother glanced over at Andy with no curiosity at all, the way people look at each other when they are on long trips, moving slowly through the digestive tract of the U.S. turnpike system. They drove off, showing a Michigan plate. There were now three cars and the gray van and Andy’s station wagon parked in the rest area. One of the cars belonged to the girls. Two more people were strolling across the grounds, and there was one man inside the little information booth, looking at the I-80 map, his hands tucked into the back pockets of his jeans.

Andy had no idea of exactly what he was going to do.

Charlie finished her drink. One of the two men bent over and took a sip. Then they started back toward their van. Andy was looking at them from around the van’s back-left corner. Charlie looked scared, really scared. She had been crying. Andy tried the back door of the van, not knowing why, but it was no good anyway; it was locked.

Abruptly he stepped out into full view.

They were very quick. Andy saw the recognition come into their eyes immediately, even before the gladness flooded Charlie’s face, driving away that look of blank, frightened shock.

“Daddy!” she cried shrilly, causing the young couple with the baby to look around. One of the girls under the elms shaded her eyes to see what was happening.

Charlie tried to run to him and one of the men grabbed her by the shoulder and hauled her back against him, half-twisting her pack sack from her shoulders. An instant later there was a gun in his hand. He had produced it from somewhere under his sport coat like a magician doing an evil trick. He put the barrel against Charlie’s temple.

The other man began to stroll unhurriedly away from Charlie and his partner, then began to move in on Andy. His hand was in his coat, but his conjuring was not as good as his partner’s had been; he was having a little trouble producing his gun.

“Move away from the van if you don’t want anything to happen to your daughter,” the one with the gun said. “Daddy!” Charlie cried again.

Andy moved slowly away from the van. The other fellow, who was prematurely bald, had his gun out now. He pointed it at Andy. He was less than five feet away. “I advise you very sincerely not to move,” he said in a low voice. “This is a Colt forty-five and it makes a giant hole.”

The young guy with his wife and baby at the picnic table got up. He was wearing rimless glasses and he looked severe. “What exactly is going on here?” he asked in the carrying, enunciated tones of a college instructor.

The man with Charlie turned toward him. The muzzle of his gun floated slightly away from her so that the young man could see it. “Government business,” he said. “Stay right where you are; everything is fine.”

The young man’s wife grabbed his arm and pulled him down. Andy looked at the balding agent and said in a low, pleasant voice, “That gun is much too hot to hold.”

Baldy looked at him, puzzled. Then, suddenly, he screamed and dropped his revolver. It struck the pavement and went off: One of the girls under the elms let out a puzzled, surprised shout. Baldy was holding his hand and dancing around. Fresh white blisters appeared on his palm, rising like bread dough.

The man with Charlie stared at his partner, and for a moment the gun was totally distracted from her small head. “You’re blind,” Andy told him, and pushed just as hard as he could. A sickening wrench of pain twisted through his head. The man screamed suddenly. He let go of Charlie and his hands went to his eyes.

“Charlie,” Andy said in a low voice, and his daughter ran to him and clutched his legs in a trembling bear hug. The man inside the information booth ran out to see what was going on.

Baldy, still clutching his burned hand, ran toward Andy and Charlie. His face worked horribly.

“Go to sleep,” Andy said curtly, and pushed again. Badly dropped sprawling as if poleaxed. His forehead bonked on the pavement. The young wife of the stern young man moaned.

Andy’s head hurt badly now, and he was remotely glad that it was summer and that he hadn’t used the push, even to prod a student who was letting his grades slip for no good reason, since perhaps May. He was charged up-but charged up or not, God knew he was going to pay for what he was doing this hot summer afternoon.

The blind man was staggering around on the grass, holding his hands up to his face and screaming. He walked into a green barrel with PUT LITTER IN ITS PLACE stenciled on its side and fell down in an overturned jumble of sandwich bags, beer cans, cigarette butts, and empty soda bottles.

“Oh Daddy, jeez I was so scared,” Charlie said, and began to cry. “The wagon’s right over there. See it?” Andy heard himself say. “Get in and I’ll be with you in a minute.” “Is Mommy here?” “No. Just get in, Charlie.” He couldn’t deal with that now. Now, somehow, he had to deal with these witnesses. “What the hell is this?” the man from the information booth asked, bewildered.

“My eyes,” the man who had had his gun up to Charlie’s head screamed. “My eyes, my eyes. What did you do to my eyes, you son of a bitch?” He got up. There was a sandwich bag sticking to one of his hands. He began to totter off toward the information booth, and the man in the bluejeans darted back inside.

“Go, Charlie.”

“Will you come, Daddy?”

“Yes, in just a second. Now go.”

Charlie went, blond pigtails bouncing. Her pack sack was still hanging askew.

Andy walked past the sleeping Shop agent, thought about his gun, and decided he didn’t want it. He walked over to the young people at the picnic table. Keep it small, he told himself. Easy. Little taps. Don’t go starting any echoes. The object is not to hurt these people.

The young woman grabbed her baby from its carrier seat rudely, waking it. It began to. cry. “Don’t you come near me, you crazy person!” she said. Andy looked at the man and his wife. “None of this is very important,” he said, and pushed. Fresh pain settled over the back of his head like a spider… and sank in.

The young man looked relieved. “Well, thank God.”

His wife offered a tentative smile. The push hadn’t taken so well with her; her maternity had been aroused.

“Lovely baby you have there,” Andy said. “Little boy, isn’t it?”

The blind man stepped off the curbing, pitched forward, and struck his head on the doorpost of the red Pinto that probably belonged to the two girls. He howled. Blood flowed from his temple. “I’m blind.” he screamed again.

The young woman’s tentative smile became radiant. “Yes, a boy,” she said. “His name is Michael.”

“Hi, Mike,” Andy said. He ruffled the baby’s mostly bald head.

“I can’t think why he’s crying,” the young woman said. “He was sleeping so well until just now. He must be hungry.”

“Sure, that’s it,” her husband said.

“Excuse me.” Andy walked toward the information booth. There was no time to lose now. Someone else could turn into this roadside bedlam at any time. “What is it, man?” the fellow in the bluejeans asked. “Is it a bust?” “Nah, nothing happened,” Andy said, and gave another light push. It was starting make him feel sick now. His head thudded and pounded. “Oh,” the fellow said. “Well, I was just trying to figure out how to get to Chagrin Falls from here. Excuse me.” And he sauntered back inside the information booth.

The two girls had retreated to the security fence that separated the turn-out from the private farmland beyond it. They stared at him with wide eyes. The blind man was now shuffling around on the pavement in a circle with his arms held stiffly out in front of him. He was cursing and weeping.

Andy advanced slowly toward the girls, holding his hands out to show them there was nothing in them. He spoke to them. One of them asked him a question and he spoke again. Shortly they both began to smile relieved smiles and to nod. Andy waved to them and they both waved in return. Then he walked rapidly across the grass toward the station wagon. His forehead was beaded with cold sweat and his stomach was rolling greasily. He could only pray that no one would drive in before he and Charlie got away, because there was nothing left. He was completely tipped over. He slid in behind the wheel and keyed the engine.

“Daddy,” Charlie said, and threw herself at him, buried her face against his chest. He hugged her briefly and then backed out of the parking lot. Turning his head was agony.

The black horse. In the aftermath, that was the thought that always came to him. He had let the black horse out of its stall somewhere in the dark barn of his subconscious and now it would again batter its way up and down through his brain. He would have to get them someplace and lay up. Quick. He wasn’t going to be capable of driving for long.

“The black horse,” he said thickly. It was coming. No… no. It wasn’t coming; it was here. Thud… thud… thud. Yes, it was here. It was free.

“Daddy, look out!” Charlie screamed.

The blind man had staggered directly across their path. Andy braked. The blind man began to pound on the hood of the wagon and scream for help. To their right, the young mother had begun to breast feed her baby. Her husband was reading a paperback. The man from the information booth had gone over to talk to the two girls from the red Pinto-perhaps hoping for some quickie experience kinky enough to write up for the Penthouse Forum. Sprawled out on the pavement, Baldy slept on. The other operative pounded on the hood of the wagon again and again. “Help me!” he screamed. “I’m blind! Dirty bastard did something to my eyes! I’m blinds” “Daddy,” Charlie moaned.

For a crazy instant, he almost floored the accelerator. Inside his aching head he could hear the sound the tires would make, could feel the dull thudding of the wheels as they passed over the body. He had kidnapped Charlie and held a gun to her head. Perhaps he had been the one who had stuffed the rag into Vicky’s mouth so she wouldn’t scream when they pulled out her fingernails. It would be so very good to kill him… except then what would separate him from them?

He laid on the horn instead. It sent another bright spear of agony through his head. The blind man leaped away from the car as if stung. Andy hauled the wheel around and drove past him. The last thing he saw in the rearview mirror as he drove down the reentry lane was the blind man sitting on the pavement, his face twisted in anger and terror… and the young woman placidly raising baby Michael to her shoulder to burp him.

He entered the flow of turnpike traffic without looking. A horn blared; tires squalled. A big Lincoln swerved around the wagon and the driver shook his fist at them. “Daddy, are you okay?” “I will be,” he said. His voice seemed to come from far away. “Charlie, look at the toll ticket and see what the next exit is.” The traffic blurred in front of his eyes. It doubled,