Firestarter

Hofferitz sat down at the kitchen table with a sigh, produced a pack of Camels, and lit one. He had smoked all his life, and, he had sometimes told colleagues, as far as he was concerned, the surgeon general could go fuck himself.

“Do you want something to eat, Karl?” Norma asked. Hofferitz looked at their plates. “No-but if I was to, it looks like you wouldn’t have to dish up anything new,” he said dryly. “Will she have to stay in bed for long?” Irv asked.

“Ought to have her down to Albany,” Hofferitz said. There was a dish of olives on the table and he took a handful. “Observation. She’s got a fever of a hundred and one. It’s from the infection. I’ll leave you some penicillin and some antibiotic ointment. Mostly what she needs to do is eat and drink and rest. Malnutrition. Dehydration.” He popped an olive into his mouth. “You were right to give her that chicken broth, Norma. Anything else, she would have sicked it up, almost as sure as shooting. Nothing but clear liquids for her tomorrow. Beef broth, chicken broth, lots of water. And plenty of gin, of course; that’s the best of those clear liquids.” He cackled at this old joke, which both Irv and Norma had heard a score of times before, and popped another olive into his mouth. “I ought to notify the police about this, you know.”

“No,” Irv and Norma said together, and then they looked at each other, so obviously surprised that Dr. Hofferitz cackled again.

“She’s in trouble, ain’t she?”

Irv looked uncomfortable. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“Got something to do with that trouble you had last year, maybe?”

This time Norma opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Irv said, “I thought it was only gunshot wounds you had to report, Karl.”

“By law, by law,” Hofferitz said impatiently, and stubbed out his cigarette. “But you know there’s a spirit of the law as well as a letter, Irv. Here’s a little girl and you say her name is Roberta McCauley and I don’t believe that anymore than I believe a hog will shit dollar bills. She says she scraped her back open crawling under barbed wire, and I got to think that’s a fu

Norma looked at her husband, frightened. Irv rocked back in his chair and looked at Dr. Hofferitz.

“Yeah,” he said finally, “she’s part of that trouble from last year. That’s why I called you, Karl. You’ve seen trouble, both here and back in the old country. You know what trouble is. And you know that sometimes the laws are only as good as the people in charge of them. I’m just saying that if you let out that little girl is here, it’s going to mean trouble for a lot of people who haven’t earned it. Norma and me, a lot of our kin… and her in there. And that’s all I think I can tell you. We’ve known each other twenty-five years. You’ll have to decide what you’re going to do.”

“And if I keep my mouth shut,” Hofferitz said, lighting another cigarette, “what are you going to do?” Irv looked at Norma, and she looked back at him. After a moment she gave her head a bewildered little shake and dropped her eyes to her plate. “I du

“You just go

Norma was looking more and more troubled.

“I du

Hofferitz’s eyes sharpened at this, but he said nothing.

“I got to think on it some. But will you keep quiet about her for the time being?”

Hofferitz popped the last of his olives into his mouth, sighed, stood up, holding onto the edge of the table. “Yeah,” he said. “She’s stable. That V-Cillin will knock out the bugs. I’ll keep my mouth shut, Irv. But you better think on it, all right. Long and hard. Because a kid ain’t a parrot.”

“No,” Norma said softly. “No, of course not.” “Something strange about that kid,” Hofferitz said, picking up his black bag. “Something damn fu

5

After the doctor had finished probing and pressing with his old, gnarled, but wonderfully gentle hands, Charlie fell into a feverish but not unpleasant doze. She could hear their voices in the other room and understood that they were talking about her, but she felt sure that they were only talking… not hatching plans.

The sheets were cool and clean; the weight of the crazy quilt was comforting on her chest. She drifted. She remembered the woman calling her a witch. She remembered walking away. She remembered hitching a ride with a vanful of hippies, all of them smoking dope and drinking wine, and she remembered that they had called her little sister and asked her where she was going.

“North,” she had replied, and that had caused a roar of approval.

After that she remembered very little until yesterday, and the hog that had charged her, apparently meaning to eat her. How she had got to the Manders farm, and why she had come here-whether it had been a conscious decision or something else-she could not remember.

She drifted. The doze deepened. She slept. And in her dream they were back in Harrison and she was starting up in her bed, her face wet with tears, screaming with terror, and her mother rushed in, auburn hair blinding and sweet in the morning light, and she had cried, “Mommy, I dreamed you and Daddy were dead!” And her mother stroked her hot forehead with a cool hand and said, “Shhh, Charlie, shhh. It’s morning now, and wasn’t that a silly dream?”

6

There was very little sleep for Irv and Norma Manders that night. They sat watching a succession of inane prime-time sitcoms, then the news, then the Tonight show. And every fifteen minutes or so Norma would get up, leave the living room quietly, and go to check on Charlie.

“How is she?” Irv asked around quarter of one.

“Fine. Sleeping.”

Irv grunted.

“Have you thought of it, Irv?”

“We’ve got to keep her until she’s better,” Irv said. “Then we’ll talk to her. Find out about her dad. I can only see that far ahead.”

“If they come back-”

“Why should they?” Irv asked. “They shut us up. They think they scared us-”

“They did scare me,” Norma said softly.

“But it wasn’t right,” Irv replied, just as softly. “You know that. That money… that ‘insurance money”… I never felt right about that, did you?”

“No,” she said, and shifted restlessly. “But what Doc Hofferitz said is true, Irv. A little girl has got to have people… and she’s got to go to school… and have friends… and… and-”

“You saw what she did that time,” Irv said flatly. “That pyrowhatsis. You called her a monster.”

“I’ve regretted that unkind word ever since,” Norma said. “Her father-he seemed like such a nice man. If only we knew where he was now.”

“He’s dead,” a voice said from behind them, and Norma actually cried out as she turned and saw Charlie standing in the doorway, clean now and looking all the more pallid for that. Her forehead shone like a lamp. She floated in one of Norma’s fla