Firestarter

“Norma, I wasn’t laughin at you, and the child has got to get out sometime-”

“Don’t you think I know that? I didn’t say no, did I? That’s just it! A growing child needs fresh air, exercise. Got to have those things if you’re going to have any appetite, and she’s-”

“Peckish, I know.”

“Pale and peckish, that’s right. So I didn’t say no. I was glad to see you take her. But, Irv, what if Joh

“Honey, they didn’t.” But Irv sounded uneasy. “Not this time! Not the time before! But Irv, it can’t go on! We been lucky already, and you know it” Her footsteps crossed the kitchen again, and then there was the sound of tea being poured. “Yeah,” Irv said. “Yeah, I know we have. But… thanks, darlin.”

“Welcome,” she said, sitting down again. “And never mind the buts, either. You know it only takes one person, or maybe two. It’ll spread. It’ll get out, Irv, that we got a little girl up here. Never mind what it’s doing to her; what happens if it gets back to them?”

In the darkness of the back room, Charlie’s arms rashed out in goosebumps.

Slowly, Irv answered her. “I know what you’re saying, Norma. We got to do something, and I keep going over and over it in my head. A little paper… well, it’s not just sure enough. You know we’ve got to get this story out right if we’re going to make that girl safe for the rest of her life. If she’s going to be safe, a lot of people have got to know she exists and what she can do-isn’t that right? A lot of people.”

Norma Manders stirred restlessly but said nothing.

Irv pressed on. “We got to do it right for her, and we got to do it right for us. Because it could be our lives at stake, too. Me, I’ve already been shot once. I believe that. I love her like my own, and I know you do, too, but we got to be realists about it, Norma. She could get us killed.”

Charlie felt her face grow hot with shame… and with terror. Not for herself but for them. What had she brought on their house? “And it’s not just us or her. You remember what that man Tarkington said. The files he showed us. “It’s your brother and my nephew Fred and Shelley, and-““-and all those people back in Poland,” Norma said. “Well, maybe he was only bluffing about that. I pray to God he was. It’s hard for me to believe anyone could get that low.” Norma said grimly, “They’ve been pretty low already.”

“Anyway,” Irv said, “we know they’ll follow through on as much as they can, the dirty bastards. The shit is going to fly. All I’m saying, Norma, is I don’t want the shit to fly to no good purpose. If we’re going to make a move, I want it to be a good one. I don’t want to go to some country weekly and then have them get wind of it and squash it. They could do it. They could do it.”

“But what does that leave?”

“That,” Irv said heavily, “is what I keep tryin to figure out. A paper or a magazine, but one they won’t think of. It’s got to be honest, and it ought to be nationwide. But most of all, it can’t have any ties to the government or to the government’s ideas.”

“You mean to the Shop,” she said flatly. “Yeah. That’s what I mean.” There was the soft sound of Irv sipping his tea. Charlie lay in her bed, listening, waiting.

… it could be our lives at stake, too… I’ve already been shot once… I love her like my own, and I know you do, too, but we got to be realists about it, Norma… she could get us killed.

(no please I)

(she could get us killed like she got her mother killed)

(no please please don’t don’t say that)

(like she got her daddy killed)

(please stop)

Tears rolled across her side-turned face, catching in her ears, wetting the pillowcase. “Well, we’ll think on it some more,” Norma said finally. “There’s an answer to this, Irv. Somewhere.” “Yeah. I hope so.” “And in the meantime,” she said, “we just got to hope no one knows she’s here.” Her voice suddenly kindled with excitement. “Irv, maybe if we got a lawyer-”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’m done in, Norma. And no one knows she’s here yet.”

But someone did. And the news had already begun to spread.

10

Until he was in his late sixties, Dr. Hofferitz, an inveterate bachelor, had slept with his longtime housekeeper, Shirley McKenzie. The sex part of it had slowly dried up: the last time, as well as Hofferitz could recall, had been about fourteen years before, and that had been something of an anomaly. But the two of them had remained close; in fact, with the sex gone, the friendship had deepened and had lost some of that tense prickliness that seems to be at the center of most sexual relationships. Their friendship had become of that platonic variety that seems to genuinely obtain only in the very young and in the very old of the opposite sex.

Still, Hofferitz held onto his knowledge of the Manderses” “boarder” for better than three months. Then, one night in February, after three glasses of wine while he and Shirley (who had just that January turned seventy-five) were watching television, he told her the whole story, after swearing her to complete secrecy.

Secrets, as Cap could have told Dr. Hofferitz, are even more unstable than U-235, and stability lessens proportionately as the secret is told. Shirley McKenzie kept the secret for almost a month before telling her best girlfriend, Hortense Barclay. Hortense kept the secret for about ten days before telling her best girlfriend, Christine Traegger. Christine told her husband and her best friends (all three of them) almost immediately.

This is how the truth spreads in small towns; and by the night in April when Irv and Norma had their overheard conversation, a good deal of Hastings Glen knew that they had taken in a mysterious girl. Curiosity ran high. Tongues wagged.

Eventually the news reached the wrong pair of ears. A telephone call was made from a scrambler phone.

Shop agents closed in on the Manders farm for the second time on the last day of April; this time they came across the dawn fields through a spring mist, like horrific invaders from Planet X in their bright flame-resistant suits. Backing them up was a National Guard unit who didn’t know what the fuck they were doing or why they had been ordered out to the peaceful little town of Hastings Glen, New York.

They found Irv and Norma Manders sitting stu

She had eluded the Shop again-but wherever she was, she was alone.

The only consolation was that this time she didn’t have so far to hitch.

11

The librarian was a young man, twenty-six years old, bearded, long-haired. Standing in front of his desk was a little girl in a green blouse and bluejeans. In one hand she held a paper shopping bag. She was woefully thin, and the young man wondered what the hell her mother and father had been feeding her… if anything.

He listened to her question carefully and respectfully. Her daddy, she said, had told her that if you had a really hard question, you had to go to the library to find the answer, because at the library they knew the answers to almost all the questions. Behind them, the great lobby of the New York Public Library echoed dimly; outside, the stone lions kept their endless watch.

When she was done, the librarian recapitulated, ticking of the salient points on his fingers.

“Honest.”

She nodded.

“Big… that is, nationwide.”

She nodded again.

“No ties to the government.”

For the third time, the thin girl nodded.