me feel real good. And he got out matches and a spoon and then he made a fire …” Luke’s voice cracked, but he kept on, “and then he got out a needle, sorta like the one my dad used to have, and I yelled at him.
“I couldn’t help it and then I ran and I guess I made too much noise ’cause Wendell ran, too. And then the fire kept burning – and it got bigger and it got up into that ole wood and next thing I knew, the whole shed was burning.”
I nodded silently, seeing it clearly – the small fire feeding on the grass, licking the dry wood of the shed.
Luke chattered on. “We got out of there fast. Me and Wendell. I just kept runnin’ till I got here. Nobody ever caught my dad here and I knew they wouldn’t catch me. I lost ole Wendell on the way, but it doesn’t matter. Wendell’s not scared of nuthin’!”
“Luke,” I said, “there are papers in your file at school that say you’ve set a lot of fires. Is that true?”
Luke scratched with the stone. “Maybe some little ones. Leaves in the street.”
“Why?” I asked, still pushing, still risking, needing to know.
Luke tossed the stone over toward the water tower and it clanked against one of the metal legs. “Don’t know. I just like to watch ’em. They’re pretty, all red and blue and orange, dancin’ around.”
“How about the big fire on the mountain last fall? Did you set that?”
Luke smiled – and I hated the smile.
“That one was real pretty. Red, yellow, orange, lickin’ away, eating up the ole grass, runnin’ all by its own self.”
Luke paused. There was no guilt or repentance in his voice, only admiration for the fire. “It kept on gettin’ bigger and bigger and then began going down into town and the pines all started too – and it was taller than me.”
Luke stopped and laughed out loud.
He had forgotten about me in his excitement of remembering the fire and was just talking out loud, not to anyone in particular.
“Then the cops began to come, blowin’ their sirens and then the fire truck, but they couldn’t put it out – they couldn’t catch that ole fire, it just kept goin’.”
His voice sounded hard and cruel, not like Luke’s at all.
“Were you alone?” I asked.
“Why?” Instantly alert. “Why do you want to know?” Luke was aware of me again. The outsider.
“Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.” Why had I thought that I could reach through seven years of fires and drugs and neglect and touch a child? But Luke wasn’t done.
“I got away,” he said with pride. “The cops were all stretched out and lined up searching for us – me,” he corrected himself. “But I just started running and took an ole belly whopper right through the middle and came out on the other side. My shirt was burning like anything and I knew I couldn’t get those little buttons undone. So know what I did? I just lay down in the dirt and rolled and rolled and it went out.”
I put Luke’s lipstick tube back in my pocket. Now it was my turn to sit staring out at the sky without talking. I could see why there were waiting lists at schools, why clinics couldn’t get through, why teachers gave up. It was too much. These delinquents, or whatever label you used, weren’t born out of an acute crisis, but out of a chronic, unending sickness in cities.
Urgency departed, replaced by sorrow. I decided to attribute the churning in my stomach to hunger. Neither Luke nor I had eaten for a long while.
“Listen, Luke,” I said. “I’m going to go get us something to eat. Want to come?”
He shook his head as I had known he would. He had already made the trip off the mountain once today.
“Okay. I won’t be long,” I promised.
Down the hill, back to my car, but not back to Falls City. If Luke was watching from his water tower, as I was sure he was, I didn’t want him worrying about what I was doing in Falls City. Instead, I drove on toward the college and stopped at a roadside stand and bought sandwiches and soda.
On the drive back, textbook phrases echoed in my head. “Socially maladjusted … character disorder … sociopathic behavior; destructive, immature, impulsive, manipulative – with a disregard for the needs and feelings of others. A deficit of conscience and judgment; inability to feel guilt and shame.” I knew the words; I’d read all the descriptive phrases at night school years before.
Luke would be considered a classic case, who, as he grew older, would continue to steal, destroy and even perhaps sometime to kill. He was a product of his society, and even I knew I couldn’t change a society.
I forced my thoughts away from Luke, back to the road.
Where was the place I’d parked? Everything looked different from this direction. There was the water tower. I strained to see if I could see a figure beneath the tank, but none was visible.
Panic never arrives slowly for me. Now it hit – wham! Suppose I couldn’t find the place, the path. Suppose Luke waited and then decided that I wasn’t coming back, that I had let him down again?
I’d gone too far. I was sure of it. I was getting much too close to Falls City now. Damn, damn! Turn the car around. You’ll recognize the spot from this side.
I drove back up the hill slowly, slowly searching the side of the road for the same place I’d pulled off with Luke. If I could find that spot, I thought I could cut back to the path. Things are easier to remember on foot.
Luke! I’d almost missed him. I slammed on the brakes and backed up. Luke stood up and came out from behind a small bush. I jammed the car into some low evergreens and took the paper bag of sandwiches and soda back to where Luke waited. Luke cared! He’d even come to help. Remember the days in school, the doughnuts, the lipstick tube. Don’t sell him short.
“That path’s hard to see when you don’t know it,” Luke said, forgiving me.
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”
Four-thirty now. Time was running out. The sun turned molten red and began to descend into the city. The sky above the sunset changed from blue to gray.
Luke ate two sandwiches without speaking, washing down mouthfuls with gulps of soda. Then unexpectedly, he said, “Sometimes, after my dad was finished … underneath, he’d put out the fire and then come up on the platform and sit with me. And sometimes he would stay awake awhile and when the stars came out, he’d tell me their names.” Luke had his arms wrapped around his knees so he had to turn his whole body to look at me. “He knew all the names. Big Dipper. Little Dipper. Orion. Cassy Pee’s Chair.” There was pride in Luke’s small voice.
I concentrated on the sky, trying to remain objective, to remember the textbook, to realize what a small percentage of success socially maladjusted kids had, but my heart was thump-thumping for some undefined reason. I watched a small cloud form above the sun, an odd shape, reminiscent of something.
“Luke, look,” I said. “See that cloud? It looks like an amoeba.”
