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Chapter One

NOEL'S FATHER, WHEN LAST SEEN, had boarded a ride called the Black Dragon on the final evening of the Great Mississippi Fair, which in a matter of hours and direction would transform itself into the Great Louisiana Fair or the Great Tennessee Fair or the Great Alabama Fair. Though Noel was never positive he could remember his father, he would always remember the Black Dragon because it kept coming back with the fair every year and it was rumored to have once killed a boy by decapitating him. At night, streamlined with hundreds of small clear bulbs, it resembled a polished black octopus, the spinning cockpits slingshotting toward earth, the tentacles engraved with a fierce red calligraphy. In later years it would return to town disguised under bright shades of metal-flake enamel and bearing various demonic aliases and blasting the latest heavy-metal soundtracks, but Noel always recognized the Black Dragon on sight and rode it dozens of times. As he got older he rode it drunk and stoned and once he rode it with a Polaroid of a naked woman in his back pocket.

    He was failing first grade when his father was declared MIA. This prompted his mother to explain, "That means he's dead somewhere in Vietnam, but they don't know where yet. His bones always were hard to find."

    Noel stared into the lined pages of a Blue Horse notebook he had been drawing pictures in, while his mother, a tall attractive woman fond of props and postures, rolled a wineglass filled with grape juice against her bottom lip. Before leaving the room, she knelt to where he sat on the rug and inserted a black andwhite photograph into his notebook.

    It took Noel a moment to recognize her inside the photograph. Hiding a cigarette behind her back—the feathery smoke gave it away—his mother wore a white headband, a black dress, and stood wide-shouldered and thin-waisted and torpedo-breasted, listing into a man who, slim and tall, wore a baggy dark suit that seemed in wanting of a hat, a cigar, and a machine gun. Only his mother's shocked expression accounted for the whereabouts of the man's right hand. It was an old photograph with serrated edges, and someone had put out a cigarette on the man's heart. Because of this, it was difficult to separate his expression—the half sneer, the sun-slitted eyes—from the ridged wound melted through his chest that Noel now held up to the light and fit his eye to, as if to a keyhole, as if to the future.

    At ten he played Little League for the Standard Oil Red Sox. One spring Sunday while trying to score off a triple, Noel shattered the collarbone of the opposing catcher. The catcher had to be carried off the field, the ball still clutched in his fist. Noel had been called out. He tried explaining this fact to his mother after the game while she paraded him past the grandstands. Her hair had been dyed blond the day before, actually more yellow, and she wore it in a short-banged fashion she called a butch. During the drive home Noel kept putting his red baseball cap on her, and she kept brushing it off and saying stop that. Suddenly she hit the brakes, and the white station wagon drifted into a familiar yard. For a moment they sat silent in the car while she adjusted the studious look on her face. Then, apologetically, she shrugged and suggested they have quick look inside. "Just hello and goodbye," she promised over Noel's protests.

    Aunt Carol, the family spinster and one of his mother's five sisters, had a beagle name Archie that she pampered like an only child. Her front door had been left wide open that afternoon. They entered the house and called out hello and walked into the kitchen and there they found both Archie and Aunt Carol in a bad way. The beagle, its eyes sealed shut, was heaving away on a blue nylon blanket while Aunt Carol, wearing a pink bathrobe and no makeup, her hair bound in blue curlers, circumnavigated the blanket and remained frighteningly unaware of their presence, as if she were an apparition already passed into the spirit world awaiting the arrival of her dog.

    Still in cleats and the red and blue uniform, Noel guided his aunt outside to the Rambler and placed her in the front seat then got into the back. While they waited, a wave of rain hammered over the car and vanished down the length of hood. His mother, who had been on the phone, tied a clear plastic bonnet over her hair then started across the yard carrying Archie. She placed the dog, a wet corpse for all purposes, upon Noel's lap in the back seat. Noel stiffened, shot out his limbs, and right at that moment a strange coincidence took place, one that would impress his born-again relatives far more than it would impress Noel himself. At the moment Archie touched Noel's lap, the beagle roused itself and seemed indisputably cured. Within minutes Archie was caroming about the yard sniffing out tennis balls. Archie even chased their station wagon when they finally left.

    In the sideview mirror, the beagle faltered into a neighbor's yard. Noel turned and half accusingly asked his mother, "How'd you know to stop the car?"

* * *

Noel's stepfather bore an uncanny resemblance to Billy Graham, one he cultivated by sweeping back his hair in the same high-banged fashion. Roger had even assumed some of Billy's mannerisms, such as stabbing at the air in front of him with steepled hands. The house fell silent only during Billy Graham Crusade Specials when Roger required Noel, Matt, and their younger half-brother Ben to huddle before the TV and shut up. Roger had also installed a rotation system of grace. Before supper—which had become supper, no longer dinner—the three brothers took turns saying bless this food to our use and thus to Thy service.

    Noel launched out of grace and into the play-by-play of how he had tried to take home off his triple. Matt and Ben listened with the reverence due an older brother who had broken someone's collarbone. But just as Noel was lowering his head to spear the catcher, Roger interrupted to ask, "Noel, isn't tomorrow the day your class goes to that zoo?"

    Noel ignored the question the same way he had ignored the third-base coach, who had signaled him to stop. Noel had not wanted to stop. He wanted a homer. So he kept digging and rammed his helmet into the catcher, spearing him just above the chest protector. Then, after untangling himself, Noel had limped to the dugout through the loudest applause he had ever heard. "Ya killed him, Weatherspoon!" someone cheered from inside the dugout. That had caused Noel to stop and turn around. The catcher, sprawled facedown over home plate, had yet to move.

    Noel did not get this far into the story before Roger interrupted him again.

    "Noel. Did you hear me ask you a direct question?"

    Noel said yes sir his class was going to the zoo. "And I haven't had any trouble breathing, not for weeks, ask Mom if you don't believe me."

    Instead Roger said pass the salt. While sprinkling it over his spaghetti, he recalled, "We spent over a hundred dollars on those allergy tests. I think it's assumed we're going to heed the results."

    Matt made a clown's crying face at his older brother.

    "But I'm allergic to the whole planet," Noel protested.

    "No, what you're allergic to, the main thing," Roger clarified, "is animal dander. Which is why we are not going to get a dog, Ben. And why we are certainly not going to get a snake, Matt. And knowing what we know, I'm wondering why we're even entertaining the notion of letting Noel go to that zoo tomorrow, especially since the last time he went there—correct me if I'm wrong—he had another asthma attack."

    "I tested positive to grass, that don't stop me from having to weed your garden all the time."

    "That's because your mother and I want you to grow up normal."

    "He is normal," Alise said.

    Roger picked up his fork, the fork he used to eat french fries and pizza; at breakfast he poured ketchup over his scrambled eggs.

    "What's so normal about failing first grade?" he asked.

    "Normal boys sometimes fail first grade. Then they study harder the next year and pass it, like Noel did."

    "Going to the zoo is normal."

    "He's not allergic to snakes."

    Roger jabbed the fork at Matt, who was wearing a white T-shirt with a snotty collar. "Matthew," he said. "I don't want to hear one more word about snakes come out of your mouth for the rest of your life, understand?"

    The phone began to ring, but no one dared answer it, not during supper. It rang a dozen times. Only after it had stopped did the family resume eating their spaghetti, everybody except Noel, who tipped back his chair and started over, "Okay, I'm rounding second, right? And Coach is waving his arms like crazy, yelling for me to stop. But I don't wanna stop...."

* * *

A bright slew of candy-coated pills awaited Noel at the breakfast table. Sometimes his mother arranged these pills in a cross shape, sometimes in a happy face, sometimes in the V-pattern of migrating geese. After everyone else had left the table, Noel handed her the permission slip. She widened her green eyes upon the purple mimeograph then scribbled her name boyishly at the bottom. "Don't breathe a word," she warned. Noel stood, but she touched his wrist. "Noel, there's something we need to discuss. It has to do with that boy. Ross Altman."

    "Who?"

    "The boy that got in your way, the one with the mask on. He had some kind of seizure after yesterday's game. They don't know what's wrong with him yet, but whatever it is, it's not your fault, okay? They can't get Ross to wake up. He's in a coma."

    "In a what?"

    "A coma. That means the doctors have to figure out a way to make him wake up."

    "Is he gonna die?"

    "No. Well, nobody knows yet. It's possible, I suppose."

    Noel nodded and folded away the permission slip. As he started to leave the table, Alise said, "Wait. First let's find you some more blue pills. For the zoo. Just in case." Rummaging through the pill drawer, she murmured, "I don't know why I'm letting you go. I hate that place. Those poor beasts. Sometimes I think burning that zoo to the ground would be a pure Christian act." She tucked some blue pills into his shirt pocket and found two other pills already there, white nubs that had survived the wash. She dropped these into the disposal and while fanning her fingers under the spigot said, "Never mind. I didn't say that."

    Kamper Park reeked of lost enthusiasm. It had survived two decades as an abomination of a small-town zoo where somnambulant animals huddled in cramped wet cages. Through the steel bars monkeys stared at the pine trees. The lion's tongue lagged out while it blinked and blinked at the boys who tried to rally it with their own roars and bared teeth. Eventually the boys took to pelting the lion with peanuts. Only the baboons had enough gumption to return fire—flinging pawfuls of shit between the bars at the boys. The llamas would not spit, though there were signs promising they would if annoyed. A mangy brown bear paced in its sleep, whisking an inch away from the bars at each turn.

    After the zoo, the class brown-bagged lunch in a pavilion beside a playground containing a military tank and a red caboose. For this occasion each child had been allowed to bring one bag of candy. Noel had selected a jumbo sack of bubblegum cigarettes, each one wrapped in paper tinged red at one end. When blown into, the cigarettes would issue a few puffs of powdered-sugar smoke. They looked real, and everybody wanted one. Noel started the bidding at a quarter each. And although he cleared over six dollars that day, he did not care so much about the money. He cared about the power he felt, jacking up the price, denying a customer, slipping a freebie to a friend or a pretty girl.

    When the rain started, the kids were herded under the pavilion. They crowded the rail nearest the street and posed with their cigarettes and timed their measured puffs to coincide with traffic. Some cars slowed, others honked, then a dirt-brown Buick jerked to the shoulder of the road and a man in a brown overcoat stepped outside and walked to the back of the car and leaned against it. He cocked one leg backward onto the fender and studied the pavilion.

    "Look!" a girl cried out. "It's Billy Graham!"

* * *

That afternoon Alise took Noel to the clinic for his weekly allergy shots, three in his left arm, two in his throwing arm. Doc Martin broke off the needles with his thumb and gave Noel the syringes to play with. Halfway home, Noel had an attack. Alise got him home and propped him up in a makeshift bed she created by pushing Roger's recliner up against an easy chair. After using up the last of his inhaler, Noel sat bolt upright and began to rock. And that's how Roger found things when he arrived home from his security job at Pine Belt Airport. Roger was wearing his blue jumpsuit, and he had a rolled newspaper clamped under the same arm that toted a silver lunch pail. He stopped just inside the door, as if tactically absorbing the scene, but before he could say one word he was sent to the pharmacy for a new inhaler.

    Noel used this reprieve to confess that he had been spotted at the zoo. Alise took in the news resiliently and then walked into the kitchen. She opened the freezer, said goddamnit into it, then let the door squeak shut.

    The highlight of the ensuing argument was his mother screaming, "I will not have you following my children around like a spy in the dark!" Noel was recuperating on the back porch and pretending to read Durango Street, which was about this black kid who carried a switchblade harmonica. Noel had read the book a dozen times. Late at night, unable to sleep because of the synthetic adrenaline in his asthma medications, he would slip out of bed and wield that switchblade harmonica in imaginary gang fights until his chest seized up and he had to crawl back under the sheets, sipping from his inhaler and pretending to be bleeding to death in some ghetto alleyway.

    Roger came out onto the porch and squatted beside Noel's rocking chair so that they shared the same backyard view: pecan and eucalyptus tree, budding garden, tall pine trees along the property edge. They stayed quiet until Roger reached up to steady the rocking chair and commented, "I suppose you think it makes a difference them being candy cigarettes." He raised a stop-sign palm. "Let me tell you a little story, Noel. Something you might find useful. Today, driving by that zoo, when I saw you under that wooden thing, I didn't recognize you, not at first. You ever have that happen, where you don't recognize somebody you know, and it's like, for those few seconds before you recognize them, it's like you're seeing them, really seeing that person, for the first time?"

    "No sir."

    "And it's like you can see their entire future."

    "Yes sir."

    "In this case I wouldn't call it a pleasant experience."

    "No sir."

    "Cut that out."

    "Cut what out?"

    "The yes-sir, no-sir crap."

    "But you said always call you sir."

    Roger exhaled wearily then continued, "You going to the zoo today, that was your mom's fault, not yours. I'm not punishing you for that." He steepled his hands, flexed the fingers. "But I was right about your asthma, wasn't I?"

    "It wasn't the zoo, it was the allergy shots did it."

    "Noel, be reasonable. Nobody's allergic to allergy shots."

    "I am. I'm allergic to everything."

    "No. Not everything. But you are allergic to that zoo. And when a man's wrong, he steps up and admits it."

    "When was the last time you did?"

    "Did what?"

    "Admitted you was wrong."

    Roger explained that he was not the one on trial here. A muddy hummingbird dive-bombed wasps off the juice feeder. When Noel reopened his paperback, Roger stated, "And another thing. Your mom and I, we're worried that you use those inhalers too much. We're considering taking them away from you."

    Noel closed the book on his hand. Very carefully he stated, "But if you do that, I won't be able to play baseball."

    "Baseball's not everything."

    "It is to me."

    "Well, what else can we do, Noel? Your hands shake—look at them. You can't sit still in class. Can't concentrate. That's what your teachers say. You've got bags under your eyes, like an old man does. You went through that last whiffer in two weeks. They're supposed to last you two months."

    Noel banged the back of his skull against the headboard of the chair. Then he did it again, harder.

    "Two months, that's what Doc Martin said. And now, to top it all off, you're out smoking cigarettes."

    "Candy cigarettes."

    "That's not the point—quit hitting your head, please—the point is ..." He started rocking Noel's chair like a cradle, but Noel anchored the chair backward by stiffening his legs. "It's like this, Noel. Every time you use that inhaler, you know what it does?"

    "It lets me breathe."

    "It speeds up your heart." He lowered his hands onto Noel's knee. "It speeds up your heart."

    "So?"

    "So! Think about that. A heart's only going to beat so many times—correct?"

    "I guess."

    "No guessing to it. It's a scientific fact. A heart is only going to beat a given number of times. So what you're doing, Noel, every time you use that thing, you're wasting heartbeats. You're shortening your life." Roger stood with a groan. Trying to sound jocular, he added, "Mom says pork chops in five minutes. And no, you're not getting off the hook, you're going to Aunt Paula's with the rest of us after supper."

    Roger started inside, but Noel said, "Mom said you were going by the hospital today."

    Roger ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. He said, "That was none of your fault what happened. Boy was born that way. Something on the brain. It woulda happened sooner or later, even if you hadn't creamed him."

    "He's dead, isn't he?"

    "No. Not dead, not alive. Somewhere in the in between. They've got machines breathing for him. Which ain't right, if you ask me."

    Noel asked if Ross was going to get better. It felt strange to call him by his first name.

    Roger shook his head and said no, probably he wasn't. "If he was just a little more brain-dead then they could take him off those machines. Way it is, though, they got to leave him running. Like a car with the keys locked inside it. That's what the law says."

    At supper, the family joined hands beneath the dining table, their arms forming an upside down crown. Roger said, "Matt, if you would," and Matt lowered his face and piped, "Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat." An occult silence ensued. Outside, setting behind pine trees and gray clouds, the sun became a full moon and filled the dining room with the fuzzy consistency of a newspaper photo. Ben, his head barely showing above his plate, blinked his brown cow eyes at his two older half-brothers. Noel had sunk into laughing convulsions so severe they rippled through the crown of arms; Matt stared crucified into his own lap, refusing to cry out even though Roger was caving Matt's palm in lengthwise. Finally Roger rebowed his head.

    "Ben," he said, "if you would."

(Continues...)

Echo Burning

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By Lee Child

Copyright © 2001 Lee Child. All rights reserved.