Tangerine

  That was that. Dad was now off into the Erik Fisher Football Dream. As soon as I got an opening I said, "May I be excused? I'd like to go find my bedroom."

  Dad said, "Sure thing. You're at the top of the stairs, to the right. Erik's down at the other end. And you have two guest rooms in between. You guys should never hear each other."

  I retraced my steps through the great room, went up the stairs, and turned right. I had to squeeze into my bedroom past a stack of boxes. I switched on the light and saw one that had PAUL'S SHEETS written on it, so I opened it and made up my bed. Then I found my computer carton and set it up on the desk. When I got around to putting my clothes away in the dresser, I came across a box that said ERIK'S TROPHIES. I felt a surge of anger, Mom's anger, at the moving guys for doing that. I picked it up and carried it out to the top of the stairs.

  Erik was standing down in the foyer. He had the front door cracked open. He was talking to a group of kids—at least two girls and one guy—telling them that he would see them later.

  I put the box down quietly and hurried back into my room. I turned on the computer, got into my private journal, and wrote until about eleven o'clock. Then I lay down on the bed and fell asleep—but I woke up almost immediately. Someone was running down the hall. It was Erik. I heard him run down the stairs, go out the front door, and pull away in a loud car.

  I couldn't get back to sleep. My mind started racing like an engine. I started thinking about our old house. Then I started thinking about a zombie, a pissed-off zombie. Dragging one foot behind him. Keeping to the right. Taking his time. Slowly, surely, stalking his way down Interstate 10.

  Saturday, August 19

  I woke up in the dark to the sound of an explosion. I groped around for my regular glasses—unable to find them in this new bedroom, upstairs in this new house. Then my glasses suddenly appeared on the nightstand, illuminated by a flash of lightning.

  I'd no sooner pulled them on when another explosion made the windows rattle and the walls shake. The lightning once again filled the room, painful and surprising, like the flash of a camera in my face. I waited for more explosions to follow, but none did, and I fell back asleep.

  I woke up again at seven, still wearing my glasses. I walked down the stairs, unbolted the front door, and stepped out into the morning air. It wasn't what I expected. The air had a gray tint to it, and a damp, foul smell like an ashtray.

  Smoke, I thought. Something around here is on fire.

  I walked back inside and turned left, toward the sound of a television. Mom was sitting on a stool at the high counter that separates the kitchen from the rest of the great room.

  "Mom, I think something's on fire around here."

  "What? Where?"

  "Step out front and take a look. And smell the air."

  Mom slid off the stool and hurried out the front door. She made it exactly as far as I had when the smoke stopped her in her tracks.

  "Where's it coming from?" she cried, shuffling backward in her bedroom slippers. She stared at the top of the house, looking for flames.

  "I don't know. I'll check around back." I pulled my T-shirt up to cover my mouth and nose and ran off into the blowing gray smoke. I circled completely around our new house, but I couldn't see the source of the fire.

  Mom was on her way back inside. "I'm calling the Fire Department."

  "What about Dad and Erik? Should I wake them up?"

  "They're up already. They're up and out. They went to Gainesville to look at the football stadium."

  "Gainesville?"

  "That's where the University of Florida is, honey."

  "Oh. I guess we don't need to save them, then," I said as I started to feel the walls for heat. "You know, it could be the electric wiring inside the walls. It could smolder for a while in there and then burst into flame."

  "It could?" Mom replied in horror. She snatched up the portable phone and dialed 911, talking as she followed my hand's progress along the wall of the great room.

  "The builder of this development certainly should have known how to wire a—Hello! Yes, I want the Fire Department." Mom felt the wall with her free hand. "Yes! There's a fire at ... Oh, Paul! What's our address? Lake Windsor Downs! What is it? Run outside and find the house number!"

  I sprinted out, read the black numbers over the garage, sprinted back in, and shouted, "1225!"

  But Mom had already dug out a contract and was reading into the phone, "1225 Kensington Gardens Drive, Lake Windsor Downs. What? Where is it? It's in Tangerine! It's just outside of Tangerine!" Mom listened for another ten seconds, turning red. Then, at the end of her patience, she yelled into the phone, "What more do you need to know? It's the place with the smoke pouring out of it. Get somebody out here!" She listened again, said, "Yes, please hurry," and hung up.

  We resumed our search of the house and waited for the approaching wail of the fire engines. Twenty minutes later Mom picked up the phone to call the Fire Department again as I peered out the front window.

  "Wait, Mom!" I shouted. "I see them. They're on the other side of the development."

  Mom and I ran outside and watched an old red fire engine cruising slowly up and down the streets.

  The fire engine turned in our direction. We waved and hollered and managed to attract the driver's attention. When the engine rolled up in front of our house and the driver got out, we saw that he was alone. He didn't look to be much older than Erik. He had on knee-high black-and-yellow boots, a pair of cutoff shorts, and a white shirt that had TANGERINE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT—WAYNE written over the breast pocket.

  He waved to us and smiled brightly. "Y'all the ones who called about the fire?"

  Mom turned and pointed at our house. "Yes! Yes, right here."

  The young man didn't move. "Where's the fire at, ma'am?"

  Mom directed her voice at him like a laser beam. "You get in there and answer that question for yourself, young man. I called you twenty minutes ago. Is our house about to burst into flames while we're standing out here?"

  "Any of your walls or doors feel hot, ma'am?"

  "No."

  "Then I'd say you don't need to worry. You don't got a fire. Just a bunch of smoke."

  "Smoke? Smoke from where?"

  Without a moment's hesitation, the young man's left arm shot up and pointed to the open field just beyond the wall at the end of our street. "Right out there. It's the muck fire."

  "It's the what?"

  "Muck fire, ma'am. That field probably got hit by lightning last night. Stirred up the muck fire."

  "Last night? So ... how long is this fire going to burn?"

  The young man laughed out loud and threw up his hands. "It's been burning for as long as I can remember."

  Mom's mouth dropped. She stared at him in disbelief as he continued cheerfully, "Muck fires don't go out. They're burning all the time. Burning right there under the ground, all the time. Sometimes the rain'll damp them down, but they're still smoldering. Y'all ever hear of lignite?"

  Mom and I shook our heads dumbly. Wayne continued, "Well, that field's full of lignite. Lignite is, like, one step before coal. There's hundreds of miles of it under here."

  Mom turned to me with a look of pure puzzlement. "Well, I'm sure your father was never told about any of this. I'm sure the Homeowners' Association will want to know about this."

  "Oh, they know about it, ma'am. Lots of people call us when they first move in here. We wind up having to explain it to them."

  I watched Mom struggling to understand this. "You explain it to them?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "And then what do they do?"

  The young man laughed again. "They learn to live with it, I guess. When the wind's up like this, they gotta stay inside, keep the windows closed."

  "You're saying that there's no way of stopping this fire?"

  He shook his head. "Late summer like this, if you want to stop the muck fire you got to stop the lightning from striking. They ain't figured out h
ow to do that yet."

  Watching this, I suddenly had to admire this Wayne fellow. He was relentlessly cheerful, even in the face of Mom's rising anger. I knew she wanted to grab him by the ear and march him down to that field to put out that muck fire once and for all. But she couldn't. She couldn't do anything except turn to me once again and vow to bring this "muck fire situation" to the attention of the Homeowners' Association.

  "Y'all have a nice day!" Wayne called. Mom and I turned together to look at him. With a happy wave he climbed back into the fire engine and pulled noisily away.

  Saturday, August 19, later

  Dad and Erik were gone all day. Our house never did burst into flames, but the thermometer on the patio, hanging there in the direct sun, did climb to over a hundred degrees.

  A vicious thunderstorm hit in the late afternoon and knocked out our power for about ten seconds. That was just long enough to make Mom and me have to go around the entire house resetting all of the alarm clocks, VCRs, computers, and stereos.

  After supper I opened the garage door and walked my bike out toward the street. The air was hot and damp, but there was no smell of smoke. The wind was blowing west now, toward the Gulf of Mexico.

  You can actually see the wind here. It whips around full of white construction sand, the sand that covers the streets and the unsold lots. The same white-sugar sand that whipped through our development in Houston and the one before that, in Huntsville.

  I turned left and pedaled against the sand toward the front of the development. Our street is about half filled with houses now. The development has grown from the west side to the east side, and we're on the last street before the east wall. Every empty lot on our street has a Sold sign on it, though, so Lake Windsor Downs will soon be complete.

  I stopped at the model homes area—four houses surrounded by the same white picket fence—and pulled off my glasses to clean them. Lake Windsor Downs offers four choices to home buyers, each named after a British royal family: the Lancaster, the York, the Stuart, and the Tudor. Mom absolutely loves that. I'm sure that's why we live here instead of in the Estates at East Hampton, or the Manors of Coventry, or the Villas at Versailles. Mom will soon be describing people like this: "They're the two-story Lancaster with the teal trim," or "They're the white Tudor with the red tile roof."

  I replaced my glasses and started off again, riding parallel to that high gray wall. I stopped for a few minutes to watch two guys unloading thick squares of muddy sod from a flatbed truck. They plopped the squares down over the white-sugar sand, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. When they pulled away a new white Stuart had a new green lawn around it.

  I pedaled up to the iron gates. They open onto a two-lane entranceway with a cement island in the middle. There's a fancy little guardhouse on the island, like something the kings and queens in history would have built to keep out the serfs, or the Vandals, or whoever. It isn't keeping anybody out now. It's empty inside, but I could see a dirty ashtray and a wastebasket full of soda cans.

  Just inside the entranceway is a big pond: Lake Windsor, I suppose. I started around it on my bike. It's a perfectly round blue lake with a border of grass between the water and the road. I thought I heard a splash in the water, but I couldn't see anything moving. I rode completely around the lake in one minute and then headed toward home.

  As soon as I turned onto our street, I saw a black Jeep Cherokee parked in our driveway. A heavyset man in shorts was talking to Mom. She was pointing at the top of our house and smiling. When I pulled up next to them, she was saying, "So naturally I thought I'd see flames shooting out of the roof!"

  The heavyset man turned toward me, nodding his head in sympathy. "Yeah. When that muck fire kicks up, it can be a real stinkaroo. Hello, young man."

  "Hello, sir."

  "Paul," Mom said, "this is Mr. Costello. He's the president of the Homeowners' Association. This is my son Paul."

  I said, "Pleased to meet you."

  Mom added, "He lives in the brown-and-beige Tudor on the west side."

  I shook Mr. Costello's outstretched hand and said, "I was just up at the lake. Just now."

  "Is that right?" He smiled. "Did you see any of the koi?"

  "The what?"

  "The fish! Koi. Japanese carp. They look like giant goldfish."

  "No. No, I thought I heard something, but I didn't see any fish."

  "You get up there early in the morning and check out those koi. They're really something to see. We had them flown in from Atlanta. Stocked the lake full of them."

  Mom asked, "The lake? Is that Lake Windsor?"

  Mr. Costello laughed. "I guess it is now. It's not an official lake. It's man-made. Any new development like this has to have a retention pond for storm runoff. We decided to make the lake a centerpiece, a showpiece, for our community. We stocked it with the koi and added plenty of green space around it for strolling or even picnicking." He reached over and squeezed my elbow. "No fishing, though, OK? Those koi are high-priced fish."

  Just then Dad and Erik turned the corner and pulled into the driveway. As usual when Erik appears, the attention switched from me to him. Dad and Mom started to tell Mr. Costello about what a great football player Erik is, but Mr. Costello was ready for them. He has a football-playing son of his own, and he hopped into his Jeep Cherokee to go get him.

  They all wound up in the great room, near the fireplace. I sat on a stool near the kitchen. Mr. Costello's son is named Mike. Mike and his father talked about the football program at Lake Windsor High with a great deal of pride. Mr. Costello pointed out, "We've only had the program for ten years, and we've already surpassed the program at Tangerine High. No big-school football players are coming out of Tangerine High anymore. The Lake Windsor Seagulls are now the dominant team in three counties. They're rewriting all the county record books."

  Dad said, "What position do you play, Mike?"

  Mike Costello spoke very well, like one of those football guys who make United Way commercials. "Coach Warner and Dad and I made a decision last year. Coach had enough linemen, but he had no backup at quarterback. He's been working with me, and now I'm number-two quarterback on the depth chart."

  Mike's father turned to Mom and explained, "That means he's the backup to Antoine Thomas."

  But no one in my family needs to be told what "number two on the depth chart" means. If Mom had chosen to, she could have explained to Mr. Costello what it really means. As backup quarterback, his son Mike would be handling the snaps and holding the ball for the placekicker—in this case, Erik Fisher, a placekicker who can hit with deadly accuracy from fifty yards. If Mom had chosen to, she could have explained to him that Mike Costello's backside would be featured in the local paper often as he held the ball for this new placekicking sensation. But she didn't.

  Mike was very friendly. He told Erik that he "had heard about him already from the coach" and that he "was looking forward to working with him."

  Erik smiled and said, "So Coach Warner told you that you'll be my holder?"

  Mike answered, "Coach wants me in there as the holder so we can have the option—either we can kick the ball, or we can fake the kick and have me roll out and run or pass."

  Erik was still smiling, but he said, "Coach Warner knows what I can do. He can send anybody out there to pretend to kick a field goal. When I go out there, it'll be for real."

  Mike shrugged and said, "That'll be the coach's call.

  Won't it?"

  Erik locked eyes with him for a second, then backed off. "Yes, of course it will."

  I thought to myself, Way to go, Mike. But I had to admit Erik was right. I've heard Coach Warner talk to Dad enough to know he's counting on Erik to be an impact player, a star. I guess part of that stardom will come at Mike's expense. I can see Mike Costello's future. I can see the Tangerine Times photos of the sensational senior placekicker Erik Fisher and his anonymous holder. (Dad has the clippings from Houston of the sensational junior placekicker Erik Fisher and his anonymous h
older, a kid whose name totally escapes me now.) There will be no football glory in Mike Costello's future. But does Mike, or his father, really care? They certainly don't care the way Dad and Erik do.

  Dad told them that he graduated from Ohio State. But he added that he always regretted not being big enough to play football there. Mike's dad told us that he graduated from FSU, and from FSU's School of Law. He didn't add that he regretted anything.

  Both Costellos seemed to be impressed by Erik. They both asked about his high school exploits back in Houston. They both admired the gold varsity ring on his hand. Dad boasted that Erik was the only sophomore in his high school ever to receive one.

  Erik was as phony as he needed to be. He asked some questions about Lake Windsor High's student government, and about its National Honor Society. He asked about early-acceptance programs at different universities in Florida.

  Mike told us that he had already been accepted into FSU's School of Engineering, so I don't think he's too worried about his future in football, or in anything else. Actually, he seems a pretty decent guy, for a football player. But who knows? He's bound to change, in one way or another, once he gets caught up inside the Erik Fisher Football Dream.

  Monday, August 21

  It took me a long time to fall asleep last night. I was thinking about this: Erik's arrival is going to change the football season at Lake Windsor High School. Dad's arrival is going to change how things are done in the Civil Engineering Department in Tangerine County. Mom's arrival will change the Homeowners' Association in Lake Windsor Downs. So what about me? Will I make the difference between winning and losing for the middle school's soccer team?