Alligator - Lisa Moore [101]
The boy rose up from the lawn on his hands and knees and the flames stood up on his back like the fur of a hissing cat. The boy stood up with his arms held out from his body as though he were a conductor about to address a choir. The house held its breath. Then Frank flapped his arms wildly. He whipped his arms through the air and the house bellowed behind him with one long, sustained, sonorous boom.
The windows in the front of the house blew shards of glass all over the lawn and knocked the boy down. The fire reached as far as it could out the windows and then it flowed upward. It poured into the sky like a river falling in the wrong direction. Flames tumbled up and raced over the backs of other flames and flicked at the leaves of the trees that grew near the house.
And then the trees went up. The flames moved from tree to tree and the trees shrivelled up and crackled and spat sparks. All the worms hanging in the trees were lit up for the second it took them to turn to carbon.
The boy stood up again and turned around to see what had knocked him down. Valentin ran from the driveway into the wall of heat. The hairs on the backs of his hands curled and disappeared and it made the backs of his hands itch. He saw, through the front window, a yellow film of heat engulf the piano. He saw the sheet music curl and disappear. He thought of the possessed look Isobel wore while she played and the way she nodded at him to turn the page, how imperious and frantic her face had looked, how important it was to turn the page at exactly the right moment, how concentrated he had been in order to do her bidding, but the sheet music had disappeared the instant the flame touched it just like any other kind of paper. The armchair was a sunflower.
The boy was slapping the flames on his back, he was turning in fast circles and arching his spine and ducking and slapping at himself. There were tattered flames on both of his swinging arms and flames at his ankles and he was trying to twist out of them. He appeared to be wrestling himself to the lawn, finally knocking himself down and rolling. The fire covered him in a flimsy straitjacket the boy couldn’t get out of.
Then he was out cold again. Valentin was dragging the boy to the truck before he knew what he was doing. Everything took time and was mired in the time it took.
He had taken the shovel out of the back of the truck. He would bring it down on the boy’s head and throw him back in the fire where he belonged and put an end to this at once. He knew the shovel would never work but it would have to work.
Then he saw the woman across the street, under the street light. She stood with a dog on a leash. Valentin dropped the shovel and dragged the boy across the lawn by the back of his jacket but the jacket came apart in Valentin’s hand. He knew the woman was watching and now it was necessary to think before he killed the boy. He managed to drag the boy’s body over the lawn and he got him into the cab of the truck. He slammed the passenger door but the door bounced back and he slammed it again and it bounced back, and he slammed it with all the force he had, spit flying out of his mouth and the door bounced back. The woman across the street watched him and it occurred to Valentin that it was over. He would not implicate Isobel. He decided that in an instant. He did not love her, he hated her, but he would not implicate her. He would say he had acted without her knowledge. He would say he was a jealous lover. He would go to jail forever but he would leave her alone. She could have the insurance money; that’s what he decided. He would stand by her. It might be the honourable thing.
The door of the truck had made him limp with rage. The boy was supposed to burn in the fire. First he would pass out or he might even crawl along the floor and breathe the smoke and perhaps find his way to the door but the door would be jammed, if the boy made it that far, and the boy would slump against the door and the