Trash Mountain. Bradley Bazzle
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and throw it as high as I could, to see what happened. I agreed. I reached into my pocket for the matchbook I had stolen from the kitchen, and while my hand was in there I felt a piece of paper. I took it out and saw my note to Ruthanne. I almost cried, thinking how the note might have burned up with me, without her knowing what it said and how I felt about her. I handed the note to Demarcus. “If anything happens to me,” I said, “give this to my sister.”
“What does she look like?”
I wasn’t sure how to describe her so I told him my address and said she was the girl living there, not the lady. I also told him to deliver the note under cover of night in case FBI snipers were watching the house.
Then I took out the matchbook, lit a match and held it up to the wick. It caught fire real quick, maybe because of the extra gasoline in my backpack, so I sort of panicked and threw the bottle just ten feet or so up onto a trash bag. It landed with a thump and didn’t break. I watched the flame peter out, hoping something in the trash pile would catch fire, but nothing did.
Demarcus said I should aim for a big blue metal thing that looked like the fender of a van. It was about thirty feet up, close enough to hit but far enough to be hard to aim at. I accepted the challenge. I took out the second Molotov cocktail, lit it, grabbed it by the bottleneck, as described on the internet, and flung it with force at the fender. But I flung it with so much force that the wind put out the wick and by the time the bottle smashed against the fender, the fire was long gone.
“Fuck, man,” I said.
“Maybe throw it softer,” Demarcus said.
“How can I throw it softer? I gotta hit the goddamn fender.”
“Wait for the rag to be more on fire, maybe. You threw it pretty quick after it was lit.”
Demarcus had a point. But I was nervous. This was my last Molotov cocktail, and I had to make it count. The lucky thing was some gasoline was already on the trash from the second Molotov cocktail, so if I could hit the fender again then the fire might be doubly intense. So I took a few deep breaths and shook out my hand, then I lit the final Molotov cocktail and waited. The waiting was eerie, watching the fire slowly devour the wick. Demarcus was watching too, his eyes glistening with tiny reflected flames. When the fire met the bottle I flung it with not quite as much speed but a higher arc, and Demarcus and I watched for what felt like minutes as the flaming bottle traced a trajectory high in the air. At first I thought I had missed, because the bottle went so high, but sure enough it began to sink, and then, suddenly, it shattered against the fender and bright orange flame spread like spilled juice splashing across the floor. We kept watching, stunned, then something else caught fire beneath the fender and rumbled so loud I could feel it in my chest. A tiny fireball shot up and showered sparks. We ran.
The next part is fuzzy. I remember watching Demarcus basically dive under the fence and scoot through on his belly. I followed him, but by the time I got through he was shrinking in the distance, running for home. I looked over my shoulder and saw smoke. I ran along the fence, stumbling over clods of dirt and falling at least once, scuffing the palms of my hands. When I got to the road to Komer I was still running. It was dark and I was running down the sidewalk, not even thinking about perverted hobos or what my parents would say, just desperate to get home. Once or twice I looked over the fence and saw what looked like a plume of smoke in the purplish night sky.
When I got home I fumbled with the doorknob for what felt like an age, then I ran through the empty house to Ruthanne’s bedroom. She was there, thank God, reading her paperback. She looked up at me, startled. I told her to look out her window.
“Ben,” she said, “are you okay?”
I went over to the window and pulled back the drapes. “See?” I said, but there was nothing to see. There weren’t any flames in the distance. Not even smoke. Just the lumbering dark shape of Trash Mountain. Near the top, a big floppy mattress glittered in the moonlight. Its stuffing was coming out in balls, and for days the puffy white balls had been rolling in slow-motion down the raggedy slope. If only I had caught that stuffing on fire, I thought, but the thought rang hollow. To destroy Trash Mountain would take more than a couple Molotov cocktails, I knew. Much more.
TURNS OUT GARBAGE piles combust from their own heat pretty much all the time, so the night watchman, who sat in this little tower you could see from the road, didn’t even call the fire department that night. He just drove out to Trash Mountain in his golf cart, sprayed the side of it with a hose, then turned around and finished his shift. I learned all this from Demarcus a few months later. He did a school report on the dump and interviewed the night watchman, among others, on what was most exciting about working there. Demarcus said the night watchman was a creep. When Demarcus asked him what was most exciting, the night watchman pointed at a pile of porno magazines and winked.
I decided I needed a blowtorch. The best was the Red Dragon 400,000 BTU Backpack Torch Kit with Squeeze Valve. It cost $284.95 online but came empty, so I’d have to pay to fill it with propane. I needed $300 to be safe.
I asked Ruthanne what kind of job I could get that would pay $300. Ruthanne said most places wouldn’t hire you until you were sixteen, but I was only almost fourteen. Ruthanne said she knew from experience.
“What kind of job did you try for?” I asked.
“Waiting tables,” she said.
“But you couldn’t lift the trays.”
“Could too. It’s not like I’m crippled.”
“Well you don’t lift nothing around here.”
“Around here I choose not to. It’s nonviolent protest. What do you want a job for anyway? You don’t even like girls.”
“Do too.”
“Well you don’t take ’em out on dates, and that’s what costs money.”
“It’s not like you go on dates, so why the hell do you want a job?”
“Not to blow up a trash pile, that’s for sure.”
“Fuck you,” I said, and went to my room. Ruthanne followed me, so I picked up The Highest Mountain by Bob Bilger, the only book in the room, and pretended to read it.
Ruthanne flopped down on my bed. “Whatcha reading?” she asked, even though she knew what I was reading. Every kid in Komer had to read The Highest Mountain, since Bob Bilger talked at school every year. Most kids thought he was boring but I thought he was okay. He had a big white beard and wore western jackets. He cursed on stage.
I tried to ignore her but Ruthanne persisted. “Which part are you on?” she asked, resting her chin on her fist. “The part where he videos the mountain, or the other part where he videos the mountain? Or, wait, the part where he pays some Sherpas to video the mountain?”
I shut the book and left the house, feeling like a fly whose sister was picking off its wings. The problem was Ruthanne was bored. Even though she was the most talkative person in the family, besides Dad, she was shy around other kids. She didn’t play sports because of her back, which wasn’t her fault, but she didn’t do band or yearbook or anything else either. After school she just slinked home, finished her homework in about fifteen minutes, then read one of her sleazy books or watched TV with Mom. She tormented Mom too. For instance, she might say, “Hey, Mom, Price is Right is on. Want me to turn it up full volume?” Mom would say sure, not really listening, and Ruthanne would do it. The TV would be rattling but Ruthanne would just be sitting there, watching, smiling kind of crazy, and when the host announced a new car or whatever, Ruthanne would announce it too, real loud, and do a crazy made-up song about the car until Mom told her to shut up so she could hear Price is Right.
Sometimes I thought if Ruthanne and I were combined into a sort of hybrid kid (not a hermaphrodite, though) we would be the most successful person ever to come out of Komer/Haislip, bigger than Bob Bilger