Dark Heaven
thomas wells
“Are you the guardian of this boy?” Officer Pritchett was holding a pad and pen. Stacey nodded.
“His name is Keith Shamburg. Is that correct?”
She shook her head no.
“Keith Schaumburg,” she said.
“Your name please?”
She cleared her throat.
“Schaumburg. Same as his. The first name is Stacey.” Pritchett asked her to spell the last name. It was a proud name Nitro left to the family, Keith thought. Why was it so easily butchered, he wondered.
Dusk painted his mother in shadows that autumn evening as Keith studied her faint outline on the old cracked concrete porch. She was standing with her arms folded across her chest looking off at the first stars.
The fifteen year old brushed long brown hair back from his eyes and looked at Officer Pritchett standing next to him in the thick moist grass. He heard a squirrel dart through dry leaves in the iris bed near the squad car. The car radio buzzed and squawked from inside.Œ
“Ma’am, your son was apprehended this evening building a fire over in the vacant field next to the residence of Mr. Robert Fleischer.”
Keith smelled the smoke in his shirt. He remembered the angry old man shouting at him across the field from behind the high fence. He was like a rabid attack dog. He opened a gate and raced across the field screaming and shaking his fists.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that.”
His mother’s voice seemed far away as she continued to look at the sky.
“Mrs. Schaumburg, your son has been observed starting fires on three occasions this month. It poses a serious hazard to all the homes nearby. The airborne sparks...”
Keith remembered Nitro from a long time ago. There were his bright eyes and his face aglow with laughter.
“... If he gets caught doing this again, your son will be taken into custody. He will be referred to juvenile authorities and may have to spend time in detention.” The Officer looked over at the boy.
“Is that clear?”
Keith nodded and looked at the ground, kicking at the grass nervously.
Officer Pritchett finally finished making notes on the pad and went to his car. The boy watched intently as the car rolled in reverse down the long gravel drive. The tires crunched over the gravel, static radio voices squawked across the yard and the car pulled away.
Keith turned to face his mother. She was silent for a long while and would not look at him. Her face was grainy and filled with tired middle aged creases. “You better go to your room son.”
He wished she were furious with him. He wondered what her wrath would feel like. He knew she had her mind on other things. She was always sad about something, he thought. It was something deep, something she would not say. She just never talked to him.
Keith dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He sighed and swung his foot across the grass like a sickle. Finally he jogged up the steps and onto the porch. Quickly, he darted past her and whipped open the screen door. The house was as dark as a cave. Groping in the hallway, he could see the door to his mother’s room was slightly ajar. He pushed it open and looked in.
A high intensity lamp hovered brightly over a stack of 3 pillows against the headboard on the bed. Keith noted the open Bible laying face down on the bed near the pillows. Then he looked across the room at the string of three framed family photos lining the top of the dresser. He was familiar with them. On the left was a picture of Nitro in his twenties. He looked down at the camera from a stage. He held an electric guitar with one hand in the strum position and the other high up on the neck. His fingers were curled over the strings. His shoulder length dark brown hair was thick. It was parted at the middle, and his bushy mustache covered his upper lip.
Written across the photo in ink was his stage name.
Keith thought it was a radical stage name and he liked the way his dad’s eyes burned brightly. The photo was taken back in ‘68 at a club in St. Louis with the rock band Electric Winter. Nitro must have played a mean lead guitar, he thought. He had so much energy to work construction during the day and explode on stage every night.
Next to the photo of Nitro were pictures of his two brothers. The one of his older brother Joseph was a school picture taken a few years ago for the senior year book. The other showed Randy - his younger brother standing bare chested and waist deep in a swimming pool.
Keith felt a vague weariness and he sighed deeply. It was like being lost in the woods for days. The smokey smell of his shirt filled his nostrils. It was good to have the memory of fire stick to him, he thought. Standing at the edge of the bed, he snatched up the Bible. He didn’t know why, but he started leafing frenetically through the pages. Keith flipped back to the first page of the Bible. The title read:
The first book of Moses, called Genesis.
It was in large bold type centered at the top of the page. He never read the Bible and couldn’t imagine why it would interest anyone. He thought of boring sermons and dull church hymns like those he’d been forced to sit through at First Christian.
His eyes wandered down the page until they were caught by a curious line.
The boy looked over at the high intensity lamp. Could any of this really be true, he wondered. It was just words, he decided. He snapped the book closed and tossed it on the bed.
In his own bedroom, he switched the light on and remembered the cat’s-eye. It should still be in his desk drawer. At the desk he jerked open the center drawer. There was the large blue marble knocking around between the papers and junk. It popped loudly like a pinball against the hollow wooden sides.
He caught it and held it up, his face conveying reverence. It was a sparkling sphere of translucent agate about the size of a shooter.
The cat’s-eye glistened as he held it up to the light. In its center there ran a ripple of green that shimmered as he turned it. The ripple allowed him to view objects in the room in refracted light.
Keith would never forget that evening of his sixth birthday. It was the dream night he spent with Nitro at the carnival. Nitro gave him the cat’s-eye that night, and told him it would keep them together forever. The boy must never lose it. One day it could make him safe.
On the day he learned of Nitro’s death he held the cat’s- eye tightly. Keith was only seven then, and he remembered the feeling that Nitro was still there. “Why did he have to die?”
Keith often blurted things out when he was in his room.
They said it was from a cocaine overdose, he recalled.
The doctors determined that it was a heart attack brought on by the drugs. It even made the papers. The article mentioned that he once played guitar with Jim Morrison and Jerry Garcia.
It changed Mother too, he thought. She cried a lot and stopped talking to him. Keith wondered if maybe he had driven Nitro to use cocaine. Maybe that’s what killed him. Maybe she knew it.
He stepped over near his bed and threw himself on it. His body bounced on the soft mattress. Sitting up, he studied the cat’s-eye in his palm. Then he closed his eyes. He wished he knew more about him. He wanted to talk to him again, to tell him he was sorry for everything. Nitro would listen. Maybe they could be partners again!
Rocket powered Nitro danced and soared. He leaped and screamed under the hot lights across the stage. Keith was small again and the Nitro man carried him on his shoulders. Nitro sang and told him a story and Keith knew he was safe.
There were the Nitro hands covered with black grease when he tore apart his motorcycle in the garage. They wrapped around him, holding him close. Keith could feel their memory on his ribs, firm and warm.
There they were together in the carnival night riding the bumper cars. Nitro laughed like a dog’s howl as the car slammed head on spinning to slam again in another direction. Keith’s hard laugh got trapped in his throat like a big stone.
Nitro’s face glowed in the light and faded in the shadow on the Ferris Wheel. Keith heard carousel music blare and tasted the buttered popcorn.
They were partners riding inside the roar of the roller coaster, driving free and savage through the black sky. They merged with the bursting, with the trajectory of the fireworks. They were rising, then descending and brushing the face of the sky. They were holding each other so close and knowing they were together forever.
Keith opened his eyes and looked around his room as though he were surprised that he was still in the same place. The cat’s-eye was still in his palm. It felt warm and moist with his sweat. He slipped it into the pocket of his jeans.
At Stevens High School the lunch bell echoed through the halls the next day. Keith’s stomach growled as he waited in the long line extending from the cafeteria out into the hallway.
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet to count his cash. He spotted the small pack of matches which he always kept there. He removed the pack, wedging it between his lips. Then he leafed briskly through the bills. There were 5 singles. He was in good shape to cover lunch including snacks for most of the rest of the week, he thought.
Keith looked up the line through the doorway to the cafeteria. He noticed Dawn Kateman slip out of line some distance ahead. He inserted the matches back in his wallet. She was instructing another girl to save her spot in line.
Suddenly she was looking directly at Keith. She was taking steps in his direction! He stopped breathing. Dawn’s bleach blond hair and clear blue eyes shined so brightly. Keith had a secret fantasy about kissing her on the lips. What could she want, he wondered in terror. He quickly shifted his eyes to the floor.
Keith had never even said hello to her before. How could he speak to such a girl? She was a goddess from another world and he’d seen her talking to older guys, guys who were seniors.
Then she was practically in front of him. Beautiful Dawn was standing near enough to touch him. Sweat broke out on his palms as he waited for her to speak. She said hello but Keith was unable to reply.
“Say, isn’t your name Keith Schaumburg?”
He was stunned. She even knew his name. Finally he realized it was his turn to speak.
“Yes ma’am...I mean... that’s me.”
His words were so stupid, he thought. He knew he’d blown it. He was cellophane to her eyes.
“I’ve noticed how you watch me in study hall,” Dawn continued.
“Oh that. Oh don’t worry about that. It don’t mean nothin’. I mean...it’s not like I’m a pervert.”
He should never have used pervert, he thought. He wished he could start over.
“Maybe you should try asking me out sometime.”
Dawn grinned broadly, tilting her head and watching his eyes from an angle. Her words spilled from her lips so easily, he thought. They seemed to penetrate his chest. His heart pounded heavily.
Had he really heard her right? Keith had never dated anyone before. He wondered what happened on dates. He felt incapable of shaping words with his mouth. It was like getting a shot of novocaine in his face. Only it was more scarey than that.
“Y-Y-Ya, Ya sure. It’s in the works. I-I mean I’ll do it. I’ll try it, I mean I’ll give it a try.”
Dawn laughed at him. She knew he was a moron, he thought.
“Say Keith, I’m really busted. Can you like..., loan me a few?”
The boy wasn’t paying attention to her sudden shift in conversation. He was getting dizzy.
“I’m really starvin’ and I need to buy some cigarettes for the week. I’ll pay you back. I promise!”
Her eyes turned baby round.
Keith quickly reached for his wallet and opened it in front of her. Dawn peered in. He pulled out the pack of matches as he plucked several bills from his wallet.
“Do you smoke?” she said.
Keith realized she was looking at the matches. He blushed as he stuck them back in the wallet.
“Sometimes. Not that often. Here, how about three dollars. Is three enough?”
He held out the money. “Well, Keith sweetie, can I get a couple more?”
“Oh well, sure. I guess so. I wasn’t hungry anyway. Here’s two more dollars. That’s all I have, sorry. I-I wish it could be more.”
Keith probed her face to see if she was mad.
“Thanks. This will really help. I’ll pay you back for sure. I promise!”
Dawn clasped the money and turned around swiftly. She raced back to the spot up the line which was still being saved by her girl friend.
Keith watched her intently savoring everything about the moment. This truly beautiful girl was interested in him! He wondered what it meant. He knew now that she was able to look past his stupid garbled speech. He knew now that he was in love with Dawn. He would skip a million lunches for that.
At the final bell, Keith sped down the front steps of the school and onto the street. His mind drifted back to Dawn and all the wonderful ways she had of looking at him. His growling stomach reminded him of candy bars at the Quick Stop.
Reaching into both pockets for change, his left hand fingered the cat’s-eye. A grin spread over his face. Nitro was always with him, he thought. Digging deeper he felt a load of change in each pocket.
The boy saw a big crowd through the windows of the Quick Stop. A line of customers stood waiting at the front counter while others milled up and down the aisles.
An animated cashier struck keys on a cash register at top speed. Keith noticed cars whip in and out of parking spaces as he entered the store. It was almost like a fast forward video, he thought.
He drifted down a long aisle of snacks grabbing a bag of Doritos, a Hersheys and two Snickers. Fingering his coins again, he realized he’d have to give up something to get a Coke. He returned the bag of Doritos and approached the cooler at the back of the store.
Through the glass doors he could see the Cokes in the far corner. Grabbing one he turned quickly, allowing the cooler door to swing shut.
Keith suddenly froze in his tracks. There was Dawn Kateman! She entered the store accompanied by a tall blond athletic looking guy. He had never seen the boy before.
Dawn laughed, talking rapidly to the blond boy. Keith could not make out their words. Her view of him was obstructed by a row of soda and coffee machines. But Keith trained his eyes on her.
Dawn wrapped her arm around the tall boy tenderly, and rested her head against his shoulder. The couple promenaded toward a shelf devoted to medications. A yellow display rack hung on pegboard offered a selection of condoms in little packets.
They studied each other’s eyes and talked as they stood before the rack. Then she reached over and extracted several blue packets. At the counter, Dawn pulled cash from her purse as the cashier bagged the condoms. She and the boy quickly left the store and drove off in his truck. Keith was numb.
The Coke slid from his fingers. He tried to recover it, but was too late. The bottle hit the hard linoleum and fractured into several jagged pieces. Black froth swelled and fizzed at his feet in a spreading puddle.
Everyone in the store was looking at him now. Everything was spread before him now. Everything was broken and swollen.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.”
The cashier shrugged his shoulders and waved his hands at Keith. Several customers chuckled as they watched. He looked around at the faces. They were somehow dull and sickly. Examining the candy in his hands, he thought he might throw- up.
Abruptly the boy leaped across the puddle and started to run through the store.
“What are you doing? There’s no running here,” the cashier yelled.
Keith tossed the candy bars onto a shelf as he darted down the aisle and out the door.
It was already dark as he found himself at the end of the path entering the clearing. It was all quite familiar as he drew close to the mound.
He felt his shoe kick a loose rock. Debris was everywhere. Keith looked down to see that he was standing on top of the mound in soft powdery cinders. He had expected to see some old singed logs. Someone must have cleared them away, he surmised.
He was certain someone was watching him. Maybe they could read his mind. His thoughts raced in a blur and his heart pounded.
In the distance Keith observed the silhouette of a gate and a fence against the illuminated windows of Old Man Fleischer’s house. He looked back in the opposite direction across the weeds. He retraced the distance through the trees to the street where he entered the field.
Far away a single dim street lamp shed light over a hydrant and a vacant street. He took no comfort in the quiet.
Tears started to well in his eyes. Dawn was only part of it. He buried his face in his palms. There was just no belonging or attaching to things, he thought. Wiping his eyes, Keith remembered why he had come. He scurried and stumbled through the weeds gathering up sticks and broken boards in his arms. Loading up with as many as he could manage, he rushed back to the mound and dropped them to his feet.
The boy dragged long dead tree limbs across the field to the clearing. There, he broke them into small pieces and dumped them on the mound. As he collected thick bunches of leaves and brittle dead weeds, he felt the burrs on his arms.
The lopsided pile of kindling grew in size as he raced to complete the job. Sticks, boards and logs crisscrossed in generous layers of leaves. It looked like a compost pile reaching the height of his chest. Keith was sweaty and winded, but still not sure he had enough kindling. He wondered if Fleischer could see him. Reaching into his back pocket, Keith removed the pack of matches from the otherwise empty wallet. He returned the wallet to the pocket and hesitated. He listened as wind rustled the dry leaves. Loose leaves were lifted from the kindling pile, and he shivered feeling the cool breeze in his sweaty face.
Placing his hand over his pounding heart, he sensed that something propelled him. There was a secret being revealed to him. It was as though he belonged to it. Keith opened the pack of matches and plucked a match from inside. Something was pushing him. It made him race. He struck the match repeatedly against the coarse strip on the back of the pack. It flared suddenly between his fingers and was quickly snuffed out by the breeze.
Kneeling near the lopsided kindling pile, he struck another match. This time he cupped the flare in his hand until it stabilized. Then he held the flame next to the loose leaves and twigs along the bottom of the kindling pile. The flame spread instantly. The bright flickering dance leached hungrily from the brittle dry kindling. Keith circled the pile repeating the procedure as he moved. Fingers of blaze wriggled over the pile leaping and taking over. He heard the flood of crunching sticks accelerate to a roar. In seconds the entire pile was consumed by the brilliant fire. The feasting blaze released schools of sparks carried on the breeze like tiny stars.
He was being moved by something. It was so powerful. Then he remembered the cat’s-eye! Extracting it like a pearl, he clutched it tightly.
Nitro was here in the fire, he thought. The flames rose rapidly and Keith felt the smoke burn in his eyes as the wind shifted suddenly.
In the dense choke of smoke he coughed hard as his eyes gushed. Yet somehow he knew Nitro was here touching him on his head and in his chest.
Still coughing as the smoke cleared, Keith looked up in astonishment at the brilliant dance of blaze reaching high above his head. This surge of fire was beyond anything he had conceived. It was a perfect force of flaring claws swirling high into the sky.
The boy held the cat’s-eye aloft at the ends of his fingers. He studied the refracted curls of intense light through the smooth globe, sensing a secret. He held the marble to his eye and looked high up at the tips of flame clawing at the darkness.
A mighty apparition of a man appeared, his long hair blowing and spangled by fireworks against a carnival night. It was Nitro just as he was, just as Keith remembered him on his sixth birthday.
Nitro smiled and Keith was gripped by the joy, by all the glittering dots of light. He remembered reading the line in the Bible. It was something to do with God putting lights in heaven. This was supposed to divide day from night. If this was a heaven with lights, it was not a day heaven, he thought. Nitro lived here above the fire in a dark heaven.
Across the field Old Man Fleischer was standing outside his house behind the fence. He witnessed the tower of wild lapping flames carelessly shooting sparks over the trees. Keith could hear his shouts but could not make out his words under the rapid crackle of blaze.
The boy kept his focus on the cat’s-eye as he began to hear the sound of carousel music. The image of Nitro became brighter and the music got louder. Nitro was holding the hand rail on a roller coaster. His face passed through shadow and light as it glided up, then descended at rocket speed. Keith felt like he was dropping as he smelled buttered popcorn.
From the direction of the street, he could faintly hear sirens. Their scream grew louder and Keith turned to look. Finally he noticed the swirling red lights of a police car followed by a fire truck. Both vehicles pulled up into the field. Three firemen leaped from the truck and began unraveling a long fire hose. They raced as they yelled to each other. A fireman worked to attach the hose to the hydrant.
Officer Pritchett got out of the police car holding the radio mike to his mouth. He spoke into the mike, then reached to place it back in the car. He turned and started running toward the fire as he watched with a look of amazement. Flames were shooting nearly 25 feet into the sky, and sparks were flying in all directions.
Pritchett ran at full stride shouting at the top of his lungs. He stumbled through the dark field and suddenly tumbled forward in the weeds. His cap fell from his head, but he did not stop to retrieve it. Instead, he quickly got up and continued running toward the fire.
Old Man Fleischer entered the field on the other side, through the gate, from his yard. He ran toward the fire leaping across the weeds and through the trees.
Keith looked through the cat’s-eye again watching Nitro and listening to the music flood his ears. He knew Nitro could see him.
He believed in the sparkle of the fireworks, in the way Nitro held him that birthday night. He knew he would be safe. Nitro reached down through the flames and touched him. Keith felt the hands wrap around his ribs. Nitro could lift him now and they would soar...!
The billowing fire unfurled like the end of a huge torch casting hundreds of sparks. Two firemen scrambled to string the thick hose across the field while the third was positioned near the hydrant.
Pritchett and Fleischer converged on the clearing almost at the same moment. They circled the roaring fire several times and Pritchett removed the flashlight from his belt.
Both men were badly winded. Officer Pritchett switched on his flashlight and swung the long beam through the weeds around the clearing.
The two firemen had successfully dragged the fire hose into the clearing and were pointing the nozzle at the fire.
As a powerful blast of water showered the flames, Prichett turned to Old Man Fleischer. “Did you just see someone standing here a moment ago?” he asked with a deeply troubled look.
“Sure I seen him. It was that Schaumburg kid who’s always comin’around and makin’ fires,” Fleischer answered.
“Did you see him run anywhere?”
“No. He didn’t run. He was just standin’ here next to the fire, that’s all. He didn’t run nowhere.”
Thick smoke issued from the hissing mound as the firemen extinguished the few remaining flames. Pritchett looked away knitting his brows. He ran his fingers through his hair and fell silent. Slowly he wagged the flashlight beam over the field.
The sun was bright the next morning as Officer Pritchett stood over the mound poking the wet ashes with a long stick. He dragged the stick slowly, cutting a groove through the gray mucky ash. He looked unsure of himself. Then the stick tapped something hard in the ash.
Pritchett spotted the object caked in ash. He reached down and wiped it off. The bright blue marble shimmered when he held up to the light.
