21

The Making of a Hero

The fireman carried me out into the parking lot, where four trucks sprayed ares of water on the shell of the field house and into the side of the auditorium. He put me on the grass beside one of the trucks, and I crawled half-upright. Mr. Fitz-Hallan was being led out of the parking-lot exit, hauling Tom behind him. Both of them looked like mad scientists in a comic book, their faces smeared with black, their clothing smoking. Behind them came a line of firemen carrying the last of the boys: not twenty any longer, only five or six. One red-faced fireman staggered beneath Mr. Whipple.

An ambulance squealed down the rise into the lot and pulled up short by the side door. The attendants jumped out and opened the rear doors to pull out stretchers. I managed to stand up. Morris, Sherman, Bobby Hollingsworth, and the others were bunched together on the grass below the parking lot, watching the arcs of water disappear into the field house. I could see lines of red on Morris' face - someone had hit him with something and cut his scalp. He looked gallant and unperturbed with blood all over his face, and the shock hit me and I started to cry.

'It's okay,' Tom said. Once again he was miraculously beside me. 'I just looked around, and I think everybody's okay. Did you see Skeleton Ridpath?'

I wiped my eyes. 'I don't think he's here.'

'Well, I think he is,' Tom said. He turned away and went toward the teachers, who were in a group at the back of the parking lot, clustered around Mr. Broome. The headmaster looked as though he had been in the auditorium longer than anyone - his face was nearly black. Ashy smudges blotted his seersucker jacket. He looked straight through Tom and continued to harangue Mr. Thorpe. His Doberman lay beside him, exhausted and also matted with ash. The dog reeked of smoke and burning wood and twisting metal - I caught it from where I stood - and I realized that I probably did too. You can't tell me a boy wasn't smoking,' Mr. Broome was saying. 'It started in one of the turrets. I saw it clearly. What else have we been warning these boys about day after day?' He wobbled a bit, and Mr. Thorpe grabbed his elbow to keep him upright. 'I want a list of every boy in the auditorium. That way we'll find our guilty man. Get a list, tick them off - '

'Mr. Broome,' Tom said.

One fireman rushed by, then another.

'Men are working here,' Mr. Broome said. 'Stay out of their way.'

'Was Steve Ridpath in school this morning?' Tom asked.

'Sent him home.'

'He's at home,' Mr. Ridpath coughed out. 'He took the car. Thank God.'

'Were you going to kick Del out of school?' Tom asked.

'Don't be an ass,' Broome said. 'We have work to do. Now, leave us alone.'

A big man in a suit like a policeman's came across the gravel and stood beside Tom and me. A badge on his shoulder read Chief. 'Who is the principal here?' he asked.

Mr. Broome stiffened. 'I am the headmaster.'

'Can I see you for a second?'

'Any assistance,' Mr. Broome said, and followed the chief out into the center of the lot.

'Where's Del?' Tom asked. 'Did you see Del?'

'A deceased?' Broome said loudly, as if he had never heard the word.

The two firemen who had rushed past us earlier were coming out of the side door carrying a body on a stretcher.

'The label in his jacket says Flanagan,' the fire chief said.

'Flanagan is not deceased,' Mr. Broome said airily. 'Flanagan is very much with us. I helped him out of the auditorium myself.'

'Oh, no,' Tom said, but not in contradiction to the headmaster's lie. Mr. Fitz-Hallan and Mrs. Olinger, closely followed by Mr. Thorpe, were already at the ambulance door. Four boys who had passed out in the smoke groaned from bunk-bed-like stretchers in the white metal interior. I heard a crash as the last of the field house collapsed. The boys watching yelled as they would at fireworks. Mr. Fitz-Hallan leaned over and gently lifted the top of the blanket. I could not hear the two or three soft words he uttered.

'Let these men get on with their work, Flanagan,' Mr. Broome shouted.

As they lifted the covered body into the ambulance, the slide rule in its charred leather holster slipped over the edge of the cot and bounced against the white steel.

Which is the last of the three images that stay with me from the first year at Carson - a composite image, really. Dave Brick's slide rule banging against the bottom of the ambulance doors, the boys cheering at the last gasp of the field house, Mr. Broome yelling impatiently: that was what all the ironic civility had come down to. A dead boy, a few shouts, a madman's yell.

Tom and I found Del sitting on the lawn at the front of the school. He was guarding the magic equipment, the bass, and Phil Hanna's drums, all of which he had managed to get out while Tom had been saving lives. He had watched the arrival of the fire trucks and the ambulance, but had not come down into the lot himself because he had been afraid that someone might steal Brown's bass. 'It seemed awfully important to him,' he said. 'And anyhow, I could hear everybody coughing and yelling, so I knew they were all right.' He looked at Tom's face, then mine. 'They are all right, aren't they?'

Tom sat down beside him.