ERIC ON FIRE

Eric was alone.  That was normal, he always felt alone, alone, and vulnerable.  This time he was lying on his bed, looking at the ceiling in the falling light. Clean, groomed, and freshly shampoo’d.

(“Shampoo” he thought,”What a silly name for hair-wash stuff.”  He said it out loud “Sham poo, pretend poo”. Somebody had told him that the soldiers had brought that stuff back from India after the war, as well as ‘pyjamas’.  He didn’t think they had wars in India because that was where the peace religions came from, didn’t they?  “Anyway”, he thought “that explains everything” – but he didn’t quite know what he meant by that either.)

His room was even more tidy than usual.  Everything was in its right place, and he knew where the right place for everything was.  If it wasn’t in its right place it would be in the wrong place, and then it would be lost.  “Lost” would be out of his control, 'and that’s where the fear kicks in'.

Washed in the shower, scrubbed clean like new, his ‘good’ shoes hung from the brass window strut, almost dry.

Hours of thinking, planning ahead – got to have clean undies, best T-shirt, fresh off the ‘line, almost no wrinkles. His treasured collection of old war comics carefully packed into a carton, tied with a bit of twine, and named with his best printing:   ERICS.

He’d even remembered to cut and scrub his finger nails, and had a bunch of fresh mint from behind the shed – ready to rub over his hands.  Petrol is good for cleaning grease, but it stinks later, and somebody said that it can go right into your skin and make cancer.

The tractor shed was locked – the boss locked it after feeding the dogs each night.  Townie kids, hoons, had come out and stolen fuel, and used it to do flame-outs down at the old concrete road-bridge.  He and the boss had seen the burn-out marks when they took the heifers to the grazing block across the river.  Even the stock were upset by that stink.

He didn’t have his own key, hadn’t worked here long enough.  Not that this boss was ever likely to let him have one, he didn’t seem to trust Eric to do anything, and didn’t seem to like him either.

He picked on Eric, and made him look stupid when they were at the sales with other farmers, and even at home in front of his wife and son. He kept on telling everybody how dumb and stupid Eric was, and that if he had one more brain it would be lonely!  Eric just smiled when everybody laughed, because he didn’t get the joke.

It had been bad right from the beginning.  Although the boss had known that Eric hated school and was a bit of a ‘behaviour problem’ (well, he had to do something while at school, so he used to have fun, didn’t he – and that always meant that he was in trouble), when he found out that Eric couldn’t read or write he called Eric a “dumb dyslexic”, and made Eric learn how to write his own name, in capital letters.  It worked, but Eric hated him for it ‘cause it was so hard, and anyway he didn’t even know what that dumb dik, diks, however you say it word meant. What he did like was that this was a place to live, they fed him, and he had something to do – which was way better than living in the Children’s Home.

It had been a bit bad before, but it all got worse that day when he got things wrong.  The boss’s ‘very sophisticated’ wife and her spoilt kid were getting ready to take the ute and his motor-cross bike to the ‘Nationals’, and the boss had told Eric to fuel the ute up. He did, then put it away, ready for them the next morning. Somehow, when the ute broke down the next day, in the middle of no-where, they all blamed Eric.  Spoilt son never got to the Nationals, said that there was petrol in the diesel, and the boss wouldn’t even let him drive the ute any more.

The bit about the hay paddock didn’t help either. Again they all said it was his fault, but like with the ute, all he did was what the boss had told him.  “Get on the quad. Go up the race past the barn. Don’t open the gate by the cattle-stop, open the next one”. That was all cool, but when the boss brought the cows down for milking the next morning shit, fur and blood were flying. “The fricken cows were in the hay paddock all night! Fifteen acres of standing hay gone! I told you ‘don’t open the gate by the cattle-stop’ and whadda ya do, you put all the flaming cows into the crop!”

So now even the quad was out of bounds, and like the dog, he had to walk everywhere.

If he had parents he would get them to come and get him, but he didn’t even have that.  He knew there had to be a dad out there somewhere, probably big and strong with tats and a Harley, who could deal with this boss, but the social worker had said that mum never let on who it was.  But she was gone now too.  She was in the wrong place at the wrong time after a party when he was just two.  Except for some leery photos he hardly even knew what she’d looked like.

In the dark he’d seen the car-lights as the boss, spoilt brat kid and poncy wife came home from school prize-giving.  “Praise-giving” they called it. The boss had been on and on about taking the trailor to bring home all the trophies  “Winner of this”, “Best at that”, “Highest achievement in recorded history”, “Most goals scored ever”, “Most promising student”, “Mr Popular 2012”.  Eric reckoned the trailor was really needed to carry their big heads and bloated egos.

She was so proud of her ‘little prince’, and made a real point of letting Eric know that they were a family of social standing, of ‘class’. He understood her message, sort of, but didn’t know what she meant when she talked about being so ‘sophisticated’. In the end he found a dictionary in the town library, and asked the librarian to look it up.  She said there were lots of meanings, but he liked the one that said “An elaborate sham, to make false by worldly means”. After that he always agreed with the boss’s wife, and told her that she really was, very sophisticated.

It was now late and the lights in the main house finally went out. He intended to lie there and wait, even sleep a bit before going out, but his body, as if it had a mind of its own, wouldn’t wait.

He had imagined, after all his planning and rehearsing, that he would be calm, cool, collected, like some angry dude on the TV, but a pulsing nervous excitement ran through him like a flooded river.

Moving more quickly than he intended he crept across the back porch, down past the washing line, to the outhouse, the “long-drop of your very own – not even the dog would go there to dump” as the boss had told him on his first day.  That suited Eric just fine, and gave him a secret hiding place, a place where no one else would ever look.  He kept his dirty magazines there, and the orange twenty litre fuel can was safely stashed there too, hidden under the box-lid, undiscovered for over a month.

He could hear the boy racers – the ones the boss had blamed for stealing the can – doing their drags out on the main road.  Later they would be down at the bridge doing flame-outs, and maybe even torching a car. He reckoned they would get the blame for everything tonight – that’s why he chose Saturday.

Holding his breath he lifted the lid and pulled the full can from beside the stinking hole. It was heavy, needing both hands, and he forgot to catch the lid before it crashed back down on his toe - braced against the edge of the box. It made no sound, but his toe screamed in sharp agony.

Bumping the heavy container against his legs he made his way to the back of his cottage, hid the fuel under an old sack and moved inside. His pulse and his pain made listening impossible, but no lights came on in the main house to show that he had been heard. He didn’t feel scared or nervous, he didn’t really feel anything, but his pulse stayed at peak revs.

The grass, long and slippery from the wet weather, allowed him to half carry, half drag the can over to, then around the bosses house.  With the cap off, slurping fuel into the grass he managed the task easily, and as far as he could tell, quietly, eventually leaving a trail of fuel right around the house where the sleeping family lay.

In his planning he knew it would be stupid to use his own lighter, so he had a box of matches, ready, in one of his pockets, if, he  could  just  find  them. Fumbling in the dark, hands sticky with fuel and nervous sweat, he couldn’t push them far enough into his pocket to locate the matches. With his tension rising with his pulse racing Eric ran for the cottage.

‘Cigarette lighter, kitchen bench’ – he could see it clearly in his mind’s eye.  ‘No lights’ he warned himself, and ran his hands along the bench scattering knives, forks and spoons, his mess from last week.  He recognised the lighter as it shot from his grip, itself now slippery with sweat and fuel, off the edge of the bench.

At school he had been known for his lightening reactions. This time his reactions didn’t let him down as he instinctively knew where to intercept the lighter in mid-flight. The problem was rather in the hard edge of the stainless bench-top where it met the significantly softer edge of his rapidly descending right eyebrow.

Streaming blood, dazed, but locked into an action-plan Eric stumbled back out the door, the orange can indicating where the combustable fluid lay soaking in the grass.  Several attempts, thumb slipping before gripping, finally a flame.  He remembered the fuel on his clothes and relied on his lightning reactions to get away from the flames before he too became part of the planned outcome.

Bending quickly, arm and lighter extended to the fuel, he made the connection and leaped away with the agility of a startled cat.

His mind changed gear into an agonising slow-motion. He was aware of his body slowly uncoiling as he sprang up, away, to his left in the darkness. Eric saw the glow of the lighter falling, still burning, into the pool of fluid, then a blinding flash beginning from a tiny spark in the centre of his vision, exploding outwards to total white, then nothing. A semi-recognition of an impact, hard meeting hard.

              …………………………………………………………………………….

The ‘hoon’ had been dispatched to get more diesel. They had already used up what they had, and needed more for a worthwhile night. Town is too far away, so the local farmer’s shed would be worth a stealthy visit. Car quietly parked down the road, walk the last few hundred metres, one five litre jerry-can of diesel coming up.

The night was pitch-black so the nose led the way.  Yep, he could smell diesel, there would be a tank near the tractor shed.  A house on the right, another building off to the left in the darkness – and he froze.  Right beside him in the dark, a person, crouching, a spark, a small flame, then an eruption of action coming straight at him, a blinding light, a searing pain, and, nothing.

          ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Eric was aware that it was the boss’s voice.  It was laughing, it seemed happy, and that somehow was wrong, not as it should be. He heard it again, it was speaking, laughing, but there was nothing to see.  He tried to move and realised that he was restrained, flat on his back, but somehow comfortable.

“So you’re still alive are you, you master of the head-butte, you midnight hero”.  The voice faded as Eric’s brain closed down again.

              ……………………………………………………………………………………….

The story that Eric eventually heard (and he wasn’t into arguing) was that the boss had been woken by the familiar smell of diesel. Peering into the darkness from the kitchen window he had seen a figure, a spark, and then heard the horrible crack as two human cranium met with considerable impact. Under torchlight he discovered Eric, unconscious, lying across the similarly unconscious body of ‘the hoon’.

The hoon had woken shortly after the police arrived, but had no memory at all of what had happened, and no idea even where he was.  The evidence however spoke fairly clearly for itself, as he was well known from his previous interactions with the law, and he was thus duly removed.

Eric’s hospital stay “under observation” for three days was a total buzz, with the staff treating him according to his ‘hero’ status. The boss had asked for “no news reporters please”, and kept the whole affair at a very low profile.

In spite of what he knew about it all, a sense of legitimacy developed in Eric after that.  The boss and family treated him with grateful respect – they recognised that they owed their lives to his courage and action – and now included him as one of the family – an experience that he had never ever had, anywhere.

“How dumb” the boss would muse, “But I suppose there are a lot of townies who wouldn’t know that it is just about impossible to light diesel with a match.  Petrol is another thing, but diesel… lucky for us though.  What do you reckon eh Eric mate?”

Eric just grinned – he was no longer alone.  He just grinned.