Tampa Burn

TEN

Sitting in the Toyota, with the brat bound and gagged in the trunk, Prax told the driver that, as a teenager, he and his parents had been cruising the coast of Nicaragua when the boat they were on hit a reef and sank.

Only he had made it to shore.

Then Prax told him about the night the soldiers came to the village of his adopted Moskito Indian family and set their hut on fire.

His story had changed several times over the years, along with the lies he used to keep the story believable.

As Prax Lourdes talked, though, the truth came into his own mind’s eye: the sailboat he’d set ablaze, and the shrieks of his biological parents as he paddled away in a dinghy. Then, two years later, the windstorm woosh of his adopted Moskito father, clothes on fire, a human torch chasing him, catching him, as the man screamed, “You witch, you evil witch! You’re going to burn with us.”

To hear that arrogant man crackle was worth the pain that came later.

To set a human being on fire: what an incredible kick; what a sensation of power. To trigger an absolute and frantic loss of control in another man was to dominate him completely. A woman, the same thing, only somehow the feeling was more physical… sustained

… sweeter.

Fire did that. No method was as instantaneous, more intimate. In the first microseconds, fire stripped away all the crap, all the superiority games and social fakery. Flames unveiled the pathetic little monkey that lived at the core inside all people.

Even thinking about it, hearing his adopted father’s cries, Prax would feel again the flooding abdominal tension, and he could remember the very instant when he realized that awe-some feeling could be duplicated.

His adopted father caught him, but Prax awoke. He survived.

His adopted father didn’t.

Aware he might go to prison, Lourdes spent his waking moments perfecting the details of his alibi. In the burn unit of Managua’s peasant hospital, Hospital Escuela, speaking through bandages, he told student doctors a detailed story about soldiers attacking in the night.

Unconvinced, they sent a volunteer psychologist to interview him. She was a blond woman who tried to hide her breasts beneath baggy scrubs and vests. She reminded him of his biological mother, whom he’d despised.

Lourdes was so heavily drugged, and in such pain, that he had to concentrate with all his will to lie convincingly. That was nothing new-he was used to dealing with pain. He’d endured excruciating headaches for as long as he could remember. So he managed to keep his answers consistent when she asked her questions in different ways, trying to trick him.

Did he enjoy setting fires? Did he prefer to play alone? Had he ever wet his bed? Had he ever successfully masturbated to completion? Did he feel sorrow that his adopted mother, father, and three sisters had all died in the blaze? Had he ever intentionally burned himself, and taken pleasure from it?

One question, he just played dumb. X rays, the woman said, showed that he’d had a serious head injury years before as a child. Why had he lied to them when they’d ask if he’d had any head injuries?

He said he didn’t remember anything about it. Which was close to the truth.

One morning, the nurse brought a tall black woman. The black woman said to him in French, then in English, and, finally, in Spanish, “Why don’t you tell us your real name, my love? About your real parents. From your accent, and when you talk in your sleep, we know that you seem to be French, but that you know a lot of American English, too. Why won’t you talk to me?”

Actually, he and his family were French Canadian, though they barned in Florida when not sailing. As with many carnival and circus people, there was a small town in Florida, populated almost entirely by show people, that was their winter home.

The town was on the Gulf Coast, across the bay from Tampa. His family had a mobile home in a trailer park on a little river there, where he learned about boats and water. It was a weird little place, with midgets and clowns, elephants, chimps, and carney freaks for neighbors.

That’s why it spooked Prax to learn he’d been talking in his sleep.

Carnival society was a closed society. Had its own vocabulary, and dialect. After ten years working carnivals all across Canada, working his family’s sideshow acts, and the center joints and cook shacks, Prax knew that if a savvy person heard him speak English, they’d know right away who he was, the kind of work he’d done.

Not that carnies didn’t cover for one another. It was part of the deal. You never gave straight information to cops or strangers, and you didn’t give up a fellow carney, no matter what. That didn’t mean all or even some carnies were crooked. It’s just the way it was among people who were always among strangers, no matter where they were.

That was no guarantee the Mounties or the cops couldn’t nail him, though. So Lourdes kept his mouth shut. At night, he slept with a tongue depressor between his teeth.

The only time he came close to speaking openly was after the black woman had left and the nurse said to him, “I don’t understand why you won’t tell us. You shouldn’t be living in Nicaragua with Indians. We should send you home to be with your people.”

Prax replied, “I’ve spent nearly two years as a Suma. I like way the Suma deal with problems, their assholes, the ways of Yapti Tasba.”

It was true. He liked the freedom of the culture. Men were expected to spend long periods of time away from the village, wandering or lobster diving, while women stayed home and worked.

That kind of freedom, always moving, it had a carney feel.

He wasn’t surprised when the psychologist answered, “But your village doesn’t want you back. We’ve contacted them. We think they’re afraid of you. Why would they be afraid of a boy?”

Prax ignored her, replying, “Then I’ll find another village. I’m staying. This is home.”

Nicaragua was cool. The place had potential. He was smart enough to realize that. Even though he was only fifteen, Prax was shrewd from years of living on the road, conning money out of local marks.

Better preparation, though, was a lifetime of being different. A lifetime of having to give the appearance of being normal every waking minute because if he didn’t, he’d be busted, and that would be the end.

Prax knew he was different, had known it since earliest memory. Knew because of the withering headaches that came shooting up his spine a couple hours after sunset almost every night. Knew it because of the rage the pain created in him-a redness that flooded in behind his eyes with a pressure so great that he thought he’d burst.

Sometimes he did.

The first time was when he experimented with a cat that strayed onto the carnival grounds. Then he tried more cats, then dogs. Much later, he doused a sideshow chimp with kerosene.

His parents knew that he was different, too. But different was commonplace in their far-out world. His mother was a real freak, which she’d used in various sideshow bits. She had the size and strength of a linebacker, and Prax had inherited both. His father was a runt who, aside from sailing skills, was an idiot.

His parents never associated his strange behavior with his head injury.

Lourdes hated them.

It was mutual.

So Nicaragua was a good bet. The fact that the government’s military had secretly adopted a policy of racial genocide against his Moskito Indian tribe, Prax saw as a plus.

Like some sideshow fortune-teller, he’d nailed it.

War, he discovered, excused any outrage. By doing what he was driven to do, enjoying that rush, he became a hero. Then, lured to Masagua by money and more action, Prax Lourdes became Incendiario.

He’d done what his sideshow parents had never managed to do. He’d become a headliner.

When Lourdes was done talking, he had checked his watch and said to Reynaldo, “Get out of the car.”

Still uneasy, the driver said, “I don’t mind waiting. I can stay here.”

Lourdes said, “Get out of the car. Now. The plane with the early edition of the Miami Herald ’s just landed. Plus, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

Reynaldo followed the big man past trash barrels and the smoldering garbage dump to a metal building that had no windows. The chain on the door was already unlocked, and Prax opened it.

The driver was surprised by what was inside.

The building consisted of a main room that was equipped with things he’d seen once before in a surgical operating room in Managua. There was a steel table, gas canisters, a large overhead light, and surgical instruments on a stainless-steel table. On the walls were photos and diagrams of human faces. Several of the diagrams were more like engineer’s drawings.

The equipment seemed very old, though. Reynaldo knew nothing about medicine. But even to him, it looked old.

Another surprise was that there was a man waiting for them. A very thin Mexican man with palsied hands and a head tremor. He was wearing a suit coat over a white shirt, and he looked even older than the surgical equipment.

Reynaldo expected to be introduced. Instead, Lourdes said to the man, without any explanation, “I don’t think his skin’s worth a shit. Too much time outdoors. What do you think?”

Whose skin? Such an odd thing to say.

The Mexican was sitting, sweating, his entire body shaking-a drug addict, Reynaldo realized.

The man peered at Reynaldo intensely for a moment before sagging back, seemingly disappointed. “Why do you even waste my time? I can’t work with material like that.”

He added very quickly, “Did you bring my stuff?”

Lourdes said, “Yeah, but later,” as he stepped to the table and dropped a cotton swab that had a swash of red on it, and a vial that contained what looked to be a tiny amount of black liquid. “Stick this under the microscope and get me a blood type on this as quick as you can.”

Before the Mexican could speak, Lourdes added, “No, you old quack, it doesn’t belong to this asshole. He’s just my driver. It’s someone else, so cross your fingers it’s O-positive. You keep telling me eight out of ten people should match, so why have we had such shitty luck the last few tries?”

Reynaldo realized that the blood must belong to the boy, and the Mexican must be a doctor of some sort. Because now the man stood and, showing some authority for once, motioned for Lourdes to take off the mask.

Lourdes’ back was to Reynaldo, but the driver still felt a neural chill as the big man stripped the mask off and rubbed at the patches of curly blond hair on the back of his head with his scarred, banana-sized fingers. He did it all with the same exaggerated mannerisms that nagged at the driver’s memory and reminded him of something he’d seen as a child.

At a long ago circus?

Yes, that was it. The way the man moved, used his voice and hands, the fast, big gestures, it was the way clowns had behaved beneath that huge tent.

The clowns, Reynaldo remembered, had terrified him then, too.

The driver wanted to open the door and run, but he felt frozen as he watched the doctor reach expertly to touch places on Lourdes’ face, his eyes focused, lips pursed. It was an expression he’d seen before on the faces of doctors when they were examining a patient.

“The nose is looking better. The eyelids are coming along. But the nose is definitely looking somewhat better. Discoloration doesn’t always mean dead tissue, and a little infection is always to be expected when you have to work under these conditions.”

His tone showing only contempt, Lourdes replied, “Especially when the quack’s a heroin junkie. Which is why I’m going off and finding myself an expert, you pathetic little weasel.”

The doctor had apparently heard the abuse before, because he only replied, “Yes, the nose seems better. Some color is coming into it. It may take yet. But this man-” He indicated Reynaldo. “He’d be of no use to us even if the decay had continued.”

Reynaldo remained frozen as Prax Lourdes then turned, showing him his full face-a big smile there-and used an elegant sweep of the arm, as if to introduce himself.

With the other hand, he tapped at something that sounded metallic in his pocket.

“Hear what the man said? The quack’s got no use for you. That’s kinda rude, don’t you think, Reynaldo? So why don’t we leave the asshole here, walk out by the trash dump, just the two of us. We can have ourselves a quick smoke?”