Free The Firebug of Balrog County by David Oppegaard Page A

feet.
    â€œGo fuck yourself, hippie, and cut that faggot ponytail while you’re at it.”
    The regulars fell silent. Haggerton crossed the room, paused to sneer at us, and shouldered open the door, meeting my eyes as he plowed his way out into the night.
    â€œFucking dickhead,” Butch said after the door had swung shut. “He gets mean drunk every Saturday and thinks it’s his goddamn American right because he served two years in Korea flying a helicopter.”
    I grabbed a rag from under the sink and wiped down the bar. I thought about helicopters and high grade explosives and how Ox Haggerton lived eight miles north of the Legion, on land he’d cleared himself by chopping down every tree he could get his hands on. Everybody in the area knew where Ox lived because he’d planted a sign on the main highway, advertising firewood for sale, but as far as I knew nobody had ever needed wood bad enough to visit his house and put up with his grumpy-ass bullshit.
    Haggerton must have been lonely, living out there by himself like that.
    Maybe he could use a visit.

    After Butch and I closed the bar and divvied up the night’s meager tips, I hopped into the Olds and headed north, shouting along with the radio. I pulled out my lighter and thumbed it a few times, enjoying the small lick of flame and how it reflected off the windshield’s dark glass. I wasn’t sure I was actually going to do anything at Haggerton’s place, really, but I told myself it wouldn’t hurt to take a little survey of the property. A little recognizance gander.
    Of course, I was a master of hiding my real pyro intentions, even to myself. I was good at pretending I was just being weird, just fucking around, before the firebug suddenly reared up and smacked the good sense out of me. The urge to burn shit always bubbled below the surface of my thoughts, like magma flowing beneath the earth’s crust, but it took a good opportunity and a sudden loss of willpower to really set me off.
    Ox Haggerton’s si gn appeared abruptly amid the pine trees that lined the highway, a square of ghostly white with black block lettering. The old man must have gotten the sign professionally made back in the day. It’d been on the side of the highway for as long as I could remember.
    GOOD FIREWOOD FOR SALE—CHEAP!
    SECOND HOUSE ON THE RIGHT
    I turned left at the sign, leaving the paved highway for a lumpy gravel road. The Olds rocked, creaking like a horse buggy, and I slowed to twenty miles per hour to keep the rust bucket from tearing itself apart. I also turned down the radio because it now seemed too loud, out here in the tree-ridden boonies where it was dark as hell.
    It took five long, bouncing minutes to reach the first driveway and ten more to reach the second. The pine and birch trees, which up until now had run thickly alongside the road, disappeared on my right. They were replaced by sawed-off tree trunks that protruded from the ground like blunted teeth, the handiwork of a man who clearly didn’t care for trees, could handle a chainsaw, and had plenty of free time.
    I kept driving, slowly, and went past Haggerton’s mailbox and the single lamp that lit the driveway’s entrance. With the trees leveled, you could see Haggerton’s house about fifty yards down the gravel road, a couple of windows still lit up, and beyond that a rectangular building that looked like a shed. I drove until the trees reappeared on the right side of the road and swung the Olds back around. I turned off the car’s headlights and lowered her speed even further. “Easy does it, baby,” I whispered, patting the Old’s dashboard. “This is a black-ops mission.”
    I brought the car just short of the clearing and parked it in the middle of the road. I got out and went around to the trunk, surprised at the quiet—even the crickets were subdued tonight, as if they knew some heavy shit was about to go