Justin let himself in with the key the Barkers had given his parents before leaving for Spain. The Barkers’ dog, Austin, three quarters as high as Justin was tall, padded silently to him, and Justin consumed a few minutes petting him in a gentle, repetitive motion between his neck and the curve of his back, with the hand that was not holding the gray plastic bucket. Austin probably spent as much time in Justin’s yard as he did in his own, and although this was the third time the boy had been in the house when the Barkers were away, it never occurred to the dog to bark suspiciously or growl or hide under a bed. His mother had fed Austin that morning, and she would again this evening, but Justin wasn’t here to serve meals. He was here to experiment.
And also to get out of the house. His parents didn’t notice Justin’s presence when they were fighting, so it was no surprise that his absence went right past them as well. Shouting now seemed their preferred form of communication. They began with low-decibel snapping in the morning and slowly pushed the volume up over the course of the day – as if somewhere in the house there were a master knob, like the one controlling the intercom system, that turned itself up and up and up – until they finally sent Justin to bed and began reproaching each other in hateful whispers, so as not to keep the boy awake.
He didn’t understand all of it, but Justin was smart enough, even at seven, to know that the things they were yelling about weren’t always the things they were mad at. On Monday his dad might come home from work and ask him to pick up his GI Joes from the living room carpet and put them in the toy box in the den. On Wednesday, however, he might say, Jesus Christ, pick up your goddamn dolls! You didn’t have to be ten to know that something besides GI Joes was pissing his dad off.
It had something to do, he figured out, with a woman named Denise. Justin didn’t know why, but his dad liked Denise and his mom didn’t. His mom was always calling Denise names and telling his dad that she didn’t want him to see her anymore. His dad said she was being “ridiculous” and that Denise was a nice girl and of course he liked her, he never would have hired Denise if he didn’t like her, but they weren’t having an affair, for crying out loud, if that was what she thought. On the other hand, by the looks of these credit card bills, his mom had gone off the budget again, whatever that was, but his mom said the budget was no good and they had to redo it because they hadn’t realized how much they’d need for Justin’s clothes this year, he was growing out of them so fast, and his dad said, Justin’s clothes? Really? Justin’s clothes? You weren’t shopping for Justin’s clothes at Ultimo, but he never said what she was actually shopping for there.
Following an incident at a comic book store, his mother told Justin she didn’t want him hanging around Danny Shubert anymore, because he was a “bad influence.” Trying a little bit of his dad’s logic, Justin replied, “I like Danny, but we’re not having an affair, if that’s what you think.” His mom fell to her knees and hugged him around the neck and cried into his T-shirt and said she was sorry and forgot to punish him, so it worked as far as that went.
Boy and dog crept to the living room and Justin pulled a bundle of dry sticks and a wad of newspaper from the bucket and placed them in the brick fireplace. Austin curled himself on the couch around a chewed tennis ball that had found its way in from the backyard. On his knees, Justin produced a book of matches and lit one on the third try, hurling it immediately at the pile of kindling. The match expired and he lit two more in the same way before the paper took the flame.
In quick succession, he added the following fuels to the pyre: army man (in kneeling position), worn paperback mystery (Dean Koontz), old CD (sound track to Grease), dead flies (tweezered with an entomologist’s care from his bedroom windowsill), Lincoln Log (short connector), Lego brick (blue). When each item was added he allowed the results to hold him trancelike, the memory of each reaction recorded for future consideration.
When the bucket was empty, Justin searched the room on hands and knees for something local, something belonging to the Barkers, but something that had already been forgotten, that wouldn’t be missed. Under the coffee table he found a drawer and, inside it, a cardboard pocket of photographs awaiting their appropriate place in albums or desk frames. Flipping through them he came across one he thought particularly dull, a shot of Mrs. Barker on the patio stooped next to an older woman who was smiling but shriveled like a sun-dried insect in her wheelchair. He carted it back to the fire and tossed it in with the rest. He watched the paper and plastic and chemicals warp and fold and shrink the image, the old woman and her wheelchair becoming smaller and smaller and smaller and then disappearing altogether into smelly chars.
Not until then did he notice how much smoke filled the room. Austin left the couch with a moan and trotted around the corner and up the stairs. Still unaware of the existence of dampers, Justin climbed up the back of an upholstered chair and cracked a window at the top. He would return tomorrow to collect the half-burned, half-melted mound he had made, hide it, preserve it, and then start one anew.