Fire Solves All Problems Perfectly pt 41

Tim takes the lead on this miserably hot day, and your shirts are soaked in no time; you ride Whisper Street past the cemetery where you’ve done headstone etchings on school field trips for the last four years, past the Arlen home where the Dobermans are still looking for you, past Eberly’s Drug and Blackhawk Arcade and Tiny’s Dry Cleaning on Duel Street with the three of you looping inside each of other’s trails and arguing about sports and cars and fire and fanning yourself with your hands. Oath Street leads to Wax Street where the phone company is with its giant metal tower, and Jason says that maybe we can steal some dynamite and blow it up – he says that about most places. Behind the America Burger in the alley behind that Tim sees a box filled with fluorescent tubes left next to the dumpster and for ten minutes you smash the hell out of them with rocks, sending glass everywhere and bringing out Bob Krim the manager who yells at you while you escape, huffing air ripe with meat past oval windows filled with the faces of the town, and you know every one of them; finally you land at the city fire department, a concrete gray building with three enormous sliding doors all raised to cool the bay, revealing only two of the three gleaming engines within.

Our station in Peoria sucked, Jason says darkly as you arrive. Those guys weren’t jake at all.