Bradley Denton - A Conflagration Artist

A CONFLAGRATION ARTIST

Bradley Denton

AND THIS ONE'S FOR BARB, TOO.

CONTENTS

Introduction by Steven Gould

In the Fullness of Time

Top of the Charts

Killing Weeds

The Music of the Spheres

The Summer We Saw Diana

Captain Coyote's Last Hunt

The Chaff He Will Burn

A Conflagration Artist

Acknowledgments

Introduction

By Steven Gould

I needed a title for this introduction.

My wife, Laura J. Mixon, suggested, "Brad Denton—what a babe." I reject this without consideration.

Brad's and my mutual friend, Robin W. Bailey, suggested, "Brad Denton—what a babe." Better, but not

quite there yet.

Brad's wife, Barb Denton, suggested, "Brad Denton—what a babe."

Okay, now we're getting somewhere.

Picture a man, young, blond, bearded, conservatively cut hair, glasses thick enough to stop neutrons,

and a pronounced tendency to blush and stammer with embarrassment when attention ofany kind is

directed his way. He's wearing slacks, a long sleeved shirt, and hush puppies. He stares around him with

a bemused expression and says "Excuse me" and "I'm sorry" and "Golly". He drives a small pickup truck

with a camper shell. The tires havewhitewalls.

We will call him gentleman "A".

Now picture a different man. Shoulder length hair, leather jacket, jeans, t-shirt, sunglasses dark enough

to stop neutrons, and a pronounced tendency to stare through you like you're not there. He plays the

drums in a ragged rock and roll band and the last song of every show he kicks over the entire drum set.

He has an attitude and drives a low slung motorcycle. He sweats a lot.

We will call him man "B". He isno gentleman.

Both of these creatures are Bradley Denton.

So what happened?

Was it moving to Texas?

No, those of you who've readWrack 'n' Roll know that man "B" was there in Brad back when he lived

in Lawrence, Kansas (even if he did look like something fromRevenge of the Nerds). Anyone who has

followed Brad's short fiction over the past eight years knows that this savage creature has always been

there, inside a calmer, more genteel facade. If you're acquainted with his latest book,Buddy Holly Is

Alive and Well on Ganymede, you know that Brad Denton burns with the fierce fire of all true believers.

And if you have the good fortune to read his James Blackburn stories, you'll know that this fire is white

hot.

It is no coincidence that this book is calledA Conflagration Artist. Yes, thatis the name of one of the

stories within, seeing print here for the first time, but it also describes Bradley as well, for reasons that will

become clear as you read this collection. There is fire in most of these stories, figurative and literal,

cleansing and scarring, and I assure you that you can't read these stories without feeling the heat.

And don't worry. Brad isn't (yet) a danger to society. Youcan meet him without harm, for while Man "B"

is definitely in Bradley, he hasn't escaped Gentleman "A" yet. He still blushes with wonderful regularity.

He still stammers from embarrassment. And he still has whitewalls on his truck.

—Steven Gould

In the Fullness of Time

Darrell (1)

The slowness begins as the pickup truck's headlight beams jump onto a boxcar. His right foot tries to

stab the brake pedal, but his muscles are too sluggish. It's as if the air has turned to gelatin.

He's been driving too fast. The brakes lock too late.

But he had to get Kaye home on time, didn't he?

Alien sound envelops him as the truck fishtails. The tires groan like dying animals, and Kaye's gasp is like

air filling a huge bellows.

Kaye. He forces his head to turn toward her and sees that her face, illuminated by the pale green glow

from the dashboard, is twisting into an expression of fear.

He tries to say that it's all right, that he loves her, but he can't open his mouth far enough.

Another boxcar is in their path now. It's the one they'll hit. On Kaye's side.

Darrell is aware of everything, of the train, of Kaye's breath, of the weirdness of the light. The brake

pedal thrums against his foot. The pickup's springs compress. There is a stink of black rubber and

asphalt.

He sees, hears, feels, and smells it all. And he can do nothing about it.

They shouldn't have gone to a party so far out in the country, so far away from the house where Mrs.

Phillips watches the passage of every minute on the living room clock. He shouldn't have had the last

three beers. He shouldn't have let time get away.

Not after what Kaye's gone through for him. You're only seventeen, the others are always telling her.

He's twenty-two. And what kind of support could he give you driving a soft-drink truck? What about

your college plans?

He looks at her frightened eyes and tries again to say he loves her. But the sound of grinding, tearing

metal fills the world.

The side of the boxcar looms beside Kaye's head. Darrell sees rough speckles of paint just before the

window explodes.

Green-glittering cubes shoot through the cab in a slow spray. Darrell sees Kaye try to turn, sees her

mouth open, sees the particles bury themselves in her cheeks and eyes.

The roof comes down.

Nine-tenths of a second have passed since the headlights shone onto the train.

Frank (1)

He calls Lori to say he'll be home late. It's a heavy Friday night in the E/R, much heavier than usual for a

town of 11,000 like El Dorado, much heavier than usual for the whole county, and he thinks he should

help.

He works on a cardiac case (stupid—the guy took up jogging tonight at age fifty-four without getting a

stress test), a kid who got his nose broken in a fight, and assorted other cut, bumped, and bruised

people.Spring must be the season for racking yourself up, Frank thinks.

It slacks off around one, and he waves to the two EMTs and the nurse to let them know he's leaving.

But two ambulances scream up outside, and the drivers bring in new patients. Looks bad; a tremendous

amount of red...

Frank goes to the first one, pulls off the sheet, and shudders.

He and one of the EMTs work on the girl, but it's useless. He can't help thinking that he might as well

stay around to do the autopsy, since Jack Simmons, the alcoholic county coroner, will probably ask him

to do it anyway.

He glances over and sees the second victim's face.

It's his brother.

Oh God, Black Sheep, what've you done now?

He feels a numbness in his solar plexus that he's never known before, but he banishes it by trying to save

the girl.

Eventually, he has to give up.

Darrell (2)

He hears low, booming things, like voices from a record album playing at half-speed.

"...you... awake?" one of the voices asks. "This... is... Frank..."

It doesn't sound like Frank. Frank doesn't talk as if he were submerged in molasses.

Darrell opens his eyes and is surprised at how long it takes.

One of the three men standing over him in this white room is indeed Big Brother...

...who made Mom and Dad proud before they died in the plane crash. Who married a girl his own age,

from his own high school class. Who went to med school and made something of himself.

"Hello, Goody-Two-Shoes," Darrell tries to say. But instead of his voice, he hears another low, booming

thing.

"...accident... last... night..." Frank says. "...fractured tibia... lacerations... concussion..."

Darrell's temples throb. He doesn't think he can stand to hear warped voices much longer, but he has to

find out—

What he already knows.

"Kaye," he says. In speaking that one syllable, he sounds almost normal.

Frank's colleagues turn away with incredible sluggishness and drift out the doorway that's several feet

beyond the end of the hospital bed. Frank's face creases, and his eyelids half-close.

"...didn't... make it..." the molasses-voice says.

Darrell listens to blood forcing its way through the vessels in his head. It's a sound like the ocean, or a

gargantuan washing machine.

"I want to see her," he tries to make his tongue and lips say.

"...burial... tonight..." Frank says. "Mrs. Phillips... didn't want... embalming... Kansas law... twenty-four

hours..."

The slowness of the words is horrible.

Darrell begins to close his eyes. If only no one will talk to him, he'll be all right. The hospital stench is

sickening, but at least it isn't time-warped like everything else.

He doesn't get his eyes completely closed before he sees a crying woman float into the room.

It is Kaye's mother, clutching a Bible in her left hand. She raises her right arm and points at Darrell.

"MUR... DER... ER..."

The word hangs like smoke.

"BURN... IN... HELL..."

She goes on and on, and Darrell can only understand part of what she says. But it's enough:

Kaye was only six weeks away from graduating, and then she'd have gone to college. She would have

been safe. But now—now—

If her father were alive, he'd get his gun and—

Frank takes the woman's left arm. Darrell sees the fingers of her right hand curl and is surprised that

Frank can't dodge quickly enough to avoid the nails that strike his cheek.

The other men return and grasp the woman's shoulders. Her wail resonates in Darrell's jaw.

The three doctors take Mrs. Phillips out of the room.

They walk as ghosts through water.

Frank (2)

He checks his brother's pulse, blood pressure, and respiration, then frowns and writes in the green spiral

notepad he bought at the drugstore this morning.

In the past four days, he's gone through all the literature that could possibly be relevant, done blood

tests, reflex tests, and even a CAT scan. All indicate that Darrell's obvious injuries are his only physical

wounds.

Whatever else is wrong, then, is beyond Frank's power to heal.

At least there'll be no legal trouble. The crossing was unlit and its markers knocked down by vandals,

and Darrell was only doing four miles per hour over the speed limit. The blood tests for THC and other

illegal drugs were negative, and the alcohol level was below that of legal intoxication.

(Frank wonders about this, though he tries not to. The tests were done so long after the wreck...)

Still, just because the law won't prosecute doesn't mean that his patient hasn't puthimself on trial.

He pats Darrell's arm and goes out to the nurses' station.

There he makes a phone call to a friend in Wichita, a friend who owes him favors. A psychiatrist.

He feels like a failure. A traitor.

Like Goody-Two-Shoes.

Darrell (3)

Raindrops drift down like elongated glass beads in clear syrup. He almost smiles as he watches them

disintegrate against the sidewalk.

Then he raises his eyes. The old place looks too perfect.

Frank and Lori have painted it blue and planted shrubs and flowers to mask the concrete-block

foundation. Darrell wonders if they've even landscaped the family cemetery on the back twenty.

Frank holds his crutches and helps him out of the car.A slow ballet for cripples, Darrell thinks.

"Good... country... air," Frank says.

Darrell wishes Frank wouldn't talk to him without using the three-speed tape recorder. It's too hard to

make sense out of the grotesquely stretched words.

But then, he knows Frank only bought the recorder to humor him. Big Brother thinks the problem is

mental. He's even hired a shrink, a med school buddy named Andrew Barnes.

The shrink says Darrell is punishing himself.

"Accidents... happen..." Barnes said at the hospital, refusing to use the recorder. "Yet you... take

blame... delude... yourself... You... move... speak... essentially... normally... must... forgive... yourself..."

"Accidents happen." Right. A sweet, beautiful one-hundred-and-three-pound woman has been crushed

by a ton of metal.

"Forgive yourself." But even if he does, Kaye's friends and family never will. Frank didn't let him attend

the memorial service a week after the burial, saying it was "too soon" to get out of bed, but Darrell

knows the real reason. He couldn't go because he would have been the Murderer. Murderers don't go to

their victims' funerals.

"In... the... fullness... of... time," Barnes has said, "they... will... forgive..."

How long will that take? Darrell wonders. And how long will itseem to take?

He counts off seconds as he hobbles up the sidewalk behind Frank, reaching two hundred and fifty

before they stand on the front porch. The sidewalk is fifteen yards long.

The year in the hospital, Frank has told him, took two weeks. The two months he's to spend here will

probably seem like a decade, because the slowness is getting worse.

It takes three hours, in Darrell's time, for him and his things to be moved into the little room on the first

floor. This was his bedroom when he was a teenager, after Frank left for college, and his narrow bed,

chipped maple bureau, and oak nightstand are still here. But the paisley wallpaper has been replaced by

neat wallboard painted a light blue. There's also a new rag rug, speckled with bright colors. He wonders

if Lori made it herself.

Frank leaves him alone "for a few seconds," so he counts the rug's colors and memorizes the position of

every speckle.

Has his body slowed down, or has his mind sped up? Or have both slowed down, but at different rates?

As he sits motionless on the edge of the bed, it occurs to him that he feels normal for the first time since

the accident. He's alone with no moving object to serve as a frame of reference, so his thoughts seem to

progress at their proper rate. But he must remain still...

Only the dead can be still forever.

He begins to wonder how much time is really passing and sees that there's no clock in here. Probably an

intentional omission on Frank's part.

After what seems like an hour, Frank's ten-year-old son Paul enters the room. Skinny and freckled, the

boy reminds Darrell too much of what he himself was like as a kid. The resemblance is especially striking

now that Darrell has time to note every blemish and scrape. The big scab on Paul's left forearm

duplicates an injury Darrell had at the same age as the result of a nasty bike wreck.

He studies Paul's face and sees the hero-worship he's always seen there, now mingled with worry and

fear. What must it be like to worship someone and then have your God despised by almost everyone

else?

Paul touches the plaster encasing his uncle's right shin and calf. Darrell winces even though he feels

nothing.

"No... basketball?" Paul asks in a voice as deep and slow as a whale's.

" 'Fraid not," Darrell tries to say. His jaw aches, and he tells himself he must be imagining it. There can

be no pain, for Frank and the psychiatrist insist that he speaks "essentially normally." It's only in his guilty

mind that his voice has slowed.

Ah, but dear brother and dear shrink, what does "essentially" mean in doctorese?

Frank returns and tells Paul to change clothes. At least that's what Darrell thinks he says. The boy

leaves.

Frank has the bulky three-speed tape recorder with him. He sets it on the floor, moves the speed switch

from the first position to the second, and pushes the PLAY button. The reels seem to stare at Darrell like

crazy brown eyes.

"I don't like using this," the machine says, "but I will now since Lori wants to go into town for Chinese

food. We usually eat out on Saturday evening." The voice is still too slow to be Frank's, but at least it's

understandable. "I know they fed you before I came up, so do you want to come, or will you be all right

by yourself?"

Even in the stretched syllables, Darrell can hear what Frank hopes the answer will be. Lori was one of

Kaye's teachers, and she must not want Darrell to come along, must not even want him in the house.

Frank is trying to be Perfect Husband and Big Brother at the same time.

Goody-Two-Shoes,Darrell thinks as he watches Frank's finger come down on the STOP button.

"I'll be fine," he forces out. It takes ten minutes.

Frank nods in a gradual sinking of chin toward chest, then holds out a small brown bottle. The word

LORAZEPAM stands out in typed capitals on the prescription label. This stuff was the shrink's idea.

"Frank says... you aren't... sleeping..." Barnes said when he wrote the prescription. "...too much...

anxiety..."

But Darrell hasn't been taking it. Frank doles out the pills and, trusting soul that he is, never checks to

see if his brother is actually swallowing them.

Frank shakes out a pentagon-shaped tablet and puts it on the nightstand. Then he replaces the bottle in

his pocket and takes a stethoscope and sphygmomanometer from the bureau's top drawer.

To Darrell's mind, the brief check on his vital signs takes about an hour and a half. When it's over, he

tries to say, "Really slowing, aren't I?"

The muscles in Frank's neck ripple as he shakes his head. Then he pushes the PLAY button again.

"You say the same thing every time," the machine says, "so here's my all-purpose answer: Even if your

pulse and respiration were slower than they used to be, and I'm not saying they are, it'd be the result of

biofeedback. Like Andy says, once you stop punishing yourself, everything'll be back... to... normal."

The last few words are so low and drawn-out that Darrell has to guess at what they are from the context

of the words that have come before. He wishes Frank would use the high-speed setting.

As his brother leaves the room, Darrell sighs. The sound is like the rumble of a freight train.

He thinks of how Kaye looked just before she died.

The little white pentagon on the nightstand gleams at him. He knows why Frank keeps the bottle, but it

doesn't matter. In the pocket of a pair of jeans in his suitcase is a plastic cylinder he took from a trash can

at the hospital. When he adds this latest pill, he'll have ten altogether.

Frank's wife, Lori, glides past the open doorway with the baby, Jennifer, in her arms. Her posture

suggests that she's hurrying, and she doesn't look in at him. But Darrell can read the message etched in

her profile. She wants him gone. She hates him, as does everyone who knows he killed Kaye. Except

Frank and Paul, who are trapped by blood.

Barnes doesn't hate him either, but that doesn't count. A shrink is trained not to hate paying patients no

matter what they've done. Darrell wonders how much he'd have to pay the rest of the world to make

them feel the same way.

He doesn't blame Lori. But he can't go back to his third-floor walk-up or to driving the Pepsi truck until

his leg heals, can he? And until the slowness stops...

Paul returns with an armload of books almost as big as he is, and after a subjective hour Darrell

understands that these are books Frank thinks might help pass the time. Darrell tries to say "thank you"

and doesn't know if the words come out right or not. The boy gives him a long hug and then dashes out,

running on the moon. Darrell's throat feels tight.

Much later, Frank appears in the doorway and indicates that he and his family are leaving. Is Darrell sure

he'll be all right?

Darrell manages a nod.

Long after Frank, Lori, and the kids have gone, the tearless heaving hits him. But it isn't as bad as it was

during the sleepless, week-long nights in the hospital. It only lasts a few hours.

When it's over, Darrell concentrates on his movements and is able to pick up the crutches and rise from

the bed. Eventually, he makes it into the hall and turns toward the living room.

By the time he reaches the edge of Lori's new dove-gray carpet, he feels winded and sore. His breath is

a rasp.

If he squints, the reddish lamplight shows him the hands of the clock that's part of the waterfall painting

on the far wall. It's seven P.M. He's been back in his boyhood home for twenty minutes.

Strangely, returning to his room doesn't seem to take as long as the trip out did. Maybe, he thinks as he

sinks down to the bed, Frank and the shrink are right. He'll never be rid of the pain, but if he can learn to

live with it—

The stack of books is beside the bed, and the jacket of the one on top catches his eye. It looks like a

slam-bang thriller similar to the ones he read in this room as a kid. He picks it up, trying to ignore the

slowness of his muscles, and opens it to the first chapter.

He's gotten through less than half a sentence when he realizes the true extent of the change. He can read

single words or even pairs of words with no difficulty, but when he tries to move his eyes to the next

pair—

It's so painfully slow that the concentration required to move his eyes obliterates his comprehension of

what he's just read. He spends what feels like four hours reading thirty words he can't remember. His

head aches.

He can't watch television; he tried in the hospital, and all he saw were snowy flickers. He can't talk, can't

listen, can't read—can't do anything but sit and think. And when he does that, he thinks of the wreck, of

Kaye's death.

He drops the book, then rises and again makes the trek to the living room. It takes twice as long to

reach the edge of the carpet as it did the first time. The aluminum crutches groan.

He stares across the room at the waterfall painting, tells himself he can't be sure of what he sees in the

dim light, and ventures out farther. The crutches leave deep round wells behind him. It's like crossing a

desert of gray sand, and it takes forever.

When his face is only a few inches from the face of the clock, he holds his breath until he can hear the

steady hum of the mechanism.

Then he begins breathing again, and the sound is deeper and slower than ever.

It's two minutes past seven.

Frank (3)

There's only one Chinese restaurant in El Dorado, and there are no empty tables when they arrive. They

have to wait in a recessed area to the right of the entrance, imprisoned behind velvet ropes.

Frank feels as though he's standing under a lens that's focusing the sun to a burning point.

"They're talking about us," Lori mutters. "Mary Webb and her husband. Terry Tucker and somebody I

don't know."

Paul looks up with a puzzled expression. "What, Mom?"

Frank shifts the baby's weight from his right arm to his left. "She wasn't talking to you, kiddo." He tries to

sound jocular and fails.

The waiter finally comes for them, and as Frank walks between the tables he feels as though he's running

a gauntlet. Sure, Darrell used to be a little wild—drank too much beer, drag raced down Central—but

do they think he killed the Phillips girl on purpose?

"...heard the boy driving was stoned..." a woman whispers to her companion as Frank passes their table.

That's a lie!he wants to shout, and holds it in throughout the entire meal.

If only they could see Darrell, or the green notepad, maybe they wouldn't—

Bradley Denton - A Conflagration Artist

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