I was tired. I was mad. I didn't know why exactly.
Will Wilson stood up now. I turned to look at him, and behind him, in the window of the store, I could see my reflection. Hair so wet in the rain. Hair that hung straight past my eyes.
Will Wilson was standing. It was time to go.
The guy was screaming, blood and spit spraying across the street.
I walked to the curb and kneeled at a puddle, rinsing my hands in the cool rainwater. Two fingers on my right hand were numb and bent. I turned my face to the sky, let the rain run down my eyes and neck. Wiped the water away before again rinsing my hands in the puddle. Again wiping at my face before the three of us met up with Coe and we all walked home, fourteen, and none of us had a car.
Teddy is standing at a window. With his curly hair turned gray in the darkness, his soft and round face turned pale by a streetlight outside, Teddy looks like an aging man. Some old guy at his window. With nothing to do but stare. For a while I'd thought Teddy stood at the windows because he was watching for the police. But one time he tells me he is just seeing what this family looks at during the day.
Will Wilson is going through cabinets, drawers, seeming to count the forgotten records and books.
Coe is rolling, on his side, across the couch.
And years later, when I find myself thinking about the break-ins, I know that what I liked most was watching the three of them in a house that was ours. I bounced soundlessly on chairs playing tag with Coe, stood next to Teddy staring out at the night, searched through closets and drawers with a smiling Will Wilson. But I now mostly remember watching through the shadows, seeing my three best friends doing a careful and silent nighttime dance.
Maybe because they're too small to park in or too far from the house, but the garages behind a lot of the houses in Tacoma's blocky, sprawling neighborhoods often stand unused, the swinging door left open, the small panes of the windows broken by neighborhood kids. And beginning in the middle of our senior year, Will Wilson, Coe, Teddy, and I had started burning these garages down. At two or three in the morning, we'd sneak along a dark alley with a can of gasoline, pouring it against the inside base of the wooden walls, making a big pool in the center of the smooth, concrete slab. Lighting the gas, the four of us throwing matches while watching the alley and the surrounding houses, the garage igniting in front of us like a huge gas oven, the walls burning with low flames, the pool in the center burning with flames three feet high.
We'd burned nine by the end of May. Six days from graduation, we burned another one. The next day, we made the newspaper, a small article about what fire officials believed was a pattern of arson. The police had been consulted. Officers on patrol in Tacoma's North End would be checking alleys.
We went out that night at two A.M. in our black sweatshirts and gloves and ski masks and found a garage on Cheyenne Street only ten blocks from the last garage we'd burned.
Will Wilson went to check if the house was dark.
"Shit," Teddy whispered to me in the dark. "Shit. This is serious. They've got to be watching, Brian. Fuck, Brian, fuck. This is serious, Brian."
"Well," I whispered. "Fuck. Well."
Will Wilson came back, matches in his hand. There were paint cans and a can of paint thinner in the garage. There was also a lawn chair, an old croquet set and a cardboard box full of books. We spread out the junk and books and some boards from the stairs, then poured thinner and gas over it all.
Coe was bouncing on his heels, circling in place.
Will Wilson held a book of matches out to Teddy and me but didn't look at us. We were all near the entrance, and Will Wilson lit a match and tossed it, then another, the gas catching. Teddy kept looking over his shoulder, glancing down the alley.
"Come on," Will Wilson said, still not looking at Teddy and me, just flicking matches across the floor, small blue fires now burning in four or five places.
And finally I took a match from Will Wilson. Lit it and threw it because Will Wilson wanted me to. But most of all I lit it because I wanted to be a part of this. I wanted to see what would happen.
Blue flames had spread across much of the floor. A small pool near the books ignited.
I lit and threw another match.
And Teddy was starting to go down the alley and Will Wilson turned quickly, grabbed him hard by the neck, pulling Teddy close to his face. "Come on," he said quietly and held up a lit match for Teddy.
The books were burning orange and red, the wood catching now. The plastic seat of the lawn chair burning bright, shining on Will Wilson's face and Teddy's face and sending a foul smell through the garage.
"Come on," Will Wilson said, and then smiled and took a high voice. Whining, "This is serious."
And Teddy did light a match and did throw it then, lighting another and another, tossing each into the already hot fire, the tiny match flames disappearing in the gold and growing light, but Teddy just stared at Will Wilson, not scared, not weak, just staring, Will Wilson holding him by the neck and not once looking at the fire behind him, whining over and over, "This is serious. This is serious"
And then a white police cruiser turned down the alley and hit its lights.
And Teddy's pool of gas was burning yellow, blue, and white.
We ran. Through alleys, across yards, over fences, and through hedges. Ducking behind houses, running along streets, trying to make our way toward a huge, wooded park where we could hide.
Fifteen minutes later, with two cops on foot behind us, the sirens of three cruisers screaming near us, Will Wilson and I were sprinting toward the park, Teddy and Coe probably already in there, the two of us crossing a brightly lit street, aiming for the low white wall that bordered the park, the park here sweeping in an arc a half-mile around, sloping a few hundred yards deep like a quilt of thick green trees and bushes, stretching three quarters of a mile uninterrupted to the waterfront. And as I ran across that pavement with a cop car skidding to a stop near me, both doors opening, two more men jumping out, I saw the glow of lights from the unseen mills and oil plants five miles away where right then my dad was working.
And I do remember wondering if the police would shoot an arsonist.
Will Wilson and I hit the low fence, stepping off, jumping, floating for that moment, silently flying into the park. We hit trees, then bushes, finally sliding across the wet, steep ground. We were a hundred feet down before I looked back. Another hundred and we stopped sliding, seeing the pinpoint of searchlights waving back and forth above us.
It only took twenty minutes to find the base of the Proctor Bridge, where Teddy and Coe were waiting.
We climbed up the dirt hillside, the bridge's heavy concrete supports stretching out over our heads, hearing all around us the low, numbing sound of the rain against the leaves. We reached the wide dirt ledge just below the surface of the bridge, the four of us sharing from a bottle of vodka that we had hidden there.
"God," Will Wilson said, "God." He somehow seemed so thin in the dark. A bare, hard person drinking next to me. "They were chasing us. Everywhere we went they were chasing us. And it was beautiful."
The four of us never called anything beautiful.
He told Teddy and Coe how the two of us split off from them, crossing through yards and over fences, and he was drinking and saying beautiful, and finally he sat down in the dirt and I realized Will Wilson was drunk.
And I watched him and I remembered how, when we were running, he'd split off from Coe and Teddy, touched my arm, pulled me with him. Taking the two of us down an alley he knew, toward a street we'd been on a hundred times.