Pop feels like he’s in the belly of something that’s been set on fire and stoked up, something you can’t stop until it all burns up. Like a furnace. Or an oven where bricks are being fired.
He stands in the back door. Through the waves of smoke he sees Lambert swinging a big metal plate over the fire. Flames shoot up from under the plate. Lambert roars. It looks like his feet are in the coals. He’s taking high steps and his legs look like they’re burnt black, all the way up to his knees.
Slowly, Pop registers what he’s seeing. Flossie’s not on her blocks any more. She’s not even on her chassis. She’s right off her undercarriage, like something fleeing its own skin. What’s more, it looks like someone’s taken a sledgehammer and smashed the dislocated Flossie even further into her glory. Bits of her lie scattered all over the place. All that remains on her chassis are the seats, the engine and the steering wheel. It’s almost like a king-sized dog with jaws of iron decided to tear her to bits. And her shell, standing to one side with its doors thrown open, looks like something that wants to fly, a thing with broken wings and no face, ’cause the front window’s been smashed in as well. The doors have been pushed almost right out of their hinges, and the nose of the bonnet’s been twisted upwards, out of shape. The engine cover too. God in heaven, how could he have slept through all this? Maybe he’s still sleeping. Maybe he’ll wake up in a minute or two and find it’s just an ordinary day.
Slowly, Pop moves his sore hip down the kitchen steps. Still in his shirt and socks, he takes a few steps through the wreckage. A blowtorch lies in the grass. He sees the big monkey-wrench and the electric saw for cutting iron. Pieces of iron piping and bricks lie scattered everywhere. He wants to get to Lambert, over there, standing in the flames. He must stop Lambert. He must try to stop him before he goes too far. He must say something, before Lambert takes to the streets and breaks down the whole of Triomf. But the smoke and the heat stop Pop in his tracks. He can’t go any further, the wind’s blowing everything into his face. There’s soot in his eyes and he can smell rubber.
Suddenly he sees Treppie and Mol running towards him, through the smoke. Mol’s coughing. Her hair stands up wildly. Treppie’s waving his arms.
‘Back! Back!’ he shouts.
‘Around the front!’ Mol shouts.
‘Here!’ Treppie rips the steering wheel out of its rod and pushes it into Pop’s hands.
‘Take this!’ he shouts at Mol. He rips something loose. It’s a piece of the back seat.
Treppie grabs one more time. He tears off one of Flossie’s loose mudguards at the back. ‘Come!’ he shouts.
Pop finds himself in the middle of a procession. Back through the kitchen door, down the passage, up towards the front door. With Treppie in the lead.
‘He’s gone berserk!’ shouts Mol.
‘He’s flipped,’ shouts Treppie.
‘Everything must burn!’ shouts Mol.
‘We must go round the front!’ shouts Treppie. ‘The wind’s too strong, we must throw the stuff into the fire from the front.’ The wind blows the warm smoke full into their faces. From the back, they can’t even get close to the fire.
‘He wants to see fire,’ shouts Mol.
‘Quick,’ shouts Treppie.
Pop wants to say ‘police’, he wants to say ‘fire brigade’, he wants to say ‘neighbours’, he wants to say ‘Lord God, please help’, but he can’t get a word out. He slips on the floor as he shuffles down the passage with the procession, steering wheel in hand. Then they’re out through the front door. Ahead of him, Pop sees Treppie starting to run. Flossie’s mudguard scrapes a long, white mark against the front door. From behind, Mol pushes Flossie’s seat into his back. ‘Hurry, Pop. Run!’
Toby squeezes past their legs. He barks in a high voice and tries to jump up against them. They’re out in front now, running around the corner. Vaguely, Pop sees a bunch of people watching them from the street, but he can’t make out who it is. Mol’s hurrying him up all the time.
‘Fetch!’ Lambert shouts from behind the fire. Pop can’t make Lambert out. All he hears is Lambert’s voice, which sounds different. Like it’s coming through a loudspeaker, or the mouth of a bugle.
‘Hurry up, you fucken dung-beetles … rotten bastards! I haven’t got the whole fucken day!’
Then they’re at the fire.
‘Throw it in! Throw it in! In the middle, so it burns. I want nothing to do with rubbish. Rubbish must burn! Time is short!’
Lambert stands behind the fire. With his long arms he throws boxes, papers and rags into the fire. The smoke’s so thick, all you can see is his outline. The old Kneff’s also in the fire, Pop sees. It looks like a big, burning white ship. How the hell did Lambert get that heavy thing outside?
Treppie takes Flossie’s seat from Mol and throws it on to the heap. It gives off a cloud of thick, black smoke. It stinks. Then the insides of the seat catch fire.
‘Hooooo-haaa!’ Lambert shouts.
The fire shoots up high.
‘Hooooo-haaa!’ he shouts. ‘More! More! Come, come, come! What you all standing there for? Never seen a fire before, hey? Never seen how rubbish burns? Fucken rubbish must fucken burn. It must burn!’
They scuttle back round the corner of the house. Treppie gets to the remains of Flossie first. He rips and pulls at her shell.
Treppie gives Pop a door. Pop looks through the broken window and sees heads from next door looking over the prefab wall. Mol gets the wipers and a piece of floor mat and some plastic from Flossie’s insides. Treppie rips a chunk out of the back seat. Fluffy stuff, brown woolly bits and coir bulge out of it. They go back in through the kitchen door. Toby barks. All the way along the passage he pulls things out of Mol’s hands. She tries to pick the stuff up, but when she does, Toby bites her.
‘Voetsek!’ Mol shouts, but she’s almost lost her voice. Pop’s behind her. He tries to kick Toby with his socked foot, but all he manages to do is kick Toby’s tail as it waves around in the air. Toby’s wild. He thinks it’s a party. He runs round them in circles with his ears flat against his head. He dances on his hind legs and the blocks on the floor dance up and down with him. Then they’re out again, through the front door. They go round the corner, towards the back, until they get to the fire. They throw their things on the fire. Then back through the smoke to Flossie and back in through the kitchen with more pieces. Round and round they go. Pop’s short of breath. He can’t any more. He falls over his own two feet. He stays down, lying there with Flossie’s dashboard in his hands, still quite a way short of the fire. He’s looking at the world from underneath, from an angle. Toby’s face is in front of him. His tongue hangs out. Pop pushes Toby away. Here come Treppie’s shoes. The heels have been worn down at one side at the back. Now he sees Mol’s legs. She’s full of bruises and grazes and her brown socks have sagged down to her ankles. Pop looks up Mol’s legs. The hollows of her knees are full of knobbly, purple veins. Above the hollows, the skin puffs up in bulges and, further up, it hangs in folds. Pop’s looking up into Mol’s depths. He lets his head drop again.
‘Up! Up!’ he hears Lambert screaming. ‘Don’t go lie down now, there’s still lots more that must burn!’
Toby gets hold of Pop’s shirt-sleeve. He pulls at it. Pop gets halfway up. He’s on his knees, looking round him on all fours. Toby stands next to him, at the same height, looking into his face with pricked ears. Toby’s waiting to see Pop’s next move. But Pop doesn’t move. He watches as Lambert drags Flossie’s entire shell on to the fire, swinging and plucking wildly. Isn’t Lambert also burning? The flames shoot up all around him. Now Lambert’s doing funny things with his head. It’s pulled down deeply into his shoulders. He looks like he’s biting at something in the air. Pop crawls nearer on his hands and knees, alongside Toby, who still thinks it’s a game. Then he kneels on his shirt; a piece rips loose from the collar.