Page 33 of Fire
He motions for me to come over, not taking his eyes off the screen.
I hurry to put my weapons back in their hiding spot and join Evan at the table to find out what has him so angry.
The first thing I see is the main cage at the Reivers headquarters in Adeline, where all the big, illegal cage matches are held. I fought in it many times, the last time being when I was in the culling. I watch as Johnny and an injured, staggering Cash fight each other. Johnny aims a series of short punches at Cash that, to my practiced eye, are obviously meant to cause the least damage. Holding back, or not, each time Johnny’s fist makes the connection, the look of agony on his face from being forced to hurt his lover is clear.
I think back to my nightmare of hurting Evan, and I completely understand Johnny’s pain.
“What in the fuck is this?”
“It’s a live video feed. Digger is selling premium tickets and taking bets for a live-stream death match between Cash and Johnny.”
“That sick fucker. Please tell me that our guys are close to breaching the lockdown.” Though I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here with Evan making sure he’s safe, I wish I could be in two places at once so I could be there trying to get Cash and Johnny out of this fucked up situation.
“Grave sent a report to Eli that they’re waiting for some heavy equipment to help them tear down the steel gate in place during Reivers’ lockdowns, but they should be storming the clubhouse in thirty minutes.”
“Good.” I don’t say it out loud, but Cash isn’t looking too good. I’m not sure how much more of this fight he can survive, even with Johnny’s pulled punches.
“I fucking hate watching this shit,” I say, though I continue to stand here, eyes glued to Evan’s computer screen while holding back the urge to turn away. I don’t want to see this. I lived it, but I somehow feel like I’m supporting Cash and Johnny, and I want to see our guys come in and end this.
“It's beyond brutal,” Evan says, looking nauseous at the violence he’s viewing. “But Eli has pulled the stream off of the dark web and is offering the live feed of it to all the broadcast news stations if they’ll air it live.”
“Holy shit,” I say, thunderstruck at what this means. Digger is showing himself breaking fifty serious felonies on this live feed, not to mention showing all of his dedicated grassroots followers the true devil that lives behind his handsome face and right-wing rhetoric. “Holy shit,” I repeat myself.
The day is a long one as we watch this unreal situation playing out with a bunch of twists and turns that belong in an old black-and-white gangster movie. In the end, emergency services rush Digger and Cash to the hospital for emergency surgery.
As we wait to hear news about Cash, Evan writes. He’s a warrior going into battle with only his computer and his natural ability with words. And with each word he types, he gets more furious, and then he types some more. He’s paced the small confines of the cabin again and again, ranting to himself, and then he sits down and writes another article.
He only stops to show me one of them. It’s a tribute piece on Evan’s dead bodyguard, Barry Tramor. “Do you think it’s any good?” he asks, bringing over his computer to the bed where I’ve been sitting since I haven’t been able to budge Evan from the table.
He sits knee to knee with me, impatiently slapping his hand on his leg as I read. It’s a moving piece that introduces the reader to Barry, a former Army Ranger who left the service to help his sister raise his niece after she was widowed. Evan goes on to tell how the die-hard Cubs fan volunteered on his days off at a Chicago animal charity that specialized in fostering, rehabilitating, and homing animals who had been involved in dog fighting rings. Evan then introduces the Patriots Nownarrative and their history of hate rhetoric and ties to the Reivers, and then he ties them to Barry’s death. The article manages to be both a moving tribute to Barry and a damning indictment of the organization responsible for his death.
I close his laptop. “It’s great,” I tell him honestly.
“Really?” he asks, self-doubt in every syllable of the question. It stuns me that someone who is so damned talented isn’t confident in what a writing badass he is. “I want his sister and niece to read it and be proud of him and also know that the people responsible for his death are going to pay for what they did.”
At that, the fire is back in his eyes, and he returns to his cycle of research, pacing, and writing. This lasts for days. When we learn Cash’s surgery had some complications, and the doctors aren’t sure he’s going to survive, it spurs him on even harder on his quest. I end up fighting Evan to make him take breaks from writing to slurp some water and shovel food down his throat.
All my worries about the cabin’s one bed were wasted. Each night, I sleep out on the porch, and in the morning, I come in to find the bed still made and Evan snoring, his head resting on the table. I wake him up, and it starts all over again.
I know this can’t go on much longer, but some instinct tells me to let Evan continue like this for a little while more. I sense it’s his way of processing everything.
On day three of our stay at the cabin, I walk the perimeter, making sure there aren’t any signs of anyone being where they shouldn’t. When I’m sure everything is as it should be, I return to the cabin to find Evan staring blankly into his computer.
Bending down on my haunches so we are close to eye level, I call to him. “Evan?”
He looks up at me like he’s lost. I look at his computer screen and then move the cursor up. The last several pages he wrote are pure gibberish.
Okay, it’s finally time to end this.
“Evan.” I move his chair back. “It’s time to rest.” As I stand up, I bring him up with me, and as I start walking him to the bed, he realizes he isn’t sitting in his chair anymore and starts resisting me.
“I can’t stop.”
“You’ll get some sleep and write more tomorrow,” I tell him, though I’m pretty sure once I get him in bed, he might sleep through most, if not all, of tomorrow.
“I can’t stop,” he says, tears forming in his eyes. “I’m too angry to stop.”
“Angry?”
