“Maybe things need to change,” I said. “Maybe they should change.”
“Yeah. Right. And where would I be? Where else am I going to find work, at my age? Want me to start collectin’ garbage the tourists leave down at the beach? And where would you be? The factory’s your future too, y’know.”
I took a step then, over the line into forbidden territory. “I’d still like to go to college, Dad. My grades are good enough. The school counselor said—”
“I’ve told you we’ll talk about that later,” Dad said firmly. “Right now we need the extra money. Times are tough, Bobby! You’ve got to pull your weight and toe the line! Remember, a bull should roam his own pasture. Right?”
I guess I agreed. I don’t remember. Anyway, he left my room and I lay there for a long time, just thinking. I think I remember hearing a boat’s whistle blow, way off in the distance, and then I fell asleep.
On Monday morning we found out where Virgil Sikes was assigned. Not the line. Not the loading dock. He came right into the big room where my dad worked on one of the machines that smoothed and polished the gears until they were all exactly the same, and he started working on a machine about twenty feet away. I didn’t see him, because I worked on the loading dock that summer, but my dad was a nervous wreck at the end of the day. Seems Virgil Sikes was wearing all red again; and, as we were to learn, that’s the only color he would wear, crimson right down to his socks.
It began to drive my dad crazy. But I know one thing: the first week Virgil Sikes worked at the factory, I carted about twenty more crates than usual off that loading dock. The second week, the factory’s quota was up by at least thirty crates. I know, because my sore muscles took count.
The story finally came from Mr. Raphaelli: Virgil Sikes had hands as fast as fire, and he worked like no man Mr. Raphaelli had ever seen before. Rumor was circulating around the factory that Sikes had labored in a lot of different factories along the coast, and in every one of them he’d boosted production by from twenty to thirty percent. The man was never still, never slowed down or even took a water break. And somehow Mr. Lindquist had found out about him and hired him away from a factory down South, but to come to Greystone Bay Virgil Sikes had asked one thing: that the house he live in be painted as bright a red—inside and out—as the painters could find.
“That redneck’s a lot younger than me,” Dad said at dinner. “I could do that much work when I was his age!” But all of us knew that wasn’t true; all of us knew nobody at the factory could work like that. “He keeps on like this, he’s gonna blow up his damn machine! Then we’ll see what Lindquist thinks about him!”
But about a week after that, word came down to assign Virgil Sikes to two polishers at the same time. He handled them both with ease, his own speed gearing up to match the machines.
The red house began to haunt my dad’s dreams. Some nights he woke up in a cold sweat, yelling and thrashing around. When he got drunk, he ranted about painting our house bright blue or yellow—but all of us knew Mr. Lindquist wouldn’t let him do that. No, Virgil Sikes was special. He was different, and that’s why Mr. Lindquist let him live in a red house amid the gray ones.
And one night when Dad was drunk he said something that I knew had been on his mind for a long time. “Bobby boy,” he said, placing his hand on my shoulder and squeezing, “what if somethin’ bad was to happen to that damn Commie-red house over there? What if somebody was to light a little bitty fire, and that red house was to go up like a—”
“Are you crazy?” Mom interrupted. “You don’t know what you’re saying!”
“Shut up!” he bellowed. “We’re talkin’ man-to-man!” And that started another yelling match. I got out of the house pretty quick, and went up to the church to be alone.
I didn’t go back home until one or two in the morning. It was quiet on Accardo Street, and all the houses were dark.
But I saw a flicker of light on the red house’s porch. A match. Somebody was sitting on the porch, lighting a cigarette.
“Howdy, Bobby,” Virgil Sikes’ voice said quietly, in its thick Southern drawl.
I stopped, wondering how he could see it was me. “Hi,” I said, and then I started to go up the steps to my own house, because 1 wasn’t supposed to be talking to him and he was kind of spooky anyway.
“Hold on,” he said. I stopped again. “Why don’t you come on over and sit a spell?”
“I can’t. It’s way too late.”
He laughed softly. “Oh, it’s never too late. Come on up. Let’s have us a talk.”
I hesitated, thought of my room with the cracked ceiling. In that gray house, Dad would be snoring, and Mom might be muttering in her sleep. I turned around, walked across the street and up to the red house’s porch.
“Have a seat, Bobby,” Virgil offered, and I sat down in a chair next to him. I couldn’t see very much in the dark, but I knew the chair was painted red. The tip of his cigarette glowed bright orange and Virgil’s eyes seemed to shine like circles of flame.
We talked for a while about the factory. He asked me how I liked it, and I said it was okay. Oh, he asked me all sorts of questions about myself—what I liked, what I didn’t like, how I felt about Greystone Bay. Before long, I guess I was telling him everything about myself—things I suppose I’d never even told my folks. I don’t know why, but while I was talking to him, I felt as comfortable as if I were sitting in front of a warm, reassuring fireplace on a cold, uncertain night.
“Look at those stars!” Virgil said suddenly. “Did you ever see the like?”
Well, I hadn’t noticed them before, but now I looked. The sky was full of glittering dots, thousands and thousands of them strewn over Greystone Bay like diamonds on black velvet.
“Know what most of those are?” he asked me. “Worlds of fire. Oh, yes! They’re created out of fire, and they burn so bright before they go out—so very bright. You know, fire creates and it destroys too, and sometimes it can do both at the same time.” He looked at me, his orange eyes catching the light from his cigarette. “Your father doesn’t think too highly of me, does he?”
“No, I guess not. But part of it’s the house. He can’t stand the color red.”
“And I can’t stand to live without it,” he answered. “It’s the color of fire. I like that color. It’s the color of newness, and energy…and change. To me, it’s the color of life itself.”
“So that’s why you wanted the house changed from gray to red?”
“That’s right. I couldn’t live in a gray house. Neither could Evie or the kids. See, I figure houses are a lot like the people who live in them. You look around here at all these gray houses, and you know the people who live there have got gray souls. Maybe it’s not their choice, maybe it is. But what I’m sayin’ is that everybody can choose, if he has the courage.”
“Mr. Lindquist wouldn’t let anybody else paint their house a different color. You’re different because you work so good.”
“I work so good because I live in a red house,” Virgil said. “I won’t go to any town where I can’t live in one. I spell that out good and proper before I take a man’s money. See, I’ve made my choice. Oh, maybe I won’t ever be a millionaire and I won’t live in a mansion—but in my own way, I’m rich. What more does a man need than to be able to make his own choices?”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Bobby,” Virgil said quietly, “everybody can choose what color to paint their own house. It don’t matter who you are, or how rich or poor—you’re the one who lives inside the walls. Some folks long to be red houses amid the gray, but they let somebody else do the paintin’.” He stared at me in the dark. His cigarette had gone out, and he lit another with a thin red flame. “Greystone Bay’s got a lot of gray houses in it,” he said. “Lots of old ones, and ones yet to be.”
He was talking in riddles. Like I say, he was kind of spooky. We sat for a while in silence, and then I stood up and said I’d better be getting to bed because work cam
e early the next morning. He said good night, and I started across the street.
It wasn’t until I was in my room that I realized I hadn’t seen any matches or a lighter when Virgil had lit that second cigarette. Was I crazy—or had the flame been growing from his index finger?
Lots of old ones, Virgil had said. And ones yet to be.
I went to sleep with that on my mind.
And it seemed like I’d just closed my eyes when I heard my dad say, “Up and at ’em, Bobby! Factory whistle’s about to blow!”
The next week, the loading dock moved at least thirty-five more crates over quota. We could hardly keep up with them as they came out of the packing room. Dad couldn’t believe how fast Virgil Sikes worked; he said that the man moved so fast between those two machines that the air got hot and Virgil’s red clothes seemed to smoke.
One evening we came home and Mom was all shook up. It seems she got a telephone call from Mrs. Avery from two houses up Accardo. Mrs. Avery had gone nosing around the red house, and had looked into the kitchen window to see Evie Sikes standing over the range. Evie Sikes had turned all the burners on, and was holding her face above them like an ordinary person would accept a breeze from a fan. And Mrs. Avery swore she’d seen the other woman bend down and press her forehead to one of the burners as if it was a block of ice.
“My God,” Dad whispered. “They’re not human. I knew something was wrong with them the first time I saw them! Somebody ought to run them out of Greystone Bay! Somebody ought to burn that damned red house to the ground!”
And this time Mom didn’t say anything.
God forgive me, I didn’t say anything either.
Lots of old ones. And ones yet to be.
Rumor got around the factory: Virgil Sikes was going to be in charge of three polishing machines. And somebody in that department was going to get a pink slip.
You know how rumors are. Sometimes they hold a kernel of truth, most times they’re just nervous air. Whatever the case, Dad started making a detour to the liquor store on the way home from work three nights a week. He broke out in a sweat when we turned onto Accardo and had to approach the red house. He could hardly sleep at night, and sometimes he sat in the front room with his head in his hands, and if either Mom or I spoke a word, he blew up like a firecracker.
And finally, on a hot August night, his face covered with sweat, he said quietly, “I can’t breathe anymore. It’s that red house. It’s stealin’ the life right out of me. God Almighty, I can’t take it anymore!” He rose from his chair, looked at me, and said, “Come on, Bobby.”
“Where are we going?” I asked him as we walked down the steps to the car. Across the street, the lights of the red house were blazing.
“You don’t ask questions. You just do as I say. Get in, now. We’ve got places to go.”
I did as he said. And as we pulled away from the curb I looked over at the red house and thought I saw a figure standing at the window, peering out.
Dad drove out into the sticks and found a hardware store still open. He bought two three-gallon gasoline cans. He already had a third in the back. Then he drove to a gas station where nobody knew us and he filled up all three cans at the pumps. On the way home, the smell of the gasoline almost made me sick. “It has to be done, Bobby,” Dad said, his eyes glittering and his face blotched with color. “You and me have to do it. Us men have to stick together, right? It’s for the good of both of us, Bobby. Those Sikes people aren’t human.”
“They’re different, you mean,” I said. My heart was hammering, and I couldn’t think straight.
“Yes. Different. They don’t belong on Accardo Street. We don’t need any red houses on our street. Things have been fine for a hundred years, and we’re going to make them fine again, aren’t we?”
“You’re…going to kill them,” I whispered.
“No. Hell, no! I wouldn’t kill anybody! I’m gonna set the fire and then start yellin’. They’ll wake up and run out the back door! Nobody’ll get hurt!”
“They’ll know it was you.”
“You’ll say we were watchin’ a movie on TV. So will your mom. We’ll figure out what to say. Damn it, Bobby, are you with me or against me?”
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what to say. What’s wrong and what’s right when you love somebody?
Dad waited until all the lights had gone out on Accardo Street. Mom sat with us in the front room; she didn’t say anything, and she wouldn’t look at either of us. We waited until the Johnny Carson show was over. Then Dad put his lighter in his pocket, picked up two of the gas cans, and told me to get the third. He had to tell me twice, but I did it. With all the lights off but the glow of the TV, I followed my father out of the room, across the street, and quietly up to the red house’s porch. Everything was silent and dark. My palms were sweating, and I almost dropped my gas can going up the steps.
Dad started pouring gas over the red-painted boards, just sloshing it everywhere. He poured all the gas out from two cans, and then he looked at me standing there. “Pour yours out!” he whispered. “Go on, Bobby!”
“Dad,” I said weakly. “Please…don’t do this.”
“Christ Almighty!” He jerked the can from my hand and sloshed it over the porch too.
“Dad…please. They don’t mean any harm. Just because they’re different…just because they live in a house that’s a different color—”
“They shouldn’t be different!” Dad told me. His voice was strained, and I knew he was right at the end of his rope. “We don’t like different people here! We don’t need different people!” He started fumbling for his lighter, took from his pocket a rag he’d brought from the kitchen.
“Please…don’t. They haven’t hurt us. Let’s just forget it, okay? We can just walk away—”
His lighter flared. He started to touch the flame to the rag.
Lots of old ones, I thought. And ones yet to be.
Me. Virgil Sikes had been talking about me.
I thought about gears at that instant. Millions and millions of gears going down a conveyor belt, and all of them exactly the same. I thought about the concrete walls of the factory. I thought about the machines and their constant pounding, damning rhythm. I thought about a cage of gray clapboard, and I looked at my dad’s scared face in the orange light and realized he was terrified of what lay outside the gray clapboards—opportunity, choices, chance, life. He was scared to death, and I knew right then that I could not be my father’s son.
I reached out and grabbed his wrist. He looked at me like he’d never seen me before.
And I heard my voice—stronger now, the voice of a stranger—say, “No.”
Before Dad could react, the red-painted front door opened.
And there was Virgil Sikes, his orange eyes glittering. He was smoking a cigarette. Behind him stood his wife and two kids—three more pairs of orange, glowing eyes like camp-fires in the night.
“Howdy,” Virgil said in his soft Southern drawl. “Ya’ll havin’ fun?”
My dad started sputtering. I still had hold of his wrist.
Virgil smiled in the dark. “One less gray house in Greystone Bay, Bobby.”
And then he dropped the cigarette onto the gas-soaked boards at his feet.
The flames caught, burst up high. I tried to grab Virgil, but he pulled back. Then Dad was pulling me off the porch as the boards began to explode into flame. We ran down into the street, and both of us were yelling for the Sikes to get out the back door before the whole house caught.
But they didn’t. Oh, no. Virgil took one of the children in his arms and sat down in a red chair, and his wife took the other and sat down beside him in the midst of the flames. The porch caught, hot and bright, and as we watched in fascinated horror, we saw all four of the Sikeses burst into flame; but their fire-figures were just sitting there in the chairs, as if they were enjoying a nice day at the beach. I saw Virgil’s head nod. I saw Evie smile before fire filled up her face, the children beca
me forms of flame—happy fires, bouncing and kicking joyfully in the laps of their parents.
I thought something then. Somthing that I shouldn’t think about too much.
I thought: They were always made of fire. And now they’re going back to what they were.
Cinders spun into the air, flew up and glittered like stars, worlds on fire. The four figures began to disintegrate. There were no screams, no cries of pain—but I thought I beard Virgil Sikes laugh like the happiest man in the world.
Or something that had appeared to be a man.
Lights were coming on all up and down Accardo Street. The fires were shooting up high, and the red house was almost engulfed. I watched the sparks of what had been the Sikes family fly up high, so very high—and then they drifted off together over Greystone Bay, and whether they winked out or just kept going, I don’t know. I heard the siren of a fire truck coming. I looked at my dad, looked long and hard, because I wanted to remember his face. He looked so small. So small.
And then I turned and started walking along Accardo Street, away from the burning house. Dad grabbed at my arm, but I pulled free as easily as if I were being held by a shadow. I kept walking right to the end of Accardo—and then I just kept walking.
I love my mom and dad. I called them when the workboat I signed onto got to a port up the coast about thirty miles. They were okay. The red house was gone, but of course the firemen never found any bodies. All that was left was the red station wagon. I figured they’d haul that off to where the junked cars are, and the blind old man who lives there would have a new place to sleep.
Dad got into some trouble, but he pleaded temporary insanity. Everybody on Accardo knew Bull was half-crazy, that he’d been under a lot of pressure and drank a lot. Mr. Lindquist, I heard later, was puzzled by the whole thing, like everybody else, but the clapboard houses were cheap and he decided to build a white brick house across from my folks. Mr. Lindquist had wanted to get rid of those clapboard things and put up stronger houses for the factory workers anyway. This just started the ball rolling.