10. Red Like Fire

Chapter Ten

Legend, Number Five

Lafayetteplains, Orchard County

The highway was framed on either side by pale green, seven-foot-tall rows and rows of corn stalks. A classic 1960s Jaguar cruised down the middle of the two lane highway at ninety miles per hour. Legend released the accelerator, causing the whirring turbo to dampen in intensity. As the RPMs fell, Legend down shifted. He could see a gap in the corn stalks ahead on the right. He dropped one more gear before veering sharply off the highway and onto a dirt path barely wider than the car. Legend bounced around in his chair as the car whipped straight on the path. Legend slammed the accelerator to the floor and rowed through the gears until the Jaguar was flying through the cornfield at sixty miles per hour.

“What the hell was that for?” cried a voice to Legend’s right.

Legend cocked his head to the side. He had forgotten that Gossip was in the car with him. “The turn came up quicker than I recalled,” Legend said.

“Hell it did,” Gossip mumbled, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck. “You still didn’t tell me where we’re going or why it’s urgent.”

“Mercedes called a meeting at the barn.” The path was intersected ahead by a broader dirt road in a plus shape. Legend cranked the steering wheel to the left and made the turn on two wheels. “I haven’t been out here in ages. I have to make sure that it remains standing.”

The barn was stubborn like that. Decades of wear and three fires were not enough to knock it down.

Gossip was clutching the side of the car with white-knuckled hands. “Oh yeah, just casually keep it up while you’re trying to kill me.”

Legend glanced over at him. Reflective silver shades wrapped around Gossip’s eyes. His face was turned towards the car door and his feet were planted firmly on the floor.

Legend stared at the blind man too long. He almost missed the last turn on the right. With another glance at Gossip, Legend decided to drift around the turn. Gossip lost hold on the door and his body slammed into Legend before bouncing back against the passenger door as Legend yanked up on the emergency brake, sending the car spiraling into a series of circles.

Dust clouds billowed up around them as the car screeched to a stop before a large double-door, faded red barn. Red like fire.

The engine stalled and sputtered off. Legend hadn’t put in the clutch.

“Great. I have no idea where you brought me. I’m sure my stomach is on the road back there somewhere. And now the car is dead,” Gossip said. “Fabulous.”

Legend yanked the keys out of the ignition. “The barn, I told you,” he said opening his door.

Gossip started to say something but Legend slammed his door shut. Gossip would take the hint. Legend turned away from the car and began walking through the hot, humid air towards the barn. “It stands,” he said when he heard Gossip stagger out of the car. Charred black marks still crusted around the eaves of the roof and the center window had never been replaced after being broken by a burning baseball nearly half a century before. The red paint was peeling on all walls and faded to pink on the sides where the sun was the strongest. Red like fire.

“Well, you haven’t crashed into it yet,” Gossip said. His white and red stick scraped against the ground as he moved to follow Legend. Red like fire.

When they were standing side by side, Legend started towards the barn again.

“Cornfield racers. The old and the blind,” Legend said throwing the barn doors open.

Gossip stumbled backwards, narrowly missing getting slammed into by the doors swinging outward towards him. “That’s insulting,” he said.

“It’s the truth,” Legend said, walking into the shadow of the barn. He sneezed and wiped his sleeve across his nose. The barn was as dusty inside as it was outside.

It took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. When he could see, Legend wasn’t surprised to find that the place hadn’t changed since the last time he’d been there. Dry bales of hay were stacked against the far wall. At least two more had exploded and scattered straw all over most of the floor. Old rusty hand tools lined the left wall. Broken, random car parts from twelve different cars were piled to the right of the door. The ladder to the loft hung down in the middle of the floor with a corroded lawn mower from the 1980s to the right of it.

Legend inhaled the scent of old hay. He wanted to say it smelled like home but he couldn’t recall and honestly didn’t care. Every time he thought of his childhood, Legend’s nostrils filled with the acrid tang of smoke, and a humorless smile would cross his lips.

“And?” Gossip asked from the doorway.

“Nothing’s changed,” Legend said.

“Who owns this place anyway?” Gossip asked.

Legend looked over at him for a moment before proceeding farther into the barn. “It matters as much now as it did the last time you asked,” he said, not because he was irritated with being asked the same question every time he took Gossip to the barn but because it was the truth. Legend didn’t know what irritation was.

“I just wanted to know what kind of person would look the other way with street racers holding a secret meeting in their barn,” Gossip said.

“The kind who doesn’t know it’s happening,” Legend said. He stopped at the ladder stretched out in the middle of the aisle. The wood was cracked and splintering, almost as if each rung would snap in half the second an ounce of weight even looked at it wrong. But the splinters were sticking out in the same places they always had, so Legend knew the thing was stable. He glanced over his shoulder at Gossip again. The blind man hadn’t moved beyond the barn’s threshold. His head swept from side to side as if he were studying his surroundings.

Cornfield racers. The old and the blind. The one who lacked emotion and the one who lacked physical senses. Legend supposed he could see what was so funny about that to the other counties.

“What if he finds out?” Gossip asked.

Legend grabbed ahold of the ladder’s side rails and placed one foot on the bottom rung. It creaked from the pressure but otherwise didn’t react. Legend swung his other foot up onto the second rung and allowed the ladder to support his weight for a few moments.

Gossip asked him questions as if Legend knew what an appropriate response would be. “Then he would know what goes on,” Legend said.

“But what if he calls the cops?” Gossip asked.

“This is Orchard County,” Legend said as he stepped up another two rungs. The ladder groaned and wobbled. “Home of the Orchard County Rural Police Force and one deputy sheriff. I could race out of here on a gas powered push lawn mower before dispatch had even finished initiating the call. We have two zip codes with an elementary school in one town and the high school in the other. Big city racers like Mercedes can more than handle the OCRPD.”

Legend climbed up another two rungs. Halfway up the ladder, he was able to poke his head into the loft above. The floor was covered in a carpet of loose straw. Square bales of hay lined the perimeter of the loft, forming a fireside-like semicircle at the far side. The roof eaves pressed in on two walls and that single glassless window streamed moonlight into the room from the front of the barn.

Same old, same old.

“Sure,” Gossip said from below. “But what about sabotage? Like that crap I heard these guys do to the cornfields.”

Legend paused again and glanced down at the blind man. “Dead men are hardly capable of sabotage,” he said.

He finished climbing the ladder and kicked his way through the straw to circle the room, stooping low around the slanted roof. He took care to avoid sticking himself on any one of the various nails poking through the boards of the slant.

Pulling his mobile from a pocket in his jeans, Legend sat down on one of the hay bales. He flipped the device opened and dialed 9666.

“Yes?” Mercedes’ voice answered with an echo indicative of speaking into a car microphone.

“I’m not interrupting, am I,” Legend asked. His words belied the question where his flat tone was unable to.

“No,” Mercedes said.

“The barn looks good,” Legend said. “She’s all set for the Numbers.”

“Grand,” Mercedes said. “I’ll have everyone meet there in three nights. Can you arrange a major distraction for the OCR?”

A red flag ran up the pole in Legend’s mind. Red like fire. “It will be done,” he said. “Your news is pressing then and unrelated to the winter events.”

“Planning for the Solstice Scrap and New Year’s Bash hasn’t crossed my mind much to be honest,” Mercedes said.

“Because of Bronze,” Legend said.

Mercedes sighed. “He was a Number for as long as I have been racing,” he said. “I doubt I’m the only one to feel the hole that he’s left.”

Legend didn’t feel a hole at Bronze’s absence. The man everyone likened to a puppy hadn’t been in his life much to begin with. He had been one of Legend’s czars before earning himself the title Number Seven but Legend had tried not to keep tabs on him.

“But that isn’t what this is about,” Legend said. After all, Bronze had already been replaced. The new Tenth County Number had been to the barn once, after Mercedes had appointed him. Taboo was his name. “What is it, then.”

“I’m not going to tell you over mobile,” Mercedes said. “But if you want a preview, I suggest tuning into Channel 9.”

“The national news,” Legend said. “Not local.”

“Channel 9, not 7, right,” Mercedes said.

“I’ll see you in three days,” Legend said. He flipped his mobile closed before Mercedes said anything else. The impersonality of the telephone was something that Legend struggled with, even more so than regular conversation.

He swept his gaze around the loft one last time before standing up, bones creaking nearly as much as the ladder had with the effort. Pocketing his mobile once more, Legend stepped back up to the ladder and began his descent.

“Everything check out?” Gossip asked, probably having heard the ladder protesting again.

“Numbers meeting here in three nights,” Legend said as he alighted on the dusty barn ground. “It is as much presentable as it usually is.”

Legend brushed past Gossip on his way out. The blind man took the message and backed out of the doorway to allow Legend to swing the barn doors shut again. Gossip was already making his way back over to the car. Despite the dirt driveway being largely the same consistency wherever one stepped, Gossip had no problem getting himself back to the passenger side of the car. Sometimes Legend had to wonder if Gossip wasn’t really blind at all.