“When you’re quite finished, you’re under arrest.”
The Captain spoke with a kind of amused and detached authority, as if he were only joking from one fireman to another, though my stomach knew that it wasn’t the case. Just the smoldering heap behind them, what used to be a house, proved it.
The man, called Montag if the crowd had heard right, stood there silently, helplessly, watching his life and books burn.
My heart went out to Montag; my last husband had been a librarian and reckless book-lover back in the days when it was still legal, and had ended up as a fiery bust of ashes into the midnight sky, God rest his soul. He’d burned with his beloved books, speaking Islamic faith passages about God as he did so. When I’d remarried, it was to a contractor who believed in the power of blueprints and computer screens instead of the printed word. I had always been indifferent to books, though silently opposed to those who wouldn’t leave those who still treasured them alone.
Three thirty in the morning, so it was, and yet, as tired as I felt, I knew that there was a remaining sleepless night ahead of me.
The rest of the crowd slowly fell away behind me as the house smoked, but I felt compelled to stay; I was there for the whole thing.
“Was it my wife that turned in the alarm?” Montag asked after several uneven tries. For such a strong man, he seemed so weak and torn, though for good reason.
The Captain nodded, and proceeded to talk about the foolishness of both Montag and the books, and how the world was just fine without them. More than once the Captain insulted Montag, though he just took the blows without so much as flinching.
Montag tilted his head, almost imperceptibly, and just as quickly as it happened, Montag was reeling backward from the force of a punch straight from the Captain.
I felt my eyes widen in shock. Now here was a twist to the everyday tale of the house-burning, book-owning scenario that I’d not only seen many times, but had lived through.
Quickly, before Montag could recover, he reached out, picking up something that, from my yard, was practically invisible.
The Captain said something roughly, tucking the small object into a pocket.
“No!” The disgraced fireman cried out.
I watched, breathless, as the Captain’s eyes flickered to the flame thrower, caused by a trigger movement on Montag’s part that I had missed.
Seconds ticked by unnervingly before anyone did anything, the air thick with tension and the smell of burning wood. When they did, it was a relaxed smirk from the Captain.
“Well, that’s one way to get an audience. Hold a gun on a man and force him to listen to your speech.” The Captain rambled on, my eyes burning from the effort it was taking not to blink, in fear that something else might happen. “Go ahead now, you second-hand litterateur, pull the trigger.” The Captain stepped forward arrogantly.
My heart rate accelerated.
“We never burned right…” Montag said, almost wistful.
The Captain, confident – too confident, in my opinion – smiled wickedly. “Hand it over, Guy.”
Before I could truly process what was happening, a ball of fire lashed out at the Captain, along with a loud shriek as he was consumed by the starving mass of flame. He crumpled to the ground, the odor of burning flesh tingeing the air.
Bile rose in my throat, but I could not look away as Guy Montag, believer in the truth of books, knocked the two other firemen unconscious.
For a moment, as I clutched my hand over my mouth, all seemed silent.
Montag turned in time to hear the bounding leaps, the almost-growl of the Mechanical Hound; the same one that the oldest captain, before the one killed that night, had brought with him to fetch my husband.
I prayed that it couldn’t sense fear.
It was almost graceful, that bulk of machinery, and I had to turn away as it leaped at Montag, one of the people it was meant to obey; to listen to.
I heard a slam, as if it had tackled Montag to the ground, and then another, and after a loud shout, a series of several more loud ones, and then the smell of a clean kind of fire, almost metallic.
My brain played with the sounds, forming them into different outcomes, and scaring me enough that even if what had happened was horrible, it couldn’t be any worse than my own imagination.
I turned around.
Guy lay on the ground, by the tree in what had once been his yard. He looked dazed and stunned, like he wasn’t exactly sure of what had just happened, though whenever he adjusted his leg, he winced.
Maybe the animal had gotten him, then.
Yet when I looked closer, I could see the charred remains of its spidery legs and mechanical entrails scattered across the yard.
Montag attempted to stand, but failed. “Come on!” he shouted. “Come on, you, you can’t stay here!”
His second try worked better, though the pain obvious in both his vehement curses and crippled actions proved that it was not easy for him.
People began to come out again, and I hoped I didn’t look too obviously consumed with his challenge. They shouted at him, tried to get his attention, but he just kept moving, cursing, and stumbling, before long disappearing completely into the darkness of the morning.
