Good Hot Pizza

Good Hot Pizza

Howard perched himself precariously on the large, dirt covered boulder in his side yard, planted the edge of his size twelve work boots into the small crevasse at the stone's base, and watched his house burn. He rubbed his stiff, leathered hands over the earth that clung desperately to the rock. A cloud of sandy dust rose into the air above his overalls and mixed with the coal-colored smoke that was now pouring from the four-room shotgun shack that had been his home for the last forty years.

Skinny flames began to flicker like yellow tongues through the front window frame; it seemed to Howard that the tongues were calling out to the men whose jackets were the same shade of yellow, daring them to come closer with their fat, tan hoses, like monstrous snakes coiled over his property. He'd be good, just sit here like they told him to, and be waiting for Leland when they brought him out.

“Knew it'd been engine 361,” Howard muttered to himself. “Just got done telling Leland about seeing 261 down at Tanner's Garage for repairs yesterday. It's a right pretty truck, too. Soon's he sees it, Leland's gonna clap his hands and holler 'Look a here, Howard, we got ourselves the shiny one.'”

Howard balled up one hand into a fist and slammed it into his other palm. “Leland won't be clapping his hands for long, though, after I get done giving him hell for bumping into the kerosene heater and turning it over. Right on the pretty square of blue carpet I found in the town dump just last week. Yeh,” Howard whispered, “I got me a bone to pick with Leland, just as soon as they get him out.”

Howard looked around his yard—brown clumps of grass sprinkled randomly across red clay, dried kudzu that crept closer each spring, like some beast with long, green fingers. His eyes traveled over the broken deck chairs that he'd found and never got around to fixing, the empty Clorox bottle that Leland had thrown at him last week when Howard had drunk the last beer, and the pile of old bicycles that he was using for parts to keep his fifteen-year-old three speed on the road. “Should've picked up a few things before the pumper truck got here,” Howard mumbled as he shook his head, then coughed and spit a small pool of tar-colored mucus beside the rock.

Dark smoke sifted up through the tar paper roof like flour as Howard watched. The firemen shot water toward the chimney; the smoke turned white, and then rose like thick fog into the air. Through the haze, Howard could see the outline of his kitchen window, and every now and then, as the breeze blew the mist away, a flicker of red through the singed curtains.

Suddenly, Howard laughed, a deep, guttural, belly laugh that almost shook him from his rock. “Goddamn,” he said, as he squinted his eyes and saw the pizza box sitting on the kitchen table, the red letters still visible on the brown cardboard. “That old fool,” Howard snorted. “He's in there eating pizza while the house burns down around him. That'd be just like Leland, getting me all worked up while he makes sure his pizza is still hot.”

It'd been over five years since Mrs. Emory down at Social Services had recommended that Leland move in with Howard.

“What'd you want to come live here for?” Howard asked when he first saw the short, thick necked stranger with sleepy eyes and cropped gray hair.

“Don't have nowhere else to go. You like pizza?”

“Yeh, I guess I like pizza. You buying?”

“You let me live here, it's on me. Any night you want it until my check runs out each month.”

From that first day, Howard and Leland had eaten pizza just about every night. They'd sit at the table sometimes long past midnight drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and eating thick slices with cheese dripping down their chins and pepperoni stuck between their teeth.

“You know this whole farm used to be mine, don't you?” Howard said one night as he wiped his greasy hands on the knees of his jeans. “Yes sir, grew corn on one side of the mountain, soybeans on the other.”

Leland chewed on while Howard grabbed another slice. “Damn, I was my own boss. Weren't no man that could tell me what to do—except the son of a bitch in his pin stripe suit down at the bank who couldn't see fit to give me a little more time to make the payments. You believe I used to own this mountain, Leland?”

“Yep,” Leland mumbled through a thick wad of chewy crust.

Howard shook his head and whispered, “Sure was a long time ago, though.”

Sitting on his rock and watching the pizza box turn gray with wisps of smoke, Howard thought about all the times Leland had talked about the war. He'd need at least three beers and a half of a large with everything before he'd tell Howard about the voices he still heard at night. Voices that screamed all of the way from an icy Korean hillside to the still West Virginia darkness, searching for Leland, never giving up until they found him, and tortured him into the wee hours of the morning. 

“They're gonna get me, Howard. I know they are. They've been searching for me ever since that war ended,” Leland confided to Howard one hushed, muggy night.  Leland started to cry, and Howard patted him roughly on the arm. Leland dried his eyes with the sleeve of his old fatigue jacket and said, “Screw those voices. Screw them all. Pass me the box, Howard. Right now I don't give a crap about nothin but good, hot pizza.”

Howard rubbed his palms back and forth on the rough, cold stone and watched the smoke first turn from black to the color of gravel and then to a brown, like tree bark—just before yellow flames would shoot out. He was a solitary contestant in a game, predicting when fire would eat through a part of the house by the color of the smoke. If Leland were here, they could play the game together, see who could guess first and be right. They played lots of games, anyway. When the pizza ran out, usually Leland would suggest pinochle or hearts, or sometimes checkers, anything to keep from going to bed where the voices would be waiting for him.

The crackle of the fire reminded Howard of Leland tearing up cardboard pizza boxes and throwing them into the fireplace to help heat the little house in the winter. Leland's thick fingers ripping the greasy cardboard was a comforting sound, like autumn leaves crunching under his feet or the running water of the river. Howard hadn't realized how quiet his house had been before Leland came, until he was there, filling up the days with his heavy footsteps on the porch, the clicking of his dentures as he ate his pizza, his bellowing snore once he got to sleep at night.  Surely Leland must be done with his pizza by now. Surely.

Howard watched as two firemen walked over to him, their helmets in their hands, their faces red and splotched. “Did ya find Leland?” Howard asked.

“I'm sorry, Howard,” one of the men said. “We just couldn't get to him in time.”

The other fireman put his hand on Howard's shoulder. “You want to come with us? We'll take you down to see Mrs. Emory, Howard. She'll help you find a place to stay.”

“Nope, don't want to go nowhere, right now,” Howard hung his head. “I'm just gonna sit here a while.”

“Suit yourself. We've got to keep an eye on these hotspots anyway.”

Howard rooted himself to his boulder, pulled his knees up under his chin, and rocked slowly, almost imperceptibly, back and forth. The wind blew gray choking smoke over him and still he rocked. His nostrils burned and his eyes teared, but he remained on his rock until the sun was below the tree line, its fire extinguished like the flames that had roared through his living room, leaving only thick night and black shadows of things that used to be. 

“Ever stay up all night and watch the sun come up?” Leland had once asked Howard after polishing off a green pepper and mushroom with extra cheese.

“I got too many things to do to lose sleep watching something that's happened every damn day of my life,” Howard replied as he headed off to bed. “Besides,” he hollered back at Leland, “I saw a million of 'em when I used to farm this land. Weren't nothin' special.”

“I guess they only get to be special when you think you might not see 'em again,” Leland whispered just loud enough for Howard to hear. 

Howard watched the young firemen kick at smoldering piles of debris and spray water on the heaps of rubble where his house once stood. “That same sun'll be coming up again tomorrow, Leland,” he sighed.

Howard smiled as he thought of Leland munching on stale pizza crusts in the morning while his false teeth clapped against his gums. He could see the dripping beer and cheese sliding down their chins at night as Leland talked about how he liked living out here in the country with Howard. Howard saw Leland laughing, eyes crinkled, mouth wide open and full of half-chewed pizza after Howard told him a joke he had heard down at the market that morning.

Closing his eyes, Howard could see Leland standing before him, army jacket in his hand, his thinning gray hair slicked back with a mound of grease. He could feel Leland’s warm breath as his friend smiled, opened his mouth, and began to speak.  He heard Leland's voice, as strong and clear as last night when they had wolfed down a large with extra pepperoni. “I know you need to go talk to that Mrs. Emory, Howard, but I say we go out for pizza first since it's been such a bad day.”

A hunger began to throb within Howard, deep down in his belly—a desperate need that felt like it would swallow him whole. It rumbled and roared inside him, a familiar voice refusing to be ignored. It was accompanied by another intimate voice he knew well, repeating lines he could recite like the alphabet. 

“Don't have nowhere else to go. You like pizza?”

“They're gonna get me, Howard. I know they are.”

“Now aren't we both a sight, two pizza covered fools.”

“I guess things only get to be special when you think you might not see 'em again.”

Howard stopped rocking and let his feet slide down and brush the earth beneath the boulder. He clasped his hands together and smiled, showing jagged yellow teeth. One of the firemen walked over and slid his arm around Howard's shoulder. “Come on, Howard,” he said, “Let's get going. Mrs. Emory's got another place all lined up for you.”

Howard shook his head. “Got to go one place, first, if you don't mind. Screw this goddamn day. Can you take me on over to the Pizza Palace?  You fellas like pizza? I'll get us a large with everything. Right now I don't give a crap about nothin' but good, hot pizza.”