It's been a warm spring. At school they're praying for me, because I've been out of it for more than two hundred days. I've got bedsores all over my body and a condom catheter taped to my flute. This, the doctor tells my parents, is the phase of the 'coma vigil': I've regained limited receptivity to my surroundings. He says I've started reacting to stimuli, pain and noise, and that's good news. Reacting to pain is a definite sign that you're alive.
They hang around my bed the whole time, Pa, Ma, Dirk and Sam. I can hear them as soon as they get out of the lift - a swarm of starlings darkening the sky. They smell of oil and stale tobacco; they've barely bothered to change out of their overalls. Hermans & Sons, For all your Demolition Needs. Scrap is our middle name.
We demolish wrecked vars, industrial equipment and the occasional café interior, if my brother Dirk happens to be feeling pumped up. Dirk had been barred from almost every bar, shop and inn in Lomark, but not in Westerveld, not yet. He's got a girl over there. He comes home smelling of chemical violets. All you can do is feel sorry for her.
What the Hermanses talk about mostly is the weather, the same old song and dance; business is slow and the weather's to blame, no matter what the weather's like. They swear and shake their heads, first Pa, then Dirk, then Sam. Dirk clears his sinuses loudly, now he has a gob of snot in his mouth. He doesn't know where to go with it, the only thing left to do is swallow - and, bloop, there it goes.
Lately, though, there's been more to talk about in Lomark than just the weather. While I was out cold, a runaway moving van wrecked the Maandags' step-gabled house, and huge explosions off in the distance are causing the whole town to shift itself with a certain regularity. This all has to do, it seems, with someone by the name of Joe Speedboat. He's new in Lomark; I've never met him.
Whenever they start talking about Joe Speedboat, though, I prick my ears - he sounds like a good guy if you ask me, but then no one asks me. They're sure Speedboat is the one making the bombs. Not that they've ever caught him at it, but there were never any explosions before he came, and now suddenly there are. Case closed. It's got them pretty pissed off, let me tell you. Sometimes Ma says, "Hush now, Frankie might hear you," but they don't pay her any mind.
"Just pop out for a smoke," Pa says. You're not allowed to do that in here.
"Is that really his name, Speedboat?" asks Sam, my brother, two years my elder. Sam's never the one I have to worry about
"Nobody's name is really Speedboat," says Dirk. With that big mouth of his. Dirk, the firstborn. A real bastard. I could tell you things about him.
"Ach, the boy's just lost his father," says Ma. "Let him be."
Dirk sniffs loudly. "Speedboat, of all the stupid..."
It makes me itch, a nice kind of itch, the kind you can't help scratching. Joe Speedboat. Well I'll be damned.
