Those Who Favor Fire (20 page)

“Won’t your family mind you bringing a grimy stranger home so early in the morning?” He pictured a mother in curlers, father un-bathed, children, perhaps, intent on their morning cartoons.

“I live alone,” she said. The door was unlocked, the windows wide open to the breeze.

Suspicious or not,
Joe thought,
she feels safe enough up here
.

But Rachel suffered a moment’s unease as she opened her door to this stranger—for despite knowing a thing or two about him, that’s still what he was—yet the hair on her neck refused to rise, and any second sense she possessed seemed content to trust her first, more experienced instinct.

“Come on in,” she said.

As he followed her into the house he was tempted to ask why she was living alone, at her age, in a house so clearly meant for a family. But he had only just met this girl and had no more intention of asking questions than of answering them. Instead, he said, “I got the impression from the signs on the road into town that this whole place was on the verge of going up in smoke, but all I’ve seen so far is a couple of hot spots way out in the middle of fields.”

“The fire’s not a problem in this part of town,” she said, leaving him at the kitchen door as she pulled two jelly jars out of a cupboard, filled them with tap water, and drank one down. She held the other out in his direction. He had not realized he was thirsty until he began to drink. It was well water. Cold and somehow thicker than city water, with a taste like stone.

“It’s not really a
problem
anywhere,” Rachel was saying about the fire. “Once in a while a basement heats up, out at the far end of town where the tunnels are. Or a tree suddenly begins to die.” She paused, took a sharp breath. “A church out that way has a hot graveyard, and there’s talk about the coffins breaking up. Maybe sinking a little deeper than they ought to be.” She glared at the back of her hand, used the pad of her thumb to massage a smudge of paint from the cleft of a knuckle. “Some people are thinking about moving the bodies somewhere else, but no one really wants to mess around with them unless they have to. So they keep on burying people out there and hope they’ll stay put.” Rachel gave herself a little shake and turned on the taps again, ran the water warm, fetched a bar of hard yellow soap from under the sink. “I’ll bet you don’t especially want to hear about all that.”

It was true. Joe didn’t really want to hear such things. Not on a full stomach. But he found himself fascinated by this strange fire, and he was curious about the kind of people who lived with it, cheek by jowl.

“No, I’m very interested,” he said. “I’d never heard of any such thing as a mine fire before yesterday.”

Rachel turned from the sink to look at him. “Where are you from?”

He had anticipated this question but had not settled on an answer. “The East Coast,” he replied.

If Rachel found his answer vague, she did not say so. Turning back to the sink, she beckoned with an elbow. “Come get cleaned up,” she said, making room.

Feeling a bit like a surgeon, Joe scrubbed the paint from his hands, now and then casting sidelong glances at the girl by his side. Her face, in profile, had a deliberate, pleasing topography of smooth lines, of features that suited one another like mountains suited their valleys, oceans their shores. Her hands, under their lather, were long and graceful with short, orderly nails. Both elegant and capable.

“Nobody’s too worried about this fire,” she said, as if she’d been chosen to speak for every man, woman, and child in Belle Haven. “Even before it started we sometimes had trouble with the ground giving way a bit from all the mining.”

“Giving way?”

“Every mining town in America has some lousy soil. Loose, from the coal underground being removed.”

“Anybody ever get buried?”

“Alive?” Rachel laughed. Shook the water from her hands. “Not even close. And no one’s been burned either.” She took a clean towel from a drawer by the sink, dried her hands, offered it to Joe. “As long as you aren’t sitting right above a mine tunnel, you’re as good as gold. And even then, you’re safer than you would be living in the city.” The more she talked about the fire, about her town, the more her slight accent strengthened. Her speech lost some of its edge. The tips of her words nudged one another, like beads in a necklace.

His hands tingling, Joe pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. He sat so that he could watch her as she hung the towel to dry and watered a primrose that was showing off on the windowsill.

“You must be used to it by now,” he said.

“I am,” Rachel said. “It’s no big deal. Really,” she added, as if he needed convincing. “Although …” She stretched the word out, tipping her head and appraising him with a long look. “I
could
tell you some stories …”

Joe appraised her right back. “Such as?”

She closed one eye, considered him soberly through the other. “I don’t want to give you nightmares.”

Joe grinned at her. “Don’t worry about me. I’m a big boy.”

Rachel smiled like a cat. “It’s not a very nice story.”

But Joe could not imagine that she knew any stories to compare to the ones that had sent him to Belle Haven in the first place.

“Shoot,” he said.

Rachel pulled out a chair at the table. Sat down across from Joe. “When I was eleven years old,” she said and was momentarily silenced by the look on Joe’s face. “Is something the matter?”

She had sounded so much like Holly.
When I was eleven years old …

“Go on,” he said. “Nothing’s the matter.”

Which Rachel did not believe for a second. She watched him rearrange his face, fold his hands on the table in front of him. “Do you want some coffee?” she asked, more to give him a moment than anything else.

“Sure. If it’s no trouble.” He was startled by his own good manners.

Rachel got up and took an old percolator out of a cupboard beneath the sink. “The fire started when I was ten, so I guess I was ten when this happened. Maybe eleven.” She cocked her head. “Thereabouts anyway.” She filled the percolator with water. “I was playing at my friend Lynn’s house. Lynn Cooper. She lived out near the tunnels, and north of town, where the fire started. We usually played here at my house because her brothers always pestered us, but her dog, Elvira—”

“Elvira?” he said. “They had a dog named
Elvira
?”

“I know. Don’t ask me. Anyway, she had a litter of new pups in the coal shed, and I wanted to see them. We kept trying to sneak a look, but Elvira went nuts if we got too close. She was a good mother.”

Rachel poured coffee directly out of a can into the basket of the percolator. She didn’t bother to measure it. Joe watched her hands as she made the coffee. She handled everything with the same sure, steady touch.

“She was a good ratter, too, which was a good thing for the Coopers. Lots of rats lived in the tunnels, and when the mines shut down and there were no more lunch scraps for the rats to eat, they had to come up for all their food. But Elvira didn’t have any trouble keeping them under control until the fire started. After that, the rats had to completely abandon the tunnels. People living near mine shafts, like the Coopers, suddenly had a real rat problem. Ever seen a mine rat?”

Joe shook his head. He thought about asking her to stop. “No, I never have.”

“Lucky you.” Rachel made a face. “Big as cats, some of them. Mean as spit. So up they came, looking for food and a new place to live. The Coopers had plenty of garden and a big barn, too. Rat heaven. Within a week of the fire starting, there were rat holes all over the place. Lynn’s father was afraid they’d find a way into the basement, especially when Elvira was so busy with her pups. And Lynn kept having nightmares about one of those enormous rats eating the puppies. So her father got it into his head to wipe out the rats, once and for all.” Rachel held the basket of coffee in one hand but had clearly forgotten it was there. She had gone pale with remembering. Joe watched the basket of coffee the way someone watches a long cigarette ash.

“First,” Rachel said, “he filled in all the rat holes he could find, except two. Then he attached a hose to the tailpipe of his truck and stuck it down one of the two open rat holes. And then he started up the truck and left it running while he ran over and stood next to the other rat hole with a paddle in his hands.”

She lowered her face to the coffee grounds, took a long breath, and, straightening up, refreshed by the smell of the grounds, dropped the basket onto its stalk inside the pot. Crammed on the lid. Plugged it in. Almost immediately, the percolator began to gurgle and spit.

“God, it was awful,” she said. “We all sat on the back steps to watch—Lynn and I, Lynn’s mother and her three brothers. Like it was 4-H or something.” Rachel made a sound like there was something clinging to the lining of her throat. Joe wondered what 4-H stood for.

“I’ll never forget … Lynn’s father was wearing waders to keep the blood off his pants, and one of the boys kept yelling, ‘Batter up!’ ”

It was at this point that Joe became aware of the eggs slowly liquefying in his stomach. Rachel, too, suddenly looked very grim. She swallowed so hard Joe could hear it above the grumble of the percolator.

“The first rat came scampering up out of that hole like the hounds of hell were after it,” she said. “Lynn’s father took a huge swing at it, but he hadn’t expected the rats to panic. He thought the exhaust would slow them down, blind them. And he missed. And in the next second he realized what he’d done.” Rachel took a quick step backward. “He started screaming for us to get in the house, but I was up off those steps and through that door before the words were out of his mouth. We all were. Then we watched from the windows.” The coffee gurgled in its pot. Joe could hardly wait for the taste of it. “There
were hundreds of them.
Thousands
. They came out so close together it was like watching a black river gushing up from the ground. We watched for over an hour before they stopped coming up out of that hole. And they ran out into the fields, into the barn. Elvira stood in the door of the coal shed and fought off the ones that came her way. Lynn’s mother got on the phone and called the nearest neighbors to warn them what was coming. It took about a year and all kinds of exterminators, but we finally got the mine rats under control. I haven’t seen one for years. Although now and then one will show up in somebody’s garbage and everyone will act like there’s a gargoyle on the loose.” Rachel took a pot of sugar and put it on a tray. “But that’s the worst thing that’s ever happened.

“Go on out to the porch,” she said, “and I’ll bring the coffee.”

And although Joe, too, saw that things could have been much worse for Belle Haven, he took a long look through Rachel’s screen door before he opened it on this particular corner of the world.

The balance of their conversation that morning was full of the courtesy of strangers, of curiosity unappeased. They spoke some more about the town but little about themselves. Joe was reluctant to reveal his reasons for coming to this town. Rachel was so undecided about her future that she preferred to dwell on the here and now. So they talked about the fire, about the Schooner and the bridge, about Angela and Earl, about Ian Spalding and the demise of his campground.

“How does he make a living now?” Joe asked.

“He’s a part-time schoolteacher, nearly ready to retire in any event.” Which Joe could easily believe, for Ian had a teacher’s way about him: he explained things well, seemed happy to share what he knew, had a voice made for the ear and an easy way about him. Joe thought he would be hard to ruffle. But he was also aware that he cared what Ian thought about him, which was unusual for Joe. Perhaps this was because Ian was so much older, so respectable-looking: his cuffs buttoned, sparse hair nicely cut, matching crow’s feet around his kind eyes. Or perhaps because he had taught school for so long that he had learned the trick of treating others as he himself wanted to be treated: with patience and respect.

“The campground wasn’t anything more than a way for Ian to keep
busy during the summers and make a bit of extra money,” Rachel said. “It was never very popular anyway. Just people passing through on their way somewhere else. But nobody passes through here on purpose anymore.” She wondered if Joe was an exception, and if so, why. But she figured he’d tell her if he wanted to.

After their coffee was gone, they grew awkward with each other and Joe realized it was time to leave. “I guess I’d better go fetch my Schooner,” he said. “I left it over at the A&P. Too bad Ian lives so far out. I’d rather not drive the Schooner into town again if I can help it, but I can’t see walking all that way.”

Rachel thought about that for a moment and then reluctantly said, “I guess you could borrow my father’s bike. If you promise to take good care of it.” She had mixed feelings about this man. One minute he was saying something to offend her, the next smiling his winsome smile, looking at her with those remarkably blue eyes, daring her to think ill of him.

He made her wary, suspicious, but she was tempted to trust him with small things. As if he were an ex-con or a friend known to lie. She had allowed him into her home. She would lend him her father’s old bike.

“You’ll need to walk it down to Frank’s,” she warned as they hauled the bike out of the cellar. “The tires need air, and I’ll bet the chain wants a bit of oil.”

“This is wonderful,” he said, meaning it. “I’ll take great care of it. Thanks.”

Before he went away, she gave him her phone number (she’d thought about the wisdom of that while bringing out the bike and decided it could do no harm). “It’s such a small town you shouldn’t have trouble finding anything you need, but call me if you do.”

“Thanks, Rachel. Ian’s right there, but thanks. Maybe I’ll see you at Angela’s again.”

She watched him walk off down the hill, wheeling the old bike that had been her father’s for so many years. She liked Joe despite herself. “I’ll have to watch that,” she thought. The day stretched ahead of her with no reason to hurry, no plans or commitments. She sighed and turned back toward the porch.