Those Who Favor Fire (35 page)

        Out in the woods beyond Ian’s fields, in the stand of dead trees, Joe’s statue of his sister had weathered to a softer mien, tranquil, as gray as clouds gathering rain. Beside her, Joe had carved a charming, elfish Rusty, unmistakably bright. Next to him Rachel stood wrapped in the bark of a young, dead oak tree, crowned with fragile branches, her eyes all challenge and entreaty. A fourth tree, awaiting its own face, bore the first of Joe’s incisions.

It had been more than a year since he had discovered Holly’s gold and the site of her resurrection, but in all that time he had brought only Rachel into the woods. He had satisfied Ian’s curiosity by telling him he’d found some good wood to carve and would take him out for a look someday.

For Christmas he’d carved for Ian, the stargazer, a plain wooden star from a flawless block of mahogany. The star was as smooth as Rusty’s young skin, its undulating grain as alluring as Rachel’s hair. “It will always be my Christmas star,” Ian had said, turning the polished wood in his gnarled hands. He was silent for a moment or two, and then he said, “I want to see what you’re working on out in the woods. When it’s all right with you.”

On the first Sunday after Independence Day, Joe washed his breakfast dishes, made his bunk, and set out for Ian’s house with Pal at his heels. It felt like a good day to take Ian to the woods.

Ian’s pickup was in the driveway, and there was a shovel thrust into his garden, but when Joe knocked first on the front door and then the back, Ian did not come.

“Ian,” Joe hollered through the screen door. He cupped his hands against the screen and peered into the house. The bathroom door on the far side of the kitchen stood ajar, the shower dry. The cellar door was shut, the bolt shot. “Ian,” he called, backing away from the door.

He looked out across the fields, thinking that Ian might have gone walking. “Ian,” Joe called, walking toward the plank that bridged the stream at the edge of the fields. Pal, ahead of him, stopped suddenly and looked back over her shoulder.

Ian, who had offered Joe sanctuary, who had seen how alone he was and offered him allegiance, was lying on his back in the clear, restless water of the stream. At first Joe thought he had simply become hot while gardening, fancied a moment in the cool waters of the stream, and become caught up with such dreams and diversions as water often inspires. He thought that Ian simply had not heard him calling, did not hear him at the stream’s edge, for he was lying in the shallow water with his ears submerged, his short hair waving like an unpinned halo, his face dry and pale in the sunlight.

But in the water next to Ian lolled an upended pail. On his hands were gardening gloves. On his feet, good boots. His red shirt and old jeans were swollen with cold water.

“Ian,” Joe whispered and went down on his knees. A jay landed on a rock near Ian’s boot, jabbed its beak at a stem of berries arcing over the water’s edge, and then hopped onto the toe of the boot to ruffle its plumage in the breeze.

Joe waited until the bird had flown, waited until his heart had stopped trembling, and then stepped down into the water of the stream. He gathered Ian up against his chest and staggered onto the grass. He knew he would never be able to carry him to the house alone. He was a heavy man, in wet clothes, his body weighted with the gravity of the dead, impatient for the earth.

Joe knew that if he dragged him, even in a barrow, the sight of his friend bouncing lightly, his hands dragging in the grass, losing their gloves, his heels rutting the lawn would haunt him for the rest of his days. This was Ian, drinker of brandy, singer of songs, teacher, confessor, companion, the sort of man Joe had made up his mind to be.

He sat down with Ian stretched out beside him on the grass, attended by wildflowers, and closed his eyes. He had not prayed much in his life, but he prayed now. He prayed that Ian was somewhere good. He sent a bray of anguish and longing skyward. And he began, quietly, to cry.

He thought of Ian lying alone in the beautiful water, dying, perhaps by conscious degrees, his eyes full of sky, his ears memorizing the sound of pebbles as they shifted in the current, his heart flooding with blood. He thought of Ian realizing that these were his last moments. Giving up his claim to flesh and land and voice. Sorry for the lack of warning, for the fact that he was leaving things undone, yet at the same time grateful to be leaving quickly.

“Good-bye, Ian,” Joe said inside his chest. “Good-bye and good-bye and good-bye.” And as he gained his feet and started toward the empty house, where he would find a coffee cup on the kitchen table and on the desk a letter just begun, he knew with exhilarating certainty that someday, in the far, immeasurable distance, he would see his friend again.

        “Ian was my teacher,” Rachel said, looking at the faces of those assembled around his grave. “He taught me about Henry the Eighth and the fall of Rome, showed me how to make pickles, taught me the proper way to splice a rope.

“I never had any uncles, but Ian was a lot like one to me. He and my father were friends, so I got to know Ian pretty well over the years. After my parents died, he told me I could depend on him if I ever needed anything. And I knew I could. He was that kind of man. I never expected him to die so soon.” She plucked at the damp sleeve of her dress. It was too hot for long sleeves, but Rachel didn’t notice. She had cried for Ian as she had not cried for her own parents—shock and anger over losing them leaving her too clenched for tears—and her eyes were swollen and red.

“I didn’t expect him to die at all,” she said. “When he did, I sat down and tried to write a poem to read at his funeral. To read here. I sat up all night thinking about Ian, remembering. That’s as far as I got. What’s in my head wants to stay there.

“But a few days ago I read something that reminded me of Ian. I think he would have liked it, too. It has no title.” She opened a small book to a dog-eared page.

Joe, who had been looking at the clouds, lowered his gaze slowly toward Rachel, who stood a bit apart from him, closer to the edge of the grave. From where he was standing he could see part of the page she was reading from and the poet’s name at the top of the page.

H. Caldwell. The name stirred something in his brain. But then Rachel began to read, and once again Joe was overcome with thoughts of Ian, and the fact that this was his funeral.

Rachel closed the book and slipped it into her coat pocket. A woman near her turned and looked into her husband’s eyes. He gave a small shrug. Rachel, noticing, smiled. She turned, walked away from the edge of the grave, and stood with Joe while the minister invited the mourners to throw flowers or earth down onto Ian’s casket. Without a word, Rachel and Joe declined.

One week later, Joe woke up in the middle of the night and opened his eyes. He lay quietly, waiting for whatever had awakened him to resume. There was thunder in the far distance, but he did not think he had been awakened by thunder. Acorns and twigs sometimes fell loudly onto the Schooner’s roof, but there was no wind. On occasion, an arrogant raccoon would scratch its irritable hide against the Schooner’s bumper and set everything rocking. The first time this had happened Joe had nearly fainted from fright, but he couldn’t remember the last time a raccoon had brought him up out of sleep into this kind of wakefulness.

Gradually, he grew sleepy again. His body grew heavy. His breathing slowed. And then, as his eyelids slid to a close, he remembered.

He climbed out of his bunk and turned on a lamp, pulled an apple crate out of the back of his closet, and removed from it several dusty books and a bouquet of winter gloves. In the bottom of the crate sat the box of gold. Still inside was Holly’s letter.

He carried it back to his bunk, sat down, and read it through, once, twice, once again. Then he put the letter back into the box of gold, replaced the books and gloves, slid the crate into the closet, and began to dress.

Rachel awoke to the sound of someone banging on her door. The air pulsed with the sound of the hammering. When she heard a man calling her name, she was certain that his voice was a stranger’s, it was so hoarse and terrible.

“Who is it?” she called with both of her palms flat against the door.

The banging stopped. “It’s Joe,” he said.

When she opened the door, he grabbed her by the hand and pulled her up the stairs, past her cooling bed, and into the corner where she kept her books.

“What’s wrong?” she gasped as they stumbled through the darkness. “For God’s sake, Joe,” she cried as he knocked over a lamp and scrabbled for it in the dark. “Tell me.”

“That poem you read at Ian’s funeral,” he said, breathing more slowly, finding the lamp and switching it on. He got up from his knees, put the lamp gently on the table, and turned to the nearest bookcase. “Would you please show me the book it came from?”

He had terrified her. For a book. And it was in Rachel to throw him out, kick him down her front-porch stairs, sweep sand into his eyes. “You had better have a goddamned good reason for this,” she muttered, reaching for a slender book with blue binding.

He seized it from her, turned it over in his hands, opened it. He flipped impatiently past the first page, the second, paused at the third, closed the book, and sat heavily on the floor.

“What did you do with the jacket?” he asked her, using his mouth carefully.

“It was in my way,” she said. “It’s”—she strode across the room to her desk—“right here.” He made no move to regain his feet. She brought the jacket to him, put it in his hands, felt her anger abating as she watched him slowly look at every part of the jacket, read every word on it, and carefully set it aside.

“These poems were written by Harriet Caldwell,” he said. “My sister’s name was Harriet. Her middle name was Caldwell, my mother’s maiden name. My sister was a poet. And I think I was that boy on the beach. The one who didn’t understand about birds.” He held on to the book like it was a lifeline. “I have to use your phone,” he said, and started for the stairs.

        “Mrs. Corrigan?”

“Yes?” the woman said, her voice rough with sleep.

“Ardith Corrigan?” he asked, paused, switched the phone to his other ear. “Look,” he said, when she did not immediately reply. “I know it’s the middle of the night, but it’s important that I speak with Ardith Corrigan. Emily’s mother. Are you—”

“Has something happened to Emily?” she said in a rush and then, almost immediately, asked, “Who is this?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Corrigan. My name is …” And here he had to stop, had to open the lexicon of his former life. “My name is Christopher Barrows.” He was astonished that, with Rachel nearby, he had lowered his voice.

“Christopher Barrows?” She was silent for a long moment. Then, “What do you want?”

Taken aback by her tone, he too paused before saying, “If you
are
Emily’s mother, I hope you’ll be able to tell me where I can reach her.”

“Why?”

“Well … it’s a long story.” He was beginning to think he had made a terrible mistake. “I’m trying to find Emily so I can talk to her about my sister, Holly Barrows. They were roommates at Bryn Mawr. Emily—”

“Look, young man,” the woman interrupted. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but you had better leave Holly alone.”

His hand trembled. He grabbed his jaw. “She’s alive?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Holly.”

“I’m going to hang up now,” said Mrs. Corrigan. It was clear that she was nervous, angry, afraid.

“Don’t,” he said. “Please listen to me for a moment.” He carried the phone over to Rachel’s kitchen table and sat down awkwardly, as if his brain were too consumed with what he was saying and what he was hearing to manage anything more. “My name is Christopher Barrows,” he said once again. “Most people call me Kit. Or they
did
,” he amended. “I have a different name now. I last saw my sister, Holly—Harriet—over two years ago, and a few days after that I learned that she had died.”

He heard the gasp, had expected to hear it.

“But she didn’t die, did she?” he asked, and even though he had come to suspect this, it wasn’t until he heard her say, “Of course not,” that he allowed himself to believe it, truly to believe it, and then his relief was so enormous that at first he did not understand what she said next.