Those Who Favor Fire (49 page)

“I’ve decided not to buy any land just now,” she said, to his immense relief. “You were right. Owning a few acres here and there isn’t going to change things.” She had chosen to stand, had kept her coat. “I’m going to follow your advice, wait and see what happens, but perhaps for longer than you intended. The fire’s coming faster and faster now. Who knows—maybe it won’t hang around for very long. Or maybe it will change direction. The government’s moving quickly now, too, buying up everything in sight. But maybe, when everyone who’s going to leave has left, the government will start to wonder what it has gotten itself into. Maybe the fire will force them out, too, eat up all the coal they hope to mine, leave them holding the bag. It may take years, but when the fire and the government have both finished with Belle Haven, if there’s anything left worth buying, I may well want to buy it.”

“Fair enough,” Mr. Murdock said. Once again, looking at her, he felt that what Rachel really needed was time. He was pleased that she had chosen to grant herself some.

On her way out of Randall, Rachel saw the road to Spence and took it. She wanted, unexpectedly, to see the government’s development where some of the Belle Haven condemnees now lived. But as she approached the grid of cheap new houses, the sight of endless mud, the absence of even a single tree, the streets named by someone
who had never walked them, all of this sent her racing away in another direction, the radio turned up too high, the windows open to the wind, an unwelcome memory of Joe’s beautiful houses made more alluring by the place she had just seen.

When she got home, she found Mendelson sitting on her front porch.

“Good morning, Miss Hearn,” he said, rising.

“Morning,” she replied. “What can I do for you, Mendelson?”

“I know it’s a long shot,” he said, smiling. “But I just had to come up here myself to see if maybe you’d decided to sell your house.”

“Sell my house?”

“Uh-huh. I know you got a written offer, same as everyone else, but I’d like to make an offer of my own, ten grand more than before, maybe move the house somewhere safer.” He looked around him, stomped his boot on the floorboards of the old porch. “It’s a good house.”

Rachel stared at him. “This house is not for sale,” she said. “Not now or ever.”

“Well, I know we’re not talking about that much money here—not by your standards anyway—but it’s better than nothing, which is what you’re going to end up with if you keep this place.”

Rachel waved him up out of the chair. “Why are you still here?” she said. “I told you, it’s not for sale. Didn’t you hear me?”

“I did. I did. Can’t blame a man for trying.”

As he turned to go, Rachel said, “No one’s ever blamed you for
that
,”

Mendelson stopped with his boot on the top step. “Now, what the hell’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“It means that all you’ve ever
tried
to do around here is screw things up for the rest of us.”

“
I’ve
screwed things up?”

“That’s what I said.”

In all the years since she had first laid eyes on Mendelson, Rachel had known him to be rude, hard, disturbing, but she had never seen him lose control.

“Why, you selfish, spoiled, stupid little bitch,” he said, stepping back up onto her porch and only now, incongruously, removing his hat. “One of
you
started the goddamned fire in the first place, not me. But let’s not blame some old fool who’s got cataracts and can’t drive
out to the landfill no more so he dumps his shit in a mine pit and throws a match in after it. Or maybe it was some stupid little boys smoking butts. Whatever. All I know is, it wasn’t me. But ever since I had the great misfortune to step foot in this miserable town, I’ve been blamed for every single thing that’s gone wrong. I’ve done everything that anyone could have done, but nothing was ever good enough for you high and mighty, second-guessing, finger-pointing, armchair assholes. ‘Dig here, dig there, do this, don’t do that, hurry up, get out of our town.’ ” He was shouting now. Rachel could see his spit in the sunlight. “And none of it means anything at all because only two things are really true:
you
started the fire, and
I’m
the one who’s spent nearly a third of my life trying to put it out.” He jammed his hat back on his head. “Keep your goddamned house. It’ll make fine kindling.”

As she watched him drive away, Rachel realized that there was some truth in what Mendelson had said. But it was so very easy to dislike him, and from there it was only a small step to blaming him for the fire that had kept him in Belle Haven long after his welcome had worn out.

Rachel didn’t really care. She was tired. It no longer mattered to her how the fire had made its way into town, only that it had. She had little energy to spare for Mendelson—not enough to condemn him or to absolve him, just barely enough to wish him away.

        After four days at Rachel’s house, Angela was ready to head north. She was worn out with talking and with worrying, and she figured that Rusty would never feel he’d said good-bye properly, so why not go now. Lots of other people were on the verge of leaving. There were only about eighty people left in town, and the place was looking awful. It still amazed her that there were some people who had no intention of leaving town, now or ever. They were convinced that the fire would race on under the town and southward, away. They argued that the bulldozers had done all the damage, not the fire. Not counting Ross Caspar’s place—which wasn’t right in the town—only one motor home had gone down. No great loss. Not a single fire. Just some fumes, big deal.

Angela no longer cared whether the fire or Mendelson was to blame. The town was dying, by whichever hand.

“It’s time we left,” she said.

“If you say so, Angie. But you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want.” They were out in Rachel’s front yard, giving the perennials their fall pruning. It was a lovely October day. “You sure you don’t want to hang around until Halloween? For Rusty’s sake?”

“You really think anyone’s going to be trick-or-treating, Rachel?”

“If there are kids in Belle Haven, there will be trick-or-treating. You know there will. And jack-o’-lanterns, and all that stuff. Hell, I’ve already got my costume made and my candies bought.”

“Well, I think maybe we’ll have to miss Halloween this year, all the same. I don’t want to push my luck.”

“I understand,” Rachel said, plunging her pruning shears into the ground, straightening up. “I’ll even go up there with you when you’re ready.”

“You will?” Angela gasped, hoping.

“I didn’t get a chance to give everyone a garden pot,” she said, looking over the ones left in her yard. “They’ll all fit in the back of the pickup, and there’s plenty of room for the three of us up front. Save you a bus ticket.”

“Oh.” Angela turned away, looked down the hill toward the town. “For a minute I thought—” And then she stopped and abruptly turned her head, held up a hand to silence Rachel, opened her mouth so she could hear better, and suddenly began to run down the hill, her hair flying out behind her like a veil, just as Rachel, too, heard the sound of screaming from somewhere among the houses below.

Judy Sanderson had fallen into the habit of walking around barefoot as she packed up and prepared to move house. Her husband laughed about it—“Barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen,” he said every night when he came home from work and found her cooking without her shoes on, her belly nice and big. She did not tell him why she no longer wore shoes in the house. He thought that her feet had begun to swell.

She was standing at the kitchen sink, washing potatoes, her feet on the cool linoleum, humming something unawares when she looked out into the backyard and wondered if maybe there was something going on between Mary Beth and Rusty. They were only thirteen, but that was plenty old. Then again, maybe they were just friends, as they had been for as long as she could remember. She watched them standing out there in the sunlight, throwing a baseball back and forth, back and forth, her daughter with a good arm, lean, tall for her age, going to be beautiful someday soon. Perhaps Rusty had seen that, too.

And she was watching carefully, through the window she’d washed that morning with vinegar and water (her husband had asked her, “Why you washing the windows when we’re moving next Tuesday?”), when she saw Rusty throw Mary Beth a high one, saw her daughter backing up to catch it, laughing. Judy put down the potato in her hand, saying out loud in the kitchen, “Watch out for the tree, Mary Beth,” and then saw her tall, sweet, lovely girl start to sink
right down into the ground, her face changing, dust coming up in a cloud around her, dust and smoke, heard her screaming now, all of it happening so quickly, then racing out through the back door in her bare feet and feeling the heat coming up through the ground as Rusty grabbed at Mary Beth’s hand, the hand all that was left showing, fingers stretched out taut like an exotic bloom, and then Rusty falling through the ground, the earth sinking away with him. And Judy stood there screaming, screaming while the soles of her feet began to scorch and the smoke coming up made it impossible for her to see if Rusty, too, had completely disappeared under the ground.

She lay down on solid earth where there was still grass showing, trying to lie flat on her big, hard belly, to reach her arms out and into the smoke, but she couldn’t do it, she was shaking all over and so terrified that she could no longer hear herself screaming. But she was aware, suddenly, that her neighbor, Farley, was scrambling through the huckleberry bushes that grew up between the yards, pulling her to her feet and away from the smoke and the soft ground. Farley was fat and he was getting old and he hardly ever left his house these days, or even the old chair in front of his television, but he threw himself flat along the ground and plunged his arms into the hole where the smoke was billowing, began to yell and roll frantically, trying to scramble up onto his knees without letting go of whatever he had in his hands. And then, suddenly, Angela was there and Rachel right behind her, and they grabbed Farley’s legs and pulled him away from the smoke as if he weighed nothing at all. And it seemed to Judy as if she were watching a birth, for as they pulled Farley away another figure slid up out of the ground as smoothly as a snake from its skin, covered with filth and spitting gobs from its mouth, and bawling and screaming, and choking there on the ground. And she could see that it was not her Mary Beth, that it was Rusty, that he was alive, and that he was alone.

“Get her out!” Judy screamed. “She’s still down there! Mary Beth!” she screamed at the hole in the ground, at the smoke, as if her daughter might answer, “I’m coming, Mom. My foot’s stuck, is all …” But although Farley plunged his arms back down into the ground until he, too, began to slide under and his arms came out bleeding, Mary Beth was gone. Rachel came running back then from the street where she’d gone for help, to fetch a bulldozer or some other almighty machine, but she was alone.

They took Judy inside and first called the fire department, then her husband, made sure the other children would stay wherever they were for a time. Then they tried to take her to the hospital, to make sure she was all right, but she would not go any farther from Mary Beth than her kitchen window.

Farley stayed with her, his sleeves in tatters, while Angela wrapped Rusty in a blanket, gently wiped the dirt from his eyes, and Rachel ran up the hill for her truck. She could hear the sirens as she ran.

Rusty fell asleep on the way to the hospital, but he never stopped crying even so.

“He’ll be all right,” the doctor in Randall said. “We’re doing a few more tests, but there doesn’t appear to be any real damage, although he must have breathed in an awful lot of carbon monoxide. But if he was only down there for a minute or two, well, I guess he was lucky.”

“Lucky,” Angela muttered, her face terrible, once the doctor had left. She began to pace back and forth along the hospital corridor, wringing her hands. “I almost lost my boy. I almost lost my boy.” She looked at Rachel, who stood watching. “You hear me, Rachel? I almost lost my Rusty. That good enough for you? You gonna go now? God almighty. I’m taking Rusty away as soon as I get him out of here. The very minute.”

“Of course you are,” Rachel said. “Of course you are. I understand.”

“Jesus Christ, Rachel, you don’t understand a thing. I’ve tried to be patient and open-minded, but enough is enough. You’re obsessed. I see you looking at what’s happening, but you don’t do a goddamned thing. You act like there’s still something in Belle Haven worth staying for. But I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s got such a hold on you.”

“I know,” Rachel said, leaning her back against the wall. “I know I must seem crazy to you. Joe thinks I’m out of my mind. Sometimes I lose sight of everything, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Everything’s all mixed up: things that happened years before the fire even started, things that happened hundreds of miles from here, things that happened this morning. But you’ve got to try to understand, Angela. Nothing seems important when I compare it to Belle Haven.” She put her head into her hands. “What’s so wrong with wanting to keep my home?”

“Nothing’s wrong with that. I want to keep my home too.
But I
can’t
. It’s not up to me anymore. And I do have things that are a lot more important than Belle Haven. One of them is lying on a table down the hall.”

Rachel closed her eyes. “I’m so sorry this has happened,” she said. “I never thought it would get so bad.” She opened her eyes. “But I don’t have a little boy like Rusty or a mother like Dolly. All I have is my home.”

“Which you are clinging to like it’s some kind of paradise. Jesus, Rachel. What do you think it will be like when we’ve left? I always thought you loved Belle Haven because of the people who lived there. Me included. And my mother. And Rusty. And Joe, for that matter. But you’ve made it clear that when we leave, you’ll be staying on.” She threw up her hands. “For what?”

Rachel closed her eyes. Tipped back her head. “For all kinds of reasons.”