Those Who Favor Fire (51 page)

“That’s good, Ed.” Joe opened the back door. “Let’s go inside, give Angela a hand.”

When Joe saw Angela, he pulled her close to him and held her head against his shoulder. He wondered, not for the first time, why it was Rachel he loved so completely and not Angela. But then she stepped out of his arms and led him to the couch where Rusty lay wrapped in a clean sheet, his scorched face glazed with tears. And it was then that Joe realized for the first time, as he bent down and gently traced the perfect slope of Rusty’s pale ear, that the boy was far more a brother to him than a son.

“Joe,” Rusty croaked, struggling to open his eyes as if they’d been fused. “I was dreaming that I couldn’t find you. You weren’t anywhere I looked.”

“I’m where you’re looking now,” Joe said. And in an instant Rusty was asleep again.

It didn’t take long for them to get Angela and Rusty packed up and into Ed’s car. Rusty lay on the backseat, wrapped carefully and propped like a newborn, his face turned against a pillow. Angela sat in the front with Ed looking straight ahead. Since the hospital she had not said a word to Rachel, but just as Ed was about to drive away, she thrust her arm out through the car window and grabbed Rachel’s hand. “Don’t you dare fuck around here anymore,” she said fiercely. “Belle Haven’s gone. Don’t you go down with it.”

And then she let go of Rachel’s hand and Ed drove away, down the hill, and north.

        Even though she could no longer hear Ed’s car, Rachel did not move. She felt completely unable to lift her feet, saw no reason to do anything but stand where she was, even if it began to rain, even if snakes began to slide up out of the dirt, the ground too hot even for them.

She expected Joe to put his arm around her, lead her inside, fix her something to eat, and perhaps, by and by, make another of his passionate speeches. She wondered what she would say to him in reply.

Instead, he said, “Let’s go,” tiredly, and began to walk down the hill.

She watched him for a moment and then said, not really caring if he heard her, “Where are you going?”

“I’m going down to Mary Beth’s house. Would you rather stay here?”

She was appalled that he had thought to go there, that she had not. “Of course not,” she said. “Of course I’m coming.”

They walked down the hill together, across Maple Street, along a dirt-and-gravel lane that followed the course of the nearby creek, until they could see, up ahead, the house where Mary Beth had lived. There were several cars parked along the grassy edge of the lane. They heard the sound of a machine, tasted dust in the air.

Rachel grabbed Joe’s sleeve. “I can’t,” she whispered, her hand at her mouth. She pulled him off the lane and into the shelter of the
trees, and they stood there together, looking at the house. “I can’t go in there. I just can’t.”

“Wait here, then,” Joe said, taking her hand off his sleeve. “Or go on back home. It’s all right. I’ll tell them to call you if they need anything.”

But when he started again toward the house, Rachel followed.

The front door was open, but no one answered their knock.

“Daniel?” Rachel called.

A man in jeans and a plaid shirt came down the hallway toward the door.

“Daniel,” Rachel said through the screen. “We wanted to know if we could do anything.”

“Hello, Rachel,” Daniel said, opening the door, “Joe.” He stepped out into the yard. “Judy’s at the hospital.” He did not stand still in one place, kept walking around, stopping, walking back to where he’d been. “She went into labor about an hour ago.”

“Oh, God, Daniel.”

“Yeah. She wants to die.”

Rachel pictured her in a white room, white bed, somewhere close to where Rusty had been lying when they cleaned his filthy burns.

Joe said, “Do you want us to watch the kids so you can go be with her?”

“No, the kids are at my mother’s in Randall. They don’t even know what’s happened yet. They think we’re just moving a few days early.” He looked around suddenly, as if startled to find himself standing in his own front yard, the light nearly gone now, the air cold. “We were going to leave on Tuesday,” he said. He stopped and stared at them. Rachel had never seen such disbelief as she saw on his face.

“Judy’s water broke right after we got to my mother’s. I took her straight to the hospital, and I’m going straight back as soon as I get her things.”

“She wasn’t due for a while yet, was she?”

“Not for another three weeks, but the doctor says the baby’ll be fine. Listen,” he said, glancing back toward the door. “You really shouldn’t be here. Mendelson told me to get going as soon as possible and to stay clear until they can take some more readings, see what’s going on down”—he made a vague motion toward the ground. And then suddenly he closed his eyes, began to tremble all over. His
suffering escalated quickly, violently, as if he had swallowed a lazy poison and was only now beginning, himself, to die.

“She was just a baby,” he groaned, putting his hands over his face. “She was just my baby. Oh, God—” He wailed and ran away from them, into his house. And neither of them ever saw him again.

        As much as Joe wanted Rachel away from Belle Haven, as much as he was now eager to leave himself, even he could see that she would need a day or two, perhaps as much as a week, to make everything ready.

In some ways, he considered himself lucky to have lost his possessions and was glad that the things he valued fit easily into his pockets: a pocketknife, an opal, the key to the Schooner. But, given enough warning, he would have spent some time sorting through his meager belongings and putting the most important out of harm’s way. His carving tools. His books. He would have saved everything in the Schooner if he could have. He would have saved Pal.

When he thought about it, which he often did, he admitted to himself that he’d had plenty of warning. He knew that he had made a choice: to stay a while longer with Rachel, at great risk. He was afraid that if she, too, ignored the warnings she’d been given—for another day, another hour—she might have more to regret than she already did.

But he was not so arrogant or so stupid as to condemn Rachel for her attachments. He knew that she would need some time to sort through her belongings and sever her ties. He thought that if he stayed with her, he could help her in some way. And so, when she asked him to stay with her, he did.

He was glad of the chance to use her shower, for the stream had made a cold, cold bath. He washed his sorry clothes, pared his
fingernails, enjoyed the feel of a cushion at his back. He made her a good meal that first night after Angela and Rusty had left, but they ate it without exchanging a word. He had grown accustomed to the silence of solitude, of the woods, and she was far too preoccupied for talk.

Later, in her bed, they fell almost immediately to sleep, and it was only when they awoke in the early morning that they looked at each other and realized what they were facing.

“I’m going to miss you,” she whispered, opening her arms.

And he suddenly found himself wishing, as Rachel always had, that somehow they could stay.

After that first night back in the house together, Joe slept on the couch and Rachel alone in her bed.

As she packed her belongings into boxes, took the pictures from her walls, dismantled the place she had built around herself and prepared to emerge undefended, she spoke less and less often, almost never smiled, and didn’t laugh at all.

More than at any time since she’d emptied their ashes into the creek, Rachel was making peace with her parents and with herself, yet trying to understand why this was necessary when there had never been a single open battle between them.

Perhaps if there had been, things would have turned out better.

Since that horrible day in the hospital, she had been wondering if maybe Angela was right. She had always felt guilty about her parents’ death, but she had never looked beyond the simple explanation that they had died while doing something for
her
sake.

Now she looked further.

She realized that whenever she thought about her parents’ death, she also remembered sitting on a beach, immersed in disappointment, letting the wind and the spray scour her clean. She realized that if her parents had not been killed, she would have gotten over her small disappointments. Learned from her mistakes. Chosen a different course from the one she was on. She would have come to the conclusion that making decisions that were best for her did not mean defying her parents. She would have stopped putting herself in their shoes and found ones that fit her best.

But they
had
been killed.

She had been given complete control over her life, the freedom and the money to explore as she had made up her mind to do. Instead, she had quit school and returned to Belle Haven. It had never occurred to her to take advantage of her independence, as if it were a windfall.

Maybe Angela was right. Maybe all her choices were rooted in the guilt she felt: for wanting something different from what her parents could give her, and for surviving them.

Maybe not.

She was still too confused to be sure why she felt as she did. But looking honestly at herself had turned her attention from Belle Haven. It had loosened her hold on the town, and its on her. She was sorry to be going, and she knew she would miss it terribly, but she was finally ready to go. It felt right, in her belly, for the first time. For once, the arguments she fought inside her head ended with an admission that it was time to move on.

She would grit her teeth and say her prayers and go exploring. Maybe she would find a place where she could be happy.

The sight of Joe, lying in her hammock, made her wonder if such a place could exist without him in it.

Watching her, knowing that she was far away in a place of her own, Joe stayed nearby in case she needed him, but he did not approach her. He read a book from her library, napped in the cool sunshine, and stayed gratefully up on her hill.

When she was nearly through packing, had rolled her carpets, folded her drapes and quilts into bags, he drove with her to the lumberyard and brought back a stack of plywood for her windows.

“I guess there isn’t much left to be done,” she said as they carried the wood up onto her porch.

“Not much,” he said.

“I’ve arranged for a moving van to come collect everything and put it into storage. I won’t be taking all that much with me. I won’t really need much, I guess.”

She sat down on the porch steps and held out her hand to him, but when he sat down beside her she did not look at him. She said, “I have a favor to ask you.” He waited, giving her time. Finally, he said, “You can ask me anything, Rachel. I won’t be angry.”

She looked at him. “It’s a stupid thing, but it’s what I want.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“I want to stay until Halloween,” she said. “That’s just two days away. And then we’ll need a third to board up the house. I can’t live in it boarded up, so we’ll have to wait until the day we’re leaving. Three more days is what I’m asking.”

There had been a time, before the fire had arrived, before people had begun to leave, when Rachel had held a strange sort of influence over her neighbors. Perhaps they looked at her, a young woman living alone, and thought that if she could stay and face the music, so could they. Or perhaps she reminded them of better days. Or perhaps they were so torn that they found it easier to follow her lead than to go their own ways. But these were the same people who had finally left or were now all set to go. The ones who were still determined to stay took no notice of Rachel. They, far more than she, had fought the fire—the idea of it, the threat of it—right from the start. Even when their monitors began to shriek and their basements to smoke, these people would fight. Some were fighting already, tooth and nail. But Rachel was no longer a part of that.

There was no one left in town who would be swayed, one way or the other, by the actions of a single young woman who kept, as much as she could, to herself.

“Fine,” Joe said, longing to leave. “Three days is fine. As long as you promise me you’ll be careful Halloween night. Stay up here and … hand out treats.”

“Well, then I might as well go right now,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I’m going down to the park and I’m going to sit in my tree, one more time. There aren’t too many kids left in this town, but they’ll be looking for me. I won’t disappoint them.”

“You mean you won’t disappoint yourself.” He snorted, partly amused, mostly weary. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Rachel Hearn. You are the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met. But I’ll stay here with you for three more days. I’ll even be the goddamned troll, if you’ll scare up a costume for me. And, come to think of it,” he said, musing, “I’ll like staying in the tree house for another night or two. The last night or two, at least for a good long while. And,” he said slowly, “maybe I should board up the tree house, too, just in case.”

She smiled at him, not too proud to accept these other small favors he had chosen to grant her.

“I don’t know how I’m going to live without you,” she said, leaning
into him, forgetting for a moment the house at her back, the land under her feet, and everything, everything else but him.

“I don’t know how you can live otherwise,” he said, for he knew that instinct and wisdom sometimes met, sometimes made a place as unanchored as the horizon, as the junction of sea and sky, and that Rachel had found this place, as he had, one mild, invigorating season a million years ago.

        As Rachel walked through her last days in Belle Haven, her hands busy, dismantling her home, it was not only her parents who occupied her mind. It was also the constant, lethal image of Mary Beth Sanderson baking underground. Like the foreign, threadlike matter that sometimes swims a lazy course across the eye, a terrible image of the dead girl crept without warning across Rachel’s vision, again and again, throughout those long, last days.