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'They didn't exactly make it up', Sarah had to admit. 'Dean didn't do much talking.'

'Well', said Becca, 'he come over, and that's what's important. I sure do hope we find him all right when we get over there, him and Rachel and all them kids...'

Sarah was on the verge of telling her friend about the strange gift of the amulet, but they turned the corner, and the Coppage house came into view.

Silent, searing flames consumed three walls of Lany and Rachel Coppage's bedroom. It was a fire that was sure of itself. All the glass in the room - the windowpanes, the mirrors, the light bulbs, the jars of perfume on the dresser - had broken in the intense heat. A fur jacket that had been thrown across the back of a chair, to be put up for summer storage the following day, ignited suddenly, and was devoured in a moment with a pervasive forest smell that for a few seconds conquered the overwhelming odour of burning wood. All the fabric in the centre of the room - the carpet, the coverings of the bed, the contents of the open cedar chest - had begun to smoke.

Rachel Coppage sat on the edge of the bed in an attitude that was completely relaxed. She was bouncing her youngest child up and down on her knee, smiling at it, plying it with a soft voice to stop its crying. The baby wailed abysmally from the discomfort of the heat and the smoke.

Larry's voice crested a moment over the buzzing, undefinable noise that a house makes when it is on fire, calling Rachel's name, and those of their children. But Rachel did not respond. She looked up briefly when their seven-year-old daughter, Beverly, ran past the bedroom door, screaming. The child's pyjamas, of a synthetic material, had melted on to her skin, and her curly blonde hair had been completely singed away.

Beverly's four-year-old sister lay dead of smoke inhalation in the hallway. The two boys were beating against their locked bedroom door, screaming in fright that was even greater than their intense abdominal pain. But the noise gradually subsided beneath the crying roar of the flames.

Larry lay on the floor of the guest room, unable to raise himself for the intestinal cramps. He would have gladly given over the struggle if he had not been able to hear the frantic cries of his two boys in the next room. He wept for his helplessness to preserve their lives.

The fourth wall of Rachel's bedroom c aught fire, and a ceiling beam collapsing into the middle of the room ignited the bedclothes and the contents of the cedar chest. The infant on Rachel's knee fainted, overcome by the smoke. Rachel lifted it to her breast, cradling its head against her shoulder as if it were asleep, and walked it across the room, carefully avoiding the little patches of fire on the carpet, as if they had been toys left by the other children. She laid the child in the burning wicker bassinet, tucking it lovingly between smouldering sheets.

She turned around then with a small smile, and picked up a fragment of the full length mirror that had exploded a little time before. Holding it before her, she admired in it the handsome, becoming, stylish amulet the Larry had brought her that afternoon.

Again, Larry called her name, but his voice was very weak.

'What do you want, honey?' she called back, still looking into the piece of glass. 'I'm in the bedroom!'

T.A. - C

The two fire engines of Pine Cone were driven on to the lawn of the Coppage house, and the hoses were hooked up as quickly as possible; but it was impossible to save the building. It was not known at first whether the Coppages were still inside or if they had escaped and were at a neighbour's or somewhere in the gathering crowd. Their names were called continuously. Then the eldest boy, only six, jumped from his bedroom window. He caught his foot in the gutter, twisted round, and dropped headfirst on to the brick steps. He died in a fireman's arms.

A perimeter of neighbours and friends gathered round the house on all sides, trampling the flower beds, gently swinging in the hammocks set up between the trees. Some had brought out pieces of chicken, having been interrupted at supper; others were already in their pyjamas. Small children played games of catch among the legs of the adults. There was nothing to do but watch the house burn.

The Baptist preacher's wife thought she heard someone yelling from inside the house, and a cry of 'Shhh!' shot around the circle, but nothing more could be heard, nothing but the sound of falling timbers, collapsing walls, and breaking glass.

A fireman tried to get to the second floor, but the staircase inside was itself burning, and by the time that ladders had been set against the second-floor windows, the floors had broken through, and the whole structure - and whoever was inside -was lost.

'Let's leave'; sighed Sarah, 'there's nothing that we can do. I don't want to see the bodies, I don't want to see them brought out.'

'Honey', whispered Becca, so that Margaret could not hear her, 'there's not going to be nothing to bring out of there!'

Becca and Sarah moved back to the car. Margaret came after them and said, 'Mama, I want to know if it's all right if I stay over tonight with Mary-Louise. Mz Nelson said it was all right.'

Becca shook her head. 'You're not gone do that, Margaret. You and Mary-Louise - I know you two - you'd be up half the night just looking at them smoking embers out her bedroom window. We don't know how long this is gone go on, and what if the Nelsons' house was to catch? You think I want you to be getting hit in
thetace
with them hoses? Water like that would break your nose in two!'

When Sarah returned home, she went into her bedroom to tell Jo what had happened, and why she had left the house suddenly and without explanation.

Jo still was at the foot of Dean's bed, but all the blinds in the room had been raised, and Dean's bandages were lighted faintly but eerily by the moonlight shining obliquely through the rear window.

'Well', said Jo, 'it wouldn't have happened if Larry Coppage had given Dean a job, like he wanted, like he needed, like he asked him for, making guns to blow up in
other
people's faces. ..' *

This reaction of Jo's distressed Sarah. 'How can you say something like that?' she demanded. 'They're ever' one of 'em lying dead and burned on the other side of town. Larry Coppage was standing right where I am now, not four hours ago, being nice to you and Dean—'

'You think I care about Larry Coppage being
nice\
' cried Jo. 'I look at Dean in that bed, can't see, don't talk, and it was Larry Coppage that put him there. You think Larry Coppage saying he's sorry what happened is gone make Dean see again? You think Rachel Coppage's casseroles are gone put the flesh back in Dean's face?'

Sarah did not reply to this. Instead she asked, 'Why do you say this wouldn't have happened if he had given Dean the job? That didn't have nothing to do with the Coppage house burning down - it couldn't have

Jo paused a moment, and then said carefully, 'If Larry Coppage had given Dean a job, then things would be different, that's all. Things would be a lot different

Mo, you listen tome', said Sarah, still in the heat of her anger, Dean lying there don't do me a bit of good either. I hate it worse than hell what happened to him, he's my husband, but the blame for it don't go to Larry Coppage, it don't go to nobody at all. There's nobody to point your finger at.' Jo glared at Sarah but said nothing.
'But',
said Sarah in a low voice, 'if you are bound and determined to blame somebody, go ahead and blame it on Larry Coppage, 'cause the poor man is dead now, him and Rachel and ever' one of them five kids. Go ahead and blame him, because it cain't hurt him—'

'Wasn't just Larry Coppage', said Jo slowly, 'it's the whole damn town - layabouts and whores - the draft board, and the factory, and—'

'You talking crazy, Jo! You talking crazy!' cried Sarah, and fled the room. It was only Dean who heard the list of those responsible for his injury - if he could hear anything at all.

Hie following morning, the Coppage house was a low pile of mouldering cinders, black and wet, stinking of fire and waste. The carefully tended lawn had been torn up by vehicles, which left deep tracks in the turf. A few of the neighbours stood about in robes and pyjamas, and others came by for a quick look before going off to work. A woman in a housecoat knelt in one of the flower beds next to the street, digging up bulbs and dropping them one by one into a paper sack. The Coppages were dead and would not miss the plants. No one tried to stop her.

On the official side of things, two men in shirtsleeves were picking carefully through the wreckage. They avoided going near the few timbers that were still upright, though heavily charred. Officer James Shirley, in uniform, stood on the brick steps that now led nowhere, as if he were guarding the soggy refuse behind him. He was talking to Sarah Howell and Becca Blair, who had dropped by before work to get the latest news on what had happened.

A small girl, about nine years old and possessing a thin face with features too sharp to be entirely pleasant, was moving round the edges of the burnt house, gingerly touching pieces of charred wood here and there, wondering perhaps if the pieces were still hot, hoping more likely to find something of value.

'James Shirley', said Becca Blair, interrupting him, 'your little girl's gone get a splinter if she don't watch what she's doing!'

The policeman turned, and saw the little girl. He called out to her, 'Mary, you be careful! They's still nails in them things! Mary, you get away from there! I don't want you touching any part of that house!' He shook his head, and turned back to Sarah and Becca. 'Don't know what might not fail down, fall through. They didn't have no basement, that I know of, but if they had a

cesspool or something, why little Mary could drop right through and drown 'fore I could get to her, and Thelma would beat my head if anything happened to little Mary.'

Thelma was James Shirley's wife, and not known in town for her generous disposition or the control of her temper.

'Gosh-damn', he sighed. 'It was terrible what happened here last night. Five children, two grownups!'

'Not much left', commented Becca, without sarcasm.

'Don't really matter much', replied the officer, 'they's all dead. The family'11 get the insurance money, and they don't need it.'

'Four of them five kids was walking', Said Sarah, 'and not one of 'em got out—'

'The oldest boy ...' Becca reminded her.

'He was bad burned already, though', said Officer Shirley, 'might not have survived anyway.'

'They was all walking', Sarah repeated, 'so why didn't none of 'em get out? And I can't understand what happened to Larry and Rachel.'

'Maybe', said Becca, 'they was trying to protect the kids, maybe they was asleep

'Too early to be asleep', argued James Shirley.

Becca shrugged. 'Well,
something
happened, even if we can't guess what it was.'

'They have plots, Mr Shirley?' Sarah asked.

'Don't know, Sarah, don't know. Probably had family plots, since they got such family, but I don't know which cemetery. Y 'all 'scuse me.' The two men in shirtsleeves had beckoned the policeman over to where they were standing.

Becca and Sarah glanced at one another, sadly, and then walked together back to the purple Pontiac.

'What time that fire start?' asked Sarah, when they drove off towards the plant. Sarah stared out the window, at the now-empty corner lot, and thought how desolate a place that whole section of town appeared now.

'Don't know. Why? About eight o'clock, eight-thirty, I guess', she added after a moment. 'Why?'

'I was just thinking about Larry coming over last night', Sarah said in a low voice.

Becca nodded, and whistled. 'That's right. You was probably

the last one to see him alive ...' she intoned with melodramatic emphasis.

Sarah nodded.

'I meant to ask you all about that', Becca said, 'but I didn't want to say anything in front of Margaret. Margaret's got a bigger mouth than the Mississippi River. Say the fire started at eight-thirty - what time was Larry over to see Dean?'

'He got there about a quarter of six, I think, didn't stay mere than twenty minutes. He was in and out', said Sarah. She wrinkled her brow, and said, more to herself than to her friend, 'It almost seemed like there was some sort of connection

'What do you mean?' demanded Becca. 'Some sort of connection between his coming to see Dean and then his house burning down two hours later?'

Sarah nodded. 'That's crazy, isn't it?' She wanted reassurance.

'Sure is', Becca replied. 'D'you say anything to him?' she asked doubtfully. 'I mean, were you ugly to him or something? I thought you liked Larry.'

'I do like Lany', Sarah protested. 'I liked him a lot', she said more softly, recalling that the man was dead. 'But Jo was being Jo. She didn't say anything to him direct - and I'm real glad that she didn't - but she was real mad at I^any for not giving Dean a job back 'fore he went in the army.' She paused, and then added, 'She thinks it was Larry's fault that Dean was—' She stopped, and tried to think of a way to complete the sentence. 'Larry's fault that Dean was covered up in white like he is.'

Becca's eyes widened. 'Well', she said, 'it's Jo that's gone have to live with herself for talking mean to the man two hours 'fore he went up in smoke.'