The River Burns (23 page)

He wanted to survive just so he could put something down on the page.

Willis toppled over. No sudden stroke, no brutal attack, his heart was under no particular duress. His woe arrived by way of his own imagining. He was curious, in typical fashion, but not keen. Sexually, emotionally, even in a business sense, even when it came to plumbing his depths, he was merely curious. He lay in a circular huddle on the sofa and, as his anxieties politely let up, he shut his eyes and, comfortable again, considered just sleeping there. He thought of nothing to add to the pages despite a middling desire to do so. Perhaps, as time went by, he might be inspired to write something down. Or perhaps it was on the page already. The sum total of his life then, perhaps, added up to nothing. A big fat zero. In the interim, he'd put the pages away in a drawer, the blank one on top. Perhaps, perhaps, he'd see to them another day. Perhaps, that's what he needed. Another day to mull this over.

Eyes closed, he viewed a mental image of the young woman walking, chatting with customers, casting an intermittent smile in his direction. Willis swallowed hard, through a pain, a compression and a dryness in his throat. He didn't want to admit it, but he lived for those moments now, those inexplicable glimpses. It's not, he thought, that someone came into his life, disrupting it, but
something
came in, when the door was unlocked, the windows unsealed, when he wasn't looking and was caught unaware.

■   ■   ■

Denny O'Farrell waited in a
crouch. The bottom tip of the moon's sliver stood on end above a hilltop, visible to him now, and if he pulled himself upright the nadir would also appear. He stood, bending back a few branches and as he did so he turned his gaze away from the moon. Before him, the covered river bridge cast in the patina of faint moonlight stood stark and still.

As though breathing.

He listened to woodsy night sounds.

The river's rush. Wind in the trees. Bug flight and distant truck wheels on pavement. A gear change. The loud thrum of quiet.

Across the river, Xavier gave the all clear.

This time Denny issued no order. He simply nodded his chin.

The pickup drove its own length onto the bridge then stopped.

Old timbers released a sad creak. Then a croak. Then settled.

Samad waited, perhaps afraid to turn around.

From the truck bed, André Gervais spoke his command. “Go, Samad.”

Samad liked that, in a way. Hearing his name gave greater import to his contribution. Then Xavier's repeated flashes encouraged him.

“Take it real slow,” André counselled. Samad already knew to do that.

The truck moved cautiously forward.

With his right hand, André turned the pump's handle. Gasoline spit from an eight-foot hose, which he flailed with his left hand to release it back and forth across the floor of the bridge then up into the rafters. Before getting too far across he switched hands, then he called to Samad to go a speck quicker. By accident, he splashed himself and the truck.

They moved across the bridge, an easy pace, leaving a trail of stinking gasoline puddles on the floor and a sweat stain of gas on the side and upper timbers. Then Samad drove them off the bridge onto the pavement on the other side. He picked up Xavier thirty feet along.

“Let's go,” Xavier, nervous, commanded. He jumped up onto the truck bed with André.

“Let's wait,” André contradicted him. He was holding his arm, a trifle weary from pumping.

“Why?”

“I want to see this.”

Samad did as well, apparently. With the transmission in park he opened his door and stood on the running board, looking back the way they'd come. He stared at the bridge, adored from the moment he arrived in this town. He played on it as a child and leapt from its braces as a teenager and watched the logs from the forest be guided down underneath it to the southern mills. Now it stood alone and abandoned in the dark. Sacred in its way.
Like a church, like.

He saw a form—Denny O'Farrell—walk up the incline to the old covered bridge on the other side.

He watched him crouch down.

■   ■   ■

Denny paused.

He could smell the gas.

He needed to do this quickly, then disappear, yet he paused.

Then he struck a match against the flint on his matchbook and tossed it onto the gas-soaked timbers.

The flame flared on the wood before fizzling out.

He lit another match. This time it went out in a puff in midair.

The third match he used to light the entire matchbook, and set it down gently, quickly. Gasoline ignited in a soft blue line about three feet wide and burned as casually as a barbecue when suddenly Denny reared back from a sudden ignition. A sound like a wind shook him, and suddenly the fire encircled the interior of his end of the wooden trestle, then at panic speed it whooshed down the length of the structure. The heat seared him and he rolled himself away even as flames leapt back at him, and on the roadside Denny scampered to his knees, jumped to his feet, and retreated a short distance.

But he stopped, although this was against the plan. He turned around and looked back.

■   ■   ■

The men on the far
side dwelled momentarily in the thrall of the fire, before André shook himself alert and interrupted their rapture.
“Get out of here!”
Gas, he realized, spilled on the truck, the barrel wasn't empty, he stank of gasoline himself, and a trickle followed them to this spot in a direct dotted line. The others now saw it, too, in the firelight. They never anticipated that the flames could surge across the bridge so quickly, as if in pursuit of them, and Samad scrambled in behind the wheel and drove for their very lives. Upon the crest of a gradual riverside hill, two hundred feet along, he braked, took a breath, and when his vehicle did not explode, dared look back.

The old covered bridge transmogrified into an inferno. Flames raged under the rooftop, blazed out through the side openings. Samad half fell getting out and stood on the running board to gaze over the roof of the cab. “Holy crap,” he said quietly. He was thinking,
What did we do this for?

Xavier meant to say something, but he and André stayed silent.

■   ■   ■

Denny O'Farrell moved deeper into
the thicket, not to be seen in the brilliant glow of the fire. Across the river the truck had not yet fled. A mistake. The guys there were taking in the view, like tourists. The initial scorch still felt warm on his face, and he worried that his skin was marked by telltale burns—seared skin the only evidence a judge might require to throw away the key.

Burying himself low behind the shrubbery, tree trunks, and low-slung branches, he successfully reduced the amount of light that fell upon him, but he could not escape the flames' noise in his ears. That roaring surprised him. Not only did timbers grotesquely crack in the heat, but the fire's internal wind and the scorched air astonished him. Denny hid his face in his arms, to both hide and shield himself from the combusting frenzy.

The ferocity of the bedlam intensified, scaring him more.

When he looked up again, he saw that at least the guys across the river were long gone.

Denny sensed that he glowed. That he shone like a moonscape. Light the fire cast upon him radiated off his cheeks and forehead, he imagined, and within the thicket that concealed him, which itself might combust in an instant. If anyone looked upon him now, he believed, they'd see the fire not only mirrored in his eyes but burning there as twin torches. Suddenly, he was rudely shoved back against a tree. The knock came from a concussive burst through a section of the bridge roof. Flame and sparkling cinders whirled and ascended high into the night sky. For a moment that display lingered in his bones, he wished that he could just make this stop. He'd gone too far. He didn't mean to do this. And then, looking up through the leaves, he felt bewildered by how the flames transformed the dark.

■   ■   ■

Jackson Eugene Withers—from birth, “Jake”—plunged
his shoulder too heavily into the rear outside door departing a bar, consequently stumbling into the establishment's parking lot and looking more inebriated than he might have otherwise. He caught himself against a tall fence constructed for the sole purpose of hiding garbage cans from view. He sniffed a wayward scent. Straightening, Jake adjusted his ball cap and pulled down his polo, a ritual vanity that came too late. He was already spotted. He caught the covert attention of a police officer across the street and a short distance down in another lot. Jake pulled out his keys and climbed into his car, recently christened the Old Orange Shitbox by Skootch. As he drove away from the lot, Jake Withers was being followed.

Skootch's ball club played Les Tigres de Maniwaki that evening. The other team was mostly composed of mill workers, although their catcher was a burly import from the post office. They'd won handily, 6–zip. Handcuffed early by inside fastballs, striking out in his first two at bats, Jake was hit on the kneecap in his third. A Maniwaki plumber, a lefty, was losing his stuff by the seventh inning and Jake connected with a tricky squibbler down the third base line that, once the ball went fair over the bag, broke into foul territory, rolling under the infield fence for a ground-rule double.
A double!
Not only his first hit, but his first RBI, followed shortly by his first run scored.

A decent night. After a couple of beers in the company of his teammates he wanted to get off on his own to soak it in. Or, perhaps, he'd drive back to Skootch's camp to see if any of the women were up. They might be. Talking away. Drinking. Smoking. Sitting by a fire. Maybe he'd go there.
Yeah.
Chat to some girl about his double that dribbled under a fence twenty feet from the third base bag.

He was driving arrow-straight down Main Street when his police escort, unimpressed by any evident level of inebriation, discontinued the surveillance. Jake noticed the headlights remove themselves from his rearview then instantly forgot about them altogether, his attention snagged instead by a strange glow through and above the treetops farther along. That impression faded, the sightlines blocked by buildings and a denser woods, but he kept looking to see if the strange light returned. Then it did, and he said, “Shit me,” speeding up. Jake knew what it was before he got there but he couldn't really believe this and wanted to make sure. It could be a house. As he swerved too quickly around a bend he depressed the gas pedal. Fire. Red, orange, white, and blue. He continued to accelerate close to the burning bridge then braked hard and flung himself out of the car and raced on foot to the edge of the inferno as if he would find something there that he might do, or someone whom he might save.

He bounced on his feet like a prizefighter. Then Jake stood aghast before the fountain of flames, briefly stunned and marvelling at the shooting tangents. He just loved this fire. Its bedlam. His arms shot up and, as if he were some minor god kicked out of his lair by a rival lord, he bellowed, a guttural vexation and, perched on the precipice of the fire, he repeatedly spun in circles. He felt holy and mad and oddly exuberant. Twice he kicked the air with his foot chin-high. Jake dashed back to the car and his right palm landed on the horn and he left it there and he made hooting noises himself while the horn blared away. He was looking around for someone to hear, or see, or notice, and finally, back in the centre of town, he detected headlights. Right away that car was racing in his direction, cherries flashing blue and red on the rooftop, and a moment later the vehicle's siren wailed.

A few house lights in the neighbourhood popped on.

“Yeah!” Jake cried out, enjoying the reaction. “Yeah!”

He glimpsed through the trees and homes other vehicles that also flashed lights, which indicated another cop and probably that volunteer firefighters alerted by the cops were heading for their station. The car that tailed him a few minutes earlier skidded to a sharp stop.

The officer climbed out slowly, awestruck. “Ho-ly fuck.” He audibly sucked in his next breath.

Jake nodded vigorously. He wholeheartedly agreed.

The cop got back on his radio but now the town was waking up. Shouts hither and yon and Jake speculated that phones were ringing off their hooks. This was news. This was an event. He looked back at the fire and thought it astounding, the most splendid and amazing sight he could ever hope to witness. For the first time since the last time he enjoyed sex, which was a very long while ago, he felt compulsively alive. The cop, considerably older than him, now stood right beside him, gazing at the fire as though he shared the same sentiment, and passion, exactly.

Before long, a soaring siren pitched in as the first vehicle in the Fire Department, a pumper, left the station.

■   ■   ■

The night's last kiss was
warm, welcome, and it lasted awhile, although Tara, ever so gently, eased Ryan away with a light press of her fingertips against his chest. The two separated, yet stayed close, and were gazing at one another when a horn blared. Unusual at any time, but an annoyance at night. Ryan's police instincts were alert but he lifted Tara's hand in his to say a proper good-bye. They shared quick kisses and after the third, a police car raced past them, lights flashing. That ended their evening, and Ryan stepped back onto Main Street to see whatever the commotion might be, and saw the fire.

“Oh no,” he said, stunned.

Tara joined him on the road. “What's that? A house on fire?”

Ryan whispered. “They've done it now. It's the bridge.”

“Oh my God.”

“I gotta go.”

“Go,” she told him, but Ryan was already running. His car was pointed in the right direction and he scrambled inside and tore off. A second later his coloured lights were flashing and moments after that the siren wailed. He was waking up the whole town. Every able-bodied man might be needed to fight this fire. He drove, and he couldn't believe a burst of flames, their height, that radiant orange plumage.