World Made by Hand (13 page)

"I like the sound of that," Brother Jobe said, rubbing his hands. "I'll tell you what: we'll examine those water pipes right away. We have the manpower to repair them and we'll do it. And we'll see to the electric this summer, if your offer to lend a little guidance still stands. And my offer still stands to help out in case your boat crew don't report back. I've got some fellows that have been trained in this sort of thing."

"What? Military types?"

"Holy Land vets."

"Really? Well, great," Bullock said, pushing away from the table. "It was sure nice of you to visit. We don't get many breaks from the routine here."

"You notify me if you want our boys to help turn up those boys of your'n. They're stout fellows, upright and fearless."

"Very kind of you."

"And maybe you'll consider starting up those wheels of justice."

"I'll consider those things."

"It's been an honor to meet you too, sir," Brother Jobe said. "But say, if you're not going to eat the rest of that fine hamburger, why I'd like to take it with me, if you don't mind. It's been years since I've seen such a thing and, you know, waste not want not, especially in these times."

"Of course," Bullock said with a strange broad smile that didn't seem altogether natural, while he handed the plate to Brother Jobe. "By the way, this hamburger came from one of our oxen."

"You don't say?"

"His name was Dick."

"What happened to him?"

"Freak accident. A scaffold fell on him down at the new cane mill and crushed his spine. We had to put him down."

"My condolences. Well, he sure come to a tasty end, though."

"Come back some time for hot dogs," Bullock said. "We make those here too."

The sky had darkened and it looked like a storm was gathering when we stepped outside. On the way back to town in the cart, not much was said. I suppose we were both lost in our own thoughts. But as we passed the old Toyota lot just west of town, Brother Jobe surprised me by muttering, as if to himself, "That fellow is a dangerous man."

Lightning played crazy patterns on the walls all night, though the storms stayed off in the distance and no rain fell. I kept waiting for it to come closer, work its fury, and be over. Even more, I longed for a cool front to drive off the relentless heat. At times I imagined that maybe it wasn't thunder and lightning at all but a terrific battle beyond the horizon between whatever was left of the great war machines-though I hadn't seen an airplane in the skies for years, civilian or military. In any case, the distant storms kept me awake, so I got out of bed and sat in a soft chair by the window to watch the sky until I was satisfied that it was indeed lightning and not Armageddon. I must have fallen to dozing there because I woke up with a jerk. I quickly recognized that the scream which woke me up was real, not in a dream, and noticed an orange glow reflecting off the side of Lucy Myles's house next door. I strapped on my sandals and hurried outside.

Lucy was out in her yard in her nightclothes.

"Someone's house is burning down," she said.

An orange aura flickered over the nearby rooftops. A hot wind blew leaves and dust down the street, as if every loose particle in town was being prompted into motion by unseen forces. I rushed around the block toward the fire, joined by half-clad neighbors, till we all converged in front of the Watling house on Salem Street. Flames licked through the tall windows of the broom shop and up into a dormer. The fire visibly gathered strength in the few seconds that I stood there gaping at it. Bonnie Sweetland, the Watlings' next-door neighbor, was screaming. Loren and Jane Ann, Jason LaBountie, Sam Hutto, Andrew Pendergast, Tom Allison, Terry Einhorn and his older boy, Teddy, the Copelands and their kids, Larry Russo the baker, who generally started work before dawn, and many others all soon arrived on the scene, some halfdressed, many carrying buckets. Even Heath Rucker and Dale Murray, the constable and our mayor, showed up. Bruce Wheedon, a foreman on Deaver's farm, who was the nominal chief of our pathetic fire department, appeared with a huge box wrench, but was not able to open the valve on the nearby hydrant. Who knows how many years it had been since the valve head had been turned, and I was not aware that anybody went around testing them. The nut was rusted frozen.

Loren tried banging the wrench handle with a big rock. He only succeeded in snapping off the handle from the box end. Bruce cursed and there was some yelling back and forth, and Doug Sweetland dragged his garden hose over, which got everybody to stop yelling until they realized that we couldn't fill the buckets fast enough with it, and then Charles Pettie, the town cobbler and bass fiddle player in our music circle, showed up with a yard-long Stillson wrench that must have weighed thirty pounds. Two men pushed and one pulled the long handle until the valve nut turned with a shriek and water started flowing out of the hydrant. Everybody cheered and rapidly formed a bucket brigade. But it was soon obvious that our flung buckets made no impression on the fire.

All this happened quickly, no more than a few minutes. Meanwhile, other women joined Bonnie Sweetland in screaming and pointing up into the end dormer where two figures, Britney and Sarah, were dimly visible huddled together inside. Tom Allison brought over an aluminum extension ladder and threw it against the eaves below the dormer. At the same moment, the needles of a big white pine tree close by the most involved end of the house reached kindling temperature and exploded into flame. Bruce Wheedon yelled at the bucket men to forget the Watling house and start wetting down the Sweetland's place next door so it wouldn't catch, and they all rushed to reform the bucket line there. Up on the ladder, Tom smashed the window in the dormer, but Britney remained frozen inside clutching the girl. I tossed my bucket aside, rushed around the back of the house, and slipped in the kitchen door.

My hand sizzled when I turned the doorknob, and there was a smell like grilled meat. The back stairway ran right off the mudroom, and I raced up into the smoke. They were in the little girl's room, the wallpaper dirty pink through the smoke. Everything happened fast. In the confusion it seemed that Britney was trying to prevent me from helping her. I scooped up Sarah under my left arm like a meal sack and grabbed Britney's hand so she would follow me out. But she resisted. I hollered, "This way! Come on!" By now, flames were probing into the hallway, and I doubted we could make a run out the back stairs. Tom shouted something from the window, where he stood atop the ladder, his words smothered in the rising roar. To hand Sarah to him, I had to let go of Britney. She slipped out the door back into the fiery hallway. I realized she didn't want to escape. But the maw of flame deterred her long enough for me to reach out and seize her. She flailed ineffectively. I yanked her back into the pink bedroom and shoved her toward the dormer until I managed to push her out the window. Tom grappled her down with help from the boys below. By then flames had invaded the little room itself. The heat was ferocious. I launched myself through the dormer headfirst.

The next thing I remember was lying in the weeds hacking my lungs out with faces bobbing above me, and then I rolled over and vomited in the grass. Warm blood ran down the side of my head into my eyes. Someone pressed a rag against my scalp and then they were carrying me somewhere. Gray daylight gathered in the treetops as raindrops the size of marbles spiraled down from an infinite height and stung my face.

Jerry Copeland had a small infirmary in the second story above his office and lab where people too sick to be home sometimes stayed so he could keep an eye on them. That's where I woke up. I was in a fog. My lungs felt heavy. A big bandage like a mitten was swaddled on my left hand. I had a similar bandage around my head. I began to recall what had happened the night before in odd documentary detail, without emotion. I lay there for quite a while in a strange carefree exhausted state of mind, hearing the muffled sounds of Jerry padding around down below, doing whatever he was doing, seeing patients or cooking up medicines. After a while, he came in with a tray of food for me.

"How are you feeling?"

"Pretty stoned."

"That's the laudanum."

"It's wicked strong."

"I had to put a few stitches in your head."

"What happened to my hand?" I said, holding up the mittenlike bandage.

"I'd say you burned it on a doorknob."

"Where?"

"The Watling house."

"No, where on my hand?"

"The palm mostly."

"I need those pads on the tips to play my fiddle, you know."

"I think they're okay. Try to sit up."

As I did, I noticed an impressive pain in my shoulder, but felt detached from it, like it was somebody else's pain and I was only a casual observer of it. I must have made a face, though.

"You came down pretty hard on that side," Jerry said. "Nothing's broken, in my judgment. There would be more swelling. No reason why you can't go home."

"Okay," I said, trying to imagine how I might hold the fiddle with a bum shoulder. I had fiddling on what was left of my brain.

"Eat some," he said. "It'll help clear your head."

The tray had legs on it so a person could eat comfortably in bed without having to balance it on their lap. On it was a plate of scrambled eggs, two squares of corn bread, a little dish of creamed spinach, and a mug of rose-hip tea. I must have been staring at the tray.

"This is beautiful. Your wife makes a lovely breakfast."

"You're a hero now, Robert."

"Huh?"

"Saving those two."

"Oh."

"Eat something."

I picked up a fork. "I don't think she wanted to be rescued."

Jerry sat down at the end of the bed.

"What makes you say that?"

"She tried to run back into the fire. I had to catch her and shove her out the window."

"Maybe she was confused."

"I don't know. Maybe."

I lifted a forkful of scrambled eggs, golden and buttery. Jeanette had panfried the corn bread in butter too.

"It's a good thing we all work as hard as we do around here," I said. "All the butter and cream we eat."

"Do you suppose she set that fire herself?" Jerry said.

"Huh?"

"You think Britney Watling torched her own house?"

"It hadn't occurred to me."

"Well, now I wonder," Jerry said. "At first I figured lightning. But now I'm not so sure."

"I don't know either. The storms kept me up a long time but they were far off. I fell asleep sometime before the fire broke out."

"Lightning can strike far from the center of a storm cell," Jerry said.

"Maybe. I hope she didn't try to harm herself and her kid. I stopped in on her two days ago with some cornmeal. She seemed mighty glum."

"She'll have to put in with someone," Jerry said. "Sooner rather than later. Maybe with your neighbor Lucy Myles. Lucy could help with the child."

"Who are they staying with now?"

"Allisons. I think."

I finished the eggs and turned to the creamed spinach and finally the corn bread. Sandy used to think it was funny that I ate things in sequence off a plate. Never some of this and some of that. One item at a time. Who knows, maybe it was what made me a good organizer in the old days on the job. My head was clearing.

"Last night, before all this happened, I was thinking."

"About Britney and the girl?"

"No. About the town. We really have to get our act together around here."

"Yeah? How are we going to do that."

"I'm calling a meeting of the trustees tonight," I said after a while. Any of us on the town board could call a meeting. We just hadn't done it in at least a year. "Can you help get the word out? Ask Loren to send for the farmers, and make sure Dale Murray is there."

"All right," Jerry said. "Any particular purpose?"

"For one thing, the water pressure used to be much higher than it is now. We really have to fix it."

"I doubt it would have mattered last night."

"We'll never know, will we?"

"I suppose."

"You see how we give in? It's some kind of reflex negativity."

"We're conditioned by adversity."

"We don't have to surrender to conditioning. Brother Jobe says we're demoralized. I think it's true."

"Since when are you tight with him?"

"I took him over to see Bullock. He's a cheeky bastard. He put it right to Stephen about taking up his duties as magistrate."

"Stephen's a proud man. I don't imagine he rolled over for him."

"He got Stephen to agree to help fix our water system. He can cast some concrete pipe for us, he says."

"Maybe we should all take turns falling out a window," Jerry said. "It seems to have pepped you up."

"I'm just sick of sleepwalking through life. Can you take this tray up off me?"

"Of course."

I got up and out of the bed. Everything felt wobbly, but I stayed on my feet. Sun streamed through the windows. It felt like a new day.

"Also, ask Loren to get Brother Jobe to the board meeting tonight. That new bunch has to be in on this."

"All right," Jerry said.

"Tell them eight o'clock at the old town hall, upstairs."