by Ike Hamill
“You okay?” Brett asked.
“No, I’m not okay,” Eddie snarled.
Frank Libby went to him, examined his hand, then walked slowly towards the Trader who was turning his blackened head left a right.
Through the flames, Lily could see his wide eyes. She thought that maybe his eyelids had already burned. His lips definitely had—there was nothing but gnashing teeth in his gaping mouth.
“No smoke,” Frank Libby said, looking up into the rafters of the barn. “No smoke.”
He turned and came to Lily. She almost wanted to run away from him. The confusion on his face was nearly as frightening as the burning forms.
“I don’t know if this is going to work, Lily,” he said.
He glanced over his shoulder when the Trader yelled, “Stop!”
Black ash was falling from the Trader’s side.
“I honestly don’t even know if these flames are real,” Frank Libby said.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Lily asked him.
“I’m just saying that we might need to back up and take another approach.”
“I need this to be done, Frank. Whatever we have to do, I want to be finished with this right now.”
Nicky shouted. Lily looked over as Nicky and Eric stepped back another pace from the drowned man as the flames flared. Crackling like fireworks, the new burst of flames tore through the mound of flesh that remained. As they swept through, the pile shrank quickly.
“There he goes,” Jessie said. He had put the gas can down and was approaching cautiously.
Lily followed his eyes and saw that the Trader was sagging now as his legs disappeared to ash. With a similar flareup, the process accelerated and he all but vanished before their eyes. Brett was waving a hand in front of his face and backing up from the swirling dust and ash. Holdty was splashing water on the smoldering straw.
“Holy shit,” someone whispered.
“I guess I was wrong,” Frank Libby said.
ERIC
NOBODY SEEMED EAGER TO leave the scene. They splashed everything down with water and found an old broom to sweep away the soggy ashes. Officer Libby rinsed the seared handcuffs off in water and then tossed them back into the bucket. He did the same with the knife. Eric was pretty sure that those things would be decommissioned into some shallow grave.
Of the Trader and the soggy zombie that had lumbered into the barn, there wasn’t much left to dispose of. They found some teeth and bones and put those in the other bucket. Fish found a handkerchief that was stained with ash but looked unburned. Holdty recovered a handful of old coins from the sweepings, but they didn’t know if they were from the Trader or had just been dropped in the barn by someone. Officer Libby told them to add them to the bucket. It wasn’t worth taking the chance.
When they were done with the cleanup, Eddie and Brett took on the chore of getting rid of the teeth and bones. They walked them into the woods with a little hand shovel from Officer Libby’s trunk.
“How do we know he’s really gone?” Lily asked. “What happens if we see him back at that tree?”
“I don’t know that there is a way to prove it,” Officer Libby said. “The best we can do is keep an eye on things and wait and see. I’ll make a report about some suspicious activity down by the cemetery and see if I can get some surveillance. Meanwhile, we keep our notebooks and remind ourselves to watch and wait.”
“Should we meet again in a week?” Nicky asked. “Check in?”
“That’s a good idea,” Frank Libby said. “Okay, let’s do one more sweep of this place. I don’t want to leave anything behind that suggests what went on here. Remove anything that looks suspicious in any way.”
“Who is going to suspect anything?” Fish asked.
“That’s the question. Let’s take away the answer before it’s asked,” Frank Libby said.
Eric didn’t quite understand that explanation, but the sentiment made sense. His uncle always used to say, “You can’t always be lucky, but you can always be careful.”
While they were making their final sweep through the barn, Eddie and Brett came back.
Back at the cars, they divided up based on where they were headed. Eric drove the Gran Torino with Nicky, Lily, Jessie, and Fish packed in. Officer Libby gave the others a ride. Looping down Foreside Road, Eric took Fish home first.
“See you Monday,” Jessie said as his friend got out.
“Why? What’s today?” Fish asked.
They all laughed. Calendars and clocks felt like outmoded concepts. After what they had been through, the real world must have gone off without them.
“You want to go home?” Eric asked Nicky.
“Not really,” she said. “Last night was freaky. I kept having these weird thoughts and ideas, but I couldn’t tell my mom about any of them. My parents think I’m a weirdo because I still live at home. The last thing I want to do is get judged by them again when they have no idea all the crazy stuff I’ve been through.”
“Stay at our house for a bit,” Lily said. “You can figure out what you want to do later. At least we all know what we’ve been through.”
“Yeah. Okay. If that won’t be weird.”
“Not at all, right?” Lily said.
Eric realized that she was looking at him. “No. Of course you should.”
“Thanks,” Nicky said.
Eric took a right, altering his route now that they were all headed to the same place.
“You working tonight?” he asked.
“Night off,” Nicky said. “I think.”
They laughed again.
“We could all use a night off,” Lily said.
Eric rounded the corner, his eyes fixed on the cupola for a moment. Back when it was the only building on the block, it must have been a grand sight. The towering shape of their house against the chaos of the trees was a testament to what people could accomplish even in a place as cold and unforgiving as Maine.
Lily said something that made Nicky and Jessie laugh again.
Eric didn’t hear it. All he could hear was his own heartbeat, pounding in his ears. His eyes had settled down on the porch of the house and his foot had automatically drifted from the accelerator to the brake pedal. They came to a stop in the middle of the road.
“Eric?” Lily asked, still laughing. “What are you…”
Her hand landed on his arm and squeezed. She was anchoring herself to reality.
“Is that…” Nicky began to ask
“Wendell,” Jessie said.
# # #
He barely got the car to the curb before the doors all opened and people spilled out. Eric shut it off and closed his door and the one that Lily had left open. They were all running up the lawn towards the porch. Wendell was just sitting there, looking up at the sky.
“Wendell?” Lily called. “Wendell!”
He looked over at her and stood up. Using both hands he straightened his long hair.
Jessie caught up and nearly passed his sister. They both reached the porch at the same time.
When Nicky and Eric got there, Lily was hugging her little brother and Jessie was clapping him on the back.
“Let me go,” Wendell said. His voice sounded strained either because his sister was squeezing him or because he hated to be hugged. It was probably both.
“I will not,” she said. “I will never let you go.”
She settled for taking his hand though.
“Where have you been?” Eric asked.
“I went on a journey,” Wendell said. “It was really long. I didn’t realize how long it would be.”
“You’re telling us!” Lily said. She took his face in her hands and squeezed him again until he fought her off.
“You were gone too,” Wendell said, pointing at his sister. He pointed at Eric. “So was he, for a while.”
“Tell us all about it,” Lily said. “Tell us how you came back. Tell us everything.”
Wendell looked between them. His face
was dirty around the edges and his hair was matted down. His shirt was stained under the armpits and had a blown-out seam on the side. His pants were threadbare at the knees. Even with all that, he didn’t look bad for a kid who had been missing for two years.
“Where are Mom and Dad?” Wendell asked.
Lily rocked back like she had been punched.
“Yeah, we have to talk about all that, bud,” Jessie said. “Come on. Let’s go in.” He slid past his brother and tried the door. It was unlocked. Pushing it open, he asked over his shoulder, “Why didn’t you go in?”
“Nobody was here,” Wendell said.
Lily put a hand on his shoulder and guided him inside.
Eric was about to follow when Nicky put a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey,” she whispered. “Remember why you left.”
“Huh?”
“The pipes? The basement? Be careful.”
“Gotcha. Thanks,” Eric said. He gestured for her to go in and then closed the door.
The house had an empty feeling to it, even though Lily was filling the kitchen with questions to Wendell. She wanted to know when he had eaten and if he had to go to the bathroom. She wanted to know if he was warm enough. Jessie gave Eric a wave and headed towards the back of the house. Eric followed. Apparently, his cousin had been thinking along the same lines as Nicky—he gestured towards the cellar door.
“We should check it out,” Jessie said.
Eric nodded.
In the kitchen, Wendell was asking about their parents again. Lily was starting to explain in halting sentences. It was cowardly, but Eric didn’t want to be anywhere near that conversation.
Eric called Nicky over. “Stay at the top of the stairs. If anything funny happens, call Officer Libby, okay? You have his number?”
She nodded and pulled out her notepad from her back pocket.
He heard Lily in the kitchen saying, “Wendell, There was an accident.”
Eric nodded to Jessie and they started down the cellar stairs. The stairs creaked and sagged as they descended. Eric remembered how terrified he had been of the cellar when he had first come to live with his aunt and uncle. The dark hole had been the realm of spiders, mice, and snakes. Until he had started helping Uncle Reynold with projects, he had been afraid to touch anything down there.
Jessie clicked on the lights and looked around.
Everything was quiet and still.
Jessie moved over to the stone wall by the oil tank. His hand brushed a root that had squeezed its way between the rock. At his touch, the root snapped off.
“Dead,” Jessie said. The corner of his mouth turned up. “What do you bet they’re all dead?”
Eric didn’t share his cousin’s optimism until he checked for himself. He went to where the roots had come in and then grown over to the pipes. He checked the place where some roots came in around the bulkhead door. They were all the same—dry and lifeless. Jessie discovered the bigger roots, when broken off, were black inside, like they had been burned from the inside out.
“Everything okay?” Nicky called from the top of the stairs.
“I think so,” Eric called back.
“How do we know though?” Eric asked Jessie.
Jessie shrugged. “When you get the answer you’re looking for, stop asking.”
Eric smiled. It was something Uncle Reynold had always said.
# # #
After they had something to eat, Lily took Wendell upstairs to work some of the dirt out of his matted hair. Jessie started a fire. The TV was on with the volume down and the radio in the kitchen supplied music. So far, Wendell hadn’t really said much about where he had been. Lily had pressed him at first and then she had been the one to say that it was okay if he didn’t want to talk yet.
“You have any tea?” Nicky asked.
“Check the cabinet to the left of the window there,” Jessie said.
He sat down near Eric and then leaned back to reach a drawer. His hand came out with a deck of cards. Nicky filled the kettle and then put it on the stove to boil. When Jessie riffled through the deck and pulled out the two of diamonds, Eric knew what he was planning.
Nicky sat down while the kettle heated.
They heard the water rush through the pipes to the upstairs bathroom. Either Lily was drawing a bath or Wendell was going to take a shower. Eric was betting on bath. When Wendell was feeling overwhelmed, he hated showers. He said they made his head hurt.
Jessie dealt the cards.
“What are we playing?” Nicky asked.
“Three-handed hearts,” Eric and Jessie said at the same time.
“I’ve never played,” Nicky said.
“Oh, you’ll like it,” Jessie said. “We usually play for money though. Dime a point. How much do you have on you?”
“I think maybe we should play a few hands without money first,” Nicky said.
Eric smiled and looked between them, not sure who was conning whom. He knew that Nicky knew how to play hearts—at least with four people. It occurred to him that maybe they were both conning him.
Nicky was already sorting her cards when she asked, “So, how do you play?”
Jessie gave a quick description of the rules, leaving a bunch of stuff out. After they exchanged cards, Nicky nodded and laid down the deuce of clubs, pulling it from the left side of her fan of cards.
“You guys both think you’re slick,” Eric said. “I know what you’re up to.”
He took the trick with the ace as the kettle started to whistle.
“Tea?” Nicky asked.
Eric and Jessie both said yes. Nicky found some mugs and distributed them with teabags draped over the sides. She visited each with steaming water.
They all glanced up when the water to the upstairs bath shut off.
“Guess his head’s not hurting today,” Jessie said, saying what Eric was thinking.
They all froze at the slow knock at the door. Jessie’s cards wilted as his hand fell. Nicky stood there with the tea kettle in her hand. Eric’s eyes went to the side door.
His throat was dry and his tongue clicked when he opened his mouth to speak.
“Maybe it’s just Officer Libby,” he said. He pushed back from the table and forced his legs to lift him.
“Maybe,” Jessie said.
“Don’t answer it,” Nicky said.
Eric ignored her. He understood the sentiment, but they couldn’t be afraid of the world forever. At some point, things had to get back to normal. It had gotten dark outside. He couldn’t see a thing through the glass in the door. Eric flipped on the porch lights and saw the shape of someone out there. They were facing away from him.
He cleared his throat.
“Who is it?”
The person turned.
Eric recognized the suit before he saw the face. It was the suit that he had helped Lily pick out to take to the funeral home. Even though they didn’t have a viewing, she had wanted to dress her father up in a suit before he was committed to the ground. The suit was a little dirty, but looked to be in surprisingly good shape given the fact that it had been buried for a year.
He could say the same about his uncle.
Reynold caught his eye through the glass.
“Eric? Is that you?”
Eric could sense Jessie coming up behind him.
“Is that Dad?”
Eric could hear the muscles of his own neck working as he turned to look at Jessie.
“I…” Eric said. “I don’t know.”
Jessie reached forward for the knob. If he had been able to, Eric would have tried to stop him.
# # #
“Jessie?” Reynold asked.
“Dad.”
Jessie moved forward and pulled his father into a hug. When he folded his arms around his son, Eric got a good look at the man’s fingernails. There was some dirt under the nails, but they weren’t overly long. Reynold’s fingers looked pink and healthy. The two of them hugged and Eric heard the teapot crash to
the floor, followed by Nicky cursing.
Just as the hug was breaking up, Eric heard fast feet coming down the stairs.
“Come in,” Jessie said, leading his father across the kitchen. “You hungry?”
“I should wash my hands,” Reynold said.
Seeing the man coming towards her, Nicky pressed back into the counter and looked like she wanted to climb over it to escape.
Reynold waggled a finger at her as he slid by to get to the sink.
“There’s nowhere to lean in this kitchen, Nicky. Don’t even try. Anywhere you try to get out of the way, that’s exactly where someone will want to be.”
He ran the water and began to rinse his hands.
Nicky kicked the kettle as she fled. She moved behind Eric.
“What the fuck?” she whispered in Eric’s ear.
Reynold was lathering his hands with soap and pressing his fingernails into the bar to get the dirt out. He said over his shoulder, “I must have hit my head or something. I can’t remember what day it is, or where I’ve been. This water is funny.”
Reynold laughed.
“I don’t even know why I’m all dressed up. I think I’m wearing rubber underwear.”
“Wendell’s back, Dad,” Jessie said.
“Get out of here!” Reynold said. He turned around shaking water from his hands. He looked like he was about to wipe his hands on his suit pants and then reached for a towel instead. Eric was looking at his uncle’s hair. It looked perfect, like it had just been combed.
“Your mother must be over the moon. When did he get back?”
“Today, as far as we know,” Jessie said. “But Mom isn’t back yet.”
“Oh?” Reynold asked.
Jessie glanced over at the door. Nicky saw the look too. When she rushed to the door, Eric figured that she was going to keep running until she got home. Instead, Nicky turned the lock and peeked through the curtains before drawing them.
Reynold watched her with raised eyebrows and then shrugged it off.
“Where is Wen?”