Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 05 - Play With Fire

by Play

  "Somebody get on the radio!"

  Kate ran for the truck, buckets forgotten. Bobby hoisted himself into the cab while Dinah tossed his chair in the back. Mutt leapt in beside it, Kate jammed the truck in gear and spit gravel pulling out.

  The church was a quarter of a mile down the road and they were there in less than a minute. Kate slammed on the brakes and the Isuzu slid to a halt on the loose gravel. The three of them stared at the scene in front of them. Bobby broke the silence. "What the hell's going on here?"

  There was a fire, and it was a burner, but it had been deliberately set, a pile of wood doused with gas they could smell from inside the cab.

  Kate opened the door and got out. "Mutt," she said, and Mutt jumped down to stand next to her. "Stay close, girl."

  Mutt gave an uneasy woof. Little fires she could tolerate. Big ones made her ruff stand up. Dinah lifted Bobby's chair out of the bed and set it down next to the open door. He walked his knuckles down into it and the three of them moved toward the fire as other vehicles arrived.

  A group of people formed a ring around the fire, the tallest of whom was the Right Reverend Pastor Simon Seabolt. Matthew stood next to him.

  There were twenty children and twice as many adults, and all of them were feeding the flames of the fire.

  Kate looked closer. Feeding the flames with books and albums of music.

  She recognized a Michael Jackson CD, a book with a picture of Albert Einstein on the cover. One woman tossed in what looked like a small totem. A bottle of vodka was thrown in and shattered and flames roared up, just in time to be recorded for posterity by Dinah's camera. It recorded everything faithfully, so faithfully that Kate couldn't bear to watch it, even long afterward, even with the filter of the medium between her and the event.

  The images were burned forever into her memory: the light of the fire turning the faces of the crowd into gilded masks, the fixed look in their wide, staring eyes, lips half-open in the ecstasy of ritual sacrifice. Seabolt's voice, too, was recorded clearly, deep, demanding, a call to arms. "Show your children the devil must be cast out and committed to the everlasting fire of damnation!" he shouted above the crackle and roar of the flames. "The dangers of failing to instruct them in God's holy laws are great! If we don't take advantage of this opportunity, Satan will!"

  There was a chorus of amens. A flame jumped up and someone screamed.

  "Satan! I see the serpent!" A woman fell to her knees, her head buried in her hands.

  The red light of the fire reflected back on Sea bolt's face, casting it in exaggerated shadows so that his eyebrows and the lines that bracketed his mouth looked carved and deep.

  A gilt album Kate recognized as

  "Elvis' Greatest Hits" went into the flames. Elvis and Jesus, she thought, remembering the line from the Henley song Jack had quoted, they kind of look the same. She just hadn't been aware until now that she was required to make a choice.

  A Nirvana T-shirt went in, followed by half a dozen cassette tapes.

  Kate saw one woman about to throw in a book she recognized from her own library, a copy of The Riverside Shakespeare. She started forward with an inarticulate protest and Bobby grabbed her arm. "No, Kate," he said, his voice low, his gaze as fierce as Seabolt's.

  "But--"

  "No." His deep voice was inflexible. "You try to stop this and you'll be the next thing they toss on that fire."

  Unexpectedly Mutt erupted, barking ferociously. She lunged forward and Kate was only just in time to catch her ruff, one arm knotted in the fur at the back of Mutt's neck, the other still caught in Bobby's hard grasp.

  "What the hell!" A big, beefy man who had just tossed a half dozen paperbacks into the fire jumped back. "You better watch that dog, lady!"

  Mutt barked wildly, straining, pulling so strongly that Kate grabbed her with both hands, Bobby still gripping one arm. "Quiet, girl," she said urgently. But Mutt would not quiet, and suddenly Kate knew. She stared at the man, at Mutt, at the man again. "You son of a bitch," she said softly.

  "What?" Dinah said. "What's wrong?"

  Wary, the man looked at Mutt, backing up a step. "You mind that dog, you hear!"

  Kate almost let Mutt go. The temptation was so great to just open her hands, loosen her grip, turn Mutt loose. It could always take a while to get her under control. A big strong animal like that, as tiny and frail as Kate could look when she put her mind to it, no one could blame her.

  She almost did it. She came so close. She saw the fear the big, beefy man tried to cover with bluster, and she knew Mutt wouldn't stop with him. Mutt's nose worked far too well for that. Four men had attacked the camp that night, and not for one moment did she doubt that the other three were present here, too.

  Sally Gillespie burst into the ring of people surrounding the fire, a bundle wadded at her breast. She hurled it up and in the air it unfolded enough to reveal itself as the hunter's tunic that had once graced the wall of Russell's store.

  Kate screamed, the involuntary sound torn out of her ruined throat.

  "No!" Mutt barked again. "Sally, no, don't, DON'T!"

  "No, Kate," Bobby said again, hanging on with a grip like grim death.

  "It's too late." She knew he was right and stopped fighting him, swaying on her feet, watching with anguished eyes. The flames licked at the dentalium shells, the beads melted, the porcupine quills flared up and were consumed The caustic smell of burnt hide mingled with the wood smoke and spread across the parking lot.

  She raised a hand and discovered her cheek was wet.

  They watched until the last book was thrown, until the last cassette tape melted, until the last T-shirt burst into flame. They watched until the flames began to die down, until the wood beneath had collapsed into a pile of smoldering embers. Only then did people began to drift away in ones, twos, families. Many stopped to shake Seabolt's hand, to receive his blessing.

  Bobby's grip had loosened and before he could stop her Kate pulled free and went around the dying fire to confront Matthew Seabolt. "You wanted to know what happened to your father," she said, traces of tears still on her face. She pointed at his grandfather. "This man killed him."

  "No," the boy said in a small voice.

  "Yes," Kate said relentlessly. "Yes, he did, and you know it. You told me how he did it. You know it, and I know it, and everyone in this town knows it. Your father loved you, and your grandfather killed him." She grabbed Matthew by his shoulders and shook him once, hard.

  "Don't forget," she said fiercely. Bobby's hands pulled at her. "And don't forgive!"

  The last sight she had of Matthew Seabolt was of him standing next to his grandfather, blue eyes wide and wild, as Bobby and Dinah dragged her away. "Don't forget, Matthew!"

  Bobby muscled her into the truck. "Jesus, Kate! Let it alone!" He pulled himself up and slammed the door and grabbed her again before she went out the other side. He shook her once, hard. "What the hell do you think you're doing! The kid's barely ten! You think he needs to hear somebody say something like that about his grandfather, the only family he's got left, the guy he's got to live with? Jesus!"

  Dinah drove.

  When they came to the Gillespies' store Kate said suddenly, "Stop."

  "What?"

  "Stop the goddam truck!"

  They slid to a halt and Kate was out and running before Dinah and Bobby knew what happened. She went around to the back and slammed through the door without knocking.

  The Gillespies were all sitting in their living room and looked up at her, at first startled, and then not. Sally's eyes were the first to fall. Kate looked at Russell. "I want to know what happened to Daniel Seabolt."

  "I don't--" he began.

  Her voice cracked like a whip. "I want to know what happened to Daniel Seabolt!"

  The words hung in the air, written in the fire and smoke of burnt offerings.

  She glared at him and he glared back. His shoulders were rigid, his jaw taut, and then in the next moment all the fight seemed
to drain out of him. He slumped back in his chair, shaking his head so that it was almost a nervous twitch.

  "Russell," Sally said, her voice pleading.

  He shook his head again, this time a slow movement that spoke of a bone-deep weariness. "She knows most of it. She might as well know the rest."

  "Russell, no."

  He raised his head and Sally flushed beneath the contempt in his eyes.

  There was a fresh bruise on her left cheek. Kate wondered dispassionately if she'd received it during the theft of the hunter's tunic or after she'd returned home without it. Either way, she could not find it in her heart to care.

  There was a map on the wall opposite, a map of Chistona and the surrounding area, the map Brad Burns had spoken of, the map with red flags for the sinners, blue flags for the saved. She wondered if the flag for Daniel Seabolt was still up. She wondered how many other unsatisfactory residents of Chistona had been flagged for disposal.

  They could get away with it, at least for a while, as isolated as they were. They could do it. There was no one to stop them.

  No one had stopped them last time.

  "Tell her," Russell said.

  Sally said, "At least let me put the kids to bed."

  "Let them stay," he said, his voice heavy.

  "Russell, no, they're too young--"

  "Let them stay." The three words were flat and final, and she was silenced.

  Dinah and Bobby came up behind Kate to stand in the doorway. Happy, even eager for the interruption, Sally said, smile stretched into a travesty of hospitality, "Would you like to sit down? I could get you some coffee and--"

  Kate almost choked on the disgust she felt. "No."

  Sally flinched beneath the single syllable, and looked imploringly again at her husband.

  "Tell her," he said again. "Tell her what you did, all for the love of God. Show your children what their mother is."

  Sally broke down then. It was hard to make out the words between the sobs but Kate understood enough to wish she couldn't understand any of it. She'd asked for it, though, and she stood there and took it, all of it, all there was to take.

  "He sent Matthew away," Sally said between sobs. "Along with all the rest of the children, to Bible camp. And then we waited until the first fishing period was called and everyone else was gone. We waited a day, and then we went down to the little trailer Daniel and Matthew were living in. He was surprised to see us, but he invited us inside.

  He even offered us coffee."

  She broke down again, and they waited. When it was obvious nobody was leaving until the story was finished, she resumed. "We warned him of the consequences of his actions. We gave him one last chance to stop teaching those lies about the creation and all that other filth." She sobbed again. "He refused. He was very nice about it, but he said no."

  She swallowed. "So we stripped him of his clothes." One of the children made a noise. Russell held out an arm and the little boy rushed into it.

  Sally watched the boy with hungry eyes. "He fought us. He was young and strong, and he fought." She rubbed one shoulder with an absent hand, as if an old bruise suddenly pained her. "It took four of us to hold him while we locked the door. He kept trying to get in the car with us. Then he started running next to us and we had to floor it to get back to our houses and lock the doors."

  She folded her arms across her chest and bent over them. Her voice dropped. "He was outside here for a while. I heard him. He banged on the door and yelled. Then he screamed and begged me to let him in. He tried breaking a window but it was too small for him to fit in and all it did was cut his arm. I cleaned up the blood the next morning."

  The cuts on Seabolt's upper right arm, Kate thought.

  She looked around, her eyes haunted. "It wasn't supposed to take so long. He was allergic to mosquitoes, his father told us so. He should have died right away. But he didn't. When he screamed, I'll never forget when he screamed--" Her voice caught on the word and she wept silently, hands pressed against her ears.

  Why hadn't he tried to break in somewhere else? Kate wondered. The answer was as simple and as terrible as the Alaskan bush itself. It was a long way between cabins in Chistona. There was the church, and the store, and then there were acres of trees and swamp and miles of river and gravel road before the next outpost of civilization.

  Seabolt's best chance would have been to return to the church and the pastor's cabin and try to get in there, but in a very short time the allergic reaction would have set in, and it is never easy to think clearly when you can't breathe. Kate had had first-hand experience of that not long ago, inside a crab pot ten fathoms below and dropping fast.

  It was amazing Daniel Seabolt had made it as far as he did, naked and ill, a mile and more crosscountry from the church and the store. And by the time he had followed Sally and her lynch mob down the rough gravel road, his bare feet would have been torn and bloody, and that wouldn't have helped either.

  Sally rocked a little, back and forth. "After a while, he went away, and I didn't hear him anymore."

  Kate felt sick, suffocated. From the expressions of revulsion on the other faces in the room, she wasn't alone. A second boy crawled into his father's lap.

  "Who reserved the privilege of shoving him out the door?" Kate said thinly. "His father?" "Oh, no," Sally said, shocked out of her misery.

  "Pastor Seabolt wasn't there. He wasn't with us that evening. He was in Glennallen, lecturing at the Bible college."

  They stared at her, dumbfounded, and she said, turning peevish, "I don't know why you're all looking at me like that. We were serving God. Daniel was a blasphemer and a corrupting influence on our children. He was a tool of Satan. He had to be destroyed."

  She was like a child reciting scripture by rote.

  Bobby stirred. "You ever hear of a little verse that goes, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord'?"

  "We are but instruments o/the Lord," Sally said, and again her voice was the voice of a child, obedient and well disciplined. Kate looked at Russell and then as swiftly away, unwilling to witness what she saw there.

  Sally sat back against the couch, looking around the room with wide eyes, as if awakening from a bad dream. With a sigh she said, "Gosh, I feel better." She stretched and yawned. "I feel like I could get some sleep now."

  Kate wasn't sure she was ever going to be able to sleep again. She looked at Russell, all pity gone, lips pressed together against a rising gorge. He was waiting for it; he flung up one hand, warding her off. "I wasn't here."

  The whip was back in Kate's voice. "Where were you?"

  "I was dip-netting for silvers in the Kanuyaq that day. I didn't know anything about it until I got home the next morning, and right after that the storm came, and the lightning, and we had the fire to fight."

  "Why didn't you tell someone what happened?"

  He became angry in his turn, angry and defensive. He pointed at Sally.

  "That is my wife, God help me. These are my kids." He waved a hand.

  "This is my home. That's my store. Those people are my neighbors. I have to live here. Besides--" He fell silent.

  "Besides what?"

  He sat back a little, squaring his shoulders, and raised his eyes.

  There was a quality of patient endurance there that she had not seen before, a quiet, stubborn determination in the thrust of his jaw, a sort of immovability in the set of the stocky shoulders. With a small shock she realized that in this moment he resembled Ekaterina. "They won't last."