Richard was right; no one would believe it was an accident—how could they explain being here, the gasoline, the matches in his pocket. He had to think—no one could ever know they had been here. No one could ever know it had been him.
“Get the jug and pour gasoline in here—hurry!” Buddy ordered, but Richard only stared. “If they get me, they’ll get you, too—now, move!”
Richard began to slosh the liquid over everything in the area, moving about the room and close to the front, but keeping hidden from the windows and the electric light on at the front of the store.
“No—you can’t—not now—” Carl seemed near hysterics. He shook his head slowly, staring at Buddy through tears that rolled from his eyes and down his cheeks. Trust him to fall apart, Buddy thought. Trust him to cost them everything—he slapped Carl hard across the face, then again, backhanded the second time, and his friend stared at him through shocked, tear-bright eyes, his hand going to his cheek.
“You listen to me—nobody can ever know we were here. Do you hear me—nobody. So help me, you breathe a word about this, you son-of-a-bitch, and I’ll kill you myself.”
Carl stared, his mouth slack and open.
Buddy pushed Carl and Richard through the door and into the storeroom ahead of him, then went back and sloshed the last of the gasoline over the body of the grocer. He looked around the room, then moved back into the storeroom. Looking toward the open back door he could see Richard and Carl there, dark forms against the less dark of the night outside—the fools were going to be seen.
He took the matches from his pocket, finding his hands steady as he struck one. He stared at the flame for a moment, then tossed it onto the floor, watching it fall until it struck the pool of gasoline. There was a soft whooshing as the gasoline ignited then spread away, toward the doorway and the body that lay beyond. He watched the cloth sacks on a lower shelf start to burn as the fire spread. He could hear Richard calling his name, and feel the cool breeze behind him from the open doorway, but for a moment he could only stare, captivated by the sight before him, and the sound, of something almost alive as it grew and began to consume the wood—then Richard was dragging at his arm, pulling him away and through the open doorway into the night outside.
The fire spread quickly, having engulfed the grocery and spread to the barber shop next door by the time the fire department arrived. The sky was alight as flames shot up from the roof of Brown’s Grocery, threatening the cafe on its other side, and the mass of buildings below the barber shop. The grocery was given up as lost, the town’s volunteer firemen directing their attentions to the buildings on either side. One entire half of downtown could go if the fire was not contained—stores, shops, businesses, livelihoods, in a town already hurting from unemployment and lack of work. People hurried toward downtown, some to watch, drawn by the excitement, but many more to help fight the blaze. A water spigot ran full open beside town hall, another before the hardware store, and lines of men stretched from both toward the buildings threatened, dousing the wood and brick structures with buckets brought out from the hardware store, Abernathy’s Feed and Seed, and the five and dime.
The Sanders had eaten supper, and Janson and Stan afterward went out to the woodpile beside the house to refill the box by the back door. Janson was talking about the work they had the next day replacing flooring in Brown’s Grocery, but he suddenly stopped and stared. There was a glow in the night sky beyond the distant bulk of Goode’s house, a glow that seemed to be growing brighter as the minutes passed. Downtown—
Suddenly he was running, knowing before he reached Main Street that there was a fire, but he never expected what he saw when he reached downtown. Flames shot up from rooftops, reaching into the night sky. People stood close, fighting the fire, falling back as it edged its way farther and farther down the street. Downtown was jammed with cars parked helter-skelter along the street as Janson reached the sidewalks, the air thick with heavy, black smoke that curled upward into the darkness above the flames, and that floated out over the growing crowd that had gathered to watch. Brown’s Grocery was engulfed, the glass windows broken and jagged, fire wildly eating everything behind the bricked front—Mr. Brown had still been at work in the store when Janson had left earlier. If he had not gotten out—
The roof groaned, heavy with fire, and began to crash in, and the flames shot even higher. The grocery was nothing now but a wall, a space, filled with fire—no one could be alive in that. Janson stared up at the orange, yellow, and red—the destruction, the disaster—feeling heat on his face, forcing him back. He thought of the fire that had cost his father’s life—then he was moving to the line of men that stretched from the hardware store to the flames, joining the others fighting the blaze the only way open to them. He accepted the buckets, their contents already half slopped out, and dashed at the flames with the water, handing back a bucket, taking another—but it was hopeless, the fire too big, their efforts too small. Buildings were lost, other stores catching, even with the efforts of the men and the work of the pumper truck—one entire side of the street could go, and they could not stop it.
There was a crash from the upper story of Patterson’s Drug Store before them, and shards of glass fell on Janson and the other men on the sidewalk below. There was a panic-filled scream and the sound of more breaking glass from the windows above, and Janson looked up—there was someone at the windows of old Dr. Bassett’s office, white-sleeved arms thrust out through the broken glass, silhouetted against the dark sky above. Janson threw down the empty bucket in his hand and ran toward the entrance to the building, several other men beside him.
They crashed against the door, Janson and one other man throwing their weight against it, fumbling with the door knob, then Janson drove his shoulder against the wood frame again, splintering it and shattering the glass as the lock gave way and it flew inward. He stumbled inside, coughing with the smoke that was already in his lungs. The fire burned close by, all along one side of the store, catching and consuming more as it moved through the building. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and held it over his face, trying to block out the smoke that choked and gagged him as he made his way toward the back of the building and the stairs there already beginning to catch fire. The man beside him grabbed his sleeve and Janson turned to look at him through the stinging smoke, seeing the man shake his head and release his arm to point back toward the doorway then start to move in that direction. There was another sound of a crash overhead, and Janson’s eyes moved back to the stairs. The fire was hot on his face and he wiped away the sweat that poured into his eyes. He coughed through the handkerchief, the fire so close now he could feel it, could smell it, could hear it. He stumbled up the stairs, toward the office overhead, almost unable to see now for the smoke and the heat and the hell around him.
Smoke choked the upper floor, flames moving into the wooden walls, rolling across the ceiling overhead, and the sound, hot and deafening, filled his ears. He could no longer see where he was going, but stumbled forward, following instinct toward the windows that would overlook Main Street. He ran into a wall, and felt his way along it to an open doorway, then fell inside and had to regain his feet.
He felt the man before he saw him, and grabbed his arm, intending to push him out the second-story window and then jump himself—but suddenly the man was fighting him, clawing at him, knocking him back, and then moving from the window and the closest means of escape. There was a crashing sound from below, and another, as Janson stumbled after him and through the doorway out onto the landing.
Fire rolled across the ceiling overhead—he could hear it, though he could no longer see anything but blackness, his handkerchief lost in the struggle. There was a high-pitched keening, and Janson followed it to its source, finding the man pressed into a corner near the top of the stairs. Janson grabbed his arm, slapping him hard as he tried to struggle free, then again before he pushed him to the top of the stairs and s
tarted down. The man was clawing at him, dragging at him, almost making him lose his footing as Janson shoved him down the last few steps and into the hell of the bottom floor.
He stumbled forward, forcing the smaller man before him. His lungs hurt; there was no air, only smoke and a hot hell that he could no longer breathe in.
Crashing sounds came from behind, a groan as a wall weakened, or the ceiling overhead, ready to collapse. The entire front of the store was burning now, and he forced the man forward, knowing they would both die if they did not push through the flames.
There was the smell of scorched hair and burning flesh, but he forced the man forward, forced him through the flames, through the blackness, through the smoke, and he fell ahead himself, into the open, into the night air.
Alive—he stood swaying on his feet as the man collapsed against one of those nearby fighting the blaze. Alive, alive—
Suddenly he was hit hard from the side, landing hard, sprawling, out onto the brick pavement of the street. Someone was on him, rolling him over, hurting him, bruising already bruised flesh on the hard red brick. He caught sight of open-mouthed faces, but no one would help him. He was too dazed to struggle, but the person would not let go, rolling him over and over on the street—strong, determined, overpowering.
He was released and he lay for a moment on his side, dazed, hurting, then found Stan’s worried and smut-blackened face staring into his own, helping him to sit. He was hearing, he was alive, he was breathing, and Stan was there, looking at him, talking, his face streaked with sweat and soot.
“You were on fire. You seemed not to know it—you were on fire—”
The words made no sense. He tried to make himself think, tried to make himself feel. Stan was looking at him, at his arm, at his side, and Janson looked down—I’ve ruined my coat, he thought. Then—I was on fire; as he stared, in open amazement, at the blackened and burned garment, the burned thing beneath that was his shirt sleeve.
He lifted his eyes to Stan, feeling coming into the scorched and burned flesh, the hurt oddly welcome because it said that he lived, he breathed.
He sat in the street, staring at the line of stores before him, at the fire that had almost ended his life. It was hopeless, the fire out of all control, one entire half of Main Street seeming lost as the flames spread outward. They would be lucky if one building on that side of the street was left standing, lucky if no life was lost. Half of downtown was gone, all the stores and businesses, the places people worked, the jobs that gave money to feed entire families—gone. He realized suddenly that he was crying and sick there on the red brick of the street, as he watched the town burn.
Elise dropped the cup she had been washing when Janson and Stan returned to the house that night. The two children and Sissy were asleep, and Elise had been washing the supper dishes alone at the dishpan on the kitchen table when the door opened and Stan entered the tiny house, followed by Janson—both men were covered with soot, smelling of smoke. Stan’s hands were burned from having beaten the fire out when Janson’s clothes were burning—but the sight of Janson made Elise feel as if her heart would stop beating. The clothes along his right arm and side were badly burned, his neck raw-looking, and his hair singed along one side—the cup shattered on the floor at her feet, but Elise did not even notice.
She realized she must have cried out, for Janson’s first words, as she crossed the room to go to him, were: “I’m okay, Elise; don’t wake up Henry an’ Catherine—” his eyes large and green in his smut-blackened face.
She was almost afraid to touch him as she made him sit at the kitchen table, and then she frantically searched for the scissors so that she could cut away the burned garments to see how bad his burns were. Her hands were shaking badly as she tried to cut at the material and she knew she was hurting him all the worse, and she kept trying to get him to allow her to send Sissy running for a doctor—but he told her that doctors cost money, and that money was something they did not have, so she cut the burned coat and shirt away herself and cleaned the burns as best she could, gingerly applied salve, and then wrapped them in clean white strips that she cut from the good sheets she had kept stored in the bottom of the chifforobe, sheets Janson’s grandmother had given them. Her hands were still shaking as she cleaned and dressed Stan’s burns as well, and, when she was finished, they were shaking all the worse, for she realized that she could have lost Janson and her brother in the one hellish fire that they had said had consumed much of downtown.
Catherine cried when she saw what her father looked like the next morning, and would have nothing to do with him. Janson and Stan left the house early, well before breakfast, to do the chores that were required of them in exchange for the roof over their heads and the small security they had in the little two-room house. Elise hardly touched her own breakfast as she tried to keep Henry still long enough to get some small amount of food into him—he looked so much like Janson, with the same black hair, green eyes, and coloring, and she could not help but to think of Janson as she sat looking into those green eyes, and Catherine’s as well.
There was sound from outside, Stan’s voice shouting her name, and Elise started to get up from the table, her heart rising to her throat at the fear and panic she could hear in her brother’s voice. She had not reached the door before it flew inward as Stan stumbled into the room. His hair was in wild disarray and his glasses were almost unseated from his face as he stared down at her, his words gasped out between panicked breaths. “Janson—at the barn, we were working—Mr. Brown’s dead. Somebody saw him and Janson arguing out behind the grocery yesterday. The police came and took Janson, Elise; they’ve arrested Janson—”
Chapter Eight
The pool hall on a side street a block off Main was smoky and dimly lit that morning, the light filtering through the grimy windows spotty and almost gray in color. Buddy Eason leaned against a pool table, a bottle in his hand from which he drank openly, the pretense of Prohibition forgotten in the open area of the pool hall, and not just in the dark rooms beyond where the law seldom reached. Buddy was hustling money and stirring up trouble, both of which he often did, and openly enjoyed, in the pool room.
Carl watched from a stool in one corner of the room just beyond the tables, watched as Buddy put down the bottle and took his shot—within minutes he would win the game from the other player, and, as Carl stared at the other man, he knew the money the man would be losing was money he could little afford. The man had lost his job in the fire that had taken much of downtown the night before, but still he had been unable to refuse Buddy’s challenge. He was afraid of Buddy, as were many other men who frequented the pool hall. That was a feeling that Carl could well understand.
The night before haunted him now, after having robbed him of sleep, invading his dreams in the early morning hours when sleep finally came—the break-in, spilling the gasoline out, realizing the old man was dead, the fire—Carl had lived it again and again in his dreams, and he shuddered as he remembered the sound of the fire, the smell of the gasoline, the look on Buddy’s face of determination and something very near to pleasure. How did we do it? Carl wondered, staring at Buddy. They had run from the store the night before, leaving the dead man behind, leaving the fire set to consume the store and the body itself, the fire that had finally taken half of downtown. In the cold light of day it seemed a nightmare now, a hell of dream and fear, too horrible to have ever been real—but it had been real. The burned-out shells of the stores downtown said it was real; the smell of smoke that still clung to the town; the raw, blackened timbers and collapsed walls and supports, and the charred corpse found in the blackened pit of the grocery said it was real; as did the man who now sat in the jail accused of something that Buddy, Carl, and Richard had done. Carl hated himself, but he had not been able to tell Buddy no, no more than he had ever been able to tell Buddy no about anything even once in their lives. He was horrified of Buddy, and horrified of what they
had done, and horrified that he had not somehow been able to stop it, and horrified that he could not now tell the truth.
And horrified of what Buddy planned to do now before Janson Sanders could come to trial for something he had not done.
Carl had gone to Buddy’s house that morning—but Buddy had not let him inside, shoving him back onto the porch as soon as he came to the door. Buddy had taken him for a drive and told him what he would do to him if he ever confessed to what they had done, and Carl was all the more horrified now because he knew that Buddy would not think twice about doing to him exactly what he had said he would. They had just reached uptown, driving past the shells of the burned-out buildings, then turning down the side street that took them past the police station where they had seen Janson Sanders being taken into the building by the police—Buddy had seemed to forget Carl’s presence in the car as he stared out the window at the door through which Sanders had been taken, and Carl’s breath had caught in his throat as he had heard the words, spoken almost to himself, that Buddy had said:
“Maybe the place ought to burn down tonight with him locked inside it. Maybe—”
Then Buddy had fallen silent, sitting there in his car parked in the street, staring at a door through which another man had been taken for something that he and Carl and Richard had done, and Carl had been unable to do anything but sit and stare, knowing how likely it was that Janson Sanders would never live long enough to stand trial.
He dragged his attention back to the moment, watching as Buddy completed the game, watching as Buddy took the little money the unemployed man had, then seeing him go into the back room off the pool hall only to return with another bottle of gin. Buddy rarely got drunk; he only got mean, and he was getting mean this morning as he moved between the pool tables and back toward where Richard stood near the front windows that looked out onto the street. Richard was at the edge of a group of men, listening, having little to say, getting drunk himself as he listened to the talk about the fire, for that dominated conversation in the pool hall since more than an hour before. At first Buddy had listened as well, saying nothing himself, until the first mention of Janson Sanders’s name, then he took the lead in the conversation, carefully stoking the anger and rage building within many in the pool hall, until that rage was a physical presence there in the room now that Carl could feel.
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