Through the Flames

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  The others had seemed so concerned with his packing up his stuff that they would likely watch to see if he took it with him. They would be relieved, he hoped, to find everything still in his room. It was packed and stacked, though, so they could wonder if he was eventually going to leave, based on what decision he came to. But his decision, at least about staying at Judd’s, was already made.

  It made Ryan feel a little better to know that the others seemed to want him to stay regardless. He knew they wanted him to become a Christian, but that didn’t seem to have anything to do with whether he stayed around. Was it because they really cared for him? Were they actually worried about him and looking out for him? He couldn’t figure that one out. He had never cared about anybody else that much, except maybe Raymie.

  Ryan wanted to work on his courage. Could he ride into his own neighborhood and past his own house? And if he could, could he also see what was happening at the Steeles’? He sure didn’t want to ask them about Mrs. Steele or Raymie, because he knew both Mr. Steele and Raymie’s big sister Chloe had to feel terrible about their vanishing. Maybe they’d be like his aunt was a few years ago, who seemed to want to do nothing more than talk about Ryan’s uncle at his uncle’s funeral. That seemed so strange. You’d think she would have been so upset she wouldn’t want his name even mentioned. But she had talked about him nonstop. She even asked people to tell her their favorite stories about him.

  “Sit here with me for a minute,” she had said, taking Ryan’s hand. “Tell me about that time your uncle Walter was trying to teach you to fish and he fell into the lake.”

  “Oh, Aunt Evelyn,” Ryan had said, feeling sheepish and awkward. “You know Uncle Wally did that on purpose. I mean, I was only eight, but I knew that even then.”

  Aunt Evelyn had leaned back in her chair and laughed her hearty laugh, right there in the funeral home with people filing past the body of her husband. Many turned to stare at the insensitive person who would be guffawing at a time like that and were at first shocked, then pleased to find it was Aunt Evelyn herself.

  “I saw the whole thing from the porch of the cottage,” she had said, wiping away her tears of laughter. Ryan thought it funny that she usually cried when she laughed, but of course maybe this time she was covering her real tears of sadness. “I just knew what he was going to do because he had done it to me when we were first dating. He stepped on one side of the boat and then the other, and he kept saying, ‘No problem. No problem. Shouldn’t stand up in the boat, but don’t you worry, I’ve got it all under control.’ Right? Right? Didn’t he say that in that big phony deep voice of his?”

  “Yes, he did,” Ryan had admitted.

  “And then, pretending to adjust the fishing line or something, he just stepped back and flipped over the side in his shirt and pants and hat and everything. Didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but he had put his glasses in the picnic basket first, and he even took out his hearing aid.”

  That just made Aunt Evelyn laugh all the more, and soon everyone in the room was waiting his turn to tell a favorite Uncle Walter story. Just thinking about that crazy funeral made Ryan pedal harder as he sped toward his own block. Aunt Evelyn herself had died not two years later. How he missed them both!

  Why, he wondered, was he thinking about them now? Maybe because it reminded him that Raymie Steele had not been the first person to ever tell him about God. Ryan had been to Vacation Bible School a couple of times, but it was at Uncle Walter’s funeral, when Ryan had worked up the courage to ask Aunt Evelyn why she wasn’t more sad, that she had said that confusing thing to him.

  “That’s an excellent question, Ryan honey,” she had said. She almost always would call him that, even in front of other people. “I’m sad and I’ll have my bad days and nights, and I’ll cry enough tears for the whole family. But you see, I know where Uncle Walter is, and it’s where I’m going to be someday. He’s in heaven.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “The Bible says you can know,” she had said.

  But that was as far as the conversation had gone. Ryan had thought about that a long time and even asked his mom and dad about it. Uncle Walter was Mr. Daley’s much older brother, and Aunt Evelyn was his second wife. “Your dad says your uncle Walter’s wife has always been some kind of a religious nut, Ryan,” his mother had said. “But she means well. She’s been good for Walter.”

  “Good for him?” Mr. Daley had chimed in. “Took all the fun out of him, if you ask me. Got him the old-time religion, and he became a Holy Joe.”

  “He was still fun, Dad,” Ryan had said. “He was always being funny.”

  “He kept telling us we need Jesus,” Mr. Daley said. “But frankly, I don’t feel the need for anything.”

  Ryan skidded to a stop in front of Raymie Steele’s house. He couldn’t tell whether Mr. Steele and Chloe were home. So that was it, he realized about his thoughts turning to his uncle Walter and aunt Evelyn. They had been Christians. They were in heaven. And they had tried to tell him and his parents about Christ. He wondered how many other chances his parents had had. His dad always had some comment when he saw a preacher on television. He thought they were all crooks, but he never kept the TV channel on any church program long enough to hear what they had to say.

  Ryan sat straddling his bike, pawing the ground with his foot. What he wouldn’t give to have it be just a week or so ago and to know that Raymie would come bounding out of this house for some fun. Man, they had good times. They squabbled and argued and had often been jealous of each other, but not a day went by when they didn’t have more fun than any two kids deserved. They were best friends, blood brothers, and had pledged to always keep in touch—no matter where college or life took them. How Ryan wanted to see Raymie again!

  He pedaled slowly to the end of the block, where his house came into view. There was a pile of newspapers on the stoop, and he knew he should get rid of them and call to cancel the paper. Making it obvious no one was home was an invitation to more burglaries. The drapes were all shut, too. And though there were lights on an automatic timer, all the power outages lately put them on a crazy schedule. The lights were on now and would go off early in the evening. Ryan thought about going in and resetting the timer and opening the drapes so it looked like the house was lived in. But as usual, he couldn’t force himself to even move up the driveway by himself, let alone approach the front door. What in the world was he going to do when the lawn needed mowing?

  Ryan headed off to the other side of town, where Lionel had lived. He would be scared to death to approach that house with all of André Dupree’s so-called friends living there. But still, he wanted to see it, to spy on it. He couldn’t figure out what was happening with Lionel’s uncle André.

  Ryan had been there when Lionel had played the answering machine message from André. He had to agree, the guy sounded ready to kill himself. Lionel was only kidding himself, Ryan thought, to think that someone André owed money to had killed him and made it look like suicide. The two guys Lionel said had threatened André once were the leaders of the bunch that had moved into Lionel’s house, supposedly with André’s permission. And they talked about how great it would be when André joined them. How did that make sense, especially now that Lionel had discovered that whoever had been killed in André’s apartment, in André’s clothes, wearing André’s jewelry, and carrying André’s wallet, was not André at all?

  Ryan was as curious as he could be, but on the other hand, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. What would he do with that information?

  He looked at his watch. He knew Judd Thompson had been serious, and that if Ryan was not back at Judd’s house and ready to go to the meeting with Bruce that night, he would no longer be welcome. He still had an hour. Ryan rode idly up and down the sidewalk on the other side of the street from Lionel’s. There was little going on at the house across the street, but the van was there and lights were on in the house.

  At one side of the house was a wide dr
iveway that served the home next door. No one seemed to be home there. Ryan wondered if he would be noticed if he parked his bike out of sight and just moseyed over there, appearing to just be hanging around, playing. That would be a test of his courage, wouldn’t it? He didn’t think anyone in Lionel’s house would recognize him as the one who had sped away from there on bikes with Lionel. And if anyone didn’t want him playing in that area next to the house, he’d just move along.

  The plan sounded reasonable to Ryan, but he found himself petrified when he actually began walking across the street. He wasn’t sure why he was doing this, except that he was hoping to take some bit of information back to Lionel. Maybe Lionel would respect him if he actually did something grown-up, something brave. Plus he really wanted to be helpful. He figured Lionel would rather live with the others at Judd’s anyway, but it wasn’t right to be driven out of your own home for no reason.

  The police were too busy with all the other emergencies to be worried about something like this, but what if he and Lionel took them solid evidence on the fake suicide? It had obviously been a murder. If the police could be convinced of that, maybe Lionel’s invaded house would wind up higher on their list of what needed to be investigated.

  But what if it had been André who had committed the murder? Who else could have gotten into his place and put all his stuff on another person before killing him? Ryan was beginning to think he was in over his head.

  Worse, he felt conspicuous walking across the street. He knew no one noticed or cared, but he felt as if every eye on the street was on him. Just putting one foot in front of the other took all the concentration he could muster. He tried to look casual, as if he were just strolling nowhere.

  When he finally reached the driveway between the houses, he moved toward the back so he would be out of sight. He settled on the grass at the far back corner of Lionel’s house, close to the neighbor’s house and as far away from Lionel’s garage as he could be and still be on Lionel’s property. He was afraid someone might see him from the window, so he crept up to the wall and sat with his back to the foundation. The cold cement made him shiver, but he knew he was close enough now that if someone looked out a window, he wouldn’t be seen.

  What was he doing, he wondered? Putting himself in danger just to prove that he could? What good would he be to anyone if he was discovered? And what might these characters do to him? Would they hurt him? Kidnap him? Kill him? And if they did, where would he be then?

  That was something he had to think about as he sat there in the grass, a couple of blades of it in his hands. He pulled the thin green strips apart and smelled the richness of the ground beneath him. It was one thing to hold out on his own decision about God because he didn’t like what had happened to his parents. But what would they want for him if this was the truth?

  How would he ever see Raymie again, or Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Walter? He knew he was still here because he had heard the truth and not acted on it. How long was he going to be stubborn, hoping everyone else was wrong when he knew full well they were right?

  Maybe tonight, maybe at the meeting, he would ask to stay after and talk to Bruce. He didn’t want to do something just because everybody wanted him to. He wouldn’t be pressured into this. But he still had a lot of questions, and if anyone knew the answers, it would be Bruce.

  Ryan froze when he heard footsteps above him in the house. He wasn’t about to stand and peer into a window. He held his breath.

  There was the squeak of a bedspring, as if someone had sat on the bed. He heard a mechanical sound he didn’t recognize, but it came to him when he heard one end of a conversation. Someone had placed a phone call. It was a woman, sitting on the bed in the room just above him. He was able to hear her clearly if he kept his breathing shallow.

  “André,” she was saying, “you ought not to be drinkin’ now. You got to keep yourself healthy, and you can surface sometime soon.”

  Surface? Ryan wondered. What does that mean? He’s hiding out somewhere but he can come out soon? Will he have a disguise? He’d have to have a new name. Did the police even suspect that he was still alive, that they had assumed the wrong dead man was André?

  “Now don’t you go gettin’ religious on me now, hon. You’re just lonely. . . . Your cousin was over here the other day, and the guys offered to let him stay. But he wasn’t too happy about us being here and he took off. . . . Yes, someone will try to find out where he is and check up on him. Or you can do that yourself in a few days. But you’ve got to be careful now, you hear? . . . No! Now don’t be worrying about him. It wasn’t your fault. He seems like a smart kid who can take care of himself. . . . Thirteen?! Are you sure? That big gangly boy? He looked sixteen if he was a minute. Well, he spoke well for himself—even stood up to the guys here. Don’t worry about him. . . . Quit your crying now. This will all be over soon. . . . I love you, so shut up.”

  Ryan jumped to his feet and ran down the driveway and across the street to his bike. He had done his job. He had accomplished something. He had something to tell the others. André was alive. André was in hiding. André would be coming out into the open soon and might even come to Lionel’s house.

  But what was all that stuff about André getting religious and worrying about Lionel? His phone message that night must have been real. He must have really been worried about what his influence had meant to Lionel. That had to be good news, right?

  Ryan began pedaling back toward Judd’s when the door of Lionel’s house burst open and a thin, young black woman raced at him across the lawn. Had she been the one on the phone? Had she seen him? What did she want?

  Ryan tried to accelerate, but he couldn’t do it fast enough. The woman overtook him and grabbed him by the shoulders. For as thin as she looked, she was wiry and muscular, much stronger than Ryan. The bike stopped beneath him, and it was all he could do to stay upright.

  “What were you doing in our yard?” she demanded.

  “Your yard?” Ryan said, barely able to catch his breath. His heart banged so hard in his chest that he worried his ribs would crack. “I thought it was my friend’s yard.”

  “And who is your friend?”

  Ryan knew better than to say. He kept his mouth shut.

  “Maybe you’d like to tell one of the men in my house.”

  Ryan was petrified. “I’m not going to tell anybody anything,” he said, amazed that had come out of his mouth. What he wanted to do, what he was afraid he would do, was break down and cry and tell everything. He was a friend of Lionel’s, and Lionel wanted his house back, but that news would bring all kinds of trouble down on Ryan and his friends.

  “We’ll just see about that,” the woman said. She strengthened her grip on Ryan’s shoulders and began to yank him off his bike.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Ryan lied. “I’ll come with you. I’m not afraid of you or anyone in my friend’s house.”

  “Then get off that bike and come in here.”

  She kept one hand on his arm as Ryan dismounted, and he noticed one of the men of the house coming out onto the front porch. If that guy joined her, he was in trouble.

  As he climbed off his bike, she let go of his arm and the man on the porch hollered out, “You need help, Talia?”

  “No! He’s comin’, and you’re gonna talk to him!”

  But with that, Ryan pulled away and began running with all his might, pushing his bike along. The woman yelled at him and took out after him, but Ryan was fast. He didn’t want to jump on his bike until he knew he had enough speed to get away from her. She was yelling for the man on the porch. “LeRoy! Get him!”

  “Get him?” LeRoy shouted back with a laugh. “I’ll run him down!”

  Ryan was sprinting as fast as he could and sensed he was pulling away from Talia when he heard the old rattletrap van start up. He leapt onto his bike and pedaled with all his might. His only hope, he knew, was that his bike could go places that van couldn’t. And Ryan knew this suburb.

  It w
asn’t long before Talia had quit running because she fell too far behind. But Ryan could hear that old van engine growling, and he was scared to death.

  He cut through yards, went down alleys, turned every which way as fast as he could. He thought he had gotten away from LeRoy a couple of times, and then he showed up, somehow guessing where Ryan would come out. LeRoy never got closer than a block or so, though, until Ryan got into his own neighborhood. LeRoy was about a block behind and closing fast when Ryan got near Raymie Steele’s house. Raymie and Ryan had a route they always used when going between their houses, especially when they were trying to sneak somewhere or were trying to keep from being seen. It went through the side of Raymie’s yard to the back and through the hedges in his yard to the hedges of the next one. That led into an alley that emptied out right near Ryan’s house.

  It put him right in plain sight unless he got there fast enough that no one was right behind him. If someone came out of that alley late enough and couldn’t see him, he wouldn’t know which way Ryan had turned. Actually, he didn’t turn at all. Ryan just made a jog around the side of his own house and slipped through a small cutout in the fence. He usually ran through the shortcut, but on his bike he was really flying.

  When he got to Raymie’s side yard, his bike fishtailed in the grass, but he couldn’t slow down. He just tried to stay up while still pedaling fast. He straightened out just in time to squeeze through those two hedges, but he could see LeRoy and his van heading for the alley. LeRoy had to slow down to make the turn, and by that time Ryan was through the hedges and clear. He could hear LeRoy but he couldn’t see him, so he knew LeRoy couldn’t see him either.

  Ryan shot through the lawn at the side of his house, riding as fast as he ever had. His legs were burning, and he was gasping. He saw the headlights of the van just as he got to the fence and knew if he got off his bike and tried to slither through the fence on foot, LeRoy would see his bike and know where he was.