Chapter Nineteen
THE LADDER!
Sure. That was as brilliant as most of my ideas. The first part of the house that had started to burn was the part the ladder leaned against She was between me and its ashes, anyway. And from here it was a long jump to the ground.
Now, finally, I heard the sad and lonesome wailing of sirens Only this time it was a sweet, pleasant sound, and it was about time. I backed into the room and locked the door. I was damned if I was going to have Mrs. Sader sneaking up behind me. Then I turned to the front of the room so I could throw up the window.
But there wasn't any window. There had been, but the heat had cracked it and flames licked through it now. The curtains caught and flared as I started forward, and I almost singed my white eyebrows black. The front of the house was cooking, too, and I got a twitch of panic in my stomach. This whole blasted place was going to go before much longer. I was coughing frequently now, and my eyes were streaming.
Sirens screamed to a stop in front of the house, more wailing behind them. I imagined men scurrying over the lawn, but I couldn't see them. Those big trucks would have a tough time stopping anywhere but in front and in back of the house because of the sloping sides of the hill the house sat on. And here I was. How the hell—The roof! From the roof I could see them and they could see me. I remembered when I'd first searched the house for Iris I'd found the steps to the roof. Here we go, Scott. Over the top again.
The steps to the roof were down here, right at the end of the hall. I was going through that door, Mrs. Sader or no Mrs. Sader. I unlocked the door of the room and looked out. She wasn't in sight, but the hall was so filled with smoke I could hardly see to the end of it. The fumes itched at my eyes and choked in my throat. I yanked off my coat and held it in front of my mouth, breathing air through it almost hot enough to sear my lungs. I ran down the hall, through the door at the end, and up the steps there as I had once before.
At the top of the short flight of steps I pushed open the little door in the roof and climbed out, the roar getting louder in my ears. I ran to the edge of the roof at a spot where flames weren't licking continually over the edge. Over at the left, beyond the front of the house, I could glimpse the big red trucks with men around them. And down below me on the slanting hillside were two uniformed firemen wearing khaki coats and pants, knee-length rubber boots, and dark helmets.
I threw my coat out over the edge of the roof and down toward them. One of them grabbed the other and pointed up. Hell, they probably thought that was me. Then they spotted me and I yelled and waved. They ran away.
The bastards! What the devil? But then in a minute they were back. About a dozen men lugged a circular thing—a net. A net I was supposed to jump into.
Me? Jump? That was a laugh.
Yeah, it was a laugh, all right. The roof quivered a little. Maybe I imagined it, but it was either the roof quivering or me. I didn't have to make up my mind; I had to jump.
The men were waving and shouting things I couldn't hear and suddenly I realized those guys down there were sticking their necks out for me. If this place should go, if a wall should topple, those guys down there might get it right in the neck.
They might even get hit by me.
I took a big hot breath, held it, gauged the distance, and let my breath out. It wasn't too far, maybe, not more than a mile down, but that little white thing looked like a piece of lint. Scott, you devil, you. How the hell did you get up here?
I took another breath and my legs shook a little as I bent them.
I jumped.
I did like I'd seen them do in movies, and jumped so my feet flew out in front of me, and I guess they were pointing at the horizon. I wondered if I'd land on my head in some gravel, and then I was looking up into the air at a lot of spinning stars and screaming my fool head off.
There was a mixed-up flash of flames and flying sparks and white streaks across the sky, and then my back slammed into the net.
I'd actually made it. I hit and bounced and I came down again, and my chest hurt and my arm hurt and my head exploded, but it wasn't gravel I didn't want to move. I just wanted to lie there on that sweet old net.
Hands grabbed me and pulled me up to my feet.
"You all right, guy?"
"Sure," I started to say, only nothing came out. I nodded my head.
"Anybody else in there?"
"Yeah." I got a word out.
"Sweet Christ—"
"A woman," I said. "She's up there somewhere. Running around singing."
"What?"
"At the top of her voice."
"What?"
"Singing hymns or something. She's—"
"Hey!"
"She's got a gun."
"Hey, mister. Relax. Everything's O. K. It's all under control."
"Damn it!" I yelled. "I mean it. She's up there—"
"That's fine, fellow. That's sure swell" He jerked his head at a man who came running up carrying a little metal case with a white cross on it.
I gritted my teeth and looked up at the roof just as one of the men said, "We better get the hell out. She's gonna go right soon."
And as I looked up I saw Mrs. Sader. She was standing almost where I'd been, only now the flames were shooting higher and they'd hide her for seconds at a time.
'There she is!" I shouted.
I pointed up and heads followed the direction I indicated with my finger. One of the men cursed and they spread the net again, some of them holding it up high under their chins, some holding it lower because of the slant of the ground.
I said, "I dunno, you guys. She's got—"
And then it happened. It wasn't as loud as it would ordinarily have been because of the noise of the fire itself, but a round hole appeared near the center of the net.
I yelled, "Damn it, it's a gun! She's got a gun!"
They dropped the net and scattered. I scattered right with them. After about a minute of scurrying, most of us got together at a spot near the front of the house, out away from it far enough to spoil Mrs. Sader's aim.
The guy I'd been talking to before looked at me as if possibly I wasn't crazy after all. He said, "What the hell is happening?"
I said, "The gal up there has flipped. She's cuckoo. And she's got a gun."
"A gun? A cannon she's got."
"I tried to tell you before."
He shook his head. "You couldn't have really expected me to believe you. Hey, why didn't you people clear outta there? Fire couldn't have started that fast."
I couldn't tell him. He wouldn't believe me. I couldn't tell anybody. It was my little secret. I said weakly, "One of those things."
There was activity all around us. Uniformed firemen in their khaki-colored clothes ran across the lawn or busied themselves near the equipment out front. There must have been a dozen pieces of equipment: truck companies, engine companies, the battalion chiefs red sedan near the hedge on my right. One of the big red engines, its motor roaring, pumped water from its water tank through hoses men wrestled with on the lawn. Streams of water poured onto the house, but the men were only going through the motions. They weren't going to save this one. It suddenly seemed like a fine time for me to blow my brains out.
The fireman next to me said, "Couldn't get the ladder over at the side where you were." He nodded at one of the big trucks with metal ladders on its back. A ladder was being extended up toward the front of the house, but nobody was going through the fire up there to get to it. The fireman shook his head. "Why they build houses like this. . .Jump hurt you? You all right?"
"Yeah. Thanks. Scared hell out of me, though."
"How'd it start?"
I couldn't very well say, "I did it with my little Zippo," so I shrugged. "Don't ask me," I said. Then to make it a little more honest, I said, "Please don't ask me."
He squinted at me, then one of the other men shouted, "Back! She's gonna go!" and I turned and ran.
I heard it after he did, but I heard it. The ominous, h
orrible creaking of the weakened timbers starting to give.
I looked over my shoulders as I ran, then I stopped and turned around. As I watched I caught a last glimpse of Mrs. Sader, or thought I did, before the flames shot up high over the roof of the house. Then, with a final crack, the house shuddered and the roof toppled inward. She might have been dead before that, from breathing fire into her lungs, but I'll bet, as long as she could, she was singing.
The roof fell with a great roar of flame, and heat surged against my face and I felt the suck of air as it was drawn into the updraft of the fire. Then there was a sharp crackle of flames, like a dog gnawing bones, and a great shower of sparks shot up toward the sky, swirling higher and higher and higher like a huge spirit shooting up toward heaven.
Somehow, though, I didn't think that was Mrs. Sader.
Chapter Twenty
AND that was that.
I stood watching the house burn and the last of my strength seemed to run out of my body into the ground. Sparks kept flying and a wall collapsed, but I hardly noticed.
Mrs. Sader was dead and unrecognizable by now, somewhere in those leaping flames, but she wasn't the only one who had died in these last hours. Marty, too, and some assorted hoodlums. And Kitty. Somehow that seemed to me like the worst part of a lousy mess. I'd liked little Kitty.
One of the firemen was standing nearby looking at me. There was a funny look on his face. I looked down, remembering I was in shirt sleeves, and then I saw what he was looking at. There was a rip in my white shirt, and blood from the spot where Lonely had got me had stained the shirt a red brown. The wound was open and bleeding slowly again and the stain slowly widened. I saw, too, my empty shoulder holster; I'd forgotten about that.
I said casually, "That gal—one in the house. She had a gun, you know. Off her rocker. Pinked me a little."
He didn't answer. He glanced up at my face, then walked away toward the front of the lawn. I looked toward the street. Out there near one of the fire engines was a police radio car. I hadn't heard it come up or noticed it, but there'd been so many sirens one more hadn't made any difference.
I turned and walked toward the radio car. I had a story to tell, quite a story, and remembering the look in the eyes of the incredulous fireman, I slowed down a little. But I kept on going. I was so beat I didn't care whether they believed me or not.
The next four hours weren't happy ones, but we were lucky it wasn't longer. The "we" was Iris and me. I met her at Police Headquarters and we talked our throats dry. She'd been through it all—all of it she knew—and I stuck my part in and we went around and around. There were the innumerable questions, the growls, and the headshaking. Red faces and frowning brows and more questions and more talk and explanation. In the quiet of City Hall, away from the whining wind and separated by a little time from what had happened, it seemed even more unreal, fantastic, and horrible.
But finally we'd spun it together till it fitted satisfactorily. By the time everything was in on the fire—which hadn't spread beyond the house, but which completely destroyed the house itself—Breed's part in the mess, and the party at the Pit, it made sense of a sort. I managed to spill my story without telling what Ozzie York had given me, but he was tucked away, and would be for a long time. Breed was locked up, of course, and if nothing else he was stuck cold with the murder of Flick. Locked up, too, was Shenandoah. Harry and Joe-Joe were in the jail ward of the County Hospital, Harry with a concussion and Joe-Joe with a large hole in his chest. A .45 in a man's chest usually does a lot more than bore a hole; it breaks ribs and rips flesh and muscle and lung. Before much longer Joe-Joe would join Marty, Lonely, Flick, and Kitty in the morgue.
The Doc had fixed up my wound with medication and bandages, and it didn't give me too much trouble now. I was just weak and worn out. It wouldn't have bothered me much if I hadn't run around trying to be an iron man. Now I know: the only iron in me is between my ears.
The sun was high when they let us leave, and the wind was still kicking around, but more weakly. Captain Samson, having a big twenty-four hours, was around, and he went down in the elevator with Iris and me. He'd been a raging hunk of captain for a while, but he was calmer now. He walked to the Main Street entrance with us.
At the door he stopped and looked wearily at me from red-rimmed eyes. "Shell," he said, shaking his head, "so help me, you'll be a case yourself one of these days. You ought to have your license jerked just to save your neck."
I grinned at him. "License, hell. I haven't been working. Not really. This just happened to me, Sam; I got in the middle."
"A good place for you, Shell. You should confide in Pappy."
"Well, Pappy," I said, "believe it or not, I just didn't have the time."
He shook his head some more and growled, "Beat it. Get yourself killed. But get back here when you rest up."
"Yeah," I said. "That'll be about a year."
That had been two hours ago at eight o'clock of a Tuesday morning. And now it was a little hard to believe it had all really happened. I wouldn't forget any of it, but it was fainter in my mind; the sharp edges were getting blunted. And I wanted it that way.
Birds outside were swelling their throats, and there was a strong, cool breeze whispering outside. We were back in the little cabin; Iris and Mia, my babes in the woods, and me. Mia had explained that she'd come back loaded with garlic to find the cabin empty. She'd waited a while for us, then gone to bed. Cursing us, she added slyly. The three of us had talked about what happened, then tried to forget it.
We were all lethargic. Mia hadn't slept much, and both Iris and I had been up for a long twenty-four hours. We were tired and sleepy and lightheaded with weariness. And we were still pretty full of spaghetti.
Mia looked at me, unblinking, and asked in her rustling voice, "How'd you like it?"
"The spaghetti? Never tasted any better, Mia." She asked, "You still angry?" Her eyes rested on me and her full lips twisted slightly with the merest start of a smile.
I grinned. "Certainly. You know that was a damn fool thing—charging down to the store after. . .The heck with it. Maybe it worked out better."
Iris said to me, huskily, "You don't look very comfortable, Shell."
She and Mia were relaxed and lazy on the bed. Mia had on the dress she'd wriggled into when she beat it from the apartment, and she looked just the same as then, except she wasn't wet. Iris still hadn't got into that dress. Me? I was sitting on the damned floor, leaning up against the wall of the cabin.
I blinked at them from under heavy eyelids and said, "It's a little cramped."
Mia got up off the bed, moving slowly, smoothly. I was reminded again of the quality I'd first noticed about her: that look of the jungle, the strength and animal grace in all her movements.
We'd used the glasses in the cabin once already this morning, for a mixture of the Old Grand-Dad and water, and now Mia walked toward me and asked, "Ready for another drink, Shell?"
I nodded. "Fine. Want me to mix 'em?"
She shook her head and bent over in front of me to pick up the glass on the floor by my feet. Hot damn. She would mix all the drinks.
She fixed three drinks and passed them around. When she got to me I said, "Uh, just put it on the floor, Mia."
I got the biggest smile I'd seen so far, and for a couple of seconds we grinned cheerily at each other. Then she went back to the bed and relaxed on it, stretching like a tigress.
Iris sipped her drink and said, "I'm glad you brought us up here, now. We're out of a job temporarily, but it's time we had a vacation." She glanced at Mia. "Don't you think so, honey?"
Mia nodded slowly.
We all had another drink. The bottle was getting empty. We all smiled at each other. We had another drink. The bottle was empty. We smiled. I leered.
Iris said, "Shell, you look awfully uncomfortable. You can sit on the bed if you want. We won't bite you." She giggled.
Mia wiggled over a little farther toward the head of the bed. I close
d one eye. Looked like there was room.
Iris took a deep breath and yanked at my eyeballs. I couldn't help wondering if Flick had bruised that. . .
Iris said, "Mia—Mia, honey. Isn't one of us going to leave?"
Mia didn't say anything for a moment. Then, without taking her eyes off me, she said quietly, "Mmm-hmmm. By, Iris, honey."
Iris giggled. "Oh, Mia!"
Nobody moved.
Silence built up in the room. Hot, pregnant silence. I cleared my throat and said, "Look, lovelies. I gotta go. Time I left. Things to do. Clean my gun. Sleepy. Long trip. Things. . ."
They looked at me. Then, all of a sudden, they swung heir heads around and stared at each other. They smiled, as if they'd both had an idea at the same time. Then they turned, they both looked at me again, and they said almost in the same breath, "Shell. . ."
You know what? I was just too damn tired.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2000 Richard Prather
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Everybody Had A Gun Page 17