Once Burned

by Gerry Boyle

  “Nice spot,” I said.

  “My ex bought it for me, as a surprise. Our summer retreat. Surprise number two was when he left.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What can you do?” she said, reaching for the six-pack on the floor by my feet, the cross dangling free. “Guys always want the newer model.”

  Lasha slid out. I followed her to the porch, my recorder and notebook in hand. She walked to the far chair and put the beer on the table. Taking two out, she twisted the top off of one bottle and held it out. I took it and she opened another, motioned with the bottle to the other chair and sat. I picked up the beer.

  “Often invite strangers in for a drink?” I said, smiling.

  “Not often,” Lasha said. “I go with my gut, and my gut says you’re good people.”

  She held up the bottle and I did, too. We clinked.

  “Sláinte,” I said.

  Lasha took a long swallow of ale. Then another. The beer was half gone and I could see a calm pass through her like she’d just shot up. It was 11:55. I wondered if that explained the rush to get home, even with a reporter in tow.

  I took a sip and I looked out at the ridgetop view: the tree-green valley, the storybook village, the river meandering through it.

  “Pretty,” I said.

  “Especially from a distance,” she said.

  5

  It was pretty, the pale green of the distant forest canopy, white clouds tacked to blue sky. We drank, the beer cool and sweet. The cat hopped up on my lap and purred.

  “So does it make me nervous?” Lasha said. “Sure. Up here all by myself. Kip took the dogs.”

  She’d kicked off her sandals and tucked her feet underneath her, like a little kid. She fiddled with the gold cross, fishing it from her shirt, poking it in her mouth.

  “You could get another one,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t know. The puppy thing, pooping all over the place, chewing stuff. I have a gun instead.”

  “What sort of gun?”

  “A shotgun. Kip bought it, actually. Was going to go up partridge hunting with the guys in town, be a real Mainer. Ha. Couldn’t shoot a pigeon in Central Park. Anyway, he was packing up the shotgun. I said, ‘You may be leaving me alone, you lying, cheating bastard, but you’re not leaving me defenseless.’ ”

  “You know how to use it?”

  “I do now. I’ve been practicing out back.”

  “Pump?”

  “No, you just pull the trigger.”

  “Semiautomatic,” I said.

  “Right. I’d have a machine gun if it was legal.”

  I opened the notebook on my lap, rested my pen on the page.

  “You’d use it?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  She raised the beer, drained it. I wrote the two words on the page. Hell and yes.

  “We starting the interview?”

  “If you want.”

  Lasha reached for another beer and opened it, put one on the armrest of my chair.

  “Shoot,” she said.

  “How have the fires affected your life here?”

  “Let’s see. Well, I don’t sleep much. I get up and grab the gun and take a walk around.”

  “Outside in the dark?”

  “Right. I have my spots. I just sit and listen. Me and the owls.”

  “Scary calls, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah. There’s one, sounds like somebody’s being murdered.”

  “Barn owl,” I said. “So what’s your biggest fear?”

  “The smoke. That I won’t wake up. And—”

  Lasha drank and got up.

  “And what?” I said.

  “I’ll show you,” she said.

  She slipped her sandals on and, carrying the beer, started down the drive, past the Jeep, toward the rear and the outbuildings. There were pieces of rusty farm equipment propped here and there, the smaller ones set on chunks of granite like cemetery monuments. Lasha led the way to a long shingled shed, big windows set into the south side, shades drawn.

  She unlocked a padlock, slid a wooden door aside. We stepped in and she reached to the wall and flipped a switch. Lights blazed on and giant wooden creatures stared.

  They were nearly life-size, like something from a crazed carousel. A dragon with bared teeth; a flying horse, eyes bulging, front hooves threatening; a snarling lion, his torso pierced with arrows. The figures seethed with an almost explosive energy, their eyes deep and expressive, muscles taut.

  “Wow,” I said. “You’re the real deal.”

  “A blurb for the next show,” Lasha said.

  “I can’t believe you can create this out of a block of wood.”

  “Actually, many blocks. Clamped and glued and then shaped. Rock maple, mostly.”

  “Amazing. You’ve got an amazing talent.”

  “Talent and three bucks will get you coffee at Starbucks,” Lasha said, looking over the collection. “This is ninety percent hard work.”

  I moved between the sculptures. They were cool to the touch, sanded and polished. One was in progress. A wild boar, cornered, back on its haunches, mouth fixed in a toothy snarl. The snout was rough with chisel cuts, the floor beneath it sprinkled with pale wood chips. On the far side of the studio was a workbench. On the bench and the wall were sanders, chisels, clamps.

  Lasha’s muscles. Her rough hands.

  “So you worry your work would go up in smoke.”

  She grinned. “Knew I shoulda sprung for the marble.”

  “You can’t move it all? To a safe place?”

  “Weighs tons. And then the next day they’d catch the guy.”

  I turned back, ran my fingers over the horse, his bulging eyes. I thought of Pokey, a very distant relative.

  “Who do you think it is?” I said.

  She hesitated. “The arsonist?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. I mean, we all have our theories.”

  “Like who?”

  “I can’t say. I’d get sued.”

  “Off the record, then.”

  Lasha hesitated, raised her beer and drank. Wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “You know a kid named Woodrow?” I said.

  “Woodrow Harvey?”

  “Another kid at the firehouse said it was Woodrow’s fault. Woodrow the Freak Show.”

  Lasha hesitated. Took a quick sip.

  “Well, you could say he’s the type.”

  “The arsonist type?”

  “Or something. I heard that he’s autistic or has Asperger’s or one of those things. Whatever it is, it’s made him kind of an outcast. The kind of kid who would do some weird thing in the middle of the night. Peek in windows or something. Black clothes, sort of Goth for around here. You see him walking around town in this long coat.”

  “Columbine.”

  “Right.”

  “Parents?”

  “Split up. He lives with his mom. Shirley. She works in the elementary school. In the kitchen. There’s a sister, too. Father’s a truck driver. What I heard is he met a woman online. Moved to Lewiston.”

  “And left the family behind?”

  “Guess so. Never see him around. Now my Kip, he met his new chickie the old-fashioned way. At an opening. She works for a gallery. Old enough to be his daughter. Almost.”

  She smiled.

  “He collects art?”

  “And women, it turns out.”

  “Huh.”

  I ran my hand down the horse’s neck. Looking down, I saw that it was a gelding.

  “Anybody else?”

  “Anybody else what?” Lasha said.

  “On the list of suspects.”

  “I don’t know. There’s this guy, Louis. He was in the army in Afghanistan or Iraq or someplace, and he came back all messed up. In the head, I mean. What do they call it?”

  “PTSD?”

  “Right. He lives in this cabin he built out in the woods. Grandfather left him land here or something. Some people t
hink it could be him, but I don’t want to spread rumors.”

  “It’s not rumors. It’s the speculation that’s going on in town. You’re just relating what’s actually happening.”

  “You are relentless.”

  “Aren’t you, when you’re working on one of these?”

  She looked at me as she put a finger to her mouth, let it open her lips and slip off. It trailed along the thin gold chain of her necklace, came to rest on the cross between her breasts.

  “Married?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Happily?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How happily?”

  “Blissfully so.”

  “Shit.”

  Then she smiled and I smiled back. With a little snorting chuckle, she lifted her beer and drank, drained it and swallowed.

  “Story of my life. The good ones are all taken.”

  “Kip wasn’t a good one?”

  “Only from a certain angle. In a certain light. Just like the two before him. Over time they reveal their inner asshole.”

  “Huh.”

  “Besides, for Kip I was a phase. Like the house in Maine.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, that’s life. It doesn’t always work out according to plan.”

  Her expression shifted from rueful to bitter. I looked over the wild and angry menagerie.

  “Must be hard to be alone here,” I said.

  “In the middle of the night? Yeah,” Lasha said.

  “With somebody out there burning stuff down.”

  “That, too,” she said.

  6

  Lasha drove me back to the store, her third beer in the cup holder of the Jeep. She was quiet, her alcohol mood shifting from chatty to flirty to morose. We drove down the hill, past Russell’s house, across a small bridge, and climbed to the town center. Lasha whipped the Jeep around the common, rolled up behind my truck.

  “Thanks for the beer and the conversation,” I said.

  “Anytime,” she said. “When’s this gonna be in the Times?”

  “Not sure. Maybe I’ll write it tomorrow. Depends on who else I can find.”

  “Fast worker.”

  “This isn’t The New Yorker, as one of my editors used to say.”

  She half-smiled, looked away. I got out and she hit the gas, spinning the wheels in the gravel. Lonely, I thought. Fairy-tale life up in smoke.

  But not literally. Not yet.

  The store was quiet so I went back inside, heard Harold talking in the back. I went to the line of hot drink canisters and picked a flavor of coffee. Breakfast Blend in the afternoon. I added milk, stirred. Lingered and waited. Harold came back to the front counter, saw me, and said, “You finding everything?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Coffee for the ride home.”

  I approached the counter, put the cup down.

  “Two dollars, sir,” Harold said. “Pay cash money and we’ll throw in a stale doughnut.”

  He grinned. A round face, bristly salt-and-pepper mustache, round glasses to match.

  I handed him two bucks. He took a piece of paper from a box, reached in another carton, and took out a plain doughnut.

  “Might want to dunk it first,” he said. “Save your dentures.”

  I took the doughnut, held out my other hand.

  “Jack McMorrow,” I said.

  “The newspaper reporter,” Harold said, shaking my hand.

  “Word travels fast.”

  “ ’Round here, doesn’t have far to go.”

  “You’re Harold.”

  “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.”

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “You can talk,” Harold said. “Don’t know what I can say gonna be of any interest to folks down in New York.”

  He sat down on a stool behind the counter and pushed back his cap. It said SANCTUARY GENERAL STORE, in case you were disoriented.

  “The fires.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have the town on edge?”

  “Well, I’d say they’ve got people talking.”

  “Ever had anything like this before? Somebody burning buildings?”

  “Oh, once or twice, kids drinking and smoking.”

  “This is more than that,” I said.

  “I suppose. But the places weren’t worth a whole lot. Sinking into the ground. This just speeded things up.”

  “But still,” I said. “It makes people nervous when someone’s out there torching buildings.”

  “When it isn’t the fire department,” Harold said.

  “So, Harold, you in the fire department?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, like in Sanctuary it was a given, if you were male and ambulatory.

  “Even if the sheds and barns aren’t worth anything, there’s a risk here, right? I mean, you guys are out there putting the fires out.”

  “Well, mister, you hit that nail right on the head. You fall off a ladder during a fire at an old barn, your leg’s just as broke as if you’d fallen off the roof of a mansion.”

  I scribbled in my notebook. It made Harold uneasy.

  A white-haired woman came in and he said, “Hello, Ada, honey,” and she said, “Hi, Harold,” and headed for the meat counter.

  “So are the firefighters concerned, then?”

  “Well, I can’t speak for the fire department. That’s up to the chief.”

  “Chief Frederick.”

  “Right.”

  “Spoke to him.”

  “That so?”

  “He didn’t think this was much of a story,” I said.

  “Well, it’s not like we’re calling in all the surrounding departments. Time we get there, these places are pretty much burned flat.”

  A young woman pushed through the door, a little boy in tow. Harold was off the stool, a lollipop produced from somewhere.

  “It’s all right, Samantha?” he said. She smiled, and the boy took the lollipop. The mom said, “What do you say?”

  The kid said nothing and Harold came back to the counter but didn’t sit. I said I had one more question, and he seemed relieved that it wasn’t two.

  “Any idea who it is? I mean, you must know everyone in town.”

  “Most everybody. Might be somebody new, hasn’t come in yet.”

  “So—”

  “Really can’t imagine why anybody would do something like this,” Harold said.

  “Do people in town have their suspicions?”

  “Oh, you know how people are.”

  “No,” I said. “How are they?”

  “Oh, it’s natural to wonder,” Harold said.

  “Are you worried? As a firefighter and a business owner?”

  “Ada, dear,” he said, looking past me. “Did you see the ground chuck? Real nice, and it’s on sale.”

  Ada had. She stepped up to the counter. The woman with the little boy was behind her. “How’s Ralph?” Harold said.

  I put my notebook away and stepped aside.

  The sun had slipped behind banks of clouds and the wind had picked up out of the southeast. It felt like rain again. I wondered if the arsonist checked the weather, staying home on nights when a downpour might spoil the fun.

  I was back in the truck, considering what I had. Chief Fred, telling me it was a nonstory. Lasha, sucking beers, lamenting her cheating ex, and toting a shotgun in the middle of the night. Not bad, but not enough to hang the story on; not for the Times. Harold saying little and probably wishing he hadn’t said anything at all.

  Ada came out and kept her eyes on the pavement as she walked past my truck. I looked out at the deserted town common, the road leading away. I had one trip invested, now might have to make two. The mom and kid came out of the store and I reached for the door handle but she hurried by, looking the other way. She hoisted the little boy into a car seat in a big pickup and then climbed in herself.

  I watched them, wondered if this little boy was Ratchet’s age. I pictured him lying de
ad on a kitchen floor, and all of Roxanne’s distress came flooding back. It was time to go home.

  On cue, my phone buzzed. I picked it up off the truck seat and read the text. It was Roxanne:

  YOU GONNA BE LONG? XOXO

  I replied: ON MY WAY OUT RIGHT NOW. YOU OKAY?

  Roxanne: YEAH, WOULD BE GOOD TO SEE YOU, THO.

  Me: 40 MINUTES.

  Roxanne: I’LL PUT IN A COUPLE BEERS.

  A couple of beers with my loving wife. Sure beats a lonely six-pack in an empty house. I pictured Lasha wandering from room to room, beer to beer. Ending up in the studio with the banshees.

  I shook off the image and started the truck.

  Out of the store lot, I took a right, north and east. The road passed some big colonial houses set up high, overlooking the road. One had a very big sailboat in the driveway on stands. Another had a motor home with little hoods on the tires.

  At that house a guy was mowing the lawn on a red tractor. A woman sat on the front porch with a couple of little kids, who looked like they were playing some sort of game.

  Maine: The Way Life Should Be.

  I passed them and continued on, past more big houses. The houses looked out toward the river, and a short commercial stretch that looked like it dated to the mid-nineteenth century. A café with chairs and tables outside. A hardware store with rakes and shovels standing in wooden barrels. An entrance that led to the Sanctuary Opera House, “Home of the Sanctuary Players.”

  I could see why people were drawn to this gentrified part of rural Maine. On the surface it all seemed so simple, so wholesome. Community theater. A café where you could buy a decent $10 lunch. A store owner who knew your name.

  And in the rearview mirror, a kid in a long black coat.

  I slowed the truck, watched him. He’d walked out from beyond the café and was headed down the road away from me. I pulled off the road and turned around, drove slowly back.

  He was walking slowly but deliberately, like he was in no hurry and had no particular place to go. With the black coat he looked like he was from a Western, the marshal on patrol. I drove past him and he glanced over. Shaggy hair pulled down over a pale, expressionless face. Black jeans, T-shirt and biker boots under the black coat. Johnny Depp meets Johnny Cash. In small-town Sanctuary it was no wonder he was a target.