by Sue Miller
“Ah, fuck!” Bud said. And then turned quickly to Sylvia. “Sorry,” he said.
“Repeat, call for a fire,” the voice was saying. “Address, Carson Road, number nineteen.”
“Nineteen, on this road?” he said, looking up at them, his face questioning.
“Alfie!” Sylvia cried. She was already standing up. She saw him, sleeping, smoke around him, or waking to fire, confused and helpless as a child. She was in motion, picking up her keys, her sweater, stepping quickly to the door. He would have died while she sat there drinking wine, talking. She pushed under another thought, a momentary glimpse of release for herself in this, whatever was happening.
She ran across the dirt to her car and fumbled with its door. Frankie was running out of the house, getting in on the other side. At first, Sylvia couldn’t find the key on her ring in the dark, and then she finally had it, had it in the ignition, and the car started and she pulled forward. She was about to turn out into the road when she heard the siren approaching and stopped. After a few moments, the town fire truck went by, headed uphill, siren wailing. There were two cars following it, driving fast, and then Sylvia swung out and joined the caravan.
She followed them up the hill and into the long driveway. There were three or four cars already parked in the driveway and on the grass—and men running all over. But the flames, she saw with relief, were rising only from the barn, just the barn. She got out and had started toward the house when the door to the porch off the kitchen opened and Alfie came out between two men in fire gear. Each was holding one of his arms. He was in his pajamas, looking around, amazed and frightened at the chaos, the yelling.
Then she was there, she had him. She put her hands on his face and turned it to her own, she spoke to him, and he seemed to see her. Later, she couldn’t remember what she said. The meaningless words you say to a child: It’s all right, it will be all right, shh, shh, come with me.
Frankie was beside her, she saw. One of the firemen asked if anyone else was home, and she heard Frankie tell him no.
Together she and Frankie led Alfie back to the car. She noticed a faint but pungent smell centered on him, and she wondered how long it had been since he’d bathed, feeling a pang of guilt, of shallow embarrassment, for that, for Frankie’s surely noticing it, or the firemen, one or the other of them perhaps thinking that she hadn’t been taking good care of him in this way, either. And somewhere under all of that—she was only momentarily aware of it—a pulse of rage: this, too, she’d have to be in charge of, apparently.
By the time they got him settled in the backseat, Sylvia next to him, Frankie in front, Sylvia looked up and saw that the flames were already quieting under the arc of water rising over the barn.
Alfie asked, “But what is this … event?” in a perplexed, irritated tone.
Frankie laughed in relief, and Sylvia started to try to explain it, feeling a complicated relaxation engulfing her as she did. A fire, she said, set by someone. The barn saved—you see? “And you, you were in the house, and they rescued you.”
“But who were they?”
“Yes, Mother,” Frankie said. “Who were those masked men?” and it was Sylvia’s turn to laugh, as much in relief as anything else.
——
After Alfie had gone back to bed, she and Frankie sat together for a while. Bud had stayed, too, but not long, just long enough to be sure Alfie was safely settled and to tell them what he’d learned about the fire from Davey Swann.
Tink Snell had called it in.
Loren had dropped him off here a little while ago to pick up the truck after their day in Black Mountain—Adrian had called Loren on his car phone to tell him he wanted Tink to get it moved tonight.
Tink had told Davey that as he was turning the truck around, he had seen something—a flickering—moving inside the barn, at the back. He’d gotten out, gone around behind the barn, and discovered the corner farthest from the house engulfed in flame. He’d tried the door on the house and found it unlocked, found the telephone in the kitchen, and called the fire station. Then he’d gone outside again to find a hose. There was one, attached to a spigot coming off the porch. It didn’t stretch far enough to reach the fire, but he began at least to wet down the side of the house connected to the barn. He was still doing this when the first firemen and then the fire truck arrived.
“Well, thank God he was here,” Sylvia said. The three of them were in the kitchen, at the table.
“Yeah, quite the coincidence,” Bud said.
“I guess it would be, wouldn’t it?” Frankie said.
“Sure would,” Bud answered.
“Do you not believe him, then?” Sylvia asked. “But why would he lie?”
“He’d lie if he’d set it.”
“But why would he set it and then call it in?” Frankie asked.
“It makes him a hero, doesn’t it?” Bud said. “I mean, he’s under suspicion, clearly—he and Gavin—and this would make him a hero.” After a second or two, he shook his head. “Ahh! I don’t know. I don’t know enough about it. About the fire, or the timing of Loren’s dropping him off—all that stuff. To be discussed.”
“Well, I’m just grateful it wasn’t the house,” Sylvia said.
“Of course. I am, too,” he said, and then Frankie went out on the porch with him to say good night.
When she came back, she sat down, facing Sylvia. They didn’t say anything for a moment, and then Frankie said, “You’re okay? You want me to spend the night?”
“No, no, you don’t have to do that. No one’s going to come and set another fire here tonight, of that I’m certain.”
“That’s not why I’m asking.”
“I know.”
After a moment, Frankie said, “Are you? All right?”
Sylvia laughed quickly. “Of course not, darling. I’m a mess.”
“I know I would be, in your shoes.”
“Oh, it’s not because of the fire. The fire.” She lifted her shoulders. “Well. That’s easy.”
“ ‘Easy’?”
“It’s just … I’m not sure I can do this.” She heard the wobble in her own voice and took a deep breath.
“Mother.”
“I will. I will do it. But it seems like … too much.”
Frankie leaned forward in her chair, her face earnest, concerned. “What can I do? How could I help?”
“Ah, Frankie. I don’t want you to do any of this. This is, really, the least I can do for Alfie now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean. I suppose. That I don’t love him.”
“Mother. He’s not … himself. So naturally …” She trailed off, looking steadily, sadly, at Sylvia.
“No, that’s not it. It doesn’t have to do with his illness. I haven’t loved Alfie for a long time. And I should love him.”
Frankie sat back, her mouth opened slightly.
“I should have loved him,” Sylvia corrected herself. “If I’d loved him, imagine! I could do this gladly now for the sake of that. I would take care of him now for the sake of having loved him before. So I … I will take care of him. And hope that no one thinks I’m brave or noble or anything like that. I’m doing it, I will do it, so I can feel … decent, at least. Just barely decent.”
“I’m sorry,” Frankie said.
“I know,” Sylvia answered.
Frankie’s voice changed. “Surely there are programs. Visiting nurses, or some kind of day care …”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything beyond what I’ve talked about so far with the doctor.”
“Well, maybe I can find out. I could research this for you. Find out what’s out there.”
“This isn’t the city, you know.”
“I know. But there must be programs for people, somewhere. It will make me feel better to do this. To check it out. And maybe there really will be something.”
“All right, Frankie. I don’t mean to be difficult. Yes. Thank you. Maybe there’s something.
I’d be grateful.”
The old house made a noise. Sylvia looked over at Frankie. Her face was open in a kind of yearning compassion. In an impulse responding to that answering warmth, Sylvia said, “You know, for half a second, when I heard it was our house, when Bud said nineteen, I thought Alfie would be dead. I thought I’d be free.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “I thought it was done, I’d be free.”
“Mom.” Don’t, Frankie’s face said.
“And then. And then I wanted to get him, to find him, to rescue him, or whatever I could do.”
“Of course. That’s what you wanted.”
“Mmmh,” Sylvia said.
Frankie looked away. Then her hand rose quickly to her own face, as though she’d just thought of something. After a moment, she seemed to sigh. She’d pulled back somehow, Sylvia could tell.
She shouldn’t have told her any of this. She had no right to tell her.
She looked over at Frankie. “I’m sorry, dear,” she said.
Her daughter’s pale eyes met her own again. “I know,” Frankie answered.
14
AN AUGUST HEAT WAVE. Even at night it didn’t cool down, though that might have been partly because the sloped roof above Bud’s bedroom wasn’t insulated. He’d been awake several times, once because he heard something and thought immediately of the arsonist, though he realized, after he’d gone outside and walked around the house, that it was just a raccoon trying to get into the garbage can—it was tipped over, the bungee cords that held the lid on still attached.
He woke the other times because that had made him nervous.
But mostly, he woke because it was hot.
He got up just before five, after lying there for almost an hour in the heat, listening to the birds asserting their ownership of the day. The sky was light, though the sun hadn’t risen yet. He didn’t stop for coffee. He just went outside, got in the car, and drove through the quiet town. There was one other sleepless soul out, a woman, walking with her dog by the green. He drove out of town and turned onto Silsby Pond Road.
It was a short hike in from where he pulled the car off the road to the massive rocks that constituted the streambed, and to the series of potholes cut into them by the same glacier that had heaped them up here. Only one of these, the largest pothole, had a flat lip that you could rest on—this one was technically Silsby Pond. But there were other, smaller bowls above it—a series of descending holes with slick, mossy slides between them. The teenagers in town climbed up barefoot and probably sometimes naked to the top of this series and slid down the sloping rock face from one to another.
Bud left his clothes on the open rock by the large hole and dove in. The water, even now in August, was bitingly, painfully cold, and he swam fast across the surface, turned, and swam back. He did this perhaps twenty times, and then he climbed out and lay down on the rock in the noise of the rushing water.
The sun was up now, and the rock underneath him was warm. His penis had shrunk almost shockingly in the cold water. He rested his hand on it as he lay in the sun. Come back, my friend. And then he was thinking, predictably, of Frankie Rowley.
A womanizer, she had called him.
He supposed he’d earned the title in those early days in Pomeroy. He’d met probably every eligible female in town by the end of the first month after his arrival—there had been a series of parties in his honor then, to welcome him, to introduce him to the community, to thank him for taking over the paper: clearly people had worried it might fold.
By the end of the second month, he’d begun and finished a quickly tempestuous and almost as quickly contentious relationship with a woman, Patty Babcock, who ran a small pottery in North Pomeroy. The last episode between them had involved her coming to his house in the middle of the night. He had told her a week or so earlier that he needed to cool things down a bit, that he didn’t want to—that he couldn’t—spend as much time with her as he had been. He was feeling guilty at that point about not taking over fast enough from Pete, who clearly wanted to be relieved of as much responsibility as possible as soon as Bud could manage that. “There are some interesting fish I hear calling to me in the distance,” Pete had said. But more than that, Bud felt he hadn’t had time to settle into his rented home, to explore the town. To get to know people on his own, without Patty.
“There’s someone else,” she said. Her face, whose charm was dependent on animation, had fallen, and looked flat, dull.
There wasn’t, he assured her. How could there have been time enough, let alone the energy, for anyone else? It had to do with his need for more work time, and for time alone.
Evidently she didn’t believe this explanation. And perhaps she was in some ways right not to—Bud was certainly aware of the ebbing of the infatuation that had driven him for a few weeks. At any rate, she had begun to call him, to call him at odd hours of the evening or the night, to hold him on the phone as long as she could, clearly suspicious that he had someone else in his house or in his bed. Finally he stopped answering the phone after ten, even though there was always the possibility that someone was calling about some event that he might want to know about—a fire, an accident, or a birth or death.
Finally one night at about eleven, she’d come over, uninvited. And in the middle of the argument that ensued, he had agreed—yes, no—he didn’t want to see her anymore.
“I knew it.” She shook her head, her mouth tight and mean. “Because there’s someone else.”
“No, because of this, because of this, because of this,” he said, smacking the kitchen counter over and over. They were standing by the back door. Bud was trying not to let her any farther in. “This behavior, this jealousy.” He tried to pull himself in, to speak calmly. “This behavior.”
“How dare you use that word, behavior? You’re not my parent.”
He looked at her, feeling an enormous distance. “You know, the problem is I don’t even like you anymore, Patty. You made me not like you.” And then this struck him as funny, the whole crazy argument struck him as funny, and he started to sing, “ ‘You made me not like you, I didn’t wanna do it, I didn’t wanna do it …’ ”
This didn’t go over well. Things got noisier, and Bud asked her to leave. She wouldn’t. So he did. He went to the office and slept on the couch there. When Pete came in and woke him up, he said nothing to Bud about this unprecedented event, and Bud told him nothing. He told him nothing, either, of the state he found his house in when he went home that evening, which had shocked him: books and papers strewn about, the bed ripped up, clothes lifted from the bureau and thrown onto the floor. And he told him nothing of the threats that ensued, the broken window one night.
But by the middle of the third month, when Bud had taken a different woman out to dinner in Winslow, Pete said casually to him at work one day, “You can’t be doing what you’re doing, Bud, my friend.” They were standing at the big work table, figuring out the layout for that week’s front page.
“Which is what?”
“You know what.” Pete moved a few things around and stepped back to look again. After a few moments he said, “You have to watch your … spacing, with women. These are all people you’re going to be seeing over and over again. Maybe you’re going to need to talk to them for a story. For information.” He moved to the coffee machine and poured himself another cup. He added sugar and tasted it. He said, “You can’t be embarrassing people. Hurting them. Even if they should know better than to be hurt.”
Bud didn’t say anything. They stood side by side, looking at their work.
“It’s not the city,” Pete said. “You’re not anonymous. Everyone knows your business, sooner or later. And it matters, what they think of your business.”
And then his tone changed. “It was easier for me, being married like I was. And having the wife I had—everyone liked her way better’n they liked me. People put up with me on account of her. You’re gonna have to be more … judicious, let’s say.”
Bud didn�
��t answer. He felt the weight of his decision to move here, the carelessness, as he suddenly thought of it, of the way he’d reached it.
“I speak as your friend,” Pete said, still without looking at him.
“I know you do, Pete,” he’d answered.
After that, he had been judicious. He let weeks pass between dates with the new woman, a teacher in the Pomeroy grammar school. And when things ended between them—ended with what he felt was agonizing slowness and elaborate, polite care on his part—he waited for months before turning to another woman, a summer resident, one he’d been attracted to the year before. Things were easier with her because she was going to leave, she expected things to end when the summer ended.
And after that, for the most part he kept his pecker in his pants, as his high school football coach used to say. Brandishing it only occasionally when he felt a sort of ease, a lack of intensity, in a woman’s reaction to him.
Frankie was different, he thought now, lying in the warming sun, hearing only the rush of the water. There was a focused responsiveness in her, a kind of susceptibility, he felt, which both drew him and made him cautious. He felt cautious, too, about her uncertainty. He had the sense that she could matter to him in some deep way, and he didn’t want to start something with her if she was about to leave. She was mobile, he was not. He had made that choice, and he was clear about it. Clearer about it now than he had been when he made it.
He slept then, for what he thought was ten minutes or so. When he woke, his flesh had dried. He stood up and pulled his clothes back on.
On the walk back to the car, he was thinking again about Frankie—just about the way she looked, the timbre of her voice. Then about the fire at her parents’ house.
His mind went to Tink Snell, and he was remembering—how did he know this?—that he lived on this road, somewhere up higher, it must be.
He’d look, he thought. Why not? He must be close.