She Stopped for Death

by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

  Dora called neighbors. After the third call she didn’t bother any more. She settled back and watched the growing dark out the window and reminded herself to breathe.

  At the turn from the highway, a roaring fire truck came up behind them, siren blaring, red lights strobing. Between the road and a ditch, there was little room to pull over. It took Jenny a minute too long to slow and pull off the road. The car bounced. The truck sped past.

  She was back up on the road.

  In town, she turned on Oak Street only to be forced over again as an Elk Rapids fire truck screamed past them. People from the shops along Oak were out on the sidewalk, talking in knots and pointing. Some ran to their cars and followed behind the fire truck, forcing Jenny to slow and join the line behind the others.

  “What’s that?” Dora pointed ahead.

  A faint glow lighted the horizon from time to time, as if from far off fireworks.

  The cars ahead pulled off the road, parking on the verge next to the swamp, as close as they could get to where the fire trucks were pulled in at all angles. People ran along beside the road.

  Jenny drove ahead toward the fire, slowly now so as not to hit one of the people cutting back and forth across the road. Ed Warner, directing traffic with a flashlight, waved Jenny back, then seeing who was in the car, pointed her to a place between the trucks.

  The scene was chaos. Red lights flashed all along Thimbleberry Street. Men and women ran with hoses. Everyone yelled at once, arms flailing as men directed trucks and hoses and personnel toward the old Sutton house.

  A fire chief yelled for help as Jenny and Dora got out of the car to stand beside it, taking in the wild scene. The fire chief was screaming out for men to hurry over to where he stood at the front gate. He pointed to the red car blocking the way in through the crooked gate. Men ran to push the car out of the way while other men took axes and hacked the picket fence to pieces.

  “Where the hell’s the tanker?” The chief, his eyes mirroring fire in the windows, yelled while waving to men with hoses over their shoulders to take up positions around the old stone house.

  Jenny and Dora stood off to the side, hands covering their mouths, eyes wide as they saw curtains at the front windows of the living room go up in flames.

  “There are women in there!” Jenny yelled to the fire chief, who nodded.

  “That’s what we figured.” He gestured toward the red car. “You know where? Front or back?”

  “I don’t know.” Jenny hollered at the man, whose face was red and perspiring.

  He nodded as he waved a tanker into place near the swamp side of the house. He ran around to warn the men as their hoses were hooked up. Water streamed at the house from all angles. Hoses were refilled. The tanker pumped water from the Pewee. Firemen made it through the front door and inside the house.

  Chapter 32

  “Do you smell the smoke?” the nervous voice came through the rat hole.

  Zoe was on her hands and knees. How could she not smell it? Her cubbyhole was beginning to fill with smoke.

  “She’s doing it again. She’s had her gas cans hidden for years. She didn’t know I knew.”

  “Knew what? Who started the fire?”

  “Lorna.”

  “Lorna’s back?”

  “She never left. Except for those seven years.”

  “It’s getting bad in here,” Zoe said, coughing. “Is there any way to get out?”

  There was a light laugh. “Of course. We aren’t victims, are we, Zoe?”

  “No, Emily. We aren’t victims. I’ll stand at the door. Please open it, now.”

  “I don’t have the key.”

  “Please, Emily. We’ll be burned alive.”

  Zoe moaned at what was going to happen. No way out. Poor Fida!

  A pounding started on the other side of the wall. Emily ordered her to stand back.

  Zoe heard the cracking of the drywall between the studs. Plaster showered her, so she had to cover her head with her arms and scurry away as chunks of the wall came down.

  “Pound on your side,” the order came through a widening hole in the wall. “I have a knife I’m cutting into the stud. I hope you’re not too big, Zoe.”

  “You know what size I am.” Zoe hit the wall angrily with her fists, then kicked near the bottom. The plaster cracked. But she wasn’t strong enough to pull bigger pieces away.

  Her throat burned. She inhaled the smoke edging into her prison from around the door.

  Her eyes burned, made worse by the sweat running into them.

  She pounded with both fists. She kicked with both feet.

  She heard the sound of sawing from the other side, a steady back and forth rasp.

  When the plasterboard broke into large pieces, she pushed them out until three studs were cleared. She could see the woman on the other side, squatting at her work; auburn hair swinging around her face as she sawed. She didn’t stop, not even as she glanced up at Zoe.

  It wasn’t Emily Sutton. No bright-red hair. No large, dark eyes.

  It wasn’t Emily Sutton.

  “My, you are a little one,” the woman said and took Zoe’s hand. “How lucky for you. We should have no trouble getting you out.”

  She pulled Zoe through the opening in the wall and across the room to the window, where the glass was broken out already. “I’ve signaled to the fire men. There’s a ladder against the wall.”

  A voice from near the door surprised both of them. When they turned, the woman Zoe had thought was Emily stood there, a gas can in her hands.

  “As if I’d let either one of you get away now.” This Emily stood outlined in the doorway, the scarves she wore etched in golden light from the fire along the stairway behind her. Her hair was wild. Her eyes wide open. She smiled as she set the gas can to the floor.

  “We’ll wait together. It shouldn’t be long.”

  She stepped daintily into the room, clasped her arms across her chest, challenging them.

  “Stop it, Lorna,” the woman beside Zoe ordered, then took a step toward her, only stopping when Lorna moved back and picked up the gas can.

  “Oh, no, dear Emily. I’m through with you and all your poetry—nonsense in your head. I’ve always been the smarter one. The most talented. But you, a witch, you turned people against me as you built yourself into a star. Then you locked me away so the world would never discover my talent.”

  “I write poetry, Lorna. I never tried to outshine you.”

  “Well, you did outshine me. But look at us now. Which one will burn the brighter, do you think? Which one of us is the brighter star?” Lorna took a few more steps into the room with her neck stuck out, head in front of her body. Her lips were tight, straining open. “You. You. You. All about you. She never gave a thought to me, who I was, how I was far more talented than you. The best day of my life was when they found her bones.”

  She looked from her sister to Zoe. “This will be the second best day of my life.”

  Zoe looked around for something to use as a weapon in case Lorna ran at them. She might as well die fighting rather than waiting to burn to death.

  “You’re dying, too,” Zoe yelled at Lorna.

  “Shut up!” Lorna screamed. “You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t found Walter in the swamp.”

  “Let her go, Lorna,” Emily pleaded. “She didn’t know about any of the things you’ve done.”

  “She does now.”

  “Why Althea?” Emily edged in front of Zoe, pushing her closer to the window.

  “She heard you up here one day. She wanted to know if that was you and then accused me of lying because I told her you ran away with Walter Shipley. She heard you and knew the truth. I shut her up with a story, but she called and gave me three days to produce you or she was going to the police. Three days! Can you imagine! She threatened me! Well, I fixed that one. No more threats. She didn’t think I’d do anything about it. But I did.” She smiled. “People have no idea how powerful I am.”

 
; “You’ve kept me here . . .” Emily began as she pushed Zoe to the edge of the window and motioned, with a hand behind her back, for Zoe to climb out to where the ladder rested. “I was the only one who knew what you did to Walter. I’ve paid. I’ll die with you. We’ll die here together. Just the two of us. Then everything will be over. And no one will know what you did to Walter because he didn’t love you. And to Althea because she cared.”

  “She knows.” Lorna pointed a shaking finger toward Zoe. “She’ll tell everybody and . . .”

  Lorna stopped. The staircase behind her fell away from the wall in a shower of sparks. A roaring wind swept into the room, and flames danced just beyond the door.

  Emily fell back against Zoe, who was now climbing out over the windowsill.

  Lorna picked up the gas can at her feet.

  Zoe heard the sound of a man’s voice from below, yelling for them to come out.

  Emily’s eyes focused on her sister as Lorna poured the gas out from the can. Gas trickled down Lorna’s skirt of scarves. The scarves exploded into flames that ran up around her chest and then to the red scarf wound around her red hair. She was a whirl of flames and sparks and screams. Lorna Sutton became a torch, lighting the way for Emily as she pushed Zoe out on to the ledge, helping her hook one short leg around to get a foot on the ladder. Zoe held on to the ladder with everything she had. She took a step down, then another, while above her, the real Emily Sutton stepped out to the sill, to the ladder, out to safety as a man on the ladder grabbed first Zoe and then Emily and got them to the ground. The stunned and injured women were met with cheers.

  Strong arms, and then many hands, grabbed on to Zoe and carried her away from the burning house. She was laid carefully on a stretcher. Someone slid an oxygen mask over her face. She breathed in the oxygen, then lifted the mask to cough. Her eyes were on the house. Flames licked through the roof.

  “Zoe.” Dora wound her arms around her and held on until Zoe groaned, pain crawling over her skin.

  The voices of the men around them were louder now, calling to the firemen inside to come out.

  The roof fell in. There were explosions from leaking gas.

  The center of the house fell down into rubble. Empty windows framed dancing flames. The stone walls stood, but the interior of the house disappeared. Inside, a woman was already dead.

  * * *

  Zoe felt the painful jolt as the stretcher she was lying on rolled into the back of the ambulance.

  She felt a cuff go around her arm and a needle prick her skin.

  Once the ambulance was moving, Zoe let her head turn to the stretcher beside her. The woman, her plain face shining with tears, auburn hair loose and caught behind her head, was, like Zoe, swathed in white sheets.

  Emily Sutton opened her eyes and turned her head. Above her mask, her eyes widened. Her hand moved. She wiggled her fingers, then reached across the narrow space between their stretchers, around an EMT, and took Zoe’s hand.

  Exhausted, Zoe held the hand offered her and fell asleep.

  Chapter 33

  They were both in the hospital for almost a week. Their hands were burned. For some reason, half of Zoe’s hair was gone, though wiry fuzz was already growing back.

  When they were released, still in pain at times, still stiff with healing skin, Emily came to stay at Dora’s house, and the flow of visitors began—staunched at times when Jenny or Dora saw that their patients were tired.

  “You look a lot skinnier.” Minnie Moon bent down to stare closely at Zoe, propped on pillows in Dora’s living room. Then at Emily, who lay on the sofa, covered with a white comforter. “Guess being locked up like that can do some good.”

  “I wasn’t stuck in there that long,” Zoe shot back. On her lap, Fida snapped out of a deep sleep to sit up, blink, and show her teeth, in case lethal force was needed.

  “And anyway, Emily gave me half her food. I got on the scale this morning. Didn’t lose a pound.”

  “That’s too bad,” Minnie cocked her head to one side. “Seems a waste if you can’t even get that much out of an ordeal like you two have been through.”

  Minnie smiled shyly over at Emily and got up to leave, promising to come back the next day with one of her famous dump cakes.

  Seven days since the fire. Lisa was on her way from Montana. Alex Shipley had been there from the night of the fire, sleeping in a hospital waiting room to stay close. For hours of every day, she sat beside Emily’s bed, talking to her, though Emily, locked into a dark place, hardly responded. Until one afternoon on the fourth day, when Emily reached out and touched Alex’s face.

  “He talked about you,” she said, and smiled.

  They cried together and, over the next few days, shared stories about the man they both had loved. Alex made arrangements for Walter Shipley’s burial. The two of them planned for when Emily was well, and strong. They were going to Maine together, to bury Walter in the place he loved.

  She got up close in Emily’s face, stepped back and, in a disappointed voice, said only, “That’s not Emily.”

  Tony was there every evening, bringing CDs of old Italian ballads to soothe the injured women, and one night a dish of lasagna he’d made, he said, with a dose of Italian healing power inside.

  Christopher Morley came from New York. He stayed over for two days while he sat beside Zoe, assuring her again and again that PBS was happy to change their meeting date, their only concern being Zoe’s health.

  “And my only concern, too.” Christopher gave Zoe a gentlemanly bow and, once, a kiss on the forehead.

  When he left, he promised to come back for Abigail’s party in the park, with Abigail assuring him that he’d find the trip well worth his time.

  * * *

  Both women’s burns healed slowly. They still coughed from smoke in their lungs. Zoe, with little hair on one side of her head, looked lopsided. Those were the obvious wounds. Jenny thought it was hard to know how much Emily had suffered. She was thin and lifeless at first. Three years of being imprisoned. Three years of solitary confinement—until, like a miracle, she said, she heard Zoe in the room next to her and knew she had to get them both out of there.

  As the next days passed, Emily talked more and more: a woman finding her voice.

  “I didn’t know who she was, nor why she was there,” Emily began one evening. “But having someone to talk to made me happy. One time though, Lorna slipped and called her Zoe. I remembered hearing Lorna say the name at the front door. When I’d asked, Lorna, always whispering so Zoe couldn’t hear, said it was the same person who’d brought us books of poetry.”

  “What happened to her?” Dora’s voice was gentle. “Lorna?”

  Emily looked off, away from the faces around her. “She wanted to be me. My mother warned me it was getting worse. Lorna’s jealousy was out of control. That’s why I came home. To watch her. To protect my mother. I failed.

  “I called an attorney after the fire. I knew how it had started. I’d seen Lorna’s gas cans hidden in the garage and thought nothing of it until the fire. I looked for those cans afterward but they were gone. The attorney promised to keep everything quiet—about the fire, about my mother. We didn’t see any reason to tell the police, not if we could have Lorna put away where she wouldn’t hurt anyone else. A judge signed Lorna’s commitment papers. I had seven years of peace. Except for once, when she stole a car at the hospital and came home. I found her at the kitchen table, listening to the radio. A nurse came to get her.

  “Thank you so much again, for the Code Poems.” She turned, with an almost happy smile, from Zoe to Jenny.

  “The poems you wrote saved your life. And Zoe’s, too,” Jenny said from where she sat on the floor next to Zoe’s chair, Fida in her lap. “No one would have known you two were in those upstairs rooms if it hadn’t been for the lines you wrote.”

  “Bad poetry, as bad as I could write, hoping people would know it wasn’t mine. I had hopes for the ‘slurred pewee’ line. Maybe the ‘upstairs roo
m,’ or the ‘two of us.’”

  Dora watched from the doorway, her arm around Lisa’s shoulders. “I hope you make something beautiful out of this, Emily,” she said.

  “I’ve begun,” Emily nodded. “My head’s filling with words. First I have to polish them, then shape them, then march them into lines. I have to understand the story of Lorna and who she couldn’t help but be.” She narrowed her eyes. “I want to hunt for beauty, Dora. Maybe forgiveness—after a while. But mostly beauty. That’s what I’d always wished for Lorna.”

  Epilogue

  On Saturday, the fifteenth of October, Abigail Cane threw her party in Cane Park. The day was glorious: warm, with a deep-blue sky. All she could have asked for.

  A recent rain made the falls at the edge of the park thunder through the rapids on their way out to Lake Michigan. In the park, the grass was still green. Park benches dotted the wide lawns. Tables were set up off to the side, away from the falls. Food was being spread along the tables. Myrtle, in a new green hat, along with Demeter and Delaware, set covered platters of sandwiches down the length of one table. On another, they set up salads—picnic fare, to Myrtle’s way of thinking—potato salad, macaroni salad, and Jell-O salad, all lined up: one, two, three, red, yellow, and green.

  One table was left open for desserts. Bear Falls women brought their specialties. There were upside-down cakes and chocolate cakes and cakes with fancy icings. There were two dump cakes. Apple pies. Peach pies. Rhubarb pies. Apple and peach crumbles. All fresh. Most just one step from the orchard. It was everything people expected on such a grand occasion.

  Tony, Ed Warner, and two deputies set up chairs from the funeral home around the brick-paved circle that surrounded Abigail Cane’s replacement gift, covered in a blue silk cloth, waiting to be unveiled.

  Christopher Morley, back as he’d promised, walked Zoe and Jenny formally into the park, then settled them in chairs and offered refreshments from the bar set up not far from Joshua’s statue, where two men were tying ropes around the head, the torso, and the legs.