Those Who Favor Fire

by Lauren Wolk

  “Oh, Christ,” he said. “How did you bear it?”

  “I didn’t have any choice,” she said.

  He didn’t ask her about the money she’d inherited or what she’d done with it. It wasn’t something he wanted to know about. It wasn’t something he envied. It was almost something he feared.

  In the end he decided not to call Yale, not to answer the questions that were bound to be asked. He’d let his father worry about that. So he sent a postcard instead, requesting a last-minute leave of absence, not really caring much whether it was granted.

  With his mind made up—not only to stay in Belle Haven but to make it his home—Joe felt himself lighten as if he had shed a heavy winter skin. He began to breathe all the way down to the cradles of his lungs again, for the first time in years. He woke each day with an appetite and a curiosity that was easy to calm with small things—like walking straight out into the morning to sample the weather, following whatever temptation crossed his path, and embracing every chance to pair the days of his past with better ones in this, his new life. There were many such days that fall, and the promise of more to come.

  Rachel and Joe spent Christmas together, invited Angela, Rusty, Dolly, and Ian for dinner at Rachel’s house. That night, after the feast, they all went out to the Schooner and built a big fire in Joe’s fireplace. Joe had decorated the pines at the edge of his clearing with tinfoil stars. They flared in the firelight, turning in the cold wind, and the clouds scudded across the dazzling sky. Wrapped in blankets, they sang Christmas songs and drank hot wine. They threw pinecones into the fire and waited for them to pop. They were silent and listened to the wind. Then they staggered to their various beds, sated with joy, and were asleep before the cold, hard, invigorating sheets had warmed.

  Chapter 17

  In January, one week before Joe’s birthday, an old woman named Sophia Browning, who lived a fair distance from the nearest mine tunnel, was mixing up cookie dough when she found herself short an egg. So she went out into the snow to buy a dozen and a quart of milk to go with the cookies. She planned to eat them hot. She left her little house, its lights throwing golden patches on the snow, and her cat, Moushka, asleep on top of the refrigerator.

  Sophia’s late husband, Otto, had been a friendly man who nonetheless valued privacy above most things he could hold in his hands. He made sure that the walkway he built from the road to the front door of their house was wide and welcoming and that the porch light was turned on at dusk, but he also planted a border of spruce trees around the house and tended them with care until they eventually made the loveliest sort of wall. They cast fragrant shade, gave the birds shelter, tempered the cold winter wind. Sophia liked to look at the spruce trees. They reminded her of Otto.

  As she walked back from the store with her groceries tucked into the crook of her arm, Sophia admired the spruces from a distance, was captivated by their silhouettes against the pale night sky. They seemed, tonight, in the hard January freeze, to be edged with gold. As if the sun were rising behind them. Quite beautiful. Actually, she decided, quite odd. When she reached the brick walkway that Otto had built between the spruces, Sophia peered uncertainly through the trees and saw that her house was in flames.

  Her neighbors, who had by then run from their houses, had to hold the old woman back. She kept calling out to her cat and to her small house while the fire grew with extraordinary speed into a shimmering, shrieking rage.

  By the time the fire truck arrived, Sophia’s house was far beyond salvation and the spruces that had for so long graced it were blackened, mostly spoiled, their branches cooked to spars.

  In the morning the fire inspector, surprised that the house had burned so quickly, traced its source to Sophia’s basement. Near the furnace.

  “There was absolutely nothing wrong with my furnace,” Sophia insisted, her cold hands tucked under her chin. “Nothing whatsoever.”

  She looked upon the black and broken hull of her house, the ring of ruined trees, every standing remnant wrapped in dazzling, tumultuous ice, and was unable to see the accidental beauty wrought so suddenly during the night.

  A few blocks away, Joe walked into Angela’s Kitchen to find the breakfast crowd talking about the fire.

  “Think it came up from underground?” he asked no one in particular. People shrugged, frowned, ate their eggs.

  “Don’t think so,” said Ed, the mailman, who drove past a dozen boreholes every time he delivered the mail. “That fire’s been burning for a coon’s age, Joe. It’s not going anywhere. Not doing too much harm. Never come anywhere close to Sophia’s place before. She’s a good bit east of the tunnels.”

  “What about the coal that was never mined? How do you know how much coal is buried right down under our feet? How do you know the fire’s not going to come and get it?”

  “Well, we don’t,” said Earl, who made sure his hardware store was always well stocked with smoke alarms. “Things are okay so far, Joe.”

  “I’m not sure Sophia would see it that way, Earl.”

  “Fires do happen for all kinds of reasons, you know,” Angela said with Rusty by her side.

  Cal, who ran the A&P, chuckled into his coffee cup. “Sophia’s living with her son and his family now. Probably rigged the whole thing.”

  “I can’t believe you people,” Joe said, swiveling around on his stool. “There’s a great, big fire down there, and all any of you ever do is make jokes about it.”

  “What’re you doing about it, Joe?” asked Earl.

  “Come on, Earl. All I’ve got to worry about is an old motor home.”

  Earl ate his eggs.

  “What do you want us to do, Joe?” Angela sounded angry, looked angry, kept her hand on Rusty’s shoulder. “You think we should leave everything on the chance that the fire might decide to come this way?”

  “Seems to me you’re taking an awful risk,” he said.

  “Seems to me you are, too,” she said with a certain satisfaction.

  And for a while everything in town was relatively quiet.

  Chapter 18

  On the last Sunday in April, Joe decided to clean out the Schooner, stem to stern, and usher in the warming breeze. His landlocked ship was full of winter dust and smelled like dirty laundry. So he opened all the windows, dusted off the screens, polished the panes, shook out his blankets and pegged them in the sun. He scoured the bathroom, swept the floors, scrubbed the countertops. He cleaned out his small fridge, washed his clothes and his curtains, and made everything tidy.

  He rarely stepped foot in the Schooner’s “wheelhouse,” as he liked to call it, for he seldom drove anywhere, even in winter; he biked or hitched instead and was usually content to leave the dusty dashboard to the spiders and the windshield to the frost. But spring cleaning was spring cleaning. So he filled a pail with soapy water, grabbed his sponge, and headed for the bow.

  He sponged down the dashboard and the vinyl seats, swept the leaves out from under the gas pedal, washed the windshield inside and out. He polished the mirror and dusted the visors. Threw out the junk that accumulated in the glove compartment, including the letter he’d written to his father nearly a year ago. He did not read it first.

  “Done,” he said, his mind on a hot shower and a cold beer. But there was one more thing he knew he really ought to do.

  To the right of the driver’s seat, bolted into the floor, was a wooden trunk about the size of a sewing machine. It was handmade of hard wood and brass hardware, one of the things that Ian had noticed right off the bat, Joe’s first night in Belle Haven. Someone had taken great pains to build and install this trunk, presumably for valuables. But there was nothing in it now. Nothing but a few maps that Joe had transferred from the Jaguar. He was fairly certain about this. He tried to think back to that day when he’d pulled into Big Al’s, to remember whether the trunk had been empty when he’d dumped his stuff inside and slammed the lid. Later, just as he was about to drive the Schooner away, Al had called out to him. “Tha
t lockbox up front there? The previous owner had that installed—for cameras and stuff, I guess. It’s got a good smart lock on it. Combination’s on a slip of paper taped inside. Don’t worry, I didn’t peek,” he’d spluttered, his tongue showing.

  But since Joe had not consulted any maps on his headlong flight from home, he had had no reason to open the box as he made his way toward Belle Haven. And by the time he had acquired enough possessions to need the trunk for storage, he’d somehow managed to spin the wheels of the sturdy little lock—nudged them as he edged his way into the driver’s seat, perhaps. The trunk had become locked with the combination inside. And so it had remained for the better part of a year.

  But it was a beautiful trunk, and Joe regretted its inactivity. And there was something more besides. Something that he felt he ought to remember. Something that nagged at him every time he glanced at the trunk. He had no idea what it could be, but he was now determined to find out.

  He figured that the numbered wheels could not have been knocked too far off course. So, to prevent himself from making matters worse, he wrote down the numbers that were up and then began, very methodically, to try out different combinations. From 5–8–9–4, he went to 4–8–9–4, then to 6–8–9–4, then to 5–7–9–4, then 5–9–9–4, and so on until he had tried out a dozen combinations and yet failed to unlock the safe.

  At this point he put away his cleaning stuff, took a shower, and ate a bowl of tomato soup with cheddar cheese melted in it, a stack of crackers, and a fistful of carrots. Then he went back to the box. Ten minutes later, when he was about ready to borrow Ian’s crowbar, he turned the dials to 3–7–0–3 and found that he’d finally got it right.

  Inside the trunk were several maps of New England states, a nearly new flashlight, which pleased him greatly, and beneath these things, the cardboard box that he had been surprised to find under the driver’s seat of the Jaguar. As soon as he saw it, the nagging feeling that had inspired this whole investigation was relieved. Some part of him had remembered this box and wondered about it for months now.

  When he lifted it out of the trunk, he was again surprised by its heaviness. He carried the box to the kitchen table with both hands, slid into the booth, untied the strings that held the lid on tight, and finally opened it. Inside, a folded piece of notepaper sat atop a tissue-paper nest. He opened the note and began to read.

  Dear Kit, it said, and he had to stop for a moment to say the name out loud.

  You are an unpredictable boy. To surprise me like this, just when I thought I had you pegged. It’s quite the nicest thing you’ve ever done for me. The loot is wonderful, too, of course. It will take me clean away from here and let me get on with my life. I’m only sorry that our reacquaintance will have to wait. Not for long, I hope. Go off and wander around for a bit—it will do you good—but then come find me. I’ll be in San Francisco, I think, or possibly Mendocino. Somewhere along that coast. I shouldn’t be too hard to find. If I haven’t heard from you by our birthday, I’ll write to you at Yale. Or I’ll call. One way or the other, I’ll let you know where I am. In the meantime, watch out for the riptide. Don’t get dragged back down. Use this to have a summer beyond his reach, if such a thing is possible. It’s not much—I’ve kept most of the treasure, since in truth, I need it more—but it should be enough to keep you going if he “cuts you off without a penny.” Which he may do for a month or two. If you find yourself in trouble, call Emily’s parents in Newport. George and Ardith Corrigan. If you’ve lost the number I gave you tonight (which you probably have), they’re in the book. They’ll know how to find me.

  Be good.

  Holly

  For a long time, Joe sat in his kitchen with the letter in his hands and thought about his sister. Pictured her placing the box on the Jaguar’s back floor. Pictured her smiling with satisfaction. Pictured the box sliding under the driver’s seat as he hurried out of town that night.

  He could almost feel Holly’s eyes upon him as he turned back the petals of tissue and saw the trio of sleek gold wafers, the crisp coins that nestled inside. He had taken them for her. Now they were his. And there would never be a way to give them back to her.

  He put the letter back into the box and the box back into the trunk, shut the lid, walked out of the Schooner, left the door swinging on its hinges.

  When he reached the sloping fields beyond the stream, he began to run. At the edge of the forest on the far side of the fields, he grabbed the purple bramble whips that gave most intruders pause and tugged them aside with his bare hands. As he stumbled into the shadowy cathedral of the trees, he was not looking for solace. He wanted immediate distance, a degree of oblivion, exhaustion. He was hoping that the impartial trees would simply shield him for a while from the scrutiny of the world. But he did not reckon on the uncanny knack of forests to hone the truth, or the power of solitude to magnify remorse.

  Chapter 19

  When peace, Like a river, attendeth my way

  When sorrows like sea billows roll—

  Whatever my lot,

  Thou hast taught me to say

  It is well, it is well with my soul.

  It is well

  It is well with my soul, with my soul,

  It is well, it is well with my soul.

  “Baptist?” Joe queried as he and Rachel strolled up the walkway and through the open doors of the church. It was Mother’s Day, and the nave was full of pastel, canary-faced women, wet-headed men, children in their Sunday best.

  “If I bother at all, I usually go to the Presbyterian church where I always went with my parents,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’d get pitied to death if I went there today. Besides, since they died I’ve become a more generic sort of Christian. And today I’m in the mood for Baptist. They have the nicest music.” She took Joe’s hand and led him through a narrow passageway, up a winding stair, and into the small balcony at the back of the church. “The view’s better from here,” she whispered as they sat down in a shadowy corner. They’d both dressed up for the occasion. Rachel wore an iris blue skirt, an azure blouse, and a straw Easter hat, Joe a nut brown oxford and a pair of fawn corduroys, both of which were now too big for him. They looked as if they had traded colors for the day.

  When Joe had balked at the idea of church, Rachel had dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “Suit yourself,” she’d said. “Spend the morning slobbering in your bed, like you do every other Sunday, gobbling down sausages, dragging your ass around ’til noon. I’m going to church.”

  “Why? You hardly ever go to church.”

  “Because it’s Mother’s Day,” she’d said, and he had suddenly remembered the look on his sister’s face as she worked her knuckles through their mother’s vow-heavy rings.

  From the balcony they listened to the drone of the sermon and grew as drowsy as babies in the sun. They sang, sharing a hymnal, and Joe had to admit that the choir sounded fine and the songs themselves were sweet.

  I come to the garden alone,

  While the dew is still on the roses;

  And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,

  The Son of God discloses.

  And He walks with me, and He talks with me,

  And He tells me I am His own,

  And the joy we share as we tarry there,

  None other has ever known.

  He recognized a couple of selections—the Doxology and “Holy, Holy, Holy”—from the Christmases and Easters of his childhood. He sang “Amazing Grace,” unconcerned with the vagaries of his voice, until the grief in Rachel’s eyes closed his throat. And then, when he thought that the service was at an end, the preacher smiled down upon his flock and said, “I have a special surprise for you. A busy man, preaching and teaching in Philadelphia. An important man with little time to spare. But he’s back here in his hometown for a visit, and I know you’ll be glad to see his face again and share his wisdom. The Reverend Gerald Cryers.” He opened his arms to a pudgy man who was making his way up to the pulpit. “Wel
come home, Gerry.”

  “Thank you,” said the Reverend Gerald Cryers. He grabbed the front edge of the pulpit with both of his sweating hands and leaned scowling toward the congregation.

  “It’s true,” he finally said. “I’ve been away for quite a while. And many things are different around here. Little things, like a house that’s changed color or a tree that’s died. New faces, older faces, new children.” He paused to bat his eyes at a little girl in the front pew who was drawing a camel on the back of an offertory envelope. “But some things never change. Like the sanctity of motherhood,” he announced, quite predictably, since it was Mother’s Day and the sermon had already reminded everyone of that fact. “You women who have brought children into this world have received God’s blessings in a most tangible way. He has given each of you a part of him, blessed you with his love, made you a tool … a conduit … a vessel to carry his most precious gift.

  “Mothers!” the preacher suddenly thundered, the sweat quivering on his lip. “There is another gift He has given you. When you look upon your children, remember the giver of the seed. Remember the protector, the provider, the man who took the world upon his shoulders that you might bear your young in peace.”

  As the preacher paused and focused his glare, Joe was startled to hear Rachel suddenly make a small retching sound. She didn’t look sick, but there was a certain twist to her mouth that Joe had seen before. “Oh, Lord,” he whispered to himself.

  “Close your eyes!” the preacher commanded. “Bow your heads and close your eyes. Close them as tight as oysters, and consider where you would be without fathers for your children, without bread upon your table, without a strong shoulder to lean on and a sturdy paddle in the storm.”

  Joe looked down upon the congregation and was amazed to see that nearly every member sat with bowed head, men as well as women. Only the smallest children, watchful as owls, disobeyed.