by Lauren Wolk
“I like you, Joe. You know that, right?”
“I guess.”
“You guess. Shit, boy, you know I do. But keep your goddamned nose out of my business.” She flipped the eggs with one smooth turn of her wrist. “ ’Course I’m worried. But we like it here. And besides, what choice do we have? No one in their right mind’s going to buy a square foot of Belle Haven land until this fire’s dead and gone. Certainly not my disreputable hash house. So you want to tell me how we’re supposed to start over somewhere else?”
He put down his fork and wiped his mouth. “What about the Schooner?”
Angela turned from the grill to look at him. “What about it?”
“It’s not much, but if you have to go somewhere else, it will get you there.”
Angela frowned at him. The eggs sputtered for attention. “You offering me your Schooner?”
“If you need to get out in a hurry,” he said.
She looked at him some more, thinking it through. “You planning to buy a place with your trust money?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, impatient.
Angela watched the bacon fry. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. What do I owe you?”
“Not a thing,” she answered. “It’s on the house.”
They talked for a while until Angela got too busy and Dolly came downstairs with Rusty to help out.
Before he left he asked, “All right if I park the Schooner here for a bit while I look for someplace more permanent?”
“I have a better idea,” Angela said, carrying a plate of flapjacks to a man in a bright orange feed cap. “See if Earl will let you park at the back of his lot. It’s never been full, not once in all these years. Tell him you’ll stock shelves for him one night a week, something of that sort. He’s likely got an outlet you can plug into, long as you pay for the juice. And when it’s too cold to put a hose on his outside tap, you can use my shower upstairs if we’re not in it, no charge.” She came closer and lowered her voice. “You can even, ah, wash up in the back whenever you need to.”
“Thanks. I’ve got that part under control, Angie.”
“Enough said.”
“All right, then,” he agreed, smiling, pulling on his earlobe. “I’ll go talk to Earl.”
“Fine with me,” Earl said, dusting a pyramid of paint cans. “Long as you don’t mind paying for the electric and the water. Never mind using the lot. That’s what it’s there for.”
“How about I shovel your walkways come winter and keep the lot clear?”
“Now, there’s a thought,” Earl said, his eyes gleaming. “There is a thought.”
“It’s a deal, then,” Joe said. “Let me know if you hear of anyone hiring, Earl. I need a bit of a job.”
“I’ll do that,” Earl said.
As it turned out, Joe simply began to do what he’d done before: some of this, some of that, plenty to keep himself in soup and bread, soap and razors, new laces for his boots, the occasional carving tool, gasoline and oil for the Schooner. He mowed lawns, drove old ladies to the A&P and home again, picked late peaches and early apples. School started after Joe had been back only a few days, and Angela again offered to feed Joe for time spent with Rusty and his books.
“That’s ridiculous,” Joe said. “I’m the one getting an education. Rusty’s smart as a whip. He doesn’t need my help.”
“Don’t argue with me.”
“Fine. Okay.” He held up his hands. “If you really want to make a trade, Rusty can watch Pal for me once a week. I’ve got some stuff to do out of town, and she hates driving.”
“Pal drives?”
“Very funny.” He was surprised when she didn’t ask what he’d be doing out of town, but he was also relieved. There would be a time and a place to tell her, but this wasn’t it. “And I will use your shower, if you don’t mind. But that’s more than enough. Way more.”
And so things went.
A few weeks earlier Joe would have mourned the loss of his lovely camp: the sound of the stream and the blowing trees, the sight of deer at the edge of the woods, the fireplace he’d built, the place he’d made for himself, bit by bit. But he had come back to Belle Haven treasuring more than anything else the people he encountered, even those who failed to win his affections, for they all impressed him with their inimitable bones, the oddity of their notions, with their very human fragility. And of all the people in his life, he marveled at himself most of all. At the smoothness of his fingernails, the random lunacy of his dreams, the way the smell of oranges made him think of his mother.
He still knew how to appreciate the beauty and the genius of trees, blackbirds, other live things. He still loved music and color and art of all kinds—his own included. But the impressions these things left on him were as important to Joe as the things themselves. The memory of them as precious. And the idea of things to come as rewarding as their arrival. He asked little of the world, cared little if he left it different in his wake.
Rusty, Rachel, Holly, Angela, Ian, and his father, in their various ways, had taught him to waste no time, for there was none to waste. They had taught him to do whatever made his sleep easy and his appetite strong. They had taught him to yearn but not to crave. To feed and feel as if he’d feasted. To lay open the fragile membrane of each and every cell in his body and draw in all light, all sound, all substance—but not to overlook the dark, quiet emptiness between the stars.
The days since he had fought with Rachel had been like a fast, but even as he hungered for her, Joe was content with what he had. He stood by his choices: to leave home, to live simply, to spend his inheritance on something worthwhile, even if it might mean losing Rachel for good … and now to dispute the choices she was making. If he wanted to be able to live with himself, he had to risk living without her.
Then, one night, he found himself remembering the Jaguar he’d left back in a lot somewhere east of Belle Haven. He remembered the feel of it, the sound of it, the joy it had brought him. A car. A way to get from one place to another. Rubber and steel and leather. Glass and paint. Plastic. Plastic. But he had loved it and missed it for a long time.
He knew then—and realized that a part of him had always known—what Rachel saw when she looked down from her hill and out over the fields. She saw something coming for her. For the house where her parents had lived, where she had made a place for herself. For the trees and the cats and the houses. For the people she knew and loved so well.
She did not see their destruction, or she would surely be nearer flight. She saw, instead, a kind of foreclosure, a species of theft, and she clung on, she dug in her heels and wrapped her fingers tighter, and bared her teeth like even the gentlest of dogs are known to do when threatened.
She had much more to lose than a car.
As Joe walked across Rachel’s front yard that night, pushing her father’s old bike, Pal trotting alongside, he saw her watching him from the porch.
“I’m sorry,” he said, leaning the bike against the porch rail.
She thought about that for a bit. “That’s good. Because the only way I can take you is whole and entire. I can’t just rope off little sections of you and say, well, that part’s no good, so I won’t touch it. That part’s broken, so I’ll leave it alone.”
Rachel watched Joe mull this over. Had she been able to read his thoughts—to know that he was forgiving each word as it left her mouth and promising her time to grow out of her tyranny—she might well have struck him. Instead, she leaned over the railing and offered him her bottle of beer, which he took. “I don’t mind fighting with you, but if you are truly as disgusted with me as you seemed to be the other night, I want nothing to do with you anymore.” She smoothed her hair behind her ears. “Have you gotten over all that?”
Joe sighed and handed back her bottle, sat down on the porch steps. He watched Pal move silently off into the night. “Oh, I don’t know, Rachel. You made me mad with all that talk about letting the fire run around l
ike a rabid dog. I happen to think it’s going to kill some more people. I hate to think about that, or about you being swallowed up like Ross was. Take me down to his house and look at it with me and tell me you’re not scared stiff. Tell me that, truthfully, and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
They shared the beer. She sat down next to him on the steps.
“I’m sorry,” he said again after a bit. “I should have remembered that you were patient with me once.”
“I don’t need your patience, Joe,” she said wearily.
“Well, maybe not. You’re a grown woman. You do what you have to do.”
He went inside and came back out with a second beer.
After a while, she said, “How do you like living in a parking lot?”
“It’s better than a stick in the eye.”
She laughed and laid her head against his arm.
“The best part about it is the view,” he said, which made her laugh harder. But when he said, “I can see your butterflies from the window by my bed,” she first looked up, confused, and then became still, remembering.
“What about your statues, out in Ian’s woods?” she said after a bit. “Does Mendelson know about them yet?”
“I don’t think so,” Joe said, drinking his beer, running the bottom of the bottle down his thigh. “I barely spoke to the guy. I wonder why he’d want to buy Ian’s place, what with the fire and everything.”
“He didn’t,” Rachel said. “The government did, from a cousin Ian has, had, out in Wyoming. He didn’t want the place, and the government got to him before any of the rest of us even knew the land was for sale. Now Mendelson’s living out there with a few of his crew. He’s supposed to figure out what happened to Ross’s house and plan what to do about the fire, once and for all. He’s the one who’s going to recommend what happens to this town.” She held her bottle with both hands. “Which scares me more than just about anything else.” Neither of them spoke for a while. Then Rachel said, “It shouldn’t be too hard to sneak out to the woods.”
“Sorry. You lost me.”
“To work on the statues.”
“Oh.” He nodded. “I don’t want to sneak out there,” he said. “And I’m not going anywhere near those hot spots again if I don’t have to.”
Rachel frowned. “Think about it, Joe. It’s probably safer out there in those dead trees than anywhere else around here. The fire’s already eaten up any coal in that spot.”
“I suppose.”
She gave a little grunt of exasperation. “Are you saying you don’t want to go back out there? I thought you loved carving those trees. They’re beautiful!”
“Yes, I think so too. But I can carve things right here.”
“You can’t mean you’re going to leave that last statue unfinished.”
“It’s a statue, Rachel. It’s dead wood. The worms are out there right now, and so are the woodpeckers. In a year or two those trees will be down and rotted.”
“How can you think about it like that?” she cried. “You were so excited, that day you took me out there to show me that first carving of Holly. Don’t you remember talking about how good it felt to make something so beautiful?” She was close to tears, suddenly, and for that he was sorry. “What’s happened to you?” she said.
“I’m the same as I always was,” he said gently, “only better.”
Rachel looked into his face, unsmiling, and slowly turned away. “I don’t understand you anymore.”
“And I feel the same way about you,” he said. “I hope it’s like a temporary sickness and that we’ll both get better. But right now, you seem to be paralyzed by the prospect of leaving here.” He reached for her hand. “Don’t you think I ought to shake you out of it? Isn’t that what you would do for me? Isn’t that what you did do for me?”
She took her hand away. “I’m not paralyzed, Joe. But I’m not leaving either. I’m going to do what needs to be done.”
“About what?”
“About the fire, for Christ’s sakes. Isn’t that what we’re talking about?”
“But what can you do?” He was bewildered.
“I don’t know,” she said, although the look in her eye made him think she had something in mind. “But if I do eventually leave, it won’t be like some goddamned lemming.”
“What the hell have lemmings got to do with this?” He made no attempt to hide his exasperation. “Can’t you admit that there are plenty of good, rational reasons for leaving Belle Haven? Even if there were no fire, there would be plenty of reasons to go somewhere else. Good grief, Rachel, this isn’t the only decent spot on earth. If anything, I’d say you’re acting like a lemming by staying here.”
“You don’t understand.” She stood up, looked down at him. “This town isn’t just the place where I live. It’s part of me.” She shook her head impatiently. “The willow in the park where I go on Halloween … that was where my father taught me how to climb trees. I had my first haircut at Paula’s. I remember thinking my hair was going to bleed. I grew up on cider from those apples”—she pointed toward the trees—“and huckleberries from every backyard in town.” Her voice thickened. “I grew up knowing that there was a fire out under the fields, and waiting for it to get here has been terrible. But if it finally does, I think I’ll be relieved. I feel like a sailor who can’t swim, who’s terrified of the goddamned ocean and gets sick of shore after two days home.”
To Joe, the simple porch suddenly felt like a stage. He knew that she had allowed herself to be swept up in her dilemma, as if in a net made of her own hair. Listening to her now, he could only imagine what she sounded like to herself. And yet, at the same time, he believed a part of everything she was saying.
“So don’t you treat me like I’ve lost my senses,” she said angrily. “You think I should leave Belle Haven? This place has made me what I am. Where am I going to find another Angela? Or another Rusty? What other place has roads my father walked on, trees my mother planted? Where on this entire earth will I ever find a place to compare with this one?” She looked at him sadly. “I would have bet anything you’d understand what I’m talking about. I thought you loved this place, too, for the same kinds of reasons.”
He could see in her eyes that she had begun to agonize, but he did not see any way around that. “Jesus, Rachel. I do. But you were one of the people who taught me that if you can live with yourself, you can live anywhere.” He reached up and pulled her down beside him on the step, pushed her hair away from her face. “This is only a place, Rachel. A few acres of ground.” He took her by the shoulders so that she had to look at him. “You can’t let your roots tie you down.”
She shook her shoulders free. “What do you know about roots?”
He looked at her steadily. He knew a lot about roots. “I know that the best ones grow inward,” he said, “and stay with you wherever you happen to be. It’s not the place that’s important. It’s what it means to you.” He put his hands on his chest. “And even when you leave, you won’t leave that behind.” He had not come to plead a case, but he feared that this might be the last time she would hear him out.
She stood up, stepped toward the door, looked down at him. “All you’ve talked about since you came back is how we ought to leave this place, which you claim to love. I don’t know what to think, Joe.” Again she said, “I don’t understand you.”
But he only shrugged. “I can’t help that.”
When she went inside the dark house, he stayed for only a moment more and then stood abruptly, set down his beer bottle, and, whistling for Pal, walked away, leaving her father’s bicycle behind.
Two hours later, when Rachel returned to the porch, exhausted, sick of her bed, she looked out toward the land that had belonged to Ian and saw a new landmark. Hot and orange, this one reached upward, violent, as if it came not from under the ground but from the world above it, fed with boundless air, strengthened by wind, and fortified by the rigid flesh of trees.
Chapter 36
> When Mendelson walked into Angela’s Kitchen the next morning, stinking with sulfur and cologne, Joe put down his fork, wiped his mouth carefully on a clean napkin, and took a long swallow of water.
“Give me a bag of hot cinnamon buns and fill ’er up, Angela.” Mendelson left his thermos by the register, moved down the counter to a stool next to Joe’s. “I thought I might find you in here,” he said.
“Morning, Mendelson.”
Mendelson spun slowly on his stool until he sat with his back to the counter, elbows cocked and braced on the Formica, legs crossed at the knees. “You know, the oddest thing happened last night, out in the woods at the edge of my spread.”
“Ian’s place.”
“Used to be, yes,” he said, nodding. “Someone started a pretty big fire in the middle of the night. Enough fire around here as it is, but some dumb bunny can’t get his fill, I guess. Know anything about it?” He peered at Joe, one eye shut, his curiosity real.
“Why ask me?”
“You used to live out there, is all. Thought you might’ve seen something of this sort out that way before.”
Joe finished his breakfast, drained his mug. “Probably just a hot spot, Mendelson.”
“Not this one.” He shook his head, sent his stool into another lazy spin. “Somebody made a fire out of old wood, tended it, banked it. Left a bunch of stumps and a nice, tidy pit of ashes, sort o’ like a druid hangout or something. Not the way kids would have done it, but I guess it might have been kids.”
Angela put a fat brown paper bag and a full thermos in front of Mendelson. “Post this in your window, Angela,” he said. He handed her a printed notice, paid for the food. “Guess I’ll be sleeping with one eye open from now on,” he said and left.
“There’s going to be a meeting in the school auditorium. Tomorrow night,” Angela said, reading. “I guess they’ve finally got something to tell us.”
Joe picked up a salt shaker, put it down, watched Angela looking at the notice in her hands. “You going to go?” he asked her.
“Not until I have to,” she sighed, and missed the sight of Joe bowing his head.