Those Who Favor Fire

by Lauren Wolk

  “Frank,” he said, as he walked up to them. “If you could design your own house, what kind of house would it be?”

  Frank, whose hands were still mapped with black from his long association with oil and old metal, grimaced as if he had a bad tooth. “That’s like asking me what I plan to wear to the ball,” he said. “Not something I figured I’d ever be called upon to do.”

  “Consider yourself called upon,” Joe said. He wasn’t smiling either.

  After a long pause Frank said, “No, I don’t think I can. I’ve lived in the same house all my life. And I do mean all my life, birth on up. I don’t know anything else, and I don’t really want to.”

  Which took Joe somewhat aback. Despite everything he’d seen and heard in Belle Haven, he had become convinced that everyone would eventually go their ways. In their shoes, which he in fact was, he would have spent time imagining his departure, planning the next part of his life, trying it on, making adjustments, aiming for the best possible fit.

  “You don’t mean you’re going to stay in Belle Haven?”

  “Yes,” Frank said. “That’s what I mean.”

  Rachel looked as if she wanted to move closer to Frank, take his arm.

  “And do what?” Joe tried to sound simply curious, but this came out sounding like the challenge it was.

  Frank gave him a sharp look and reset his cap. “You’ve done a nice thing here, Joe,” he said, gesturing all around him as if Joe had been the one to plant these trees, sculpt this earth, brew this air. “But it’s not what I’m after. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised you’d think of me. Do I really strike you as a man who needs minding?”

  When Joe had imagined his plans going wrong, he had imagined something much like this, words of this sort, but spoken by someone else altogether.

  “No, no, I never meant to imply you needed looking after, Frank. You or anyone else.”

  “Then how come I’m here?”

  Joe had thought he knew the answer to this one but called upon to give it found himself at a loss.

  “I don’t have a lot of friends in this world,” he eventually said. “But you’re one of them.”

  Frank nodded, pleased with this answer, willing to accept it but not to be bound by it. “That’s fine,” he said. “And I thank you for the offer. But I’ll be staying in Belle Haven for now. Maybe for good. I won’t know till I’m dead or on my way, I expect.”

  And with that he headed back down the lane toward the waiting van, leaving Joe with a good deal of the wind knocked out of him, Rachel looking smug, Angela and Dolly and Rusty somewhat removed, as if they were waiting for their turn to make a decision but not entirely certain what it would be.

  Now, with only four following him but they the four people he counted as family, Joe walked on down the lane. When they reached the next house, he lifted an elbow toward it but kept on going. “That would have been Frank’s house,” he said. Glimpsed through the trees, it seemed quite modest, as Frank was. Simple and straightforward.

  Rachel, watching it as she passed, had to admit that Joe had a knack for summing people up. He seemed able to see to the core of a person, and he usually had no trouble accepting people for what they were. And yet for months now she had felt as if he was sitting in judgment of her, whether he had any right to or not. Frank, it seemed, could flat out say he’d be staying in Belle Haven and Joe did nothing, said not a syllable, did not protest at all. To Rachel, who had also been born and raised in one house, one town, one world, Joe had made a thousand arguments, all meant to speed her on her way. She did not consider this a sign of love for her. If he truly loved her, he would respect her as well. Accept her for what she was. Accept her reasons for doing what she did.

  By the time they reached the next house, Rachel was preparing to do as Frank had done: say thanks, and mean it, but go her own way, which was back home. She had not imagined how it would feel to see Angela, and Dolly, and Rusty, who were her family, too, choose a different direction.

  Joe stopped. The others stopped with him. He turned to Angela, who was clutching Rachel’s hand like a child. “Hang on,” Joe said, grabbing Rusty’s sleeve as the boy lunged forward toward the house he could see among the trees. “Wait for your mother. And your grandmother,” he added, beckoning Dolly forward. “Angela,” he said, turning back to her and for the first time truly smiling, “I know you may not want this place. I know that already, so you won’t kill me by saying no. But I loved building it for you. I really did.” He took another key off the big ring in his hand and gave it to Rusty. “Now you can go,” he said, and Rusty sprinted down the laneway toward the most beautiful cottage Rachel had ever seen.

  It was all shingled in cedar that would weather to gray and had the look of houses built by the sea. Its windows were tall and thin, its porch wide and deep, and upstairs there was a small balcony with French doors, which would make it easy to hurry out into the morning or watch the flight of the moon. When Rusty appeared suddenly on the balcony, waving the key in his hand, Joe was reminded of the day he’d given him the tree house. And for the first time since leaving Belle Haven that morning, Joe thought that maybe he’d done the right thing.

  Angela looked at her son on that balcony, looked around her at the safe and beautiful woods, and breathed a long, shuddering sigh. Then she dropped Rachel’s hand, took her mother’s, and the two of them walked slowly toward the cottage.

  Joe watched them until they disappeared inside the house. He knew he had no choice now but to turn and look at Rachel, to see what waited on her face. He could hear her breathing. The branches of the trees overhead moved gently. The sunlight moved on the ground as if on water. There was no smell to the air except of damp earth. One of the best smells there is.

  “Where are you going to live?” Rachel finally said.

  Joe turned and looked at her face, but she avoided his eye. She was not smiling. She looked as if she never had.

  “I’ll show you,” he said, heading farther down the lane into the woods. At a narrow path, Joe turned off the lane and led the way through the trees to a cabin. It was old but appeared sound, a little bit mossy, a little bit crooked, somewhat overgrown. It, too, had a porch in front, a garden wild with carrots and rampant beans, an enormous chimney. “It’s where one of the trainers lived when this was a working farm. Wait until you see the fireplace,” he said, heading for the door.

  “Joe,” she said, stopping him. He turned slowly. “I don’t care about your fireplace. I don’t care about any of this.”

  Joe opened his mouth and closed it again. Shrugged. “I was pretty sure you’d feel that way,” he said.

  “But you did it anyway.”

  He looked up, straightened his shoulders. “Why not? You know how I feel about staying in Belle Haven. It’s a dangerous place to be. I don’t want to lose the people I love. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Then where’s my house? Didn’t you build one for me?” She peered into the woods. “Or did you think I’d move in here, with you?” She looked at him. “Or don’t I count as one of the people you love anymore?”

  “Don’t do that,” he said. There was more anger on his face than she’d seen there in a long time. “Don’t you dare do that. You’ve kept me at arm’s length for weeks now. You’ve tried to make me feel how you feel, and I can’t and I won’t. Not anymore. And if I lose you in the process, then I lose you.” He stopped to breathe. “But don’t you dare suggest that I’m the one who’s become hardhearted. That’s you.” He nearly drove her back a step with his fury. “Not me.”

  They stared at each other, Rachel trying to remember what she’d meant to say, Joe calming himself by degrees.

  “If you knew how I would feel about all this, why did you bring me along?” she said.

  Joe rubbed the back of his neck, shook his head. “I didn’t know for sure,” he said, unable to look at her. “I hoped after you saw this farm, you’d want to live here too. Near me. But on your own.” He met her eye. “I di
dn’t build you a house because you can afford to build your own house and I knew you’d want to be the one to do it.”

  “Don’t tell me this has anything to do with money. If it was about money, you wouldn’t have brought Earl and Mag up here. They’d be okay on their own. You’d have brought people like the Millers who live down by the tracks. I don’t see them here, but they’re the ones who need the most help.”

  “You’re right,” Joe said, a little of his anger returning. “It’s not only about money. I’m not doing this just to help people. I’m doing it for them and me both. I chose people who get along well with one another, who are already friends and will look after one another. People I care about. Some of them need more help than others. I could afford to help them all, so I did. And if I’ve annoyed you in the process, I’m sorry.”

  “Annoyed? You think I’m annoyed?” she said. “I am annoyed by people who let their dogs shit where I walk. By slow drivers in the fast lane. I am annoyed by people who give little girls toy ironing boards for Christmas. I am not annoyed by what you have done. I am disgusted.” She waved her arm at the trees. “By the way you have taken my friends and the only family I’ve got and my entire life and tried to make them all yours.” She began to back down the path through the trees. “You don’t like your life anymore, so you help yourself to mine. Buy people some houses, and they’re friends for life. You spend a whole year building this place, and you keep it a secret. From me.” She hit her chest with her hand. “From me! How could you do that? You know I’d do anything to keep Belle Haven from falling apart, but things have gotten to be too much for me. And now you’re pushing them faster. You’re making it so much harder.

  “I trusted you,” she said. And she turned away, walked off down the path and onto the lane, heading for the van.

  Joe stood alone outside his cabin and watched her moving through the woods until he could no longer see her. Then he sat down in the leaves and put his face into his hands and did not move until he heard Rusty calling his name.

  Chapter 44

  There was no one in the lane, but as Rachel paced the length of it she saw her friends through the trees and was amazed by the ease and immediacy of their surrender. Earl and Mag were still circling their house, their faces serious but pleased, first one pointing up at the chimney, then the other at how the sunlight struck a window, as if they were saluting the house and all its singular merits. But it was Angela who stopped Rachel in her tracks, for she was lying full length in a bed of pine needles, their barbs weathered blunt, her eyes closed, her hands resting easily on her belly. She seemed to be smiling.

  Rachel turned away and walked out of the woods. She walked past the van, through a field of long grass, and up over a rise.

  Here, hidden from the woods where Joe had built his houses, was another house. It was big, sound, freshly painted, well kept. A vegetable garden to one side still had tomatoes, cabbages, a pumpkin or two, some Indian corn. On the other side of the house a few horses grazed in a fenced pasture. They were racers, lean and shapely.

  She walked up to the fence and called to the horses. They ignored her so completely that she blushed.

  Her head hurt. She felt as if she might throw up. Her toes were clenched so tightly that they strained the seams of her shoes. Everything had gone so wrong. What was she supposed to do now? There were things in those woods that Rachel had not reckoned on. No matter what she did, what she said, she would do some wrong, commit some injustice.

  She had been unkind to Joe and it had come easy. She had not felt the slightest hesitation, no inclination at all to choose her words or soften them.

  She cursed softly and smacked the top rail of the fence with the flat of her hand, but the horses did not spare her a glance. One of them straightened its legs and shook itself all over. Its mane was like a woman’s hair.

  Rachel suddenly became aware that there was an old man walking toward her along the fence. “Never mind them,” he said, stopping next to her. “They play hard to get ’less you feed ’em.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rachel said, stepping back from the fence. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “No intrusion.” The man put out his hand. It was like wood. “Denver Simms.”

  “Rachel Hearn.”

  “Nice name, Rachel.”

  “Denver, too.”

  He looked at her closely. “You going to be one of our new neighbors?”

  She looked away, toward the horses. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. I just came along for the ride.”

  He tipped his head toward the animals. “You like horses?”

  “To look at.”

  “Ah, well, these are fine for that. Even better for riding. Fast.” He hissed through his teeth, skimmed the air with his hand. “Smart, too.”

  “You breed them?”

  “Did. Raced them, too. Trained them. Mine, other folks’. World’s finest way to make a living.”

  “But you’ve sold your land.”

  “Oh, well. Ada, my wife, and I are getting on, and my son, Steven”—he rubbed the bridge of his nose—“well, he didn’t really take to it. So, he’s an architect and that’s what he’s good at so that’s what he ought to do. And I’m proud of him, which is not to say I don’t wish it were otherwise.”

  Rachel glanced back toward the van, but it was hidden on the other side of the rise.

  “You nervous they’re going to leave you behind?”

  “No,” she said. “They’ll wait for me.”

  “They like the houses Christopher built for them?” Denver leaned toward her slightly, smiling, eyebrows lifting, pleased.

  The Christopher had thrown her for a moment. Finally, “I guess,” she said. Shrugged. Bit her lip.

  “I’ll tell you, Ada and I are very happy with the whole arrangement. We had plenty of offers from developers wanting to clear out all the trees and build a hundred look-alikes on our land. But I don’t hold no truck with developers. Christopher, he’s a different sort. He told us what he wanted to do, said we could keep these few acres, promised us there’d be only a few houses and the trees would nearly all stay. We said yes, just like that. And when he said he wanted to live in that old cabin in the woods, we approved. We understand about these things, Ada and I.”

  “So do I,” Rachel said.

  “But the thing that really sold us was the way the horses took to him. He walked up to the fence, about where we are now, and he made a little kiss sound, and they came ambling over, blowing, and stood still for him. They don’t often take to strangers that way, not these horses. So if we needed a clincher, that was it.”

  Rachel tried to picture Joe—Christopher—to picture him with the horses, but she kept shying away from the thought.

  “Well, I guess I’d better get on back to the van before they come looking for me.”

  “All right,” he said, putting out his hand once more. “It was nice to meet you, Rachel. I hope we’ll be seeing you again.”

  She liked the way he kept saying “we,” as if his wife were never truly absent.

  “It was nice to meet you, too,” she replied. “Take care of your horses.”

  “You can count on that,” he said, and she turned away.

  On her way back toward the van, Rachel felt her fury resurfacing, but it was a pervasive, chaotic anger that seemed to have too many sources, too many targets, to contemplate. It exhausted her, made her feel truly desperate. And so she forced it down and thought, instead, of horses and of Denver’s wayward son.

  She was tempted to give up, give in, and not to mind that the people she had lived her life with had chosen to go their ways, too. But in the face of this temptation came a new resolve to resist any plot that was not her own. “I am not resigned,” she said as she came over the rise and saw the van waiting below.

  Chapter 45

  October 18, ’83

  Dear Rachel,

  I may not see you for a while. There’s really no rea
son for me to go down into town anymore. I can’t stand the sight of the bulldozers, I can’t stand to be bothered by the reporters. I’ll go down to see Angela and Rusty, help them move out, help everybody move out if they need help, but most of the time I’ll be in Rusty’s tree house, with your permission. It’s on your land, I know, but I hope you won’t mind that I’m out here. I won’t bother you. I’ll climb up over the hill, won’t come through your yard.

  But that’s not why I’m writing.

  I’m writing to say that there’s land for you up on that farm if you want it. Always has been. I picked out a beautiful place alongside a stream. There’s an old stand of holly trees nearby. Quite rare, really. When I was walking the farm, trying to picture where everything would go, I thought you might like that place, so I set it aside, had a well dug, brought the power lines out that far. Everything's ready whenever you want it. But maybe you won’t.

  I think I understand how you feel, at least a little bit. Like I betrayed you, took your friends away. Nonsense, really, but I can still understand you feeling that way for now. Get over it quickly. Remind yourself that I love you. You know I do. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

  I hope this letter makes you truly furious. I hope you get so mad that you come storming out here and fight it out with me. Maybe then I’ll be able to explain things to you. Though I shouldn’t have to.

  I don’t believe in utopias and I certainly haven’t tried to create one. But I had more money than anyone has any right to have, and so I spent it. It’s as simple as that.

  It occurs to me that maybe you had a similar plan in mind, a way to put your own money to good use. Did I steal your thunder? Well, I’m fond of thunder, too. Fire, no. You can keep your fire.

  I’ll be leaving Belle Haven whenever you’re ready. You may not want me with you and I’ll stay far enough away. But I won’t leave you here alone. I’ll be in the tree house if you need me.