Those Who Favor Fire

by Lauren Wolk

  Rachel waited, through those last days, for some sort of peace to descend. She waited for a pardon. When she sensed the image of Mary Beth fading a little, she thought that the beginning of forgiveness had come. But while the torment that spoiled her waking hours abated, it divided and multiplied in her dreams as if it had a life of its own.

  As Mary Beth let go of Rusty’s foot, the dirt parted beneath her and she slid down through it. It closed above her head as she passed. The hole was not like a tunnel, open, stable. It was simply a soft vein of earth. It was very, very hot in the hole, but Mary Beth could no longer feel the heat. There was only stale, exhausted air in her lungs. There was an impossible interval between the last beats of her stubborn heart. She was dying quickly.

  Far below the surface of the earth, Mary Beth died, but her body kept moving. It slid faster and faster now, the earth slick and fire-hot. When she hit the deep bed of red coals, it consumed her. Her body moved the way a leaf turns and struggles as it burns. And then, as her body was reduced to its most resilient elements, it flared suddenly as if the fire had finally reached her volatile core and a blast of flame shot back upward. It split the dirt, erupted through the surface where Rachel stood, looking for signs of life, and caught her full in the face. It cauterized her eyes, bloodied her skin, consumed every hair on her head as if it were a fragile wick. But the fire did not knock her back. It spun her around and wrapped her up, drew her toward the hole and then down into it, down through the dirt, back down to the deep fire and the remnants of Mary Beth Sanderson. Only then did it let her go.

  Rachel did not awaken herself from the dream. Her instinct for self-preservation was no longer any match for her regret. She permitted the dream to run its course. Then she crawled out of her bed and made her way from the house to the old apple tree where she had meant her parents to be interred. Finally, everything awful had come to pass. Finally, she said, “I am resigned.”

  Chapter 52

  Rachel was cold. The huge willow had shed its leaves and gave her no protection. She sat in it and looked out through the thin branches that hung down all around her, nearly trailing on the ground. She felt like a bird in a cage.

  Children were coming: ghosts, fairies, monsters. As they edged closer to the willow, she cackled and they jumped. “I’ll eat you up, my little pretties,” she said, showering them with licorice whips and sour balls.

  She had thought this would be good for her, to sit in this tree and remember. She had hoped it would tie things off, heal her up, and send her away unencumbered. But, sitting in the tree, cold and very much alone, she realized that her departure had already begun and that she was impatient for its conclusion.

  She climbed carefully out of the tree, snagging her witch’s dress, and began to walk back through town toward her hill. She walked past all the empty lots, past the boreholes, past Angela’s and Earl’s, past the place where the Schooner had gone down and Pal had died, toward the bridge where Joe was patiently waiting for her to be done.

  Chapter 53

  Rachel Elizabeth Hearn, who had always wanted to be called Suzanne, after her mother, and who loved her own eyes, which were her father’s, and who had made up her mind to save the money they’d left her so that she could someday, maybe, buy back some of the town she was leaving, looked down from her hill and knew that she would never come back here again.

  “I want to leave now, quickly,” she said to Joe, taking the hammer out of his hand and throwing it into the back of her truck. It was hard for her to climb into the cab without looking back at her house, but when they had nailed up the last board she had turned her back, walked away carefully, had not once looked at the house and would not look at it now.

  “Would you go back and lock the front door for me?” she asked from behind the wheel, holding the key out through the window.

  So Joe went back to lock the front door, then climbed into the truck with her. As she drove down the hill, faster than she should, tears dripping off her jaw, Joe put the key into her purse. Then he reached into his pocket and took out the opal he’d been carrying with him for more than three years now. He held it low in his palm, looking at it, turning it slowly so that it flickered, and then put it, too, into her small bag.

  When they reached the farm, Rachel helped him carry his things through the woods to his cabin. He didn’t have much. Only a few things that people had given him as they’d left town for good. Bits of wood for him to carve. Bits of Belle Haven.

  “This is a wonderful cabin,” Rachel said, standing just inside the door. He had furnished it with simple, comfortable things. The floor was bare, the walls plain.

  “I only spent a couple of nights here,” he said, “when I was up checking on how the houses were coming along.” He put down the things he was holding. “It belonged to one of the horse trainers,” he said, realizing suddenly that he’d told her this before. “The main farmhouse is on past where the lane turns off to come into these woods, over a rise and out of sight. The people who raised horses here still live there. They wanted to sell everything except the house and a couple of acres that it sits on. Didn’t think they’d ever find a buyer who would agree to let them stay. But I didn’t mind.”

  He realized that he was talking but not really saying anything, so he took the things out of her arms and put them aside. “Do you want to see the place I had chosen for you?” he asked.

  They walked back through the woods to the lane and along it, around a bend to where it ended in grass, then beyond that and across a small meadow surrounded by trees. Along the far edge of the meadow there was a narrow stream. The trees were brilliant, the grass still very green.

  “And if I came back here someday, would it still be here, just like this?”

  He looked straight at her. “You ask a lot,” he said.

  “You seem to have a lot to give,” she replied.

  “It will still be here. But don’t ever make me a promise you can’t keep.”

  Afterward, they went to say good-bye to Angela and Rusty, Dolly, Earl, everyone she could find.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” he asked when they reached the truck.

  “Well, west. That’s all I know at the moment. Except that I made myself a promise once, right before my parents died, to go places. I don’t know which ones. I suppose I’ll know them when I get there.”

  “I understand, probably better than you think.”

  He handed her into the truck and kissed her through the window, not wanting to hold her, afraid if he did he would not be able to let her go.

  January 14

  San Francisco

  Dear Kit,

  Having you with me for Christmas was wonderful. Much nicer than that August, really, when we were both in pretty bad shape. I only wish you could have stayed longer. But, as it turns out, you left just in time. Rachel arrived here the very next day.

  I didn’t know she was coming. She just knocked on my door that morning, explained who she was, and said she really just wanted to meet me. She was on her way to Mendocino.

  I gave her some lunch and asked her to stay for a day or two. She stayed for a week. We talked a lot about you, a lot about all of us, really. She told me so many things about you that I didn’t know. I felt as if we were talking about two different people.

  I’m afraid I can’t tell you what her plans are … and I will let her be the one to tell you, when she’s ready, about the turns her life has taken. But I can assure you that she is all right, she is taking good care of herself, and she is doing all the sorts of things that I would be doing if I were her.

  She spent Thanksgiving in Albuquerque, Christmas on the Baja, New Year’s in Carmel. She doesn’t know where she’ll go after Mendocino, but she probably won’t go on to Alaska as she had thought she might. She’s afraid of bears, she said.

  I took her over to a shop in Sausalito to look at paintings and pots and other artsy stuff. All very nice. We walked in, she looked around, saw a shelf on the wall fifte
en feet away and knew, immediately, that she was looking at your carvings. It really shook her when she turned one over and found “Christopher Barrows” on the bottom. After a while she turned to me and said, “A good way to make a living.”

  The next day, whenever we talked about you, she practiced calling you Christopher, or Kit, as I still do. But I could tell that she was having trouble, as if it was unnatural to call you anything but Joe. Of course it would be. At least for a while. I told her that I thought she should just keep on thinking of you as Joe and, for that matter, calling you Joe.

  “I don’t plan on writing to him or calling him,” she said, “so I guess it’s a moot point.” She hates writing letters, as you do, and I think she’d rather not call you because telephones can be such hideous, dangerous devices.

  I wasn’t going to tell you all this. I was afraid you’d just be miserable, knowing she was here but not knowing where she’s gone. But I wanted you to know she is all right. Homesick, perhaps, but on the mend.

  Let me know if you hear from her, will you?

  Love,

  Holly

  In early March, Joe opened his door, expecting Rusty, and found a stranger on his doorstep.

  “My name is Andrew Harriman,” the man said, smiling, handing Joe a business card. “I’m here on behalf of my client, Miss Rachel Hearn. She seems to think that you have a lot for sale, and she would like to buy it.”

  “A lot? A lot of what?”

  Mr. Harriman chuckled. “A lot. A piece of land. A meadow near a stream. She said you would know what I’m talking about.” He made it sound like a question.

  “Well, I suppose I do,” Joe answered slowly. “How much is she offering?”

  “That’s what I asked her,” the man said, passing his hat from one hand to the other. “But she said to name your price.”

  Joe smiled. Mr. Harriman smiled back. Like all real estate brokers, he worked on commission.

  “Please come in, Mr. Harriman. Would you like some coffee? I just made some.”

  “Well, that would be nice.”

  Joe brought him a cup of coffee, a pot of sugar, one of cream.

  “I’ll take a dollar,” Joe said, leaning against the wall.

  “For the coffee?” Mr. Harriman said. He looked as if he thought he ought to be laughing but wasn’t quite sure.

  “For the land,” Joe said, the hair on his arms standing on end, his chest swollen. “The coffee’s on me.”

  Mr. Harriman wanted to believe that Joe was kidding, but in the end he saw how things were and agreed to handle the sale. “But I’ll have to charge you for my time,” he said. “You do understand that, don’t you? I don’t know if you’ve ever sold any land before, Mr. Barrows—”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “… but it is incumbent upon the vendor to pay the broker, to pay me.”

  “Miss Hearn will take care of your fee,” Joe said.

  “But I just explained—”

  “Don’t worry about it. She’ll be glad to.”

  Mr. Harriman frowned at Joe. “If you don’t have a lawyer, I can recommend one, but you’ll have to discuss fees with him directly.”

  “I have one.”

  “Then perhaps I should contact Miss Hearn before we discuss this further. In the future, can I reach you by telephone?”

  “Of course,” Joe said, writing his number on the back of Mr. Harriman’s business card. Mr. Harriman gave him a clean one and left.

  Well, how do you like them apples? Joe said to himself as he shut the door. He felt as he had that summer night when he’d called Mrs. Corrigan, searching for his sister, thinking that perhaps she was alive after all. He stood in his cabin, on the verge of rejoicing, trying desperately to find a way back toward the calm and reasonable state in which he had been living. But when he suddenly found a way back it displeased him and made him wish that he were a simpler, rasher sort of man.

  There was nothing left of Rachel’s house when Joe got there. Nothing more than black timbers and the stones of the cellar walls.

  “Didn’t expect to see you back here again.” Mendelson was walking up the drive. “Ever seen a house burned right down to the ground like that?”

  “I never have,” Joe replied, turning back toward the remains of Rachel’s beautiful house. Even the porch steps had burned. There was nothing at all left.

  “There have been other fires since you left,” Mendelson said. “Down in the town. Nobody hurt, but a few shook up enough to leave, even though they swore they never would. Things would have been a sight worse if we hadn’t razed the houses soon as they were abandoned.”

  “They weren’t abandoned.”

  “Right,” Mendelson said, shaking his head.

  “So what are you doing up here?”

  “I came up to see you, Joe. Actually, I wasn’t sure who I’d find here. Didn’t recognize the car. Figured I should have a look.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Well, because this fire was set and I’ve got enough trouble without having a firebug around. Reminds me of the trees got burned out by my place that time.”

  “This was set?”

  “Looks like it.”

  Joe stayed where he was for a long minute, staring at the last of Rachel’s home, then started off toward the woods beyond it.

  “So long,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.” Mendelson watched him go, turned, and headed back down the hill.

  The tree house was as Joe had left it, boarded up, sturdy and sound. He looked up into the branches of the tree, felt far removed from the charred wreckage of Rachel’s house, and breathed the air in deeply. The town below the hill had looked terrible, all torn up, no one on the streets. But the trees here were greening with the spring. There were birds in the branches. He was very sorry that he had come back.

  As he was leaving the woods, as he walked past a large pine that grew alongside the trail, Joe saw, in the deep moss beneath the tree, something shining. He knelt down and picked up a key. He held it in his hand for a while, his eyes vacant, and then put it back where he’d found it, but deep in the spongy moss where only someone who was looking for it would find it.

  Chapter 54

  By April Rachel owned the piece of meadowland that Joe had shown her before she had gone away. By May a small group of capable men had begun to build her a house. Joe often walked down the lane to watch them work, curious to see what she had instructed them to build for her. At first he thought it would be a house like the one she had left in Belle Haven, but this turned out to be a very different sort of house. She had chosen to build it at the top end of the meadow where the land sloped upward toward the sky. It clung to the slope and meandered down it, a low and spreading house, and Joe imagined that the rooms inside would be joined by stairs in couplets and crooked hallways. There were lots of windows, and, in the end, cedar shingles and places where gardens were meant to grow all around. The house reminded Joe of California houses, all wood, mated to the land.

  By September the house was finished. Joe spent some time walking around it, picking up stray nails and litter. Then he went home and carried back, pot by pot, the small bits of Belle Haven garden that Rachel had left with him. “Give these last ones to your neighbors,” she’d said. “Make sure Angela gets the lilac bush.” But he’d done no such thing.

  Early one morning he borrowed a shovel from Earl and planted the lilac, the roses, the huckleberries, and the columbine where he thought they’d do well, some of them nestled up alongside the house, some at the edge of the trees where they might strengthen and spread.

  Then he walked along where the back of the house nudged the woods. When he found a good, sound tree stump, he laid out the tools he’d brought with him and set to work, left a chipmunk to keep watch.

  It was dark by the time Joe finished, so he carried the empty pots home and put them in a shed behind the cabin. And then he waited.

  He had, indeed, received no word from Rachel—not a single
letter—and was, at first, hurt, angry, dismayed. But then he remembered that he himself had been the one to insist she make no promises she couldn’t be sure to keep.

  He was glad that he could not write to her. There were things that he wanted to tell her but knew should wait for her return. And there were things he was glad to be keeping from her: that Dolly had died in the spring, that Rusty still woke up screaming as many nights as not, that he himself had begun to feel the urge to start over, somewhere new.

  He did not understand his discontent, although he knew how much he missed Rachel and the place where he’d found her. He thought that he had learned how to be alone, unencumbered, settled. He had imagined that leaving Belle Haven, Rachel leaving him, would simply make him stronger. Sadder, perhaps, but stronger. Why then, even in the company of people he loved, even when he was sitting at Angela’s table, laughing, playing cards, Rusty learning how to play the guitar, Angela making soup and bread, the lamplight turning the dark windows to mirrors—why, then, did he feel the blood thinning in his veins?

  It had become Joe’s custom, on fair evenings, to sit in the clearing outside his cabin door and watch the day go down, listen to the dwindling noises of the birds and the crescendo of the sounds that belonged to the night: crickets in brisk chorus, awakening owls, small prowlers, and the like.

  One evening, opening his door, Joe was met by the sight of such a glorious sky that he nearly dropped to his knees. The sun had set, but the sky was still light and the thin clouds that stretched out across it were pink, orange, and radiant. There were also thunderheads piled up to the south, and these were, in places, gray as smoke, in others a startling white, and the sky behind them was the deepest possible blue, a nameless color, so beautiful it made his heart ache.

  Joe walked farther into the clearing with his head tipped back and looked at the sky, watched the clouds moving across it, and trembled with desire to see it whole, to see the sky unbordered by trees. He hurried along the path and out to the lane, slowed by tree roots, reluctant to lower his eyes, searching for a wider space between the trees. He nearly ran toward Rachel’s meadow, but even this broader clearing was not enough. He ran in one direction, then another, but everywhere he turned the trees reached too high. He felt like a lion pacing in a cage. He felt a terrible longing to be lifted straight up into the sky. He heard the thread of a whistle and, turning, saw a formation of ducks flying just above the trees, out across the meadow, black against the sky. To be up there with them, to be unanchored, seemed the greatest thing he could imagine just then. Ian, he thought, must have felt this way: not just once, on a rare September evening, but for all of his life. And to have settled for a life along the land … even more, to have found a way to be happy there, seemed to Joe a nearly impossible accomplishment.