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How Fire Runs

Page 17

by Charles Dodd White


  “Hey, daydreamer. You done or what?”

  “Yeah,” Harrison told him. “Let’s head on.”

  When they got back to the compound Delilah was down in the kitchen helping put some dishes away. She didn’t stop when he came up and placed his hands on her shoulders. For an instant it seemed as though she flinched.

  “There ain’t any leftovers,” she said.

  “That’s okay. I can make a sandwich.”

  She toweled and racked the plates.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  Despite this, the tightened muscles in her neck seemed on the verge of snapping.

  “Well, I’m gonna grab a shower.”

  “You do what you need to.”

  WHEN HE lay down to sleep that night she was quiet beside him, though he could sense by her breathing that her mind was restless. After a while she said his name. When he didn’t answer, she slipped from her side of the bed and dressed by the dim light of the closet. She left without making any noise. It was easier for him to lose himself in sleep once she was gone.

  He woke to an empty bed when it was just shy of dawn. He sat there and smoked a couple of cigarettes waiting for her to turn up. When she didn’t, he got dressed and left the compound without telling anyone.

  It was still early by the time he turned off for Knoxville, so he stopped at the convenience store and bought a couple of coffees, loaded them up with the cream and sugar he knew Emmanuel liked. Harrison could drink coffee any way it was brought to him, but it pleased him to match Emmanuel, made it feel like a kind of rite to fold his life into another’s.

  It was just eight o’clock by the time he stood on the stoop waiting to be let inside. He knew Emmanuel would be up, so he didn’t hesitate to knock. The early morning was when he always got started on his painting. Harrison had planned to come out here and watch him work for a while. Not talk, just sit there and absorb the atmosphere of Emmanuel and what he tried to illustrate with his pictures. Seeing him like that was its own kind of drug.

  He tapped at the door again, surprised that the lights in the front room weren’t on. He peered through the window and saw only lamplight in the back bedroom. Then slow movement.

  When Emmanuel came to the door his eyes were red.

  “Oh, honey,” he said, brought him inside, and collapsed his body against Harrison.

  Harrison simply held him and waited.

  “It’s my daddy,” Emmanuel said after a while through tears. “The home called. He had a stroke last night. He was gone before the ambulance had time to get there.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  They sat together on the couch. Harrison pulled him to his chest and let him tell him what he could. He knew that Emmanuel and his father had been estranged for several years, but that seemed to fall away now and the loss was sharp. Emmanuel spoke of regrets and guilt and love and Harrison did his best to soothe him, though he could see that his words struggled to grab hold.

  “I’m going to try and cook something.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Emmanuel told him.

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

  He went in and turned the electric burner on under a skillet and set the oven to broil. The refrigerator was largely bare, but there were still a half dozen eggs and a block of cheddar cheese. A loaf of white bread on the counter. He pinched a couple of slices from the top and slid them into the oven. He got a bowl from the cupboard, cracked in four of the eggs and began to whisk them with a fork. Thin shavings of cheese after that. The slurry splashed into the skillet with a hiss. As it thickened he turned the setting folds and scooped them onto a plate. He placed the toast on the side and carried it all out.

  Emmanuel took the plate and ate a few placating bites before setting it on the coffee table. Harrison did not try to urge him beyond that. They sat there and watched the morning light comb through the blinds. Harrison drank both coffees, not bothering to heat the second one when it had cooled.

  “Would you let me take you somewhere?” Harrison asked.

  Emmanuel smiled faintly. “Okay. Let me get dressed.”

  Harrison cleaned the kitchen while Emmanuel pulled himself together. There wasn’t much to do. Emmanuel had always kept just what he needed. No surplus to confuse the method of matching one day to the next. As Harrison worked he thought about the few times he’d been around Emmanuel’s father. He had been a quiet but burdened man, as if silence concentrated his distaste for the larger world. That sharp look he would turn on someone he saw as a threat. Eyes like gunsights. Harrison remembered coming to the house and how that man had known what he was, what his son was too, and how he’d never seen a clearer expression of hate.

  “Is this supposed to be a secret, where you’re taking me?”

  Emmanuel was dressed. He had showered and looked better.

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  “No, that’s fine. I don’t mind a surprise.”

  They stopped at the grocery store for a few things to take on a picnic. Hard cheese, a salami, a baguette and some wine and cigarettes. Harrison packed it all in a backpack and set it behind the driver’s seat. Once back on the road they turned west on the interstate, cleared the in-town traffic and before long they were on the slow grade up to the Cumberland Plateau, Knoxville sinking behind them like a gravity they’d just escaped. The radio signal soon weakened and Harrison had to shut it off, but the silence was easy and clarifying, and neither of them wanted to intrude with talk.

  He drove for an hour and exited near Crossville, took secondary roads according to directions he’d scratched on a scrap of ruled paper. Finally they came to a gravel road that terminated with a locked gate and a NO TRESPASSING sign.

  “Jay, are you sure you’re got this right? It doesn’t appear terribly inviting.”

  “Yeah, it’s okay. Come on.”

  He slung the backpack over one shoulder and bent through an opening in the gate. As he walked the contents of the bag softly clinked. The gravel eventually gave out into a rutted dirt track that curved through a frowsy meadow. The structure when it appeared seemed to grow organically out of the banks of trees, an unlikely bulk that spanned the enormous arms of branches, enclosing entire trunks. Story after story of the building wound upward, and at the top a cupola surmounted the uppermost tier of leaves. A sign hung above the entrance. THE MINISTER’S TREEHOUSE.

  “What in the world?” Emmanuel exclaimed.

  Harrison turned his head over his shoulder, smiled.

  “I thought you’d like it.”

  “You’re right, I do. If I knew what it was.”

  “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  They stepped through a passageway of closely joined tongue-in-groove boards. As they went forward, occasional panes of stained-glass windows cast cool light across them like bursts of water. Further on a series of carvings, men and women with hands raised in supplication, their faces impassive and medieval. From there the interior opened into a vast and winding space. Spray-painted obscenities vied with Bible verses arranged along the walls like cardinal directions. They paused to read a few and then went on, climbed the staircase to the landing.

  As they reached the next level Harrison told Emmanuel what this place was. A man’s eccentric aim to build the world’s largest treehouse because it had been something he’d dreamed, something he’d attributed to the voice of God Himself. So he had come out and done it with his own hands, devised the coursing woodwork and tooled the details as an attempt to achieve physical prayer. But the old man hadn’t bothered with the proper permits for public tours of the place and it had to be shut off from the outside world. Still, no one bothered to enforce the prohibition. If you were willing to take the risk of entering a building without any official maintenance, the law wasn’t going to stop you. It had gotten to be a bit of a myth when Harrison was in prison. A legend of this sacred place up in the trees that spread between the men regardless o
f their group allegiance or loyalty inside. He had promised himself that he would one day find it, see if it held the meaning he hoped it might.

  “It’s amazing,” Emmanuel said, his hand drifting over the bend of an oak trunk. It twisted and wormed its way through the overhead ceiling.

  They climbed to the next story and then one more until they could enter the cupola and see over the verdant tree line. The soft blue distance of the land without the problem of people inside it.

  “Here, let’s eat something,” Harrison said, knelt on the floor and spread the things he’d brought along. He snapped open his pocket blade and passed it over the meat and cheese until he had several stacks. They ate and wiped their hands along the seams of their pants. They opened the wine and drank from the bottle, passed it between them.

  “I’m not much for church. But I do have to admit this is pretty alright.”

  “Yeah, I kind of think so too. You want a cigarette?”

  “No, you go ahead though.”

  Harrison lit a cigarette. The light breeze unspooled the smoke.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something,” he said.

  “Talk then.”

  “I wanted to ask if you might be willing to pull up roots. Shuffle down the road a ways where we might could be something on our own.”

  Emmanuel turned the wine bottle in his hands.

  “Plan like that takes money.”

  “Hell, I can get money.”

  “Is it that easy?”

  “It can be.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. You’re determined to get yourself thrown back in jail, is that it?”

  “The place I could get it from wouldn’t bother with jail.”

  “Get yourself killed then? That’s your plan?”

  “No, not if I don’t get caught.”

  “Harrison, I sometimes wonder.”

  “Wonder what?”

  “If you’re a born fool or if you’ve just spent a hell of a long time studying it.”

  Emmanuel turned up the wine and gulped it to the finish. He set the bottle down and took a few steps toward the overlook. He wobbled a little and had to steady himself against the railing. Harrison placed his hand on his back, which he didn’t seem to mind.

  “It’s still just talk, you know?”

  “No,” Emmanuel said. “It’s never just that.”

  24

  THE HOUSE WAS DARK SAVE FOR THE BLUE GLOW OF A RUNNING television. Kyle struck the door panel three times hard with the flat of his hand, waited as he heard the curses and fumbling of the man within. The door yawned open on a bedraggled figure in sweatpants and T-shirt with a distended neck. It was Peter Carson.

  “I ought to blow you to kingdom come where you stand,” Carson said.

  “We need to talk.”

  “I don’t have a goddamn word to say to you.”

  “Well, you need to listen then. And it might take a minute, so we can either stand out here while it gets done with you looking like you’re about to pass out or we can sit in there where you’re closer to your pain pills.”

  “Goddamn you,” Carson said, though he limped back to the couch, left the door cracked as he went.

  Kyle followed, cast a quick glance through the house. The kitchen sink cluttered, the living room carpet littered. Laura’s absence in the place was as clear as if it had been written on the walls. Carson lunged for the couch, stuck a longneck beer bottle to his mouth. Half a dozen other spent bottles lined the edge of the coffee table.

  Carson smiled.

  “I’d offer you one, but I don’t want to.”

  Kyle cleared a place in a recliner and sat down.

  “You mind putting that thing on mute so you can hear me?”

  He pointed the remote and turned the volume down a few notches, the gibbering voices of Naked and Afraid still audible.

  “You’ve got balls, I’ll hand you that, Pettus. Run up on a man in his own house after you shot him in cold blood. Course, you don’t have much problem taking what you want from my house, do you?”

  “I’m not here to get a history lesson.”

  “Of course not. There’d be nothing you’d gain by that, would there?”

  “Shut up so you can hear what I’ve come to tell you.”

  Carson fumed but kept his mouth closed.

  “Now you can run whatever bullshit game you have in mind with this lawyer saying he’s going to sue me all you want. What it comes down to is that you broke into my house in the middle of the night. There’s not a jury in the state that’s going to see shooting you as anything other than justifiable. But if you want to throw your money away, that’s your own business. What I do want you to understand, though, is that this problem between us needs to be done. That includes leaving Laura alone.”

  “This sonofabitch means to tell me how I am with my own wife.”

  “You’re goddamn right I do. You don’t come near her. Not at my house and not at her work. You do that and it won’t be the law that’s your problem, you understand me?”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Fucking A it is. I’ve already put one hole in you. It’s not much to do it again.”

  “Get the hell out here.”

  “You bet. Enjoy your bare-assed reality show.”

  When Kyle got back out to the truck he sat there until his nerves calmed. After a while he pulled the pistol from under his shirttail and put it in the glove box before he cranked the truck and drove back home.

  THE NEXT morning Laura asked if he thought things were settled.

  “I imagine you know better than me, don’t you?”

  She turned the coffee cup with the tips of her fingers.

  “I don’t think he’s dangerous, no.”

  “I can always ride by the library and check in if you need me to.”

  “No, it’ll be okay. I’ve got a phone, you know.”

  He bent and kissed her, told her to make sure everything was locked up before she left, and went on to set up for the weekly farmers market.

  By the time he had the tent up it was already hot. On the drive over he’d heard the local news talking about a wildfire in Watauga County, just over the North Carolina state line. The smoke had drifted down the valley and even here in the shadow of Roan Mountain he could smell it, see the faint shadow of smoke in the sky. The girls from the organic farm said it was bad the way they had come, a couple of roads shut down for lack of visibility.

  Business sputtered throughout most of the morning. It was a pattern that seemed to happen toward the end of the summer before the last little flurry of tourist traffic in the week leading up to Labor Day. He had decided to pack up early and had just started taking up the guyline stakes when Frank Farmer pulled up in his work truck.

  “I should look into running a nursery. You folks keep an awful short workday.”

  “Hey, Frank.”

  “Hey yourself.”

  He came forward, peered at the rosemary and lavender, a row of orchids.

  “You looking for something in particular?”

  “I could take some of those flowers there,” he said, pointed. “Keep the wife happy.”

  “You do something that needs flowers to make it better?”

  Frank smiled, passed a palm across his chin stubble.

  “Not yet, I haven’t. Though I’m likely to.”

  “Premeditated mischief, huh? Sounds like a sunflower problem to me.”

  Frank turned a few pots, looked the flowers over from several angles, as if checking them for flawed manufacture.

  “You hear the radio this morning?” Frank asked. “The local station?”

  “Afraid not. I prefer a little bluegrass in the morning to that bullshit.”

  “Bullshit is a pretty good word for it. They had that man, that Gavin Noon on there, talking about the special election. Taking calls from the public. Talked about his campaign and how it had nothing at all to do with being a white man. Said it was about standing for the
principles that made this country what it was. You know, I sat there listening to him, and I thought to myself, this man actually believes the words that are coming out of his mouth. And that made me realize, he thinks he’s doing right, he’s out there believing this mess he spreads as sure as the sun comes up in the morning and sets at night.”

  Kyle said nothing, sensed that Farmer wanted him to merely listen.

  “You need some help packing these things up?”

  “I could use a hand if you don’t mind.”

  They worked swiftly, struck everything down and loaded it into the back compartments of Kyle’s truck. Seeing that business appeared done for the day, the girls from the organic farm decided to pack it in too. They shouted good-bye as they turned out of the lot and onto the highway just as Kyle and Farmer were finishing up.

  “I see why you set up out here,” Farmer said, smiled as he waved at the girls.

  “Don’t you start poaching on my territory. A man figures out the important things in life, and he’s likely to get possessive.”

  They shared a laugh.

  “I’ll tell you something, Kyle. I’m about to say something and I think it might be the dumbest damn thing I can say, but I don’t think there’s any way around it.”

  “What is it they say in the church house? Speak your truth, brother.”

  Farmer shook his head, toed the ground like he was looking for a foothold.

  “If I was to agree to what you and your commissioner buddies were wanting me to do. If I was fool enough to commit myself to something I have every reason to avoid. If that were to happen, I’d expect the men who asked me to do it to make damn sure they were there beside me trying to make it happen because I’m going to tell you right now, I’m not interested in being some kind of goddamn symbol that ends up at the end of the day without a pot to piss in. I’m not interested in being your token, you hearing me?”

 

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