“Maybe a little something to drink too?”
“Maybe,” he said, kissed her.
Frank went downstairs with him and they got a coffee and sat watching through the glass front where a news van from Knoxville was setting up for a live broadcast. The reporter had a big backdrop of burnt mountains behind him.
Kyle told him about Gerald. Told him the whole story of how they’d gotten out and what it had cost.
“I liked him,” Frank said. He sipped his coffee. “He was about as good a man as he could be.”
“Yeah, I guess so. How’s Turner?” Kyle asked, felt something uneasy settle between them. Couldn’t exactly say why. Some kind of change in the emotional air.
“Doctor said he should be able to check out tomorrow. Said there’s a lot of folks that need his attention more than Turner does. He did a lot out there. We got to some people before that mess up there with his aunt and uncle. I think we helped.”
“You think? Hell, Frank, from what I’ve heard people are calling you a hero.”
Frank watched the television reporter run through his sound checks. He had his cell phone out and was checking how his hair looked. The cameraman began to count him in.
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. I think heroes are supposed to be loved, don’t you, Pettus? This place doesn’t love me. Doesn’t love me or my wife and girls. There might be a few individuals who care, but the world is a whole lot bigger than individuals. Bigger than people who like you because they recognize your name in the newspaper or hear your voice on the radio. I’m convenient for this place, but being convenient means you’re just a thing.”
Kyle stirred his coffee for a moment to let off some of the heat.
“I’d like to think that’s only part of the truth, Frank. I’d like to think we did something to save a little bit of goodness.”
“I know you think that,” Frank said, and when he smiled, this time it was different. “We have to live with belief in something, don’t we?”
Frank stood, said he had to see to some concerns down at the courthouse. He told Kyle to finish his coffee. There was nothing that needed to be done that wouldn’t wait until tomorrow.
“Unless you’re a representative of the people?” Kyle asked.
“Something like that. Tell your woman in there that gift card for clothes will be in the mail. Take care of the both of you. People like you two make me think better of the world.”
After Frank left someone switched on the television to the news and Kyle watched as the man standing outside appeared on the screen. There was a strangeness to it that he couldn’t quite explain. He talked about the fire and what it had done, what had been left, and yet it was as though it happened on an alien planet, though everything was there just the other side of the window.
He walked down the road to a wine store and picked out a couple of bottles to take back to the room. By the time he got back he found Laura asleep. He sat on the edge of the bed and placed his hand against the curve of her neck. She didn’t shift. He wanted to go on sitting there with her like that until they were old and addled. Surely, that meant something good. He stepped softly to the kitchen and uncorked a bottle, stood by the window and its pale light and drank with what he hoped was contentment. If nothing else, it was thirst.
The next day, Kyle was able to rent a car. Went to Johnson City for clothes and some tools they might need, then drove out to his house to check the damage. Laura rode with him. They had to stop twice on the way up the drive to chainsaw fallen trees that blocked the path, but the damage to Kyle’s property was less than he had expected. So many others had lost their homes, but only one side of his house had caught fire. Part of the roof would need to be repaired, but it was nothing he couldn’t remedy himself. Might even provide a chance to build an addition, give Laura a project she could develop alongside him.
One loss was the bottom greenhouse. Most of the plants inside were dead, though some of the seedlings survived. He could raise those up, and in time they could reforest some of what had been lost. He knew the boys from the veterans group would be willing to get out and get their hands dirty, help bring back the trees. They, more than most, understood what it meant to cultivate a garden from what had been fire. He had never been happy with the location of the greenhouse anyhow. In the late summer it didn’t get enough sun. There was a flat patch of ground above the house that would suit growing things better. That would be the best place to rebuild.
“Do you feel that?” she asked him. “The ground?”
He knelt. It rose to his skin and went through his body.
“It’s still warm,” he said. He swiped his finger through the ash, and it felt as though he touched something that would be hard to explain, the way that religion can be. Even in front of her, he felt embarrassed. Still, he didn’t try to wipe away the warm ash.
They decided to stay on at the hotel through the end of the week while people came out to the house to assess the damage. They ate dinner in town, not bothering with who might see them together or what people might say. But most of the time they remained in the room to content themselves with the comfort of one another, a peaceable and sincere country fit for only two.
Acknowledgments
I want to express my gratitude to Rick Huard for seeing this book through its birth pangs, Nancy Basmajian for holding its feet to the fire, and Stephanie Williams for permitting it to keep such excellent company with the Swallow Press list. To Beth Pratt, Sally Welch, Jeff Kallet, and Laura Andre my esteem and thanks.
I refer readers to Chistopher K. Walker and Michael Beach Nichols’ harrowing documentary Welcome to Leith for insight into how real and threatening the blight of White Supremacy is in today’s rural America.
This book is because of A., E., and I.
How Fire Runs Page 27