by Tommy Hays
Grover lay there, thinking that one over. After a while, he said, “Clay?”
He didn’t answer. Grover got out of bed and leaned over him. He was already asleep. Grover gave him a little shake, but he groaned and turned over. Grover climbed back into bed, blowing the candle out on his dresser.
He heard laughter in the living room. Jessie had gone home, but their father and Leila had stayed up. As his eyes grew used to the dark, Grover could see outside his window how the bamboo swayed in the wind. He listened to the rustling for a while. Was it the wind? Or was someone outside? Or some thing? In this weather? His heart stopped when a masked face hovered in the window, looking in. He almost cried out. It took a minute to see that the face belonged to a raccoon. Maybe the fall of the great tree had disturbed his nest. With paws pressed against the glass, the raccoon boldly studied Grover’s room, then seeming satisfied, lumbered back into the bamboo.
Grover woke late in the night. He’d heard something. He didn’t see the raccoon in the window. Clay quietly snored. Grover pressed the little light on his watch that showed the time. One in the morning. He heard the creak of floorboards. Grover pulled on his pants and walked out to the living room. The main room was still pretty warm. Their father had filled the woodstove and turned the damper down.
He heard the front door shut. Looking out the window, he saw Emma Lee in her coat, walking down their walk. Grover grabbed his coat and went out the front door, careful to shut it quietly behind him.
“Hey, Emma Lee!” he called.
Emma Lee turned around and hissed, “You’re going to wake them up!”
“Where you going?” he whispered.
“I have something I need to do.”
“Can I come?”
“Go back inside before somebody misses us,” she said.
The wind had stopped. A full moon was out, showing the great tree sprawled across the road.
“I’ll be back soon,” she said.
“Why can’t I go with you, then?”
“Keep your voice down,” she said.
Emma Lee’s house was pitch-black dark. Grover still had the flashlights he’d been carrying in his coat from working in the Bamboo Forest. He handed one to Emma Lee.
“It’s freezing in here,” Grover said. He’d never been in their house. As he shined his flashlight around he saw in the hall a real weaving of what looked like mountains going on forever. “What’s that?” Grover asked. He’d never seen anything quite like it.
“Nanna’s,” she said, heading into the front room.
“Your grandmother weaves?”
“She has a big old loom,” Emma Lee said from the front room.
He saw another weaving farther down the hall—of a cabin on a mountainside. He walked into the kitchen and saw a weaving over the sink—cows in a pasture. Everywhere he shined his flashlight was a weaving. There were weavings of sunflowers, of mountain laurel in bloom, of creeks, waterfalls and one of a bridge spanning a river.
Grover came up next to Emma Lee, who stood at the front window, looking out on the moonlit street. He’d never seen his house from over here. The overgrown grass and bushes looked like a snow-covered jungle, and the old dark house rising behind it looked neglected, like the sadness of the past year had seeped through the walls and out into the yard.
Emma Lee struck a match against the side of a box of kitchen matches and lit the big candle. Grover remembered with a start last night standing just outside the window, looking in at her. She pulled up a chair and sat in front of the candle.
“Now what?” Grover asked.
“That’s it,” she said.
“You came all the way over here to light this candle?”
She stared into the flame.
He shivered. “Well, now that it’s lit, can we go back?”
“I’m staying.” She folded her arms and watched the candle.
Grover pulled up a chair and sat beside her.
“Suit yourself,” she said.
After a while, Grover said, “It’s cold in here.”
“I’ll get us some blankets,” she said.
As he watched her light disappear down the hall, he pointed his flashlight at the weaving of the family on the wall. He reached into his coat pocket for his sketchbook. As he sketched by the light of his flashlight, he saw the notes he’d taken from Sam earlier that day in the cemetery.
She came back in, carrying blankets, gave him one, then she wrapped herself in the other. In the flickering candlelight, she looked like an Indian princess sitting in front of a campfire. Candlelight, thought Grover, made the world look old.
He tucked the notebook back into his coat pocket, looked out at the night, then back at her. He cleared his throat. “How’s it going?”
Emma Lee looked at him.
“What have you been doing lately?”
Emma Lee frowned. “You’re acting very weird all of the sudden.”
“I’m making small talk,” he said. “I’ve been told girls like to have conversations first.”
“Before what? Grover, what are you getting at?”
“Forget it.” He sighed. “I was trying to ask you to go to the Christmas Waltz. I was told girls like conversation before they’re asked things.”
“Maybe some girls,” she said.
“I’m hopeless when it comes to girls.” He kept staring at the candle.
“With this girl you’re not,” she said.
Grover looked at her. “You’ll go with me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Oh,” he said.
They both jumped when they heard a sudden strange crying. Merlin was outside on the ledge, staring in at them.
“Maybe we ought to let him in,” Emma Lee said. “He might be cold.”
“But Clay said your mama said …”
“I know.”
Merlin jumped from the windowsill and disappeared.
Grover sat with Emma Lee for a while longer, staring at the candle and occasionally looking at her, finding it hard to believe that not only had he asked her but she’d said yes. After a while, Grover felt his eyelids get heavy and he said he was going back to the house. Emma Lee said she’d come in a little while. When Grover opened the front door, something streaked past him into the house. He chased after the cat, back into the front room, where Merlin was already in Emma Lee’s lap.
“You want me to put him out?” Grover asked.
She shook her head, petting the cat and yawning.
Grover had started out when Emma Lee spoke, “Thanks,” she said.
“For what?”
“Everything.”
Grover walked home through the deep snow. He didn’t like the feeling of her thanking him for Everything. Like she was saying good-bye. He looked back to see her still in the window. Once inside his house, he slowly closed the door behind him so he wouldn’t make a sound. Biscuit pranced up to him, sniffing him like he smelled the Roundtrees’ house. “Go on!” he whispered. Lowering his head, the dog walked back toward Sudie’s room.
Grover was thinking about going back to get Emma Lee when he heard noises coming from the guest bedroom where Leila slept. He noticed a line of flickering light underneath the door. He pressed his ear to the door but didn’t hear a thing except somebody moving around a lot. He leaned back on a floorboard that creaked and the movement stopped.
“Did you hear that?” Leila’s voice.
“Hear what?” A man’s voice. Grover felt his chest tighten as he realized who the man was.
“Sounded like someone at the door,” Leila said. “Should I go check on the kids?”
“I didn’t hear anything. This old house makes all kinds of noises.”
“I thought I heard someone,” she said.
“You want me to check?”
There was a long silence in which Grover wasn’t sure if someone was coming to the door. He didn’t dare move for fear of stepping on the creaky board again.
“I’m not sure about
this,” Leila said.
“Neither am I,” he said.
Grover couldn’t pry himself from the door.
“Isn’t it too soon?” she said. “For you, I mean.”
There was a pause.
“It’s just been so long,” she said.
Another pause.
“Let’s stop talking,” he said.
Grover tiptoed to his room and quietly shut the door. He lay in bed, trying to think. His father had been in the room with Leila, and there were noises that seemed to involve both of them. He’d heard similar noises come from his parents’ bedroom when his mother was alive, noises he’d known to stay away from. His father shouldn’t be making those noises with anyone but their mother. Except of course their mother wasn’t here.
Then he remembered. He’d asked Emma Lee to the Christmas Waltz and she’d said yes. Unbelievable. “Unbelievable,” he said aloud. He yawned, thinking how back in October he’d hardly noticed this girl who had moved into his neighborhood. He yawned again and, thinking of Emma Lee, rode his exhaustion out beyond the worried world, leaving it far far behind.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SHE’S IN THERE
Grover woke to Biscuit standing on his chest. The little dog was crying and making noises he’d never heard him make. Grover sat up and Biscuit jumped off the bed and ran toward the hallway.
“Now what?” Grover yawned.
Clay’s eyes opened.
Biscuit stood in the doorway whining.
Clay closed his eyes and in a sleepy voice said, “He’s your dog but I’m thinking he might need to do his business.”
Grover checked his watch. Three o’clock. Groggy and cold, he pulled on his pants, put on his bedroom slippers and walked through the chilly house. The guest room door was open. From the moonlight coming in through the window, he could see that only Leila was sleeping in there.
With Biscuit still crying, Grover opened the front door to let him out. Biscuit didn’t go off the porch, though. The little dog just stood there making those noises.
He started to pick the dog up to carry him out in the yard when he glanced across the street. Bright yellow and red swirls of light framed the Roundtrees’ window. A Van Gogh of flames.
“Emma Lee.” He ran toward the Roundtrees’ house, screaming, “Emma Lee! Emma Lee!” He kept slipping in his bedroom shoes, and finally fell hard on his knees in the street, getting a mouthful of dirt and snow. He ran up on the porch and opened the front door. Smoke poured out. Grover coughed and his eyes stung. “Emma Lee! Are you in there?!” he shouted. All he heard was the fire crackling. As he started in, Merlin streaked out, disappearing off the porch. Covering his mouth with his pajama sleeve, Grover hurried into the house but had to back out because the smoke was so thick. He coughed and wiped his stinging eyes.
He paused at the door, watching the smoke pour out. She might’ve gone back to his house and was fast asleep in Sudie’s room. He started to back down off the porch, when a voice inside him said, She’s in there.
He stepped back onto the porch and paused in the doorway. A fireman who’d visited Mrs. Caswell’s class had told them that smoke rises and that the best way to get out of a fire was to stay low and crawl. Maybe it was the best way to go into a fire too. He dropped to all fours and found he could breathe and see a little better. He crawled in the direction of the glow—the doorway of the front room.
“Emma Lee!” he croaked as he coughed and blinked his eyes.
When he reached the doorway to the front room, he saw that the couch and some of the furniture was on fire, and flames were creeping up the walls. The weavings. Somehow they’d caught. Emma Lee lay sprawled in the middle, her blanket half covering her. The candle had fallen from the windowsill and was on its side on the floor.
“Emma Lee,” he said as he crawled up to her.
She didn’t move. He turned her over. Her face was the color of ashes and her lips blue.
“Oh, no,” he said. He stood up and immediately couldn’t breathe. He felt dizzy. His throat ached with the smoke and he coughed, trying to hold his breath. He took her underneath her arms and dragged her across the floor in the direction of the door. But he slammed into the door frame, hit his back hard and dropped her. He had to bend over and feel around for her in the smoke that was getting thicker. He tried picking her up, but was so dizzy he couldn’t tell which way to go. He collapsed onto the floor beside her and was getting back up when a firm hand gripped his arm and helped him stand. The smoke was too thick for him to make out who it was. But together Grover and whoever it was dragged Emma Lee out of the room, down the hall and out onto the porch. Then, before Grover could turn his head, the person had stepped off the porch and disappeared. Grover dragged Emma Lee out into the snow, pretty far from the house. Clearing a place for her on the front walk with his foot, he laid her down. His head spinning, he fell to his knees coughing. He knelt there for some time, trying to breathe, but whenever he did, his lungs burned like somehow the fire had gotten down inside him.
“Emma Lee!!” In her nightgown, Leila sank down on her knees in front of her daughter. “Oh Lord! Please, Lord!” She leaned over, pulled her daughter’s head back and breathed into Emma Lee’s mouth. Emma Lee’s chest rose.
“Grover?” His father was in his pants and T-shirt. He squatted down beside Grover, brushing hair out of his face. “Are you okay?’
Grover nodded, not looking at his father. He’d felt a tinge of anger at his father’s touch. “I’m okay,” he croaked and coughed. The burning in his lungs had let up a little.
They watched Leila breathe into Emma Lee, wait for her daughter’s chest to go down and then breathe into her again. His father yelled back to Clay and Sudie, who were making their way across the street toward them. “Call 911.”
Sudie started to turn around and run back into the house.
“Already called ’em, Sudie,” Jessie said, coming up to Grover and his father.
“Breathe, sweetheart, breathe!” Leila watched her daughter’s chest fall. “Come on!”
His father helped Grover to his feet. Jessie stood with them, watching Leila frantically work over her daughter. Clay came up beside them, his face pale, and said under his breath, “Oh, Sis.” Grover’s father put his arm around Clay and pulled the boy against him. Sudie came and stood next to Grover, clutching her little silver cylinder like she was calling on a higher power.
Years passed. Leila worked over Emma Lee and worked over her. “Come on!” she’d say. “Come on, Emma Lee!” She yelled louder. The longer Emma Lee didn’t breathe, the angrier Leila became. Just when it seemed to Grover like Emma Lee was gone in the way his mother was gone, there was a cough. Her eyelids fluttered. She coughed again, gasped for air and opened her eyes. The color came back into her face and her lips.
“Oh, thank you, Lord!” her mother cried out. “Thank You, dear God!” She cradled her daughter’s head in her lap and rocked in the snow, as Emma Lee coughed and coughed. “Oh sweet sweet Jesus, thank You!”
A woman who lived down the street stepped out of a semicircle of neighbors and handed them a blanket. With Emma Lee wrapped in the blanket, Grover’s father carried her off the cold walk and sat her on the curb where another neighbor had laid out more blankets. The whole time Emma Lee coughed and wheezed.
A loud pop, the sound of glass breaking. The front window of the house had shattered and the fire leapt up, the flames reaching up the side of the house.
“Oh, Jessie,” Leila said, looking back, “your house!”
Not even glancing at the house, Jessie wrapped another blanket around Emma Lee.
Two fire trucks followed by an ambulance rumbled up the street, their red lights flashing against the houses and their snow chains ringing on the pavement. The sound of the chains weirdly reminded Grover of sleigh bells.
The EMTs put an oxygen mask on Emma Lee, then carried her to the ambulance and began checking her over with Leila beside her. One of the firemen walked Grover to besid
e a fire truck and began checking him over.
“How you feeling?” he asked, looking into Grover’s eyes with a light.
“My throat hurts.”
“The smoke does that,” the fireman said. “It does a whole lot worse if it has time.” He put a blood pressure cuff around Grover’s arm. He nodded toward the ambulance. “The EMTs say you saved that girl’s life. Said if she’d been in there much longer that’d a been all she wrote.”
They heard a crash and turned to see a couple of firemen knock out the rest of the front window. They aimed a fire hose through the window, blasting the front room. A couple of other firemen went in through the front door with another hose. To Grover’s astonishment, the fire was out in minutes. It had seemed so huge when he was in the house, like it would take hours, even days to put out.
Before long, the ambulance pulled away with Emma Lee, Leila riding with her. They wanted to keep Emma Lee at the hospital overnight to keep an eye on her. Leila hugged Clay and said she’d call first thing tomorrow.
“We’ll look after Clay,” Grover’s father had said.
Back at the house, Jessie settled Clay into Grover’s sleeping bag while Grover collapsed onto the couch in the living room, feeling dirty and gritty and reeking of smoke, but too exhausted to do anything about it. In a little while Grover’s father came and led Grover to the bathroom, where he’d lit a candle. Grover was startled when he saw his flickering reflection in the bathroom mirror. His face was so smudged with soot he didn’t recognize himself.
His father helped him out of his pajamas, then turned on the shower. “The water’s still warm,” he said, testing it with his hand, “even though the power’s been out a while now.” He helped Grover into the shower. But when he saw Grover could barely move, he took a washrag, soaped it up and gently washed his face, his arms, his back and his legs. Grover remembered when he was a little boy and his father had often bathed him at night after supper.
“Somebody helped me,” Grover said, stepping out of the shower.