by Austin Boyd
I am not alone.
“The bull got out early, huh?” Ian asked with a chuckle, prodding Laura Ann gently in the back.
She milked the teat of a cow corralled in a small stall near the back of the barn. Behind her, a frail calf lay on a bed of hay, curled into a circle. Pants of cold breath emerged from the tiny animal’s nostrils. The mother stood, unmoving in Laura Ann’s grip, as her milk was drawn for the newborn.
“Guess so. This one was a big surprise,” Laura Ann said, squeezing her hands from top to bottom to drain life-giving fluid from the cow. Warm streams of milk made a pssst sound against the side of a plastic pail. Soon, milk covered the bottom in a frothing steamy white. “The herd is due March twenty-first. I’m not prepared for calving in this cold weather.”
Like it could smell the nourishment, the baby calf stirred, working to stand on frail legs, then collapsed again in a pile. Ian went to the calf, scratching it behind the ears. The young one lowered its head to the ground, too exhausted to move.
“He needs the colostrum,” Laura Ann said, squeezing the teat one last time. She stood up, moving away from the cow, and went to the far side of the stall for a bottle and nipple, then poured the fresh milk for feeding. “Born yesterday, but the little guy hasn’t taken to his momma yet. If he doesn’t get some of this first milk, his body won’t be able to absorb the antibodies.”
Laura Ann nursed the calf through two bottles, then Ian set him aside. She stood and brushed off hay, then put away her feeding bottle and they left the stall. “This time tomorrow, he’ll be on his feet. We’ll probably have to feed him late tonight, and again in the morning.”
“I like that word we,” Ian said, then reached for her hand after she closed the stall.
Laura Ann felt the touch of his fingers as she threw the latch, and turned to face him. He reached up with his free hand and brushed at a piece of hay dangling from her bangs, then brushed more off the shoulder of her barn coat. She could feel his pulse in her fingers, his strong grip on her milk-wet hands.
“Got plans tomorrow?” she asked, pulling at the hand wrapped around hers. He moved closer.
“Sunday? I hoped you’d join me for church and dinner out.”
She nodded in silence. Her free hand obeyed the passion of the pounding drum in her chest and she reached for the arm of his coat. She tilted her head up, eyes locked on his, pulling him close.
Ian’s fingers came to her chin, caressing a line up to her cheek. She started to speak, a faint protest. His finger touched her lips and stopped the word, then he cradled the side of her face in his palm.
“Do you believe in the magic of coincidence?” he asked, a lilt in his voice.
She grinned, her spine tingling with each touch. “Daddy used to say that coincidence is when God chooses to remain anonymous.”
“Or when we’re too proud to admit it’s part of His plan,” Ian replied. He traced a finger along her temple, then ran his fingers through her hair, his hand alighting at the back of her head. He pulled her toward him.
“Is this part of God’s plan?” she asked, breathless. Her own pulse beat against Ian’s, his palm resting on her neck.
“I hope so.” He bent over, forehead touching hers, warm breath on her cheek. “I’ve prayed for years that it might be.”
CHAPTER 7
DECEMBER 29
She smelled him.
Laura Ann tried to raise an arm to reach him, to hold him close, but he disappeared. A vapor. Her arm moved in a leaden way, unresponsive. Her voice froze in her throat. She thrashed against unseen forces holding her down, his smell — the one she despised — permeating her senses. He must be within reach.
“Daddy!” she screamed, forcing the words from her mouth.
She woke up.
But she could still smell him, his other scent, the acrid tang of burning tobacco that announced he’d entered the house, her smokeless sanctum. Daddy was home.
Laura Ann sat up in bed, groggy, yet fully aware. She smelled cigarettes. She fought to remember the last hours. Something in her heart tugged at other memories, of a passion she’d bottled up for years, waiting on the right time. Yet she sat here alone, that mysterious ardor unfulfilled.
The scent grew intense. She reached for her housecoat and slipped on night shoes to cross cold floors. Her nose led her, drawing her from the bedroom. None of it made sense. Snatches of memories returned as she passed her coat and jeans, tossed late last night on her bedroom chair. Feeding a calf. The barn. She stopped at the door, fingers to her lips, immersed in a fresh memory.
Ian.
But the smell? Laura Ann walked down the hall, daring to believe she’d lived a nightmare losing Daddy, yet desperate for proof that last night — Ian — had been real. She pursued the strong scent of cigarettes. Daddy home? Alive? In the house?
She exited the hall where it ran down the center of the house into the kitchen, glancing out the back window. Light flickered in a strange pulsing way, yellow illuminating the landscape of a snowy barnyard. She ran now, slippers slapping at cold oak. The light intensified with each stride as she exited onto the back porch, then set her dark-adjusted eyes suddenly ablaze.
The tobacco barn. In flames.
For the briefest of moments, Laura Ann froze in place, unsure which dream to trust. Daddy alive? Ian embracing her? Her farm on fire? In the drafty cold, she smelled her answer. Burning tobacco. Her only source of revenue. The lifeblood of this farm — and the death of Daddy.
She screamed.
Laura Ann dashed for the bedroom, ripping off her housecoat and shedding her nightgown while on the run. She skidded to a stop aside her bed, nearly naked, and jumped into her jeans and shirt. Socks and boots, laces pulled tight but untied. She threw on her barn coat and raced back to the kitchen, plans forming, and reforming plans.
She ripped the phone from its cradle and hit the light switch in the same movement. The bulb stayed dark. She flipped the switch twice more, same result. Above the phone, Ian’s card beckoned her, wedged against the wall. She had to call him, but couldn’t read in the dark. She punched 9-1-1, desperate for the ring, praying for a quick response. Kitchen clocks darkened, their LED lights snuffed out, she had no idea of the time. Five rings later, a gravelly voice answered.
“Please state your emergency.” The operator sounded tired.
“Laura Ann McGehee. At The Jug. Our barn is on fire.” She screamed the last words, desperate to go fight the blaze.
“Laur’ Ann?” the voice replied. “What is it, child?”
“Mrs. Harper?”
“Your barn?”
“On fire! Call Ian Stewart!”
She hung up the phone, slung open the back door, and plunged into a river of icy air. Yellow and red blazes lit up the sky as the fire roared a hundred yards away, consuming more of the barn by the second. The main power pole, planted at the corner of the tobacco barn, spewed sparks from a burning transformer, the base of the pole wrapped in flames.
She ran, flakes of snow dusting her as they drifted down. Hot flakes. Not snow, but ash. The ash of ten thousand pounds of burning tobacco. A million cigarettes, ablaze at once. An unbearable stench.
Laura Ann’s boots slapped at the ground, untied. She stopped briefly and whipped the laces about her ankles with a crude knot, then stood up to run again. Fifty yards away, at the corner of the tobacco field, Daddy’s last crop roared in a brilliant inferno. Flames licked at the roof, bursting from the ends of the barn through the many openings built to air out the drying crop. Behind her, safe in the red dairy barn, yet somehow aware of looming disaster, her cows mooed.
“No!” she yelled, closing on the tobacco barn. In the distance, the edge of the wood flickered in ghostly ways, lit up by this roaring beacon. Short stubby stalks of summer’s tobacco stumps stood in the frozen fields like a desiccated army, observing but not in the fight. She stopped a few yards away, repelled by the heat of the blaze. Her arms fell to her side, useless. There was no way to fight this.
She could only watch.
Sticks of dried tobacco lit up like huge blazing cigars. Up to eight stalks of tobacco, pierced at their base and slid on each split oak stick, hung upside down in cascading rows from floor to ceiling. Through the brilliantly lit holes in the old log barn, Laura Ann could see stick after stick of bone-dry tobacco flare up. Flames engulfed each successive row and churned up the tinder of prime burley, flames rippling layer by layer toward the top of the barn. Licking tongues of fire poked at the rusty metal roof, caving it in as the support burned away.
She stood alone in the field, blistering in the heat of the huge fire. Red-hot sheets of rusty roof tin fell inward, plummeting to the bottom as pillars of fire shot out the top. Like a jet engine, the fire roared, sucking the air around her. A blazing yellow-red bolt licked at the sky fifty feet above.
Beyond the flame, she saw lights. The insane bouncing of a truck racing across their frozen dirt road, headed straight for her. In the distance, she could see the green of the truck in the dim light of her burning crop. Ian’s work truck. He’d come.
Fear gripped her in the jaws of a brutal reality. She stood in the heat of a fire that consumed her only legitimate chance at saving the farm. A financial reprieve, to fulfill her promise to Daddy. She turned toward the house, strangely dark, and without power.
Ian’s wild ride down the hill ran its course and his truck skidded to a stop. He jumped from the truck, running toward her.
“Laura Ann!” he yelled, arms outstretched.
She stood like a statue, turning her eyes back to the flames, one arm extended to him. He stopped at her side, then wrapped her in his arms. They watched together in silence.
One by one, logs cut by her great-great-great-grandfather fell inward, the top row of the barn drawn into the conflagration. History burned away before her. When at last a single flashing red light showed at the top of the hill, the barn was reduced to embers. The siren seemed distant, even the caress of Ian’s hand on her head unfelt, while she watched the last of the flames consume the base of the old barn.
In the glow of the dying fire, she saw a chain. Links joined links, like hands of men at work together in an ancient fire brigade, leading beyond the fire into the dark of the forest, until they disappeared in an unknown history. The link closest to her melted in slow motion, smelted in the dull orange of the barn’s smoldering foundation. It drooped, and then ran like hot metal into the red embers of her only cash crop.
The chain ended with her. She saw no future, no path beyond.
Ian waved his flashlight back and forth as they scoured the snow for footprints together. A fresh dusting of powder covered the fields, and new layers of thick snowflakes fell each minute. Walking a few feet to Ian’s right, Laura Ann sighed, desperate for any clue. As good a tracker as he was, she knew that any possible traces of an arsonist would soon be obliterated by a blanket of white.
“I can barely make out the prints with this light,” Ian said.
Deputy Sheriff Rodale shrugged, trudging along a few steps behind them, hands in his pockets.
“Someone approached the barn from over there.” Ian stopped and pointed in the direction of the farm road. “They came and went in a single track, but once they reached the road the boot prints were wiped out by our vehicles. They probably anticipated that.” He gestured to the top of the ridge and the direction of the intruder’s path.
The deputy shook his head and muttered something that Laura Ann could not make out, then thanked Ian for his help and walked back to his cruiser. He left without even a word of condolence for Laura Ann. The firemen departed long ago, but at least they cared.
Ian brushed flakes of fresh snow off her jacket and put an arm about her. “Nothing we can do out here. Let’s go clean you up.” They both sported black from head to foot where they’d poked about the edges of the barn after the main fire died, searching for some clues. In the deputy’s opinion, the transformer started it. No amount of evidence, whether visible footprints or Ian’s game-tracker logic, could change the deputy’s mind.
Laura Ann nodded at Ian’s recommendation. “I smell like an ashtray.” The first glimmer of predawn lit up the eastern sky. She tugged at Ian, leading him into the house. “You can shower here and change into some of Daddy’s things.”
“Thanks for the offer, but your power’s out. Remember?”
Her shoulders slumped for a moment, then she brightened and pointed to the back door. “We can draw water at the hand pump in the barn. I’ll heat you up a bath the old way.” She gestured toward the gas stove.
Ian nodded. “I’ll get the water. You rest a minute,” he said, pulling a kitchen chair in her direction. On the way out he stopped at the back door and tested the lock but it spun free. “You still can’t secure the house?” he asked, spinning it again.
“Never needed to. Until now.”
Ian patted the doorjamb. “You sit tight. After we get cleaned up, I’ll fix this door.” He paused, watching her. “I think I should stay—if you don’t mind.”
Laura Ann smiled. “I don’t mind at all,” she said, pointing at the busted lock. “I was hoping you’d ask.”
An hour later, Laura Ann lay curled up next to Ian on the sofa of her tiny living room. He wore a set of Daddy’s overalls, freshly pressed. “I never expected to see these on anyone else.” She chuckled, pointing to the frayed knees. “Looks like you’re ready to work, Officer Stewart.”
Ian squeezed her shoulder, pulling her closer to him. He swallowed hard, gritting his teeth.
“What?” she asked.
“I am,” he said, hesitating. “I mean, I am ready.”
Laura Ann tilted her head to one side, raising an eyebrow. “Thank you, Ian. For everything.”
“Rest up, Miss McGehee. I’ve got your back,” he said with a playful pinch, then added, “and there’s no place else I’d rather be.”
Laura Ann let those words ring in her ears for a long moment, then repeated after him. “No place else?” She raised a hand to his face, her fingers lingering on the line of his jaw, his breath moist on her cheek.
“Nowhere — but here.”
She felt his jaw move under the tips of her fingers. Laura Ann shut her eyes, in wonder. Floating in a dream. She imagined she could hear him breathe, his heart pounding in her ears.
As her eyes closed and heart raced, her lips parted of their own volition. A gentle warmth descended to meet her face, his lips brushing against hers, tentative, then pressing again with a tender confidence.
She melted into him.
Laura Ann padded into the kitchen a few minutes before ten, rubbing at the grit in her eyes. The world looked so different this time of morning. Most of her life she’d been awake before the sun. Not today. Ian greeted her from a seat at her breakfast table.
“Hello there, sleepyhead.” He stood and grabbed a chair, pulling it out for her. Laura Ann couldn’t remember the last person who did that. She yawned and plopped into the seat. With two of the gas burners aflame on the old Tappan range, the kitchen was toasty warm. Ian opened the door of the old white gas oven, a pan of fresh biscuits browned and ready.
“You cooked these?” she asked, diving into the pan with the spatula that he offered. Ian set a jar of pear preserves on the table and brought over a pot of coffee. She waved off the drink.
“Suit yourself.” He freshened up his own cup and sat down. “The calf is feeding,” he said, sipping coffee and watching her across the lip of a steaming mug.
“You’ve been to the barn already?”
“I stayed up. I’ve got your back, remember? Went out at six to feed the cows. Checked on the little guy too. He was nursing hard when I got there. Latched on to his momma like a four-legged leech.”
“Wow. I’ve never had help in the barn — other than Daddy. And he couldn’t help with much of anything after November.” Warm fuzzies walked up her back, easing the memory of last night’s pain. She pushed the pan of biscuits across the table. “You didn’t ea
t yet?”
“Nope. Waiting on you.”
“You must be starved!”
“I am.” Ian reached across the table, took both her hands, and offered a blessing. He scooped a pair of steaming biscuits out of the pan, then tapped the edge of her plate with his fork. “I have a recommendation. We stay here today. We’ll do ‘home church.’ “
“I’d thought about that. I don’t want to answer all the questions we’ll get about the fire.” She shook her head, recalling the suffocating drape of ash that engulfed her last night. “At least, not now.”
“Agreed. So how about we spend the day together. You and me?” Ian’s nose wrinkled with the suggestion, his Roman beak lending strength to high cheeks, a thin face, and a tall forehead. Grey-blue eyes stared back at her from below bushy eyebrows, his trademark.
“I’d like that,” she said with a grin. It felt good to smile again, to be around someone happy. He winked at her, spooned some pear preserves onto her plate, and then dove into his meal. Together they devoured half the pan of biscuits.
“I need to ask you something,” Ian said later, slowing down after a third helping. “About the fire.”
“Yes?”
“Think about it. How many tobacco barns burned up in all the years we’ve lived here?” He raised that eyebrow again.
“I don’t know. A few?”
“This is the only tobacco fire I can ever remember, Laura Ann. While you were sleeping, I called the state emergency ops center in Charleston. They have a few fires on record, but all those were in fire-cured burley barns. Nothing air-cured has ever burned up in this county — or in the five counties around us.” He bunched thin lips, looking up at the ceiling a moment, then added, “Until yours.”
She shrugged. “First time for everything?”
“Nope. I don’t buy it. And as for the deputy’s view that the transformer ‘just blew up,’ that doesn’t fit either. I called the power company to get the transformer replaced and they agree with me. There was no lightning or wind last night, and your place pulls almost no power load. Transformers don’t spontaneously combust.” Ian munched on half a biscuit topped with the last two spoons of pear preserves. He scooped out the dregs of the sweets and licked his spoon clean. “Even the insurance adjusters I called said that kind of fire was unheard of.”