by Ann Gabhart
42
______
The men worked feverishly to get a firebreak cleared to save the Lindell house, but the fire was too big to stop. Fern was working beside Victor when the house caught.
When she’d shown up earlier with an axe and her hatchet and started to chop down the nearest bushes without a word, he’d shouted to her over the noise of the fire and the axes. “Where are the girls?”
She stood up and looked straight at him. “With Brother.”
He could barely hear her. “Safe?”
She just kept looking at him, her face not showing any feeling in the reflection of the fire. She didn’t look a thing like the girl he’d remembered weeping and running up the steps away from Press Jr. that night so long ago. Finally, without making any kind of answer, she turned back to the brush and began chopping again. He’d done the same. There was nothing else to do. Nothing but pray. Pray and keep fighting the fire.
The fire was a ravenous monster riding on the wind. The more it ate, the hungrier it got. They would fight it back in one place only to see a new bush farther along flash into flames as though gasoline had been poured on it.
The wind was the reason they lost the Lindell house. It was blowing hard against them almost as if a storm was brewing. Victor even thought he heard a clap of thunder, but when he looked up to check for clouds, all he could see was the glow of the flames dancing against the black sky.
And then they were dancing across the roof of the Lindell house. At first it was just a spark or two, but minutes later flames were chasing each other across the old shingles and sliding down the walls.
Beside him, Fern straightened up and stared at the house. Victor moved over beside her. He touched her shoulder, but she shrugged off his hand. “Just a house,” she said.
Victor dropped his hand to his side, but didn’t move away from her. “But your house,” he said.
“Brother’s house. Trees mine.” She looked from the house to the trees flaming around them. “All gone. No place left.”
“We’ll find you a place. Don’t worry.”
Fern looked at him. “That’s what he would always say. Don’t worry. And then he would smile. Do you remember? That smile.”
He knew whose smile she was talking about. “Press was my hero.”
“He said don’t worry, but I did. Worry, worry. Weep, weep. Hurt, hurt.” She put her hand over her heart as she turned her eyes back toward the house. Her voice didn’t change as she went on. “Then I stopped. Like swooning. Didn’t help.”
“I’m sorry,” Victor said.
“Sorry don’t help any more than swooning.”
The roof of the house fell in, and flames exploded out the windows. They watched it silently for a moment before Fern said, “Brother will cry.” Then she picked up her axe and moved to where the other men had started clearing a new line.
Victor followed her, as the prayer rose inside him that Graham would have the chance to cry over his lost house. That would mean he was still alive along with the girls. They had to be alive.
A half hour later he again heard a rumbling boom. This time there was no denying it was thunder. Several of the men stopped working to look up at the sky. Victor knew they were praying, and he lifted his own prayer up to join theirs.
“Rain. Dear Lord, send rain down on the fire.”
The first big drops hit his head before all the words were out of his mouth.
Kate had no idea how long they’d been standing in the water. It seemed like an eternity as the fire flashed through the trees and surrounded them while the reflection of the flames shimmered on top the water. The fire was terrible to see, yet at the same time so awesome Kate couldn’t turn her eyes away from it.
Graham stared at the fire and whispered, “We shall behold the great and mighty works of the Lord.”
Lorena kept her face hidden against Graham’s shoulder. “I’m scared.”
“I know, they can be fearsome acts,” Graham said as he stroked Lorena’s back. “But don’t you worry. The Lord, he’s taking care of us. Helped us find the pond. And appears like we’re not the only ones. Look over there.” He pointed. “That looks like old Carson Coon. Me and Poe have been chasing that old rascal all summer, and here he is coming out to swim with us. And here comes a possum. The good Lord sure didn’t waste no pretty parts on him, now did he?”
Lorena lifted her feet out of the water. “He won’t eat my toes, will he?”
“No, your toenails would be way too crunchy for him,” Graham said.
Lorena giggled and let her feet dip down in the water again. More animals came out of the woods to ease into the water as they kept a wary eye on the humans and dog in the pond. Kate was beginning to feel like she was in a soup pot in the middle of a campfire. No more had that thought run through her mind than she imagined the water was getting warmer.
Kate leaned over to whisper to Graham. “The water won’t get too hot, will it?”
She could see his smile in the light of the fire. “You don’t have to worry none about that. We won’t be onions in fish soup here. It’s a big pond, and the fire’s moving past us fast. Just burning the cedars and underbrush. It may not get the old trees.”
Kate stared back at the fire and couldn’t imagine it leaving anything standing. It seemed to be devouring everything in its path the way the fire Elijah had called down from heaven had consumed his sacrifice, the wood, the rocks, and even licked up the water in the trough around the altar. Kate shook her head a little. She didn’t want to think about fire licking up water. She dipped down until her chin was level with the pond surface.
A few minutes later, Kate almost laughed out loud when the first raindrop hit the pond water beside her. “It’s raining!” she shouted to Graham.
“It’s raining,” Lorena echoed.
Even Poe got into the spirit with a howl, and then Graham did laugh out loud.
The raindrops began making circles in the water around them, and then the rain came down in a swoosh that swept across the pond surface. The water dashed against their faces and felt cool and refreshing. Kate opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue to catch some of the raindrops. In the woods around the pond, the rain beat down the flames as steamy fog mixed with smoke rose from the ground.
Above their heads thunder rumbled and lightning lit up the sky. The rain kept falling. “Will it put the fire out?” Kate asked Graham.
“Enough of it. See, look. Some of the critters are heading out already.” When the lightning lit up the pond, Graham pointed toward the raccoon swimming toward the bank.
“Can we go home now?” Kate asked. She wanted to go home more than anything in the world. She wanted to see her mother and father. She wanted them to know she and Lorena were safe. “Please.”
“Home. I don’t see why not.” Graham leaned over close to her ear. “A person can always go home.”
Lorena pushed her head in between Graham and Kate. “I want to go too. Home with Kate.”
They stomped around in the mud close to the pond bank to try to find Kate’s shoes, but the mud must have swallowed the shoes whole.
“Oh well,” Kate said as she climbed on out of the pond. “I can go barefoot. My feet are tough.”
“Tough enough till you step on a hot coal.” Graham followed her out on the bank and set Lorena down. He pulled off his shirt and began tearing it into strips. “We’ll have to make you some shoes of a sort.”
Kate tore a few strips off her dress tail to add to what Graham was wrapping around her feet. The first heavy dash of rain gave way to a gentle, steady shower that was slowly quenching the flames. But the fire smoldered in the old logs and put out thick, choking smoke. After Graham wrapped the rags around her feet, he soaked strips of what was left of his shirt to tie over their noses and mouths before they left the pond.
It was very dark with the rain falling around them and the clouds blotting out any sign of the moon or stars. Kate had walked between her house and Graham’
s pond a hundred times, but now nothing was the same. She had no idea if they were going the right direction as they made their way between snags of burned tree trunks and fallen trees. The lingering smoke burned her nose even with the wet rag to filter out the worst of the ash. Kate couldn’t imagine what the place would look like in the morning light. She didn’t want to imagine it. Sunrise would bring the truth soon enough.
And then they stepped into a different world. A world where the trees were still standing and the rain was filtering through a canopy of leaves over their heads to wash away the smoke that lingered in the air.
Graham pulled the rag down off his nose and then off Lorena’s face too, as he sat her down on her feet. He looked back at Kate.
“See, I told you the old girls would make it through.” He stepped up beside one of the oak trees and laughed as he laid his hand on its trunk.
Kate freed her face from the wet rag and looked up. The night was very dark, but she could sense the trees towering over her. Trees that had been there since long before Rosey Corner had been settled. The fire had gone through, but it hadn’t taken any of the trees down. When the song rose up inside her, she let it out. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” Kate always wanted to sing when she was under the great trees, and never more than now.
Graham joined in with her. He didn’t have much of a singing voice, but he sounded joyful. “Praise him all creatures here below.”
Lorena sang the amen with them.
“The strong find a way to keep standing. No matter what happens.” Graham patted the tree trunk closest to him. Then he put his hand on Lorena’s head and Kate’s shoulder. “That’s us. Strong. We’re still standing.”
“Because you knew where the pond was.” Kate wasn’t feeling very strong, just blessed. Mightily blessed.
“It’s the Lord who gives us strength,” Graham said. “To face all the fires of life.”
“You sound like Grandfather Reece,” Kate said.
“If a fellow can’t preach a little after what we’ve seen tonight, there’s something wrong inside his heart.”
“Can we go on home now?” Lorena asked in a small voice. “Or are we lost?”
Kate picked up Lorena. “No, sweetie. We aren’t lost. We know where we are and who we are. Why don’t you say your name now?”
“Okay, but put me down so I can say it right.” Lorena stood down on the ground and lifted up her head to shout at the tops of the trees. “My name is Lorena Birdsong.”
Kate laughed and shouted after her. “My name is Katherine Reece Merritt.”
Graham echoed his name right behind them. “My name is Graham Barclay Lindell.”
Then Kate shouted. “And we are alive.”
The word alive bounced off the trees around them. She pulled in a deep breath and wanted to sing again. And dance. And laugh. She’d never before thought about how good it felt to breathe.
43
______
Nadine had to leave her father in his chair on the porch. She couldn’t move his body by herself, and Carla was next to useless. It didn’t seem right at first, but then she stood up and looked across the field toward the church. While the fire was devouring the woods behind her and a blanket of smoke was settling across the land, the church stayed a calm and serene picture of peace. Her father had always liked reading his Bible out on the porch in the evening where he could look up and see the church. His church. He’d given his whole life to that church, so now perhaps it was good that he could be where he could see it. Of course he wasn’t seeing anything. Not here on this earth anyway. He’d gone home.
The rain started hitting the roof as Nadine went inside to fetch a cover off her father’s bed. When Nadine draped the quilt over her father’s body, Carla set up a keening wail. Nadine did her best to be kind as she led Carla into the house out of the rain blowing up under the porch roof.
“We can’t leave him out there,” Carla cried. “Not alone.”
“He’s not alone. He’s with the angels now.” Nadine kept her voice soft. “With Mama and my little sister. He’s happy again.”
“Again? What’s that supposed to mean? That he wasn’t happy with me?” Carla glared at her as Nadine lit one of the oil lamps.
“I meant before he got sick,” Nadine said quickly. She gently urged Carla down on the couch. The rain was peppering against the tin roof. “The rain will put the fire out. You’ll be safe here now.”
Carla grabbed Nadine’s arm. “You can’t leave. You have to stay here with him until help comes.”
“Father is beyond our help now. You have to be strong, Carla.” Nadine tried to pull away from Carla, but the woman gripped harder until Nadine thought her arm would be bruised. “You have to turn me loose.”
“I can’t be here alone with him. Not and him dead.” Carla’s eyes got big. “His spirit might still be in the house.”
“No,” Nadine said firmly as she pried Carla’s fingers off her arm. “If you don’t want to stay here, you can walk to Ella’s, but I have to go see about my family.”
“Your father’s your family. Where’s your respect for the dead?”
Nadine backed away from Carla. “I’ll send someone for the undertaker as soon as the men come back from fighting the fire. You’ll need to get his suit ready.”
“I can’t,” Carla moaned.
Nadine relented. “All right, don’t worry about that. I’ll come see to it when the undertaker comes.”
Carla half rose off the couch to grab at Nadine again, but Nadine stepped away toward the door. So Carla tried to stop her with words instead. “Your father always said you were an ungrateful daughter.”
Nadine didn’t stop. She went on through the door, past her father’s body on the porch, and down the steps into the rain. She welcomed the feel of the rain on her face and arms, washing her clean. At the yard gate she turned around and looked back at the porch. It was so dark now she could barely see the shape of her father’s body under the quilt. She stared at it a moment and then whispered into the rain. “I was a good daughter.” Then she looked up at the dark sky. “Wasn’t I, Lord?”
She stood still as the night seemed to push in on her soul. Her father was dead, gone from her forever in this life. Perhaps she had failed him. Perhaps Carla was right and she’d never been the daughter he had wanted her to be. It could be she’d failed all those she loved. That she was the reason Victor had turned to alcohol for comfort. Because she wasn’t the wife she should be. Perhaps she wasn’t the mother she should be either, and that was why Kate was in danger. She’d certainly failed to protect Lorena, who might not be her daughter in the natural manner but was every bit the daughter of her heart.
Tears mixed with the rain on her face, and for a moment she felt too much despair to move her feet on down the path toward her own house. What if bad news awaited her there as it had at her father’s house? Wouldn’t it be better to just stay in the darkness not knowing?
A Bible verse slipped into her mind. She hadn’t prayed, but the answer was there in her mind anyway. Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.
She did hope in the Lord. She had always leaned on the Lord. He knew she wasn’t perfect, but he loved her anyway. She carried that love, that hope in her heart, and now she felt a renewed strength as she began walking again. She hadn’t always done everything right, but she had always tried to do her best. The Lord would honor that.
It didn’t matter what Carla said. It didn’t even matter what Nadine’s father might have said before he died. Nadine had been a dutiful daughter. Perhaps too dutiful. She and Victor had both let their fathers’ expectations of them color too much of their life together. Expectations that neither of them had ever been able to live up to.
Nadine didn’t go back to Gertie’s. She went straight to her house from her father’s. She was glad she didn’t meet anyone on the road. Glad she didn’t yet have to speak of her father’s death. There would be time
for that.
It began to rain harder, and beyond her in the trees, the flames began to die down. Smoke that carried more than the smell of wood ash settled around her. The Lindell house must have burned, and she was glad she and Fern had saved the painting for Graham, even if she knew Fern was right. That didn’t promise his safety. Or that of the girls.
She refused to let panic grab hold of her heart again and kept putting one foot in front of the other until she was climbing her front porch steps. The house was dark. And very empty. She moved through the familiar rooms to the kitchen where she lit a taper from the coals in the cookstove to light a lamp. For a moment she wished she’d brought Evangeline and Victoria home with her so she wouldn’t feel so alone. She thought of Carla and wondered if she still sat cowering on her couch. It could be Carla was right and the church people would look down on Nadine for leaving her there alone with the body.
She shook away that worry. Her place was where she was standing, waiting for her husband, waiting for Kate and Lorena. They would come. She had to believe that. Her hand shook a little as she lit a second lamp and then blew out the taper. Cream was beginning to rise in the milk on the table. She looked at it a long moment before she set down the lamp and fixed the straining rag over the crock on the cabinet. Carefully she poured the milk through the rag into the crock and then rinsed out the bucket so it would be ready for the morning milking.
She drank a dipper full of water and felt guilty as she swallowed, thinking of how thirsty Victor or Kate and Lorena might be. She pulled three glasses out of the cabinet and filled them with water to have them ready. Then she added a fourth glass for Graham. They would come. They would all come.
She carried the lamp to the table in front of the window in the sitting room. She paid no mind to her wet dress and hair as she went out to wait on the porch. Some things had to be done. Others could wait.
Victor came first. With Fern in tow. Both their faces were streaked with smoke and ash as their hair and clothes dripped from the rain. “Kate?” Victor asked as he came up on the porch.