The raccoon snarled again and hit Billy’s leg with a long arm, claws scratching against the denim.
“You watch it, you goddam drunk!” Billy yelled, leaning over and glaring into Jake’s determined eyes. Jake backed away, snarling.
“I always give him some,” Billy said resignedly. He took down a jug of amber cider and poured a bowlful. Jake lapped a few times, shivered and backed away, then approached cautiously and began to drink.
“He hates it sometimes, but he can’t leave it alone. Let that be a lesson to you, Frank,” Billy said.
Franklin was so absorbed in the sight he hardly heard.
“Look at him lick it up!” he said. Jake stopped lapping and gave Franklin a wary glance. “That’s O.K.,” Franklin said quickly.
“Don’t let him scare you, Frank,” Billy said. “He knows he gits rough with the guests he’ll be nursing a sore hide!” He laughed and stamped his foot. Jake looked suspiciously at the foot, then went back to his cider.
“Did you catch him?” Franklin asked.
“Nope. He just come bumming around. Lazy. Too damn’ lazy to catch his own living. Eats some frogs, though, down to the swamp.”
“He eats frogs?”
“Why, sure. Killed my cat, too. Et her. That damn’ coon’ll eat anything at all.”
“Didn’t you get mad when he ate your cat?”
“Well, yes, I did, Frank. But Old Jake’s just as good as a cat—maybe better. More company.”
“I mean, didn’t you like the cat?”
“I guess I liked her well enough for most purposes. She didn’t particular care for me, howsomever. You know cats. They just don’t give a damn.”
“I guess that’s so,” Franklin said. “Not like a dog.”
“You damn’ well right, Frank.” Billy sat for a moment, then jerked his head up and stared at John. “Johnny, you remember Daisy?”
“Sure I do, Billy,” John said.
Billy’s face evened out; his eyes seemed to grow still and dark. He became as serious as John had ever seen him.
“Atmon shot her. Or Bemis did it. One.”
“No, Billy!”
“Yes they did—one. Bragged about it too….” His voice went high and unstable at the end.
“How come?” John asked, half believing it. Billy shook his head jerkily, hunched his shoulders and put his mouth into a hurt, childish line.
“Don’t know,” he said, his voice rising on the second word. “When I was gone…You know, when I was gone…”
“Why would they do a thing like that?”
“Said she was running deer. Said she was running deer….” Billy tried to control his voice. He shook himself like a dog and reached for his pipe, set his face but couldn’t manage it. He took a long drink, then, too carefully, set his can on the windowsill. “Can you imagine that, Johnny?” he asked.
“Bemis? I didn’t think he’d do a thing like that.”
“Oh, he would, all right. They was hunting together. Running deer, for Christ sake! Daisy never run no deer. Be like a squirrel running a God-damn’ lousy damn’ bastard horse!” He looked apologetically at Franklin, then added softly, “For Christ sake. She was just a little bitty rabbit dog. She didn’t care for nothing but rabbits.”
“Nobody took care of her when you were gone?”
“I asked everybody would they take her. Bob Paquette said he would. Now it ain’t Bob’s fault, I know that. She just come back here looking for me all the time. Bob, he wrote me a letter. Only letter I got when I was away. He told me he just couldn’t keep Daisy to home. She come back to Pike Hill looking for me. Bob come and got her back two, three times. Next time she was dead. Bob says he found her out by the road, right next the graveyard there, shot four times through the body. It was Atmon himself told me he and Bemis found her running deer. Wouldn’t say which one done it. Maybe he and Bemis both had some fun….”
“I’m sorry,” Franklin said.
“I asked the game warden could they do that? He says they ain’t supposed to. How do you like that? They ain’t supposed to! He says you know for sure who done it? Goddam right I know! He says you better git a lawyer and witnesses and habeas corpusses and e pluribus unems and Christallmighty! A man killed my dog, that’s all I know! Daisy, she was the sweetest little dog you ever see. She never hurt nobody, except rabbits. She was all hell on rabbits. Shot forty rabbits front of Daisy one year. I damn’ near lived on rabbits that year. You ought to heard Daisy on a hot trail. Ki Yi Yi! Jesus! Wouldn’t she go right out straight? Daisy’d dream about rabbits. Sometimes she’d wake right up out of her sleep a-running and a-yelling! Right after them rabbits, right out of her sleep! You’d see her little legs begin to twitching and her nose to puckering. Didn’t she look ashamed to herself when she woke up! She’d look all around pretending they was a rabbit under my bed. I’d look down at her and grin, then she’d look up at me and give a shit-eating grin and go back to sleep. Damnedest dog.”
Billy reached over and weighed Franklin’s beer in his hand. “You ain’t doing too bad, Frank.” He opened a couple of cans and handed one to John. “You ever see a beagle, Frank?”
Franklin nodded. “They’re nice little dogs. My uncle Jaynis has one.”
“Best dog there is, bar none. I aim to git me another come the time I git twenty dollars together. I don’t hope to git one nice as Daisy. You don’t git one dog like her your whole life.” His mouth formed into the crooked line of the hurt child again and his eyes turned darker. They seemed to be sinking deep into his head. The beer can crumpled slightly in his big hand.
“You know what I’d do if I run acrosst them two doing that to Daisy?” He spoke softly. “I’d shoot their legs off, only I don’t mean their legs.” He looked meaningfully at John. “And I’d leave ’em die slow out in the woods all night laying on the cold ground like Daisy done. A man’s got to be mean to shoot a little dog like that, Johnny. I can’t understand it, he’d have to be so mean.” He drank, spilling a few drops on his shirt and overalls.
Franklin watched him, frowning in a tense effort to hide his pity. And it was pity, John felt, not just sympathy, as if Franklin knew better than Billy that people could be that mean. He looked quickly at John, and caught his eye for a moment. The look said clearly, “I can’t stand much more of this.”
Jake twirled his empty bowl across the floor, then looked out into the cleared space in the middle of the room. He stood splayfooted, breathing deeply, his muzzle slowly moving from side to side. He looked like a drunk in Futzie’s looking for an argument.
“Drunk’s a coot,” Billy said disgustedly. Jake growled. “I give him too much. He’s O.K. with a little—gits kind of playful. But he’s a ornery old critter gits he too big a bellyful. Jake! You mind your P’s and Q’s now or I’ll boot your ass out of here! Mind you don’t do no business on the floor. I’ll rub your nose in it like I done before.” Aside, to John and Franklin: “He kind of loses control of his puckerstring sometimes.”
Jake looked from Billy to John, then for a long time at Franklin.
“What’s he looking at me for?” Franklin asked plaintively.
“He likes you. The old slob’s gitting sentimental now. He won’t hurt you none,” Billy said. “Let him set on your lap if he wants.”
Jake slowly approached.
“I don’t know if I want him to,” Franklin said. He sat stiffly, waiting. Jake put his paws on the box and looked up at Franklin. When he jumped to Franklin’s lap Franklin jumped too, and the box, the spilling beer, Franklin, Jake, and all nearly went over. For a second Jake looked like the man in the circus balancing himself with practiced calm on top of several teetering boxes. It looked as if Jake himself kept the whole business from toppling over. Franklin, shaken by the experience, hardly dared to move his hand as Jake licked it for spilled beer.
“Pet him, Frank. He loves attention,” Billy said. “Go on, now; he won’t hurt you none. I told you, he likes you. Once old Jake makes up his mind he lik
es you, you could step on his balls and he wouldn’t do nothing.”
Franklin cautiously put his hand on Jake’s head. The raccoon responded like a fat puppy—coy and fawning.
“It’s kind of disgusting, ain’t it, John?” Billy said. “He gits like that. By the gee, he’ll hate himself in the morning.”
“It’s getting pretty late,” John said.
“Wait a minute,” Billy said. “Listen!” John heard nothing but the wind, now coming back into his consciousness, whistling and sighing past the shack.
“Thought I heard something.” Billy cocked his head and closed his eyes. “Thought I heard the fire whistle—wouldn’t be too damn’ surprised I did.” He shook his head. “There! Heard her again!”
“I heard a whistle,” Franklin said.
“I did too,” John said. The frantic moo of the steam whistle on the firehouse came to them clearly in a lull of wind.
“One, two, three,” Billy counted, “thirty. Two. Wait a minute. One, two, three. Now wait…Four short. Thirty-two—that’s down by the river, from the railroad bridge to the Northlee town line. Four short—Forestry call! We can see that from the height of the land. Come on!”
Jake ran for the corner beneath Billy’s bed, and Billy grabbed the beer.
Outside, the sky was bright as clear noon, blue and untroubled, but under the trees darkness seemed to bleed out of the ground and they couldn’t see at all. Billy turned the truck around, lights on, and they drove rattling to the Huckins graveyard. The whistle blatted its windy, panicky message through the valley of Leah. The riverbanks were burning orange from the railroad tracks to the woolen mill. Even at this distance the flames danced and flickered and shot in every direction at once. Smoke flowed up the bank and over into Leah, where it slid along streets and around houses, dimming out streetlights and windowlights. A siren was just then winding down, but the whistle repeated its simple statement over and over.
“They can’t git the hoses through the fire to the river,” Billy said. “Oh, boy! What a dinger! Look at them little ants running around down there!”
They could barely see, along the edges of the long fire, strange energetic shadows—little men.
On the Vermont side of the Connecticut River the men were doing better, with the wind blowing their fire to the water. Little sparks streamed across, some dying in the air, some in the river, but some carrying over the river, over the fire on the Leah side, where they swirled in big arcs over the houses and buildings of the town.
“Your dad’s yard is O.K., Johnny. The mill’s in the way. It ain’t going to burn past the Cascom River, and them brick walls will stop her. Ain’t much to burn in the mill yard, neither, but cars. I can see ’em driving the cars away now.”
“God help those houses on Poverty Street,” John said.
“Thinks I, I’ll git me a rock to sit on and watch the show. Let her burn, you little bastards!” Billy shouted. “Yahoo! Lookit, Johnny, she’s a-going past the railroad bridge! They can’t do nothing!”
“You don’t give a damn, do you, Billy?” John said, but Billy didn’t hear him.
“Could they git the hoses down to the river, they could stop her, maybe, before she gits to the first houses. If they don’t, Johnny boy, they ain’t going to have enough hose to save all them houses. Ayuh! Wash them roofs down good and they’d have her stopped. They ain’t got the pumps nor the hose for it.”
“Maybe they can stop it in the back yards. Not many trees,” John said.
“Nope. They ain’t going to stop her,” Billy said.
“You act glad about it,” John said.
Billy whirled around and stared fiercely at him.
“You damn’ right! You God-damn’ right! They ain’t nobody down there in that town ever done me the common courtesy of nothing! Ain’t one of ’em I owe squat! Let her burn up!” He finished his beer, threw the empty can on the body of the truck and turned conciliatingly toward John.
“Now you know me, Johnny. I never hurt nobody and I don’t figure on starting. Have a beer. Here! How about you, Frank?”
“No, thank you. I haven’t finished what I’ve got,” Franklin said. Then, nervously, almost on the edge of panic, “John, is the town going to burn up?”
“I don’t know,” John said.
“Don’t you worry, Frank,” Billy said, “even if Leah does burn to hell, you won’t git hurt.”
“If Leah burns, Pike Hill goes too,” John said.
“Ayuh,” Billy sighed. “I know that, Johnny. I know I’ll have to go down and help. Them little bastards will want me now, all right—for a short while.” He scratched his leg and then said, thoughtfully, “If only the town would burn and not the woods. Too bad, ain’t it, Johnny?”
CHAPTER 14
Sam Stevens put the telephone back on its hook and turned slowly around in the farm kitchen, kneading his nose with a wide knuckle. “It ain’t a question of no fire department, no volunteer fire department, neither.” He was obviously imitating the voice he had just heard, carefully pronouncing dee-partment.
“Eh?” Aubrey said. Adolf, Mrs. Pettibone and Jane waited. They knew it had been Chief Atmon on the phone.
“Well, sir, Leah is burning up, is all.”
“Sam!” Mrs. Pettibone said.
“It ain’t quite that bad, now. Don’t git your water hot,” he said kindly. “Least I hope not. Listen to Atmon, you’d think the world was coming to an end. Why in hell they made him fire chief, too, is beyond me. He’d much rather set down there in the Town Hall playing with his guns and pretending to be this here Dragnet fella. One job is enough for most men. Two is twice too many for Atmon.”
“You tell us what he said!” Mrs. Pettibone said. She got up, her hands flighting nervously, and poured more water into the stove reservoir.
“They’s houses burning down on Poverty Street. Atmon wants me to put that three-hundred-gallon tank on the pickup and come help. Git your coat on, Adolf. Come on, Aubrey.”
“One thing,” Sam said as the men stamped their feet down into their boots: “I ain’t going to use no water from my well. They can fill her down to Leah, by God!”
“I’m going too,” Jane said.
“Now Janie, they ain’t hardly room in the truck.”
“I can squeeze in. Adolf can ride on the back.”
Sam thought for a moment.
“I ain’t going to ask you why.”
“That’s close to the Spinellis’.”
“Too close for comfort,” Sam said. “Ayuh. Aubrey, you hear me? You help us git that tank set, then you stay here. Way the woods is, fire could break out anywheres. You hear me?”
“Don’t want to go to Leah anyways,” Aubrey said.
“How about your sister?” Mrs. Pettibone asked.
“Don’t care about her,” Aubrey said. He had his coat and boots on, ready to go outside.
By the time Jane was ready the men had backed the truck under the big tank, where it hung in the shed, and chained it on. Sam was making the last inspection, his flashlight moving up and down. Occasionally its beam shot past the truck into the dry stubble where they had cleared brush and grass from around the house and barn.
The tank gonged and rattled as they drove down the gravel driveway and headed toward Leah on the Cascom River Road. The wind definitely smelled of fire now, not merely the fall smell of burning leaves and wood. Tar and rubber were burning, too. As they came nearer they saw the angry red glow of fire reflected in the moving smoke above the town.
In the Spinellis’ kitchen Father Desmond sat across from Mrs. Spinelli, drinking a glass of red wine. Jane stood just inside the door, amazed at their calmness as they turned toward her. Two blocks away she had seen a woman run, crying out loud, her arms full of blankets and a saucepan banging against her side. Men ran everywhere, pulling toy wagons full of dishes, splintering furniture in their haste to force it through doorways. On Poverty Street the world was coming to an end, and here they sat drinking wine.
“The town’s burning up!” she said. He smiled, and she noticed the specks of soot on his shiny face. His hands, too, were dirty.
“I’m afraid it is,” he said, and turned to look meaningfully at Mrs. Spinelli, as if Jane’s words supported what he had been telling the old woman.
“No, no, no, no, no!” Mrs. Spinelli said, although her expression hadn’t changed at all. She seemed quite calm. She hadn’t recognized Jane. In her lap she held the blue-and-gold pillow Mike had sent her from boot camp, and she ran her brown fingers delicately across the embroidered word Mother. The priest leaned toward her, his bulky shoulders pushed forward so that the black cloth shone across his back.
“No, no, no, no, nol” Mrs. Spinelli said. Then she looked up, surprised and pleased. “Janie! Where you been?”
The priest turned to Jane, his usual good nature gone. He looked as if he might cry. “I can’t explain it to her,” he said. “She won’t leave the house. She won’t believe me.”
“Where’s Mr. Spinelli?”
“He can’t do anything with her, either. So much to do now! Mrs. Spinelli!” he said sharply but unconvincingly. The old woman crossed herself and felt around in the folds of her black skirt for her rosary.
Mr. Spinelli came half-running into the room, then stopped short.
“Janie!” he said, taking her hands. “Janie, am I glad to see you! We got trouble. Mama lost her marbles. She won’t hear nothing about the fire. She just sits with the pillow all day. She’s sick to her head, Janie!”
“I don’t care what you tell,” Mrs. Spinelli said, “I got my kitchen here. I ain’t going no place. He took my Mikey.” She pointed her rosary-knotted hand at the priest. “Now he wants my house, my kitchen. What I done?”
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