by Robert Price
Chapter Forty
Besides being exhausted, Neil Bingham was uncomfortable. Within one hour, the image he had held of his old friend Tom went from that of a track-star-turned-courageous-patriot to that of a queer guy who abandoned his son. So when Carrie Phillips ushered her (and apparently Tom’s) son Tommy into the front parlor to escape the argument in the living room, Neil felt even more awkward. He excused himself from a conversation with Billy and Jeannine Quinn and stepped outside to wait for Ted Dorsey to pick him up.
Protected from a dousing rain by the portico, Neil lit a cigarette. After tossing the match, he looked up and noticed strange bursts of orange and yellow light, like an apparition, reflecting off the trees across the street. Curious as to the cause of the mystical flashes, he stepped into the rain and peered up at the farmhouse’s roof. Flames spouted from the chimney. Agog, Neil rushed toward the front door just in time for Ezekiel, dangling old Alley Hubbard by the shirt collar, to plow into him. Neil tumbled back out the door. Tony came next, dragging Peter Hubbard behind.
Considering the arguments he’d overheard, Neil guessed that the Hubbard brothers’ removal was the result of something other than the chimney flames. So he ran in yelling, “Fire! Fire! Everybody out! Evacuate!”
Trusting Neil’s alarm, Jeannine Quinn immediately called 911 on her cell phone. She pulled a coat on and spoke to the emergency operator as she headed out the front door.
Without thinking, Carrie Phillips picked up Tommy and, following closely behind Jeannine, carried him outside.
Neil pointed to the living room; Billy Quinn accepted his directions and went to alert the others. Neil headed toward the dining room and the kitchen.
In the living room, Jon and Elizabeth were pulling a stubborn Mrs. Hubbard by the arms. The old woman rejected the calls of alarm and refused to budge and abandon her house. She dug her feet into the floor, her fingers into the cushioned armrests, and fought to keep her position on the couch. Billy Quinn entered the room and, ignoring any discussion, pleas or resistance the old woman had, wrapped his big arms around her tiny waist. In what seemed like one effortless move, he lifted her up over his shoulder and carried her through the living room, the parlor and out the front door to the driveway. Running, Jon and Elizabeth followed after him.
Patella and Eduardo remained calm. Having cleaned the house the day before, they were familiar with Mrs. Hubbard’s abundant belongings. So, thinking clearly, they went to a closet at the end of the entrance hall and grabbed all the coats and umbrellas they could carry.
Neil, still trying to evacuate the house, passed through the dining room and access hallway. Empty. But in the kitchen he found Gabriella. She was piling Ezekiel’s photographs into his small knapsack. Neil, thinking she misunderstood the urgency of the fire, grabbed her by the arm—“Leave it!”
She pushed him away with, “Importante,” and then zipped the knapsack, swung it over her shoulder and swiftly exited the house through the cluttered kitchen back doorway.
Satisfied she was safely outside, Neil pushed forward, circling through the reception room, living room and out the parlor. In the entrance hallway a thick cloud of smoke began to roll down the stairs from the second floor. The loud thuds and booms that had originally been intermittent now sounded like a roaring crowd. Neil ran out into the driveway, panting, struggling to breath.
It had been the layers of thick, hard creosote, dangerously built up inside the 200-year-old chimney, which had finally caught fire. The roof, once exposed to the flame, smoldered like a pile of damp kindling, billowing clouds of smoke until it suddenly went up in a clean rush of fire. Uncontained, the fire spread. In a flash, the whole roof was aflame.
About halfway down the driveway, a safe distance from the house, Jon, Elizabeth and her mother huddled under two umbrellas. Carrie and Tommy stood under the musty coat Ezekiel draped over their heads and held up like a tent with his arms. Jeannine and Billy Quinn pulled their coats tight and shared an umbrella. Gabriella, Patella and Eduardo huddled together for a minute under one umbrella. Then, Gabriella returned the knapsack to Ezekiel and she, Patella and Eduardo, afraid of the police due to their undocumented status, slipped off together, undetected, into the night. The old Hubbard brothers stood off to the side and covered their heads with the red windbreaker jacket Eduardo had handed them as he left.
They all gawked like an awe-struck crowd at a pep-rally bonfire. Although the farmhouse burned in front of them, none could quite comprehend what was happening or why they had assembled outside the way they had.
Tony stood closest to the burning house. Without cover, the rain soaked him while he supplied the Captain of Newbury’s Volunteer Fire Department with an account of the fire on his cell phone. “The second floor is burning now, too! Yes, the place is empty. Everyone’s out,” Tony said as Neil’s black silhouette emerged from the darkened portico.
Carrying an open umbrella, Jon rushed passed Tony toward Neil. “You’re fucking crazy, going through the house like that. What were you thinking? Here—” He tilted his umbrella over Neil.
“Is everyone out?” Tony shouted, questioning the validity of what he had just told the Fire Chief.
“I checked the first floor—it’s empty.” Neil looked over his shoulder at the burning farmhouse and trembled with disbelief at his own heroics.
In a lower, more cautious voice, Tony updated the Fire Chief: “He’s the last one … I think—”
Jon patted Neil on the back, complimenting him on his daring deed or lucky stupidity. “Shit, I can’t believe you stayed in there. You actually checked all the rooms?”
Using the cover of the umbrella, Jon guided Neil to Tony. Positioning the umbrella in the middle, he shielded their heads. A steady stream of rain ran off the umbrella and soaked their backs. “What did they say?” Jon asked.
“They’re on their way.” As Tony spoke, thin whining sirens rose in the blackness beyond the orange orb of the flames. The sound of help coming emerged from several directions. “Any minute now,” he managed to say between heavy breaths. “I think we’re really lucky … damn.”
Ezekiel saw the flames of the roof reflect in Mrs. Hubbard’s wet eyes. Although unable to see the old woman’s individual features, hidden as they were by Elizabeth’s shadow, from what he could see her expression plainly displayed complete devastation. Ezekiel wanted to hold her, to stand with her and offer support. Another new responsibility, however, kept him from going to her. Carrie and Tommy had latched onto him. Tommy’s head rested against his thigh. Carrie pressed the side of her body tightly against his. He stood tall, towering over them like their protector, with an old musty trench coat draped over their heads.
At that moment, Ezekiel felt more wanted and needed and part of another’s life than he had since the night before Tom went back over to the war, the night Tom had finally confessed what had troubled him since he got the call to re-deploy. “I don’t want to kill. I don’t want to do it. And I don’t want to die in this pathetic war,” he had whispered across the pillow to Ezekiel.
“Don’t go,” Ezekiel urged him. “Just don’t go.”
Two hours later, Ezekiel hugged his partner of ten years goodbye at the Annapolis Army Reserves base in Maryland, not twenty miles from their home in Arlington. He had tried, unsuccessfully, to hold back tears.
Standing in front of the burning farmhouse, tethered to Ezekiel, little Tommy was mystified by the fire—more intrigued and mesmerized than frightened.
Carrie securely held on to Tommy’s shoulder and, looking up at Ezekiel, asked, “How did this happen?”
“I don’t know, but we’re safe now.”
“One minute there was that argument, and that was it, we were going to leave. Next, you and the old man plow through the room and then the house started burning down. Just like that.”
Ezekiel listened to Carrie without really hearing her. Tom’s house—the place that had nurtured his partner’s joy as well as his pain—was vanishing before thei
r eyes. Ezekiel thought he should feel sad about it, but he just couldn’t get there. He looked again at Tom’s mother. Her sorrow did fill him, however. After all, her house, life history, family’s memories—all of it was disappearing before her.
Nevertheless, thoughts of Tom contradicted his empathy for the old woman. He imagined that Tom, with his square jaw and cock-sure smile, perhaps watching from another dimension, approved of the fire. Although Tom had glorified the farm when recounting memories, and only told Ezekiel a small portion of his childhood misfortunes, Ezekiel knew his partner well enough to read between the lines and hear the unspoken misery behind all the stories, even the good ones. He might not have known the details, yet he understood there were real reasons why Tom never wanted to return.
Tom hated this place and now it was burning to the ground.
Ezekiel glanced down at Tommy standing by his leg. The boy had begun to fidget, tugging the fabric of Ezekiel’s pants and looking around at the scene in wonder. A mixture of inquisitiveness, weariness and excitement spread across his face. Ezekiel was amazed at how much the boy actually looked like his father.
And then the boy picked up Ezekiel’s knapsack as if he were ready to leave.
Before Julian could stop the car, Melanie jumped out of the passenger side door. When she was gone, he leaned across the vacant passenger seat, pulled the door closed and sped down Quinns Way, leaving her and the fire behind.
Melanie ran up the driveway shouting, “Jesus Christ, Aunt Casey, where are you?” None of the figures hidden under the coats and umbrellas responded, and none looked familiar. “Auntie!” she yelled, imagining her slow-moving aunt dead in the fire. “Hello, hello!” she shouted frantically.
She feared the people in the driveway were the neighbors from the newly-built subdivision in the old haying fields on the other side of the fence, and that they had gathered to watch a tragedy unfold—to watch her family die.
Elizabeth, huddled under an umbrella, one arm slid tightly around her mother’s waist, glanced over her shoulder. Recognizing her cousin in the light of the flames, she shouted, alarmed, “Melanie!” then, switched her tone to concern, “Where have you been?”
Mrs. Hubbard broke free from Elizabeth and, opening her arms, welcomed Melanie. “Thank God, child, you’re safe.” She moved out from under the protection of the umbrella and embraced her niece. She brushed Melanie’s face, then pressed her lips deeply into her cheek and kept them there.
As Mrs. Hubbard kissed Melanie, she briefly escaped the incomprehensible circumstances unfolding around her. Life had prepared her to understand certain things—Father Hilliard having his way with her, her husband’s violent tendencies, her niece’s drunkenness and even her son’s tragic death as a soldier. She understood these things as if they were almost expected. But watching the house burn, the home she was born and raised in, brought her children up in, watched a grandfather and a husband die in, this was unfathomable. This challenged everything her life experience had taught her. Now, temporarily dismissing this unintelligible event, she focused on concern for Melanie, who she held tightly, even as she smelled the sweet perfume of alcohol on her breath. “You’re safe, child. You’re okay.”
Relieved, Melanie sighed. Moments before, when she had first glimpsed the chimney flames from the passenger seat of Julian’s car, she feared more than anything that her aunt’s unconditional love would no longer be there. Now certain of her aunt’s safety, Melanie controlled her enthusiasm and tried to sound strong. “You’re okay? What happened?”
Mrs. Hubbard squeezed Melanie’s cheeks. “Yes, I am fine. Thank God—so are you. Thank God you left earlier. Jim told me—” She caught herself and proceeded slowly as if adding up a column of numbers. “Father Hilliard told me that he had seen you leave with that Julian—”
Looking into her niece’s face, Mrs. Hubbard’s expression changed from relief to disbelief. Her complexion cleared of blood and she stopped breathing.
“Father Hilliard—” she whispered so low her voice was inaudible.
Red, blue and white lights began to spin through the air. Fire trucks, police cars and pickup trucks suddenly clogged the road and driveway. Men uncoiled fire hoses and gathered in tee-shirts, boots and slickers. Their presence turned the Hubbard’s private affair into a public event.
Mrs. Hubbard felt dizzy and light-headed. She turned from Melanie and grabbed Elizabeth’s arm. “He’s still in there.”
“Who?” Elizabeth demanded.
Firemen trudged around them.
A fire hose slammed into Mrs. Hubbard’s ankle, knocking her off balance. She stumbled and caught the sleeve of a firemen’s coat. “He’s still in there. Do something!” she shouted through the noise.
The fireman brushed her off his sleeve. “Everyone’s out,” he exclaimed and continued toward the house.
“No, no,” she shouted and began to frantically wave her arms over her head. She wanted the firefighters to leave the fire and pay attention. “My God, listen to me!” she yelled, competing against the roar of the trucks and the fire.
Mistaking the old woman’s urgency for an injury, two firefighters advanced toward Mrs. Hubbard.
Elizabeth, frightful of her mother’s state of mind and concerned for her safety, stepped between the firefighters and her mother.
Mrs. Hubbard pushed her daughter aside and pointed a boney finger to the second floor. “Father Hilliard is still in the house!”