Reprisal

by F. Paul Wilson

  Bill leaned back in his chair and pointed to Danny.

  "Watch."

  In a matter of a minute, certainly no more than two, Danny had tipped over and explored the contents of the wastebasket, climbed to a standing position on the chair and inspected everything on the desktop, pounded on the typewriter, tried to work the adding machine, drawn on the blotter, opened every drawer and pulled out whatever was in his way, picked up and inspected anything that piqued his interest, then dropped it on the floor as soon as something else caught his eye, then crawled into the knee hole and began playing with the plugs on the electric cords under the desk.

  "Stay away from the electricity, Danny," Bill warned. "You know it's dangerous."

  Without a word Danny rolled out from under the desk and looked around for something else. His eyes lit on Nick's overstuffed briefcase and he zeroed in on it.

  Nick reached it first and snatched it off the floor and onto his lap.

  "Sorry, Danny," he said with a smile and a quick glance at Bill. "This may took like a wastepaper basket, but it's highly organized. Really."

  Danny veered off in another direction.

  "See what I mean?" Bill said.

  "You mean he's like this all day?"

  "And most of the night. Nonstop. From the crack of dawn till he collapses from sheer exhaustion."

  "No nap?"

  "Never."

  "Oy vey. Was I ever like that?"

  "You had your own unique set of problems, but your hyperac-tivity was exclusively mental."

  "I get pooped just watching him."

  "Right. So you see why I need a pair of experienced parents for Danny. They have to have the patience of Job and they have to go into this with their eyes completely open."

  "No takers?"

  Bill shrugged and put a finger to his lips. He didn't like to discuss the children's adoption prospects in front of themno matter how preoccupied they seemed, their ears were usually wide open.

  He clapped his hands once and got to his feet.

  "Come on, Danny me-boy. Let's get you under the covers one last time tonight."

  Nick rose with him, yawning. "I think I'll be getting on my way too. I've still got to drive out to the Island."

  They shook hands.

  "Next Saturday?" Bill said.

  Nick waved. "Same time, same station."

  "Bye, Nick!" Danny said.

  "Bye, kid," he said to Danny, then winked at Bill. "And good luck!"

  "Thanks," Bill said. "See you next week."

  Bill held out "üs hand to Danny who took it and allowed himself to be led down the long hall to the dorm section. But only for a moment. Soon he was skipping ahead and then scampering back to run circles around Bill.

  Bill shook his head in wonder. All that energy. He never ceased to be amazed at Danny's endless store of it. Where did it come from? And what could Bill do to govern it? Because until it was brought under control, he doubted Danny would find an adoptive home.

  Yes, he was a lovable kid. Prospective^ parents came in, took one look at himthe blond hair, those eyes, that smileand said that's the boy we've been looking for, that's the child we've always wanted. His hyperactivity would be explained to them but the parents were sure they could handle itLook at him it's worth anything to raise that boy. No problem.

  But after Danny's first weekend visit they all tended to sing a different tune. Suddenly it was "We have to give this some more thought," or "Maybe we're not ready for this just yet."

  Bill didn't hold it against them. Euphemistically speaking, Danny was a trial. That one little boy required as much attention as ten average children. He'd been examined by a panel of pediatric neurologists, put through batteries of tests, all resulting in no hard findings. He had a nonspecific hyperactivity syndrome. Medications were tried but without significant improvement.

  So day after day the almost-incessant activity went on. And one after another, Danny simply wore people out.

  Which somehow made Bill grow more deeply attached to him. Maybe it was the fact that of all the kids now residing in St. Francis, Danny had been here the longest. Two years. He'd grown from a shy, introverted hyperactive five-year-old survivor of a drug-addict mother who'd accidentally immolated herself while free-basing, into a bright, personable, hyperactive seven-year-old. And it wasn't so hard taking care of him here at St. F.'s. After many hundreds of residents over its century-plus of existence, the building was as childproof as any place could be. Proof even against Danny Gordon.

  But the days of the St. Francis Home for Boys were numbered. The Society of Jesus was cutting backlike all the religious orders, the Jesuits were gradually dwindling in membershipand St. F.'s was slated as one of the casualties. The city and other Catholic agencies would fill the void when it finally closed its doors in another two or three years. There were fewer boys in residence now than at any time in the old orphanage's history.

  As he tucked Danny into bed and helped him say his prayers, Bill wondered if he might be getting too attached to the child. Hell, why not admit it: He was already too attached. That was a luxury someone in his position couldn't afford. He had to put the child's interests firstalways. He couldn't allow any sort of emotional attachment to influence his decisions. He knew it would hurt when Danny left. And although it might take some time to arrange, his adoption was inevitableyet he could not forestall that pain at Danny's expense.

  But he was certainly determined to enjoy Danny while he was here. He had grown attached to some of the other boys in years pastNicky had been the firstbut most of them had started out at St. F.'s a few years older. Bill had been watching Danny grow and develop. It was almost like having a son.

  "Good night, Danny," he said from the bedroom door. "And don't give Father Cullen any trouble, okay?"

  "'Kay. Where you goin', Father?"

  "Going to visit some old folks."

  "Those same old folks you see all the time?"

  "The same ones."

  Bill didn't want to tell him he was making one of his regular trips out to visit his own parents. That would inevitably lead to questions about Danny's parents.

  "When you comin' back?"

  "Tomorrow night, same as ever."

  "'Kay."

  With that he rolled over and went to sleep.

  Bill returned alone to his own room where a half-packed overnight bag waited. If he stepped on it he could probably make it to his folks' place before one A.M.

  As usual, Mom had waited up for him. Bill had told her over and over not to do that but she never listened. Tonight she was swathed in a long flannel robe and had her usual motherly kiss and hug for him.

  "David!" she called. "Bill's here!"

  "Let him sleep, Ma."

  "Don't be silly. We have plenty of time for sleep. Your father would never let me hear the end of it if I didn't wake him when you arrived."

  Dad shuffled into the kitchen, tying his robe around him. They shook hands, Bill noting that his father's grip was not what it used to be. He seemed slightly more stooped every time he saw him.

  The regular ritual followed.

  Mom made him and Dad sit down at the kitchen table while she plugged in the Mr. Coffeeall set up, loaded with decaf and water, ready to go. She served them each a piece of pieit was cherry this timeand when the coffee was ready, they all sat and talked about "what's new."

  Which was never much. Bill's routine at St. F.'s was set so that one day was usually pretty much like every other. Occasionally he could report a successful placement or two", but as a rule it was business as usual. As for Mom and Dad, they were both hovering around seventy. They'd never been the types for golf or much socializing, so their existence was sedentary. They went out to dinner twice a week, Tuesdays at the Lighthouse Cafe and Fridays at Memison's. The only break in their routine was the death of an acquaintance. They always seemed to have a new death or major illness to report. Discussion of the details formed the bulk of their conversation.

&nbs
p; Not much of a life as far as Bill was concerned, but they loved and were comfortable with each other, laughed together, and seemed happy enough. And that, after all, was what really counted.

  But the house was getting to be too much for them. Mom did all right keeping the indoors clean and neat, but slowly, steadily, the outside had got away from Dad. Bill had tried to convince them to sell, get an apartment closer to downtown where they'd have a fraction of their present maintenance and could walk to the harborfront. Uh-uh. They weren't having any of that. They'd always lived here and so they would continue to live here and let's not discuss it anymore.

  He loved them dearly but they could be royal pains when it came to this house. Though in a way he couldn't blame them. The idea of selling the old place and letting someone else live in it didn't sit too well with him either. This house seemed like an island of stability in a world of flux and flow.

  So, since last summer, a couple of times a month, Bill would devote his Sunday off to the upkeep of the three-bedroom ranch that was the Ryan family homestead. Nearly two decades at St. F.'s had turned him into a skilled handyman. And he was almost caught up. By summer he figured he could reduce his maintenance schedule to once a month.

  "I think I'll hit the sack," he said, pushing himself away from the table.

  "But you haven't finished your pie."

  "Full, Ma," he said, patting his thickening waist. He was carrying more weight than he liked. Mom didn't seem to realize that a man approaching his mid-forties did not need cherry pie at one in the morning.

  After good nights, he headed for the bedroom at the far end of the househis since childhood. He was beat. Without bothering to change out of his sweats, he slipped into the creaky old bed like a tired foot into a well-worn slipper.

  Bill awoke coughing, with stinging eyes and nose. Either he was having an allergy attack or

  Smoke! Something was burning!

  Then he heard the approaching sirens.

  Fire!

  He jumped out of bed and turned on the lamp but it didn't work. He pulled the flashlight he'd kept in the nightstand since he was a kid and that did work, but feebly. He stumbled through the white smoke that layered the air of his room and swirled in his wake. His bedroom door was closed. He spotted the smoke eddying in around the edges.

  The house was on fire. Mom! Dad !

  Bill grabbed the doorknob. It was hotblistering hotbut he ignored the pain and pulled it open. The blast of heat from the hallway threw him back as a torrent of smoke and flame roared into the bedroom. He lurched for the window, yanked it open, and dove through the screen.

  Cold fresh air. He gulped it. He rolled onto his back and stared at the house. Flame was jetting from his bedroom window with a deafening roar, as if someone had opened the door to a blast furnace.

  And then an awful thought tore through his gut and propelled him to his feet. What about the rest of the house? What about the other end where his parents had their bedroom?

  Jesus God oh please let them be all right!

  He ran to his right toward the front of the house but froze when he rounded the corner.

  The rest of the house was a mass of flame. It gushed from the windows and licked up the walls and climbed toward heaven through holes in the roof.

  Dear God no!

  Bill dashed forward to where the firemen were setting up their hoses.

  "My parents! The Ryans! Did you get them out?"

  The fireman turned to him. His expression was grim in the flickering golden light.

  "We just got here. You really think there might be someone in there?"

  "If you haven't seen a man and a woman in their seventies out here, then yes, they're definitely in there!"

  The fireman glanced at the blaze 1 , then back at Bill. His eyes said everything.

  With a hoarse cry, Bill ran toward the front door. The fireman grabbed his arm but he shook him off. He had to get them out of there! As he neared the house, the heat buffeted him in waves. He'd seen blazing houses on the TV news over the years but film and videotape had never conveyed the true ferocity of a fire once it had the upper hand. He felt as if his skin was going to-blister, as if his eyes were going to boil in their sockets. He crossed his arms in front of his face and pushed forward, hoping his hair didn't burst into flame.

  On the front porch he grabbed the brass door handle but winced and let go. Hot . Hotter even than his bedroom doorknob had been. Too hot to grip. And then he cursed as he realized it didn't matter how hot it wasthe door was locked.

  He ran around the shrubs toward his parents' bedroom. The flames were roaring unchallenged from the windows. And yet from within, above the roar, he thought he heard a scream.

  He turned to the firemen and let out his own scream.

  "In here!" He pointed to the pair of windows that opened into their bedroom. "They're in here!"

  Bill ducked as the fire fighters got the hose going and directed the fat stream directly through the window and into the bedroom.

  He heard the scream again. Screams . It was two voices nowwailing in agony. His father and mother were in there burning alive!

  The fire fighter he had met before ran up to him and began pulling him back.

  "Get away from here! You'll get yourself killed!"

  Bill fought him off. "You got to help me get them out of there!"

  The fire fighter grabbed Bill's shoulders and turned him toward the blaze.

  "Take a look at that fire! Take a real good look! Nobody can be alive in there!"

  "My God, don't you hear them?"

  The fireman stood still a moment, listening. Bill watched his craggy face as he took off his fire hat and cocked an ear toward the house.

  He had to hear them! How could he miss those terrified, agonized cries? Each wail tore through Bill like barbed wire across an open wound.

  The fireman shook his head. "No. I'm sorry, pal. There's no one alive in there. Now come on"

  As Bill pulled free of his grasp again, the roof over the bedroom collapsed in an explosion of sparks and flaming embers. The blast of heat knocked Bill off his feet.

  And that was when he knew they were gone. He felt his chest constrict around the pain. Mom Dad dead. They had to be. The bedroom was a crematorium now. Had been for some time. Nothing could have survived an instant in there.

  He didn'tcouldn'tresist as the fireman dragged him back to safety. He could only shout out his grief and anguished helplessness at the flames, at the night.

  FIFTEEN

  Why?

  Bill stood alone beside the double grave under an obscenely bright late winter sky. The unfiltered sunlight stung the healing burns on his cheeks, feebly warmed his chest and shoulders, but left his soul untouched. The March wind was a cold knife slicing across the bare knolls of Tall Oaks Cemetery, ripping through the thin fabric of his black pants and jacket.

  The mourners were gone; the caretakers had yet to arrive. By tradition he should have hosted a gathering at home for the mourners, but his home was gone. Home was now a tumble of blackened, ice-encrusted timbers.

  Why?

  Bill had made all the mourners go, practically pushed them away from the graveside. He had wept his tears, he had pounded his fists of rage against unyielding walls until they were bruised and swollen, now he wanted to be alone with his folks one last time before the earth was resealed over them.

  How alone he felt at this moment. He realized that subconsciously he had taken it for granted that his parents would always be around. Consciously, of course, he had known that their remaining years were numbered in single digits, but he had envisioned them leaving him one at a time, taken off by natural causes. Never in his worst nightmare had he envisioned the possibility of such a catastrophe. Their sudden departure had left a gaping hole in his life. Even the old ranch house was gone. Where was home now? He felt adrift, as if his anchor had been torn loose three days ago and could no longer find purchase.

  A long three daystwo for the wake, t
hen the Requiem Mass and funeral service itself this morningfull of pain and the sympathy of friends and acquaintances, days in which he'd tried to leaven his grief by telling himself that his parents had led long, happy, productive lives and hadn't had much time left anyway, and how lucky he'd been to have had them around as long as he did. But none of it worked. Whatever tempering effect that sort of reasoning might have had on his almost-overwhelming sense of loss was repeatedly blasted away by the insistent memory of the two blackened, twisted corpses he had seen removed from the ruins of his parents' bedroom.

  Why?

  How many times had he offered pat, soothing bromides to a deceased's mourning family when they turned to him with that same question? He had always avoided perpetuating the nonsense that it was God's will, that God was "testing" the living, trying their faith. Circumstance, the capriciousness of reality, those were what tested one's faith. God didn't have to stick his finger into the soup and squash somebody. Disease, injury, genetic accidents, and the forces of nature were all quite capable of ruining and ending lives without the slightest help from God.

  And yet here he was, Father Ryan, asking the same questionone chagrined Father Ryan, realizing that he never really had answered the question for others, and he now could do no better for himself.

  Chief Morgan of the Monroe Fire Company had provided some sort of an explanation, though. He had pulled Bill aside in the rear of Cahill's Funeral Home during the wake.

  "I think we found the cause, Father," he had said.

  "Was it arson?" Bill said, feeling the rage rise up in him. He'd been sure the fire had been set. He had no idea who or why, but he couldn't bejieve the fire could spread so far so fast on its own.

  "No. W.e had the arson team go over the place. No sign of an accelerant. We think it started in the wiring."

  Bill had been dumbfounded.

  "You mean a short circuit could make a house burn like that?"

  "Your folks built that house before the warthe Second World War. It was a tinderbox. A good thing one of the neighbors called it in or you wouldn't be standing here."

  "Electrical?"

  "Well, the wiring was as old as the house. Not made for modern appliances. Something gets overheated once too often and then" He finished the sentence with an elaborate shrug.