Q Road (23 page)

Rachel pointed south, but she felt uncertain about her sense of direction without her gun. George walked around the stock barn and to the fence line.

Parks followed. “Holy shit, George. That's your barn!”

Rachel was grateful to Tom Parks for saying it. Perhaps Parks, too, could someday be a decent neighbor.

George walked quickly to his truck. Because he was still looking at the fire, he didn't notice that the truck was blocked in the driveway by Parks's cruiser behind, the Thunderbird on one side, and eighty-foot-high walnut trees and the pasture fence elsewhere. Parks sat in his cruiser with the door hanging open and his feet, nearly as wide as they were long, planted on the ground. “Come in,
this is two-five-five, Parks here.” He spoke into his radio. “There's a fire on Queer Road, about twenty-seven hundred north. … That's Q Road. Barn belonging to George Harland.” He paused. “There's no house.” The response that followed over the radio sounded to Rachel like the sputtering of angry crows.

Parks said, “George. There's water down there, right?”

George clutched the door handle of his truck. The other hand still held the greasy tractor part. “There's a well with a hand pump,” George said. “Well point might be clogged.” George kept staring toward the barn as though gathering more information about the weather between here and there. He opened his truck door.

Martini ran a short distance in the pasture. He stopped abruptly, reared up, and ran back to the fence line. The other animals stamped and snorted.

Rachel knew the well point was fine. She'd rinsed her face in the water just three days ago. All her life she'd drunk from that well, but was there enough water to put out a fire? “And the creek!” Rachel shouted.

Tom Parks nodded and spoke into his radio. Rachel saw him take the cigarette pack out of his pocket and study it as the radio cackled a response. Then he placed the pack on the dashboard.

One after another the people around the vegetable stand either put down or clutched more tightly their melons, pumpkins, and Brussels sprouts as they moved for clearer views of the smoke rising to the south. Nicole Hoekstra, however, continued to stare at her husband.

April May Rathburn was out of range of the men's voices, and she'd left her driving glasses in her car, so as she looked through the trees, she wondered if that smoke could possibly be coming from
her
house.

“George, come on,” Parks said. “Let's get down there.”

“I've got irrigation hoses out back,” George said.

“Hoses won't do you no good. Fire department will be here in five minutes with a lot bigger hoses, and you've got to be there. Leave that thing here.”

George placed the greasy metal shaft atop the nearest railroad tie fence post. To Rachel this all seemed to be happening in slow motion, the men speaking, the smoke thickening in the distance, the metal shaft lying forlorn, woolly bears creeping around her feet so slowly that they would never get anywhere, never reach safe places, never in a million years.

Though she had often willed time to slow, she now feared she would be trapped in this hopeless, sluggish moment forever, the worst possible moment, with her still feeling friendly toward the salesman and his talk of vinyl frames and insulating glass. Rachel had never cared about resisting decay before now.

With his back to her, George seemed thin enough that he might disappear. Parks got into his front seat, started the quiet engine, and called out, “Come on, George. We've got to get down there before the trucks.”

George looked over at Rachel as though establishing her location, and then turned away and curled his body into the front passenger seat of the county cruiser.

NICOLE LOOKED DOWN TO SEE HER HAND STROKING AN
acorn squash as though it were a baby animal she'd rescued from abandonment. She caressed the green ribs, admired the way they rose to meet at the top of the squash in a burst of pumpkin orange. When she looked back at Steve, she saw that the old blonde was pressed against him, and both were looking off the way a couple together thirty years might watch the sun setting, without saying a word, because they'd already said all that mattered. They were together inside the Harland house for half an hour, time enough to do just about anything. That woman, a stranger, was having a perfect marriage with Nicole's husband, and Nicole had nothing.

“Look.” Mrs. Rathburn elbowed Nicole. “Something's on fire.”

Until then, Nicole had been looking so intently at Steve and the blonde that she hadn't thought to wonder what the two of them were actually staring at. When she finally looked south, Nicole saw a plume of smoke rise from what was probably somebody's house
on fire. She felt a little ashamed that she didn't remember what house was there. Mrs. Rathburn's? But if it were her house, surely she would be more upset. Nicole looked down at the squash in her hand, greener than the greenest lawn, as dark and cool as the deepest pond. She'd always thought she didn't care for squash, but now she wasn't sure. The flavor was earthy, if she recalled correctly, musky perhaps, and maybe she'd been too young to appreciate it. She had no idea how to cook such a squash, but she could ask her mother.

Nicole looked back toward the rising smoke. She imagined inviting those people to her house—whatever people were losing everything in the fire. Those now homeless people would appreciate the simple but tasteful appointing of her house, the museum prints of flowers and the rolltop desk Steve had given her on their first anniversary. To people without a home, her house would feel like one. They'd admire her things and thank her, and she'd say, oh, it was nothing, that she was glad to help. For the first time in her life, she would devote herself to strangers, who, by continually talking of what they'd lost, would remind her of all she had. When Steve got home from work, she wouldn't have been watching for his car; instead she'd have been busy getting those people situated and fed. And later, when everybody had a cup of tea or a beer or soda, all of them would sit around the kitchen table and listen to the story of how the fire started and within minutes tore their lives apart. Nicole and Steve would look at each other across the table, sharing a sense of how fortunate they were. But would Steve still want another woman?

Nicole understood about a perfect marriage and a tragic divorce, but she didn't know what could occur in between. She stared at the side of Steve's face, at a sideburn that was slightly longer than she remembered it. When Steve finally turned toward her, he looked straight into her face and smiled, but for a moment he didn't seem to recognize her as Nicole, merely smiled and looked
at her in the stupidest and friendliest way without recognition, looked at her as he might look at any woman.

He walked toward her, still smiling. When he reached her, he said, “Nice squash.”

Nicole looked down at the hard, misshapen green thing and wondered how in the world she had ever considered cooking and eating it.

“We should go down and see what's on fire.” Steve picked up a pumpkin from beside Nicole and turned it in his hands. Its roundness gave Steve a vision of his wife bulging in pregnancy and that thought cheered him.

Nicole looked away from Steve's weird grin and saw Mrs. Rathburn standing on tiptoes for a better view. Nicole noticed Mrs. Shore across the street, staring sadly out her window. As weird as the woman might be, Nicole had a feeling that Mrs. Shore would sympathize with her hurt in a way Mrs. Rathburn never would.

“I want some pumpkins,” Nicole said.

“We'll get some pumpkins then,” Steve said. “First we should go down and see that fire.”

“I don't know.” Nicole's vision was blurring from tears. She had the idea that Steve would be just as happy with any woman as he was with her. She said, “I just don't know.”

“Don't know
what
?” Steve asked Nicole, meanwhile smiling in a friendly way at April May Rathburn.

As soon as April May realized, based on her view through the trees, that her own house might be on fire, she knew that her house being on fire wouldn't bother her. The morning had been so gray and overcast that she relished the possibility of a fire burning away the heaviness of the air, at any cost. As a kid in the 1930s and ‘40s, she'd been to bonfires behind the high school on the nights of football games. Everybody had been welcome at those bonfires, and she
had loved the way people's faces glowed as the night grew dark. “They burn up lumber. They waste good wood,” her father complained, which showed the difference that could exist between a German immigrant and his American children.

When April May stretched up on tiptoes as high as she could, anxious to see the blaze that was her house, the pain in her foot suddenly disappeared. Like magic, the pain of sixty-five years was gone, as quickly and completely as a spell being broken.

April May left the window salesman and his wife at the vegetable stand and carried the first two of her six pumpkins to the Buick, walking on the balls of her feet, feeling more buoyant than she had in decades. She liked the salesman, and his self-conscious wife seemed like a sweet girl. April May was also glad to be seeing more of Tommy Parks lately. She had always attended the township meetings, and she wondered if maybe Tommy could talk to George, get him to start coming to those meetings again. The conservative farmers would forgive him eventually for marrying Rachel, and really he shouldn't care if they didn't—the farmers' numbers were dwindling, and they needed him badly enough to overlook his impropriety. Seeing all those people in the same room, even if they were at odds, always made April May think that the farms and new homes could coexist, if houses lined the roads and the farming took place in acreage behind the houses, if new people would be tolerant of the realities of farming, and if the farmers wouldn't automatically resist change. April May saw how they could all fit together as one community, if only everyone would be sensible and tolerant.

Despite this neighborly feeling for her township, April May didn't mind the thought of her home reduced to a burned-out shell. If her house of fifty years were on fire, she thought, she'd stand out there with the neighbors and watch it burn. Well-constructed celebration bonfires were lovely, but it was also good sometimes to be at the mercy of uncontrollable forces. Like the tornado that
destroyed a swath of the town when she was seven, disasters brought everybody together and gave them something to remember, put them in a common awe, the way God used to. April May returned to the vegetable stand and retrieved her third and fourth pumpkins. Wherever she had to live now, she'd take her pumpkins with her. How crazy that she wasn't distressed, how incredible that she wasn't in pain. How liberating this lightness!

By the time Larry got home tonight, their house would be in ashes. All his woodworking and her family photos and murder mysteries would be dust. But maybe instead of rebuilding with the insurance money, she and Larry could buy an RV and travel the year round, having their Social Security checks direct-deposited, withdrawing money from machines throughout the Lower Forty-eight, maybe even heading up to Alaska. April May had never used an automatic teller machine, but she could learn how. They'd take it slow in the beginning. On the first night they'd park their RV on a sandy lookout over Lake Michigan, and from there they'd go west. Before they'd even consider coming back east, she would have to see a desert, a mountain, an ocean, northern lights, and a glacier. After she carried her last pumpkins and the gourds to the Buick, she slammed the trunk shut.

April May thought of her little barn bird feeder, imagined it blazing atop its metal pole, and she knew she was kidding herself. She knew this half-mile stretch of road as well as anyone, and even without her driving glasses she knew that her cats and cookware and decades of accumulated knickknacks were fine, because the fire was in the Harland barn. As a way of distracting herself from the disappointment of not losing everything, she thought about having a Halloween bonfire this year. She'd pile twigs and broken limbs into a wigwam-shaped affair and set them ablaze in the dark. April May had been planning to celebrate Halloween with cider and snacks as usual, but maybe this year she would have tricks instead of treats. Or perhaps she'd send Larry to the store, shoo the cats
outside, and light her curtains with a jack-o'-lantern. Then she'd step out herself and stand with the kids to watch the fire devour her house. Young ghosts, witches, and costumed superheroes would gather as witnesses. Their eyes would glisten in the dark, and when they realized the house itself was afire, they would scream. And after the destruction of her furniture, keepsakes, and cookbooks, she and Larry would take to the road, roam all over the country to see what they hadn't seen while sitting here in one place. She wouldn't say she'd wasted her life in Greenland—nothing like that—but she had been simmering here on low heat an awfully long time.