Summer People (16 page)

Nathan's mouth opened to let fly a nervous laugh, but he managed only something like a dry cough. “No. That's very definitely not what I said. I didn't say anything remotely like that.”

“What did you say?”

“I think I said good-bye! I think I might have cursed to myself, or cursed myself for bringing Ellen up there, but I would never have said anything like that to your wife.”

“She seems to remember the incident differently. She also claims you tried to hit her with the car as you were leaving.”

“That's insane!” Nathan cried. “I didn't try to hit her either.” While he spoke, he heard Peewee's paws scratching across the hardwood floor as the dachshund trotted into the room on its stubby legs and crossed onto the throw rug in front of him. The dog had gotten into something—thin streaks of what looked like black tar ran down the short, caramel-colored hair of its back. But apparently not noticing, Mr. McAlister patted the seat beside him on the couch. “I think your dog—,” Nathan muttered, but Peewee had leaped onto the cushions and was already nuzzling the older man's hand.

In an instant, Mr. McAlister peered at his palm, then at the dog, then swept Peewee off the couch at the same time that he himself stood. “Goddammit!” Mr. McAlister bellowed. He held his drink in front of him like a lantern as he inspected the seat cushions and his pants. “This
is the second time he's come in here with that shit on him and I can't figure out where he's getting it.”

The dog had landed miraculously on all fours. It stared at Mr. McAlister and Nathan with a plaintive expression, then circled around the throw rug as a preliminary ritual to lying down.

Mr. McAlister said, “No, Peewee! No, now come here.” He set his drink and cigar on the end table then led the dog down the hall. Nathan stared into the fire, wondering if it was possible Mr. McAlister's wife really thought he had been trying to mow her down. He thought about the way she looked when he passed near her with the car—all the righteous indignation drained from her face—and for a moment he wished he'd driven closer. As the minutes passed, however, and Mr. McAlister still hadn't returned, Nathan's resentment began to fade in and out of a defeated and somewhat drunken melancholy. A dog walked in circles before lying down because of hundreds of thousands of years of dogs flattening grass to create a space to fall asleep. Two men in front of a fire arguing over the mistreatment of a woman. The same stories again and again.

“All right,” Mr. McAlister said, sighing as he reentered the library. He glanced back down the hall as Peewee trotted after him to circle and finally lie down on the rug. When Mr. McAlister eased himself onto the couch again, his long face and narrowed eyes indicated that most of his patience had left him. “So, why would Jean think you tried to hit her if you didn't?”

“I have no idea. I was trying to pull out of that narrow driveway, and there's no way to turn around without coming close to the walkway. But I wasn't going very fast, and I certainly wasn't trying to hurt her or even scare her. I don't even
know
her, for God's sake.”

“You know she was rude to Ellen.”

Nathan hesitated, then said, “Yeah. I do know that. But that wouldn't have been enough for me to try and hit her with the car.”

For a moment, the only sound in the room was the faint keening of wind through the windows and the crackling of the logs in the fire. Mr. McAlister said, “Jean is thinking about pressing charges against you.”

Nathan stared openmouthed. “You have got to be…that's absurd.”

“Both she and Thayer thought you could have hit her with the car.”

“Well, both she and Thayer have greatly misinterpreted what happened.”

“I just wanted to let you know.”

“Well, is she going to?”

“I don't know. I think that's something she's debating at the moment.”

Nathan said bitterly, “You know what I think this is about? I think this is your wife knowing that if I have to leave, that means Ellen probably has to leave, too.”

“I don't think that's what this is about, Nathan.”

“Yeah, well from what I hear, it would probably be less complicated for everybody if Ellen wasn't here. I know you guys were involved and that Ellen still wants to spend time with you, but at the funeral the other day, you wouldn't even walk over and say hello to her because you were so busy chitchatting with your wife.”

Mr. McAlister held his glass with both hands in his lap and glowered at Nathan, pausing to choose his words. “I wanted to say hello to Ellen, and I would be very saddened if she had to leave.”

Nathan said, “Well, so would Ellen.”

Mr. McAlister nodded and cast his eyes down. He said, “I can tell Jean that—” But he didn't finish the sentence. A knot in one of the logs in the fireplace exploded, and a flurry of red embers arced through the air. Most landed safely on the dark tile in front of the hearth, but one settled on Peewee where he lay stretched out on the edge of the rug. The ember ignited a few hairs on his hindquarters and remained contained for a moment, allowing Nathan to chuckle when the dog yipped and lifted his head. Then that small patch of burning hair rocketed up the full length of Peewee's body and enveloped the dog in crackling flame. Because Nathan had been drinking earlier, he questioned what he was seeing, but when he glanced at Mr. McAlister and saw his stricken expression and outstretched hands, he understood it was true. What had initially seemed a minor accident was becoming something ghastly to behold. Peewee scrambled up
on his paws, yelping wildly, until he scurried, howling, out of the room before either man had time to stand.

By the time they found Peewee on his side a few feet away from the living room's patio doors, scorched and whimpering, he had already tried to extinguish himself by rubbing against the heavy white curtains. Flames leapt and snarled up the thick folds with a voracious hunger. For an instant, Nathan stood, stunned, as Mr. McAlister took a throw pillow off the couch and alternately tried to beat out the smoking cinders on his dog and the flames already licking the ceiling. Then Nathan grabbed another throw pillow and tried to smother what had become a wall of fire. Mr. McAlister waved him back. His flushed face squinting into the shimmery heat, the older man grabbed at a section of the curtain not yet burning, and yanked. The muscles in his face and neck strained with the effort, but the wooden curtain rings defied him. He stepped back and stared into the roiling fire then called for Nathan to follow him.

Mr. McAlister hustled into the kitchen, and fumbled inside a closet a long time to finally pull out a fire extinguisher. As they rushed back down the hallway, the older man was walking quickly, not running, and flakes of spittle clung to the corners of his mouth. “Do you want me to use that?” Nathan asked, but Mr. McAlister shook his head.

In the living room, the fire rushed like upside-down rapids across more than a quarter of the ceiling. Nathan darted over to grab a shawl from the couch and use it to scoop Peewee into his arms. He carried him back into the hallway just as Mr. McAlister took a few steps into the room to spray the walls and ceiling. Acrid-smelling smoke billowed toward them in dense clouds, forcing them deeper into the hallway. Nathan inspected the still smoldering dog for signs of life, but he knew the poor thing was no longer breathing. He cradled the dead dog in his arms as both men stared in mute astonishment at how quickly the fire was raging across the ceiling and along the side walls.

Mr. McAlister let the fire extinguisher fall, then hurried over to the near corner of the room to pull a few photographs off the piano. His face wincing from the heat, he carried the frames into the hall and gestured
again for Nathan to follow him. In the kitchen, Mr. McAlister's armful of frames clattered across the marble counter as he picked up the phone to dial 911. He barked the address and a few directions, then sputtered, “When you've gotten that far, you can just follow the goddamned smoke.” His skin was a sweating, reddish-gray, and when he hung up, he beckoned Nathan. “I need your help to take some things out.”

First they deposited Peewee, the pictures, and a seascape painting Mr. McAlister had pulled off the foyer wall onto an illuminated semicircle of driveway near the front lamppost. Then Mr. McAlister said, “Don't go near the fire or upstairs. Just grab anything that looks important and try to get it outside.”

For the next few minutes, Nathan did what he could, shuttling china, silverware, chairs, and paintings out onto the driveway. When he had finished carrying out a framed aerial photograph of Brightonfield Cove and a drawer full of letters, he paused, panting, to survey how much of the house the fire had already consumed. No longer able to see the lamplight through the library window—the room was thick with black swirls of smoke—he thought he might rush around to enter through the laundry room and perhaps at least rescue
Don Quixote.
But when he took a few hesitant steps in that direction, he heard Mr. McAlister.

“Nathan! Can you get these for me?” The older man was standing in the doorway, his chest heaving, waving Nathan into the house. He led him through the faintly smoky hallway to a stack of drawers at the bottom of the stairs. Peering down into the jumbled mess of old stock statements, socks, and bills, Nathan coughed and shouted, “I think the fire's reached the library.” Mr. McAlister crouched beside him, hoisting a stack of drawers, and nodded grimly.

Outside they could hear the rising wail of approaching fire trucks. They returned for more salvage, but Nathan was increasingly aware of the progression of the smoke and how foolish it would be to die trying to save this rich man's possessions. When Nathan stumbled back outside with a rolled-up Persian rug, he was relieved to see a fireman approach to lead him out onto the street. Red lights flashed against the white facade of
the house. Firefighters bustled around their trucks, then dispersed, weaving the long hose through the trees and alongside what looked like a high-end, late-night yard sale. A fireman led Mr. McAlister out of the house as the older man tried explaining what other belongings might be saved.

The dog dead, the library lost, and Mr. McAlister safely removed from the house, Nathan took a deep breath. He was disturbed by the memory of the dog's gruesome death, and grieved by the loss of so many beautiful books, but he was safe. The sympathy he had for Mr. McAlister was overwhelmed by the thrumming postadrenaline excitement of having experienced something bizarre and life-threatening and now being able to tell the tale.

The fireman by Nathan's side asked if there was still anyone in the house, and if he felt okay, then told him to wait near the fire truck for the paramedics to check him out when they returned. “Are you cold?” The fireman pulled a blanket out of the back and draped it over Nathan's shoulders. Listening to the sounds of breaking windows and watching the smoke billow out of the house, Nathan felt like a character in one of those videos he'd watched in grade school about the importance of fire safety. A few feet away, a heavy, ruddy-faced fireman was asking Mr. McAlister questions and jotting down the answers on a clipboard.

“So no one else lives in the house besides you?”

“No.”

“And you said your dog died in the fire?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know how the fire might have started?”

“Yeah, the dog. Peewee. He caught fire.”

The fireman nodded, but his lips grew smaller within his goatee. “How did the dog catch fire?”

Mr. McAlister shook his head and said, “I don't know.” He was staring off to where neighbors were already gathering on the left side of the yard.

“Any guesses?”

Nathan pulled his blanket more closely around him and nearer to where the two men were talking. How
had
the dog caught fire? he
wondered, with increasing indignation. He had hated seeing the terror in those eyes, and smelling its charred wiener-shaped body, and he wanted to know why God would have allowed such a deviation from the normal laws of combustion. A stray ember could have burned Peewee mildly, igniting a small portion of his hair, but what the hell had turned that dachshund into a miniature rocket of howling flame?

Mr. McAlister straightened up and chewed on his lower lip as if he might bite it off. “The goddamned dog had tar on him again, so I rubbed some paint thinner on him to get it off, but then he came back into the”—Mr. McAlister shook his head before his voice trailed off into a whisper—“into my study there, and sat down by the fire.”

Nathan stared, slack-jawed, at Mr. McAlister, then the fireman. The stocky young man had been listening sympathetically to Mr. McAlister, but when the older man said “paint thinner,” the fireman's mouth twitched to one side and he looked down at his clipboard with suddenly rapt concentration.

The fireman eventually asked what happened next, but Nathan wasn't around to hear the answer. A paramedic had walked over and began asking Nathan questions to see if he was all right. When it was over, and he had fielded many of the same questions from a policeman, Nathan watched as the firemen launched thick cords of water into the house until the fire no longer seemed to be spreading. Mr. McAlister stood nearby, already surrounded by several neighbors with shaking heads. Nathan listened to the neighbors' stilted conversation about the things Mr. McAlister had been able to save, and how lucky it was that they had a volunteer fire department to respond with such dispatch. The fire was now mostly smoke, and other neighbors were mingling with the firemen, policemen, and paramedics to talk about what had happened. Nathan walked past the couple talking with Mr. McAlister and shook his hand, telling him that he was going to head home.

“You sure you're all right?” Mr. McAlister's eyes looked much more compassionate than they had when he was barking orders at Nathan, trying to lug everything out of the house.