Town Burning (29 page)

Franklin’s another one of those damn’ polite ones, don’t stick their necks out and the next thing you know you’ve said too goddam much and you feel like an ass, just trying to be nice. Just like the rest of Leah—looking at you. Somebody has to talk, don’t they? Somebody has to be friendly, don’t they?

His own father had been another one. State senator, mouth shut, made money, worked his ass off, died off his rocker and couldn’t even go to the bathroom by himself. He was a hard man and nobody liked him very much, just respected him, feared him. He knew one person feared the old man still. Afraid of him even when he lay in his coffin. Didn’t even like to go down to the graveyard.

He still didn’t like to go down there, just as he didn’t want to go to the hospital to see what was left of Bruce. He was afraid that the eyes, so much like his father’s eyes, would open up and look at him. They couldn’t, of course. The doctors said they couldn’t. He could tell himself over and over and over they couldn’t.

He wanted to go home, have himself a shot of bourbon and go to bed. He didn’t smoke when he was in bed. But he shouldn’t leave the yard. Maybe Madbury
would
stay up all night. Like hell. As soon as he got tired of being the boy on the burning deck he’d go home to bed.

William Cotter reached for the telephone, startled to find another cigarette burning in the ash tray, and called home. Gladys answered.

“Johnny home, Glad? Everything O.K. there?”

“He and Franklin are eating supper. Are you all right, dear? What’s happening? Have they saved those houses on Poverty Street? Miss Colchester called for the Red Cross. We’re making up food. I’m making macaroni and cheese. Bill, are we all going to be burned out?”

“Take it easy, Glad. I don’t know as much as you do, but the yard’s O.K. Let me talk to Johnny.”

“I saw the fire from Pike Hill,” John said. “You want me to come down there with you?”

“Oh, the yard’s O.K., I guess. It probably won’t cross the Cascom. The mill’s in the way, for one thing. No sparks coming over here just now, just smoke all over the place. I think the wind’s going down a little. Maybe the fires are changing it a little. You know, making their own wind. I wish you’d come and spell me later, though. Would you, Johnny?”

“Sure. When do you want me?”

“How about around eleven?”

“I’ll be there at eleven. I’m going down to the fire and see if I can help.”

“Well, take care of yourself, Johnny.”

The dirty office seemed to turn. Smoke hung in the drab room. He knew he couldn’t work, so he took the bull’s-eye lantern and made a tour around the yard. He found where oil from the one-lunger had dripped into sawdust; remembering theories of spontaneous combustion, he kicked the oil-soaked sawdust out onto the dirt. It was something to do, anyway, even though he’d never heard of sawdust bursting into flame right on the ground.

The trucks were all shining and silent in the big garage-shed. The Cascom River, dried to the size of a brook, and dirty as it came through town, hardly seemed to move at all. A frog plopped into the black water and turned around to look at the lantern. Suddenly he saw hundreds of frogs’ eyes, all looking at him, all silent.
Thousands
of eyes—the place was infested with frogs. He humed up and down the short stretch of riverbank bounding the yard and found the river crammed with frogs of all sizes and colors, many of them huge, green-brown bullfrogs. Excitedly he flashed his lantern over this drought-caused bonanza of frogs.
Millions
of frogs, and all of them probably hungry as hell. Their eyes were bright BB’s scattered over the water.

He ran off to find Madbury, and came across him in the roofing shed among the tar-black rolls. “Nothin’ out of place, I can see,” the old man said seriously, duty showing in his dedicated eyes. As he spoke he searched the far corners for sparks.

“You like frogs’ legs?” William Cotter asked.

“Huh?” The old eyes narrowed. He pointed his flashlight into William Cotter’s face.

“You like frogs’ legs, I asked you.”

“Ain’t et none since I was a kid,” Madbury said grudgingly, still wanting to be the brave watchman.

“I said do you like ’em?”

Madbury took time to think. It wasn’t a proper question, but it was a straight one. “Us kids used to be crazy for frog legs. I ain’t had none since I was a kid.”

“How did you fix’em?”

“Frypan.”

“We dipped them in corn meal, then dropped them into hot bacon grease. Remember how they used to kick, right in the pan?”

“Seems I remember that,” Madbury said.

“You come with me!” The old man followed, shaking his head but coming right along. When he saw the thousands of copper-bright eyes, he believed.

“Bald-headed Jesus!” he said, and there was no more watchman in him.

“We’ll need a burlap bag, for one thing,” William Cotter said.

“I got some Number Two, Number One hooks over to my house,” Madbury said. “We git us a couple long pieces of furring—maybe one-by-ones, and make us a couple of gigs. Godalmighty! I never seen so many frogs in one place!”

“O.K. You run over and get the hooks. I’ll get a pair of pliers out of the sawmill and a couple of one-by-ones, pine.”

In the sawmill he found a pair of pliers under the planer, but his most interesting find was a long cane pole rigged for fishing, with a trout hook on a short piece of gut leader. One of the men must have tried some fishing during the lunch half-hour. He took the pole and two long pieces of furring back to the river.

“I’m a fly fisherman,” he said excitedly. His hands shook as he unsnarled the line. Looking up the long pole he saw, over the woolen mill, the red glow of the fire. It made the sky fairly bright in that quarter and helped him to see. He cut a piece of red wool from the small end of his necktie and threaded it on the rusty little hook. The pole was quite springy, and the second his fly hit the water he had a frog by the tongue. The frogs mobbed the hook, jumping over and on each other’s backs to get it. The river boiled with frogs whenever his fly touched the water.

When the old man came back, out of breath, William Cotter had landed and released a dozen frogs. Madbury had thought to bring a burlap bag, and he strung it over a bush. After sticking himself he got the big hooks straightened out and a gig made on the end of one of the long one-by-ones.

“I’m going to take the barb off this hook,” William Cotter said. He’d had to pull a bullfrog’s tongue half out, the frog grunting and squirming, before he could get the hook loose. This one he knocked over the head and tossed into the bag. Madbury danced up and down the mucky bank, trying to spear bullfrogs only. It was difficult to miss the hungry leopard and brown frogs, who practically dived into the gig itself.

The frogs kicked and grunted when they were hooked, kept mobbing the piece of red wool even after it grew dark and slimy. They waited on the surface for the darting gig, their little eyes stupid, bright and willing. It seemed as if all the frogs on the river came to see the excitement. The bag filled slowly with big bullfrogs: wounded leopard and brown frogs hopped and crawled brokenly off into the dry brush.

“Goddam!” Madbury yelled, “we going to have that bag full-up in no time! I just stuck one his legs are bigger’n bananas! Goddam drumsticks!”

John knew he’d been smart to leave the car at home. The streets were full of trucks and cars and amateur traffic directors to whom nobody paid any attention. Half the people were watching and half were insanely and erratically busy. One side of Poverty Street was a solid wall of wooden tenements. The other side was an even more solid wall of orange fire. The street itself was empty except for a burning car and discarded furniture, and the asphalt melted and ran down the gutters like watery mud. The car baked and burned, its tires firey wings. From the next street over, Mechanic Street, the town pumper had gone as far as it could into the alley between the houses and tried ineffectually to spray the roofs of the standing tenements. A bucket brigade carried water up the wooden fire escapes, but this seemed hopeless too. Most of the men were still trying to bring out clothes and bedding to the waiting cars and trucks.

The Town Square was filled with women and children, mattresses and television sets. Dogs ran between the cars and people, wagging tails and biting tires. John saw no cats at all: the paranoid creatures, he thought, usually considered any excitement to be a plot, and had left town until things cooled off. Young children, their faces cold and pale, were towed on tottering stiff legs behind their mothers.

He found Chief Atmon among the clutter of tank trucks, some of them fuel-oil carriers, some milk trucks, some farm pickups with tanks chained on—all of them filling at the hydrant, then taking the water to the ravenous pumper. Atmon stood on the flat bed of a pickup and bellowed, pointed and raged. His police uniform was a little too small for him, but his fireman’s helmet and his .44 Magnum revolver both seemed a little too big for him. The business of filling the tanks proceeded, and nobody paid much attention to the chief of fire and police.

“You next!” Atmon bellowed, pointing to the next truck in line. “Sam Stevens! You next!” Without quite looking at Atmon, Sam spat. John went over to him.

“Anything I can do to help?” he asked Sam.

“Walll, now, John. Ain’t nobody knows what to do. A few more won’t hurt none. You can help Adolf on the tank, I suppose.”

The brownish hydrant water glugged slowly into the tank. Adolf held the hose, listening to the hollow, slopping splash inside. He nodded to John, flipped his long hair back and grinned, pointing down inside.

“Hurry it up, there!” Atmon shouted.

“I could piss in it,” Sam Stevens observed. Adolf laughed, along with the rest of the waiting men, then slapped the side of the tank.

“Kem on, demmit!” Adolf said. One man kicked the hydrant. Atmon turned the other way, still shouting and pointing.

“Wind’s changed,” Sam said. Everybody laughed. “I don’t mean Atmon. I mean the wind!”

Everybody looked up. The fire they could easily see towering above Poverty Street leaned the other way, back toward the river, and the heat began to lessen a little. The smoke, that had made a wild moving ceiling over the town, thinned as it came back the other way. A few stars shone through it.

“The wind’s changed!” Atmon shouted.

“If it holds, by God, we might save the other side of Poverty Street,” Sam said.

“Maybe,” someone said.

“’Twon’t hold long,” someone said. John looked down and saw that it was Eightball, a town garbage collector and part-time worker at Cotter & Son; a dimwitted young man with clear bright eyes and straight, glossy black hair growing out at right angles all over his round head. Strangely symmetrical and clean, his rosy, gleeful face betrayed his loyalty: Eightball was on the side of the fire.

“Eightball, we need a parade!” Howard Randolf, limping slightly, a double-bitted ax across his shoulder, stepped over the hose and leaned against Sam’s truck. Eightball giggled. “I say we need a parade,” Howard said seriously, then pointed his ax handle.

John could see farther than most. He stood on the tank and looked up the street toward the square. Among the trucks, keeping formation, zigzagging back and forth around piled furniture, the white helmet-liners and gleaming gold and blue satin of the Legion Drum and Bugle Corps bobbed and weaved and advanced.

“‘Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die,’” Howard said. “Where in hell’s the National Guard?”

“What the hell are you doing with that ax?” Atmon shouted from his perch. So many eyes turned upon Atmon at once—so many eyes filled with such quiet disgust—he turned away.

“I guess our fire chief thinks the only way to put out a fire is to sprinkle water on it,” Howard said.

Sam spat.

The Legion arrived, led by the shoe clerk from Endicott Johnson’s. In a great unintelligible bass he halted and at-eased his platoon. He nearly saluted Atmon, then evidently thought better of it.

“What do you want us to do?” he asked.

“Put out the firel” Eightball yelled. Everybody laughed except Atmon and the shoe clerk. Some of the legionnaires smiled. “Put out the fire!” Eightball cackled, trying to repeat his triumph.

“O.K., O.K., Eightball,” someone said, smiling and patting him on the head.

“All right,” Atmon said. “You take your men and go to the pumper. Find Charlie Bemis. He’ll give you something to do.”

“Tenn-HUT!” The impossible bass rang out, and the Legion Drum and Bugle Corps forward-marched. Most of the platoon, too embarrassed to march, did a ragged route-step.

Finally the 300-gallon tank was full. As the truck started up, Howard Randolf swung himself up beside John. “The National Guard is being mobilized,” Howard said. “Now they’re getting their armory ready for some of the refugees. I heard you had a preview at Pinckney’s barn.”

“Not as bad as this one,” John said.

“I heard you were quite a hero. But let me tell you something, Johnny Cotter. Everybody’s doing all right. The old bags are mobilizing, bobilizing, mobilizing, bless their carnivorous old hearts! Nobody’s going to go hungry this night, nor sleep in the cold. There’ll be plenty of human kindness spread thick, my boy—as much as there ever was nastiness the rest of the year. More! You know, I kind of love this town, even if I am a twenty-year upstart.” He waved his ax toward the square.

“Maybe that’s why you like it,” John said, “but as for me, you can have it.”

“Ah! Of course! You shouldn’t be here at all! You don’t fit the pattern. You went to college, to war, to school in France—you’ve been weaned, Johnny. Where are all your friends who did the same? Gone, aren’t they?”

“Most of them.”

“Of course! How many of them came back here to settle after college? Wait a minute—I don’t mean the gutless wonders who want to be their fathers all over again.”

“None I can think of.”

“Now Leah spawned some pretty bright boys, didn’t she? Fruitful Leah. Wasn’t there a Rhodes scholar in your class?”

“Henry Blakemore.”

“And where is this all-around American boy?”