Town Burning (41 page)

“That’s what it says.”

“Damn.”

They started toward the house and met Sam Stevens and the others halfway. He handed the two guns to the troopers and made his formal complaint.

“I don’t care whether them two goes to jail tonight or not—they will soon enough. I just don’t want to see them strutting around with no guns.”

In the motionless air the big white house rose up behind them, the black mountain behind it. From the valley of the fire only a dull red glow lay ominously on the smaller hills.

“You better call the selectmen, John,” Sam said. “Next time we’ll git us a policeman ain’t so fond of television.”

“What about the sheriff, Sam?”

“Oh, him. He’s on his ass up at the county seat. Where’d you expect?” Sam looked out at the embers of the near hills. “We got to git my grandson to the hospital, John. What I can’t figure is, what with the fire and all, them two felt like killing a man. Jesus, I don’t. Do you, John?” In the burnished, wide old face that had been wrathful as God’s there was now an honest perplexity. He stood with his legs apart, as he always did, ready for any upheaval in his universe and perhaps expecting it.

“He didn’t do it,” Jane said. “He was there. They saw him run out of the town clerk’s office—right into their arms—but he says he was going for help. I believe him.”

“If you do, then I do too,” John said. They had spent most of the night at the hospital and now drove east from Leah Town Square toward the farm, having picked up Bruce’s car. They had left the ton-and-a-half truck parked on Maple Street in front of the dark Cotter house. It was dawn, and above the brown smudge of the fire the sky was white, yet the hills were still dark as night. The fire still burned, now not advancing against the firebreaks and the lines of men. As long as there was no wind the fire could be held, but only rain could put it out for good, and there was no sign of rain. The dry woods-soil burned deep, stumps were emberred to the small roots, and even a small breeze might start the fire’s advance again.

“If Junior didn’t do it, Atmon and Beaupre have had it,” John said.

“They’ve had it anyway,” Jane said. “They’re through in Leah, no matter what happens. Nobody liked Junior very much, but nobody liked Atmon, either.”

“It’s been some night,” he said, glancing over at her. In the eastern light she was pale and seemed very fragile. Her clear skin was nearly as white as new snow, it seemed to him, and her hair, drawn back from her forehead, was nearly as light—fine and seemingly brittle, as if she had been carefully carved from ivory, like a cameo. He found it difficult to believe that this slight girl had made such animal moans beneath him, had been so strong with lust the afternoon before. Now he wanted to hold her and comfort her with infinite gentleness, to make her forget the violence she had seen last night; violence he knew she had as much strength to take as he. He reached for her hand, found it cold, and brought her over against him. She leaned lightly against his shoulder, one hand on his chest.

“If he’d done it, he wouldn’t have come to me,” she said. “He only came to me when he felt he’d been cheated, when it wasn’t his fault. I don’t know why, but that’s always been the way. He’s older than I am, but I’ve always been the one he came to. Not Sam or Mrs. Pettibone or anybody else. It’s been that way as long as I can remember, even before our father and mother died. I know he didn’t do it, Johnny.”

“I know it,” he said.

“You’ve got to know it!”

“Why?”

She moved away to look at him with a startled, doubtful expression. “Johnny, I’ve got to know you. You’ve got to be
here.
You’ve got to take charge. You’ve got to do everything.”

“Janie, I’m not going to run away from you. Even when you say frightening things like that!” He smiled at her, but she didn’t seem to be reassured. “As a matter of fact I might be in a lot of trouble. I don’t know too much about this ‘citizen’s arrest’ business. Don’t know if it applies to duly appointed police officers or not. The state police look at it with a disapproving eye. Any police would, I suppose.”

While he had waited for Jane in the hospital waiting room, a captain of state police came over to view this presumptuous civilian. The captain of police had stood for a long time in front of him, looking quite stern in spite of his wonderment. At that moment John nervously went over his relationship with the law, and remembered that it had been two years since he’d renewed his permit to carry a loaded pistol or revolver. Bruce’s Ortgies was then beneath his handkerchief in his back pocket. A minor crime, since he was neither an alien or a felon, but he didn’t want to be at the mercy of the police—not in the smallest way. He felt himself to be a bad, a very bad, example in their eyes. And the selectmen he called—the two who were not on the firelines—were also quite disturbed. They admitted no love for Atmon and Beaupre, but felt that Junior Stevens probably deserved what he’d got. “He may lose an eye,” John had told them. This had made the selectmen more careful. “I didn’t know you were in Leah,” one had said. “You going to stay home now, John?” The similarity of their pointed questions about his staying home struck him: who was to cope with these odd problems? They nominated John Cotter.

“I’m not going to run away, Janie,” he said again.

“Did you see Bruce?” she asked.

“No. Why?” He knew why.

“Because he’s your brother.” She still held herself away from him so that she could watch his face.

“I thought of it. You know I did. But I can’t do it. Maybe it wasn’t visiting hours.”

“Bruce is in a private room.”

“Look,” he said, suddenly irritated, “let me take care of Bruce. You take care of your brother and I’ll take care of mine.”

She didn’t answer, just closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the seatback.

“Janie…” he said, and found that he had nothing to say. She was honest, and would be honest. She had declared her connection to him, yet now imperiled it out of honesty. Testing? Testing? No. In spite of anything she might find out about him, she was his, and she needed him. So many things to find out! How brave, how responsible he thought he had been until, sitting in the wicker chair in the waiting room, he remembered that his only brother lay empty and waiting in another room! It was then that he became afraid of the police, afraid of his poor mother and father, afraid of the fire, afraid of Jane, afraid to move for fear of breaking his suddenly brittle, fragile bones. Germs from the sinks of the hospital crawled toward him with their object his blind death. The cigarette he smoked was giving him cancer at that very moment. He closed his eyes and saw fluttery yellow lights, the aura of a brain tumor. He could taste the bitter copper of his own last choke. When Jane came, finally, from Junior’s bedside, he had nearly recovered, and although he had sweat and was still shivering slightly, he was fairly sure she hadn’t found him out.

“Janie,” he said again. Tired, showing her age in the brighter light, she watched the black road and wouldn’t answer him. For a moment he was extremely angry, perhaps because he, too, was overtired. Then, as suddenly, he was calm again. Did he really want, as Bruce had, according to his diary, someone he
deserved?
Someone he had to earn? Or was that too much for a coward to cope with, and he’d better go back to a French girl with her built-in respect for a hard-on? Or Minetta Randolf, who wasn’t so very different, in most ways. She just happened to have her way of taking the measure of a man. Literally. Or the little mimeograph girls of his college-radical days, who did everything they could for the cause and the causers of the cause. The hell with it.

Bruce wanted to ride a white horse into danger, to shoot his way to happiness while the bodies of villains fell lightly into dust; even to receive wounds in that magical spot on the shoulder. Who wouldn’t? What simple problems at sundown on the desert street where total honor hung in the balance of a gun! And what lovely finality as the villain (fear) died and was hauled off to Boot Hill (nostalgia). The memory of some fears could be beautiful—the fears that you were not afraid to remember. The fear the Riders deliberately courted (a cylinder is a kind of gun; a piston is a kind of bullet) was such a fear, and he could not blame them for seeking. The gnawing of installment payments, the march of days till rent-is-due, the mysterious stealth of interest, the infinite boredom of manual work—these were the hard ones to remember. Much better to flirt with simple death on a windy road at night.

The black road turned in the headlights now dimming in the light of a clear day, and Jane said, “You missed the turn.”

As he watched for a place to turn around he said, “Janie, I used to think if I didn’t hurt anyone I was being a good man.”

“Then be dead,” she said, “and leave nothing.”

He turned in a woods road and then, coming back, watched carefully for the farm road. Leave no issue and no issues. Only the dead stayed neatly in the indices of stones where you could always look them up. They never batted an eyelash at anybody.

“What I meant to say was, I know a lot about the sins of omission.”

She would not answer. But he did know much about the sins of omission; the sins of emission without emotion. He’d been practicing them for a long time. Sadly he thought: John Cotter, perhaps you were meant to be thus, a man of cheap and sudden gestures, meant to do and run away. What talents you have been given! You can kill. You can hurt. You can please. You can work upon others the sickness of needful love.

“Janie, I love you.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

As they turned up the long gravel road to the farm he glanced at her and found that she had slumped down in the seat. She watched the tops of the hemlocks move by in the smoke they had now entered. Her hands were open, palms up, on her lap.

Mrs. Pettibone had breakfast ready. Adolf and Aubrey, who had just come back from the firelines, ate their pancakes slowly but surely, their hands and faces black except for startling white lines across their foreheads where their caps had been. Soot and exhaustion made them look almost alike. Sam Stevens had slept some, yet he seemed more tired than anyone. He was not talking. Jane didn’t mention Junior’s hurt eye to Mrs. Pettibone: there was the possibility that it would be all right. She would not look at John, and wanted no breakfast. He saw her last at the stairs, where she thought she couldn’t be seen. He was at the kitchen sink washing his face and hands and could just see her through the front hallway. She raised one foot to the first step, then turned and put her face to the wall, arms at her sides, and leaned her forehead against the wallpaper.

She must truly love her brother, he thought. She must believe that he is innocent, and that even so he is doomed. He watched her as she turned again to the stairs, trim and lovely in her dungarees and man’s shirt. She climbed slowly out of sight. What lesson in love could she give him? Could she love that hulking bully for the accident of brotherhood, for his imperfections, for his love for her; for all of these things?

He poured maple syrup, and the wedges of white butter floated slowly across his pancake. Mrs. Pettibone came up behind his chair and put her hands on his shoulders. “She’s just awful tired, John,” Mrs. Pettibone whispered, her teeth clicking, her warm breath conspiratorial in his ear. “Don’t you pay it too much attention.”

Sam spoke, his voice harsh: “Raddio says we may git wind. No rain, as per usual. Wind.”

Forks clinked upon china. Adolf grinned whitely and shook his black head. Aubrey ate on.

“Too damn’ much to git one thing at a time. Fire, and now Junior,” Sam said. “What next?”

“But I thought they was doing better,” Mrs. Pettibone quavered. “They moved the headquarters and all….”

“They’ll most likely have to bring it back,” Sam said.

“I prayed—”

“Prayed! ‘Sprayed’ be more of a help. Next time maybe they won’t even stop here—set her up in Leah square, by God!” The old man set his chin and stood up. “I ain’t asking for nothing. I see Cascom Mountain burn like a pine knot once. Hull goddam mountain. That was in the fall of 1885. I reckon Aubrey see that one pretty close, too. Lost his father’s house and barn. It ain’t the first time, nor the last.” He stepped heavily into his overshoes and went outside.

John followed him. There was no sign of wind yet. The valley of Cascom Lake was full of brown smoke, but the lake and the unnaturally wide strip of dried shoreline were visible. The burned hills were dark beneath the brown smoke: A wind would pull off the layer of carbon and reveal acres of bright coals.

“They could be wrong about the wind,” John said.

“Better be,” Sam said. “They just damn’ well better be, John. I ain’t got the poop I used to, for one.” Then he looked down at John, shrewd wrinkles radiating from his pale blue eyes; a hint of amusement in those black birds’ feet. “Jane, she went to bed,” he said, and went off to the barn.

On the way home Bob Paquette came up behind John on his motorcycle and flagged him down. Bob left his motorcycle idling and got into the car.

“Christ, John!” he said. “What the hell happened with Atmon and Beaupre?” His wide red face was round; his hair seemed to bristle with his admiring curiosity. Evidently the time of his disapproval had passed. John told him about the fight and Junior’s wounds.

“Citizen’s arrest? Man! What a sea lawyer you turned out to be! Would I give my left nut to of seen that? That bastard Atmon!”

“Joe Beaupre did the worst, with his gun barrel.”

“I never did trust that Beaupre. Junior made a fool out of him in the flrehouse when he couldn’t git his gun out. I figured he’d be looking for a chance to git back at old Junior, but Jesus! Beat his eye out!” Bob shook his head, his eyes staring.

“Did Junior kill Bemis?”

“What? Well, John, I don’t know. Junior’s more or less a friend of mine. Where d’you stand?”

“Nowhere.”

“Well, I guess old Junior did, more or less. It sure looked like it from where I stood.”

“You saw him do it?”

“No! Now don’t go gitting any ideas I did! No, sir. Nobody see Junior do it. We just see him come out right after. Then we went in and found old Bemis croaked. Junior must of smashed his head in with old Bemis’ own telephone, the way it looked. Damn’ office was on fire, too. Don’t blame Junior a hell of a lot.”