Trial by Fire (2 page)

The doctor left, and Aunt Ginny sank onto a chair beside my bed. I’d never seen her
look so worried.

“You’re lucky to be alive, Riley,” she said in a trembling voice. That surprised
me. Aunt Ginny prided herself on being a strong person, and for the most part, that
was exactly the image she conveyed. But she didn’t sound so strong now. “Another
inch or two and your head would have struck the corner of that cement.”
Cement? What
cement?

“You could have died, Riley.” Her face was pale. “What happened?”

“I was trying to get into the barn.” I remembered that. But it was hard to recall
anything else except why I was trying to get in there. I closed my eyes and tried
to think. “There was an explosion. It blew me away like I was a piece of paper.”

When I opened my eyes, Aunt Ginny’s face was somber. And was that a tear gathering
in the corner of her eye?

“I should have let you stay with Dan.” She meant Grandpa Dan, her father, but she
never referred to him that way. She never called him Dad or Father either.
It was
a long story. “He’s always around. You wouldn’t have been alone. It’s not too late
to go back, Riley. School doesn’t start for a couple of weeks.”

“I’m fine, Aunt Ginny,” I said, even though at that moment it felt like a gang of
monkeys was playing Whack-a-Mole inside my skull. “I knew what I was doing when I
said I wanted to come with you.” Aunt Ginny had given me a choice: stay with Grandpa
Dan and my uncles in the city, or move with her to the rural community where she
had finally gotten a job as a police detective. “Mr. Goran was in the barn when I
got there, Aunt Ginny. Is he okay?”

“He’s upstairs, in Intensive Care. I’m not sure how he is.”

“Can you find out? He was screaming.” I shuddered when I remembered the terror in
his voice. It was the most hideous sound I had ever heard. “He got locked in somehow.”

Aunt Ginny frowned. “What do you mean,
locked in
?”

I struggled to recall. “The barn door closes from the outside with a latch. The latch
was stuck. I was going to get something to try to pry it open with when the explosion
happened.”

“I’ll look into it. But right now you need to rest. And I have to find someone to
take care of you.”

“I don’t need taking care of. I’m fine.” Except for the fact that suddenly I felt
like throwing up.

“You have a concussion,” Aunt Ginny said. “There’s no way I’m leaving you on your
own while I’m at work. What if something were to go wrong? What if you fell asleep
and didn’t wake up? What if you had a seizure or convulsions? What if…?”

“Aunt Ginny, you’re scaring me.”

“Good. That’s why you need someone with you.” She sounded like her old self again—brisk,
in charge, matter-of-fact Aunt Ginny didn’t believe in sugar-coating anything. Not
at work or at home. “If anything had happened to you, you’d have been in for big trouble,
young lady, and I mean it. Now get some rest. I’ll be back in a while.”

“Find out how Mr. Goran is,” I called after her.

“Rest.”

I tried to, but it wasn’t easy. I kept hearing Mr. Goran’s screams. And I couldn’t
shake Aunt Ginny’s words.
Another inch or two…

TWO

The next day they tested my memory, my balance and my coordination. And they warned
me. Boy, did they warn me!
Take it easy. Don’t do any strenuous physical activity.
If anything feels off, tell someone. If your headaches come back, tell someone. If
you feel dizzy, if you lose your balance, if you feel sadder than usual, if you
…

“What about Mr. Goran?” I asked the minute Aunt Ginny appeared. She had something
behind her back, and I was curious about it. But first things first.

“What about
you
?” Aunt Ginny said. “How are you feeling?”

“That depends. Can I go home?”

“They’re releasing you tomorrow morning.” She produced an overnight bag with a great
flourish and handed it to me. “I found someone to stay with you while I’m at work.
She’s also going to help get us unpacked.”

I groaned and started to protest again. I felt fine.

“You either have someone staying with you while I’m at work, or I’ll go and find
that doctor again and make him keep you here.”

Sometimes I could find a way around Aunt Ginny, and sometimes I couldn’t. The stiff-jawed,
sharply focused, cop-with-perp attitude she’d adopted as she insisted on a babysitter
for me told me that she was dug in. There was no way she was going to budge, no matter
what I said. I had no choice but to relent.

“Okay. But just for a few days, right?”

“Right,” Aunt Ginny said. “Assuming you’re okay.”

I knew I would be. “So what’s going on with Mr. Goran?”

Aunt Ginny’s stern expression morphed into weariness, and she sank down onto the
room’s only chair. “He’s in critical condition. He was badly burned, Riley.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

She seemed to struggle before finding an answer. “They don’t know.”

That didn’t sound good.

“I didn’t do what you told me.” I made myself spit out the words. I’d been thinking
about them ever since I woke up. “You told me to clean up the porch, but I didn’t
do it.”

“Clearly,” she said. “I still can’t remember what color the floor is.” She peered
at me. “What are you trying to tell me, Riley?”

“I started painting my room instead.” But she already knew that too. How could she
have failed to notice? She’d packed me a bag of clothes. “I only went downstairs
because it was hot and I was thirsty. That’s when I saw the fire. What if I hadn’t
been thirsty? What if there’d been a stronger breeze? I might not have gone downstairs
at all. Mr. Goran might have burned to death in his barn.”

I was shaking by then. I thought about my grandpa Jimmy. Boy, did I ever miss him!
He wasn’t the most educated guy in the world—he never finished high school—but he
was one of the smartest. He read a lot and traveled a lot, and he knew more about
how life
worked than anyone I had ever met. Jimmy used to say that all of life, every
single second of it, was balanced as if it were a penny about to fall one way or
the other, heads or tails, fortune or folly, failure or success, door number one
or door number two. He was so right. As soon as Aunt Ginny had left the house that
night, I was that penny, and I’d fallen on the side of not doing what I’d been told
to do.

Aunt Ginny shook her head. “They couldn’t save the barn. They said that was obvious
as soon as they arrived. After they got Mr. Goran out, they focused on making sure
the fire didn’t spread. They said barn fires are fast, especially in old places like
Mr. Goran’s, where the wooden barns have been standing for generations. It’s quite
possible that had you tidied up the porch and then gone upstairs afterwards, you
wouldn’t have seen the fire at all, certainly not from your bedroom. You wouldn’t
have been able to help.”

It was nice of her to say that. But possible doesn’t mean probable. Ever.

“What if you’re wrong, Aunt Ginny? What if I’d seen it right from the beginning and
called 9-1-1 right away? I was the only person who could have called. There’s no
one else close by.”

“Mr. Goran is extremely lucky that you saw what was happening and called for help,
that’s for sure.” She glanced at her watch and stood up. I knew what that meant.
“The fire wasn’t your fault, Riley. The fact that you happened to see it when you
did? There’s no doubt that’s given him a fighting chance to live. And that’s the
end of the story as far as you’re concerned. Now get some rest, and I’ll pick you
up tomorrow morning.”

A small
TV
hung from a metal arm near the side of my bed. I reached for the remote
on my bedside table and turned it on in time to catch the local news. I had to sit
through the international stuff first, which I didn’t mind. Jimmy had liked to keep
up on world events, and I had sort of caught the bug. I wished sometimes that everything
didn’t sound so dire: another budget crisis, warlords and rebel groups in various
countries in Africa (including the one where my father was), tensions with Russia,
and the ongoing struggle between the West and extreme religious fundamentalism in
the Middle East.

The network broadcast ended and a local anchor appeared to deliver the news closer
to home: a proposed wind farm, which a lot of people were against; the shortage of
school-bus drivers, which was going to be a huge issue in another month when school
started; and rumors that a cannery in the area might be closing, which would eliminate
a ready market for local farmers, who depended on the extra cash they received for
selling their beans, peas, carrots and corn. Finally, there it was, news of the fire.

“Arson cause of Moorebridge barn fire,” the pre-ad promo blared over a shot of the
smoldering remains of the barn. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I had been
in that barn the afternoon of the fire. I’d gone over to tell Mr. Goran how terrific
his salad veggies had been, and he’d shown me around. Now it was just a pile of burned-out
beams and wet ash.

Six commercials later, a reporter shoved a microphone in the face of Fire Marshal
Dave Brewster, who reported his finding that the Moorebridge barn fire had been deliberately
set and that the matter was in the hands of the Moore County Police Service, where
Aunt Ginny worked. I wondered if she was working the case. Even if she wasn’t, she
probably
knew something about it. The reporter wrapped up by noting that the police
were so far not commenting on the case.

I shut off the
TV
.

Arson.

Someone had deliberately set fire to Mr. Goran’s barn. But who? And why his barn?
He seemed like such a nice man. He was also our closest and only visible neighbor,
which probably explained why he was the first to welcome us to our new house. He’d
driven over in his red pickup truck as soon as the moving van had finished unloading
everything Aunt Ginny and I owned. He’d brought us a basket of fruits and vegetables
that he’d grown himself. He didn’t stay, even though Aunt Ginny offered iced tea.

But he dropped by again first thing the next morning with flats of flowers and plants
and spent the whole day grooming the overgrown flower beds at the front of the house
and transplanting what he’d brought from his own garden. I went out and helped him.
He spoke in a soft, accented voice. He was from Kurdistan, in Turkey, he said, where
he had grown up on his father’s grain farm. He told me all about life there—until
Aunt Ginny called me inside.

“Here,” she said, thrusting a small can of lighter fluid and a box of matches at
me. “Go light the barbecue. I’m going to make hamburgers for lunch. It’s too hot
to cook inside. Besides, I can’t find anything.”

“
You’re
going to make hamburgers?” I stared at her in disbelief.

“For your information, I do know how to cook.”

Information?
It was more like breaking news flash.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “So I
sort of
know how to cook.”

Who did she think she was kidding? Aunt Ginny knew how to open packages of food and
heat up their contents. She knew how to boil water. She was quite capable of brewing
coffee. But actually cooking?

“In other words,” I said, “you know how to barbecue.”

She did her best to look dignified when she said, “Yes.”

Our barbecue was an ancient, kettle-like metal dome on skinny legs. It had been left
by the previous tenant. I used the Jimmy method to light it: toss in some briquettes,
squirt on some lighter fluid and throw a lit match on top of it all.

Flames shot up with a mighty
swoosh.
Mr. Goran turned at the sound and let out a
shout, startling me. I jumped back involuntarily, bumping into the barbecue. It toppled
over, strewing lit briquettes onto the dry brown grass at the edge of the patio.
The grass burst into flames. Mr. Goran looked horror-stricken. He shouted in a language
I didn’t understand as I ran for the hose and doused the fire.

Mr. Goran’s face had drained of color. His hand clutched his heart. His knees buckled.
I turned off the hose and ran to grab him.

“Are you all right, Mr. Goran?”

He didn’t seem to hear me. I led him to a lawn chair and sat him down.

“Are you hurt, Mr. Goran?”

“The fire.” He was breathing heavily.

“I’m sorry. It was my fault. I should have checked that the barbecue wasn’t so close
to the edge of the patio.”

“No, no, the fault is mine,” he insisted. And then he told me about his father.

Mr. Goran’s father had planned for Mr. Goran to take over the family farm one day,
just as Mr. Goran’s father had taken it over from his father. That plan
changed in
the late 1980s when war brought death and destruction to the region of Kurdistan
where they lived. Mr. Goran’s father was sympathetic to the rebels who were demanding
an autonomous region for the Kurds. Because of that, government forces torched their
farm. Mr. Goran’s father died trying to save his few animals from the fire. Mr. Goran
was badly burned. “I have scars on my back,” he said. “Always I had nightmares, always
about burning up.” Mr. Goran’s mother died soon after, a victim of starvation in
the war that followed. Eventually the rebels were crushed. Mr. Goran and many others
had to flee.