Woodsburner (45 page)

Henry sees Young America acknowledge the seemingly unworthy name, sees his eyes flicker left and right, as if looking for an exit.

Another man comes forward, stooped and exhausted. Henry can barely distinguish one man from another; the fire has rendered them all the same, crusted with soot and ash, looking like unfinished sculptures. The stooped man pulls at his suspenders, reveals white shadows beneath, claps a thick hand on Odd's shoulder and gives him a hearty shake.

“It helps to have a few sober men like Mr. Hus here in the fight, Mr. Addington.”

The stooped man taps the handle of his ax against Addington's paunch. The fire has momentarily glazed over the petty skirmishes and disagreements, but even in this cauldron brittle impurities of former tensions flare up.

“Well, Mr. Merriam,” Addington says, knocking the ax handle aside, “had you relied on the likes of Mr. Hus alone, I wager you'd be sifting through the ashes of Concord by now.”

“What I find a true wonderment,” Merriam replies, “is that you and your tavern friends have not belched yourselves aflame.”

“Bah!” Addington grumbles. He spits a rubbery strand of tobacco juice that leaves a black paste on his chin and hisses when it hits the ground. He wipes his mouth with his thumb and looks at Odd.

“If we get our hands on the cussed imp who started this,” Addington says, “come morning he'll be swinging from a tree.”

“Might have been a brushfire what started it,” Merriam says.

“Who'd be fool enough to burn their fields on such a day?” Addington growls, spitting again from the endless supply swelling his bottom lip.

Henry has kept quiet during the exchange, but now the direction of the bickering worries him. The men are tired and angry. Assigning blame for the fire while it still burns can come to no good. The men will not think clearly or charitably if called upon. Henry tries to get Oddmund's attention. He hopes they might slip away while the other men argue.

“Lightning,” Oddmund suggests quietly. “Lightning may have done this.”

It sounds like a reasonable enough possibility, but Henry is disappointed that the man he prefers to think of as Young America does not speak more forcefully.

Addington laughs. “Lightning? From this sky?”

We ought not pass judgment on the cause just yet, Henry thinks, and he is not sure whether he has said this aloud to himself. He holds up his hand and interrupts. “The wind and the trees dry as kindling and no rain … I should think all, to some extent, are accountable for this.”

Henry sees the other men look at him as if he himself had suddenly burst into flames. He tries to explain his reasoning, but before he can say another word they hear a shout and together they turn to see if the fire has broken through the line of trenches and the swath of cleared earth. The weeping man is sounding an alarm, but not about the fire. Wandering in despair, he has stopped a few yards away and is staring at Henry from beneath the frayed brim of his straw hat. A shadow of recognition briefly crosses the man's blackened face and passes, as if he had already
confirmed its impossibility. Then the shadow returns and the man's red eyes grow wide.

“There he is!” the weeping man shouts. “That's the man! Vandal! Idiot! Criminal!”

Henry sees Oddmund drop his shovel, retrieve it, and point toward the path of the fire's retreat, a tunnel of swirling heat and smoke.

“We must go to it,” Oddmund says, and without waiting for them to concur he breaks into a run over charred roots and fallen branches, running not like a man in pursuit but like a man in flight.

The weeping man is running at Henry now. He throws his frayed hat to the ground and balls his hands into fists. The other men stop him and push him to the ground, thinking that he means to hurl himself into the fire like the madman they witnessed earlier. The man is furious. He can barely keep from choking on the despair-turned-rage that has lodged in his throat. As Young America disappears into the flames, the weeping man points at Henry from the ground, his arm rigid and trembling with intent.

“He's the one! Wastrel! Villain! Woodsburner!”

Odd runs west through the trees. Those that have already burned stand mutely iridescent beneath their charred husks, like glowing pillars of coal. Odd knows the weeping man was pointing at him. Through the trees he can still hear him shouting, “Woodsburner!” But as Odd penetrates deeper into the fire these cries are gradually swallowed by the roar of the flames, which will not be outdone. Odd wonders if this is to be the moment that history at last catches up with him. He has slipped from its grasp before, but those escapes were dearly purchased. When fate could not take him from this world, it gladly took from him those parts of the world he loved most. His feet catch in the fire's tangled leavings. It has finished on the ground, but it is everywhere above, a fiery canopy dropping burning debris upon him in thick, slow clumps. Odd knows he cannot push on without setting himself aflame, but he cannot retreat; surely the men, spurred on by the weeping man's accusation, would pounce upon him, and Emma would find herself alone and unprotected. Fate would again take his world from him. Odd curses his stupidity; he should never have left Emma's side that morning.

Odd dodges the falling clusters of fire and continues running. He understands the fire in a way that the others do not. For most of the day, a steady wind has spread the flames north and east, and now the men with their shovels and axes and hoes think they have
stopped its advance. They believe they will beat it back slowly, suffocate it inch by inch until they can crush its last thrashings underfoot. But Odd knows better. The fire will not burn itself out. It is a living thing, but it will not be bled to death. It will deceive them. Like a serpent cornered, it will only grow fiercer as it loses ground, coil onto itself and lash out if they do not strike at its heart.

Odd runs over seething ashes, past the Andromeda Ponds. He heads toward the concentrated flames, hurls himself straight into the dead forest covering Shrub Oak Plain. The fire slithers back, curls between black trunks already burned, looking for a place to hide. The air grows hotter, and the smoldering underbrush bites at his legs. He passes little outcroppings of flame and keeps going, ignoring the hot air that stings his eyes and burns in his throat, willing himself to suck in deep breaths to keep his legs pumping. His chest tightens and he grows dizzy. He thinks he hears voices amid the howling flames, and then realizes that the other men are pursuing him, calling his name, demanding that he return.

He passes through a stand of burning trees and continues running. Blazing eyes wink at him from the blackened woods. The fire retreats, outflanks him, and retreats again, teasing him, drawing him in. He ignores the blazing columns that sprout left and right and continues forward, swinging his shovel at the burning brambles in his way. There is a loud crack and a tall tree topples behind him, spewing flames in all directions. He is deep inside the inferno, cut off.

Odd leaps over a burning log and keeps going. He thinks of Emma, wonders if she has fled to safety or remained behind to protect the house and her precious books. He imagines the flames reaching the barn, exploding in the dry hay, running along the clothesline, engulfing the porch of the house, the door, the roof. He pictures Emma running from door to window, unable to escape.
He sees her bright orange hair and flames all around. Odd runs faster, head down, arms pumping, and he feels a sickening crunch beneath his foot and suspects what it might be before he recognizes seared fur and red skin. He stops and examines the charred lump more closely. It is an animal of considerable size, though hardly recognizable—a small deer, perhaps, a fawn. The carcass shudders, the legs twitch; the animal has not finished dying, but it is close. Then Odd notices the other blackened carcasses scattered over the ashes, caught in the underbrush, trapped beneath fallen trees, and tangled in the blackened branches. He cannot move without stepping on something dead or dying. Here the trees stand close together and the fire must have spread especially fast. It took what it wanted and moved up into the branches. Small flickerings underfoot reveal that the fire has left sentinels behind, hiding in the ashes, waiting for someone to return. Odd looks up and sees that the sky is blotted out by dark smoke and bright flames. He hears the flames cackle all around as he scans the ground for other bodies. Squirrels, birds, woodchucks, skunks, raccoons—he is unable to distinguish their charred and shrunken forms.

Odd cannot move. The forest has become a peculiar landscape. The trees are little more than phantoms, but some appear to have life in them yet, hidden away in untouched limbs. These trees might yet heal themselves, ooze sap over their grievous wounds, extrude great whorls of scarred bark, thick and knotted like permanent scabs, signposts to past tragedies. Odd knows that at this very moment some of the trees are exhaling invisible pollens, dropping bundles of cones that will open in the intense heat and laugh at the fire's futile rampage. The forest will return, populated by a greener, softer version of itself. The new trees will toughen over time. More complicated creatures, however, are not so resilient. These dead animals littering the ground will never live
again. Their skeletons will not sprout tender new limbs, nor will their descendants spring from desperately scattered seed. Animals will again roam these woods, but they will be the descendants of animals fast enough to have escaped the flames and fearless enough to return and breed faster, wiser creatures. That is what the New World requires, Odd thinks; if it is to survive the intrusions of the Old World, America needs stronger animals.

Odd wonders what his father would have done had he made it to America. Men can leave their homes and their families, but no man can leave his past. Søren Hus was proof enough of this. Where could a man go to start anew, to purge himself of what runs through his veins? Crossing an ocean is not enough. Something more powerful is needed to bring about such a change, something more corrosive.

He grows conscious of the heaviness in his arms and legs, and realizes that he has not moved for some time. The muscles in his shoulders tug at one another for balance. The fire screams in his ears alongside the rushing beat of his own blood. He knows he has made a terrible mistake. He should not have separated himself from the other men. He should not have left Emma alone. The fire mocks his indecision, dances left, dances right, a center without substance. It drops on him from above. How could he have thought that he might slay it with a single, well-timed thrust? Odd steps forward and then back. The fire mirrors his movements. Odd moves forward again, and he feels the heat of the flames like sunburn on his cheeks. He steps back, and the heat bites into his tired shoulders. The fire closes in slowly, surrounding him with indifferent patience. Odd lifts his shovel and waits.

A flood of visions rises from his memory. He recalls how quickly his father became a swirling cone of flame. One moment his father was standing with the burning scroll in his hand, and in the next moment the expanding ball of red heat was lifting Odd
from the deck of the
Sovereign of the Seas
, suspending him above the shocked, upturned faces of his family. There was his mother beneath him, a large, self-possessed woman of generous proportions, shorter than his father but twice as broad, anchored to the earth by the confidence of her girth, and she stared up at him with a complex spray of emotions across her wide cheeks: terror and sorrow and hope—a hope, perhaps, that he alone might escape the horror. And in the next second the fire consumed all.

Odd remembers the cool, clear blue above him and the feeling that he was being pressed flat against the dome of the sky. He remembers holding his breath as he rose impossibly high on the blast of hot air. Far below, he saw his mother waving at him, not in farewell but in warning, and he thought that he heard her voice encouraging him, reminding him, urging him:
breathe
. He inhales and chokes on searing heat. The fire has come for him again. Through the smoke he sees an impertinent flame nibbling at the cuffs of his trousers. It has tracked him from the Old World, pursued him across an ocean, determined to carry out his sentence.