Combustible (A Boone Childress Novel) (2 page)

Boone lifted his foot from the gas peda
l. He lightly tapped his brakes, then hoping that the deputy was on a call, waved the cruiser around.

"Come on, come on," Boone said, "the road's clear."

But the cop didn't seem to care how clear the road was. He hit the strobe lights, and the siren squawked.

Boone caught the cop's eyes
in the rearview.
Me
? he mouthed.

The deputy nodded and jabbed a finger at the shoulder of the road
.

"
Damn it," Boone said and signaled that he was stopping.

In Bragg County, people tended to be solid citizens. They went to high school
, then either worked on a farm or else drove down to the factories in Greenville. They went to church on Sundays and Wednesdays like good Baptists and voted Democrat because Lincoln was a Republican and that still overrode any modern day politics. They also treated law enforcement with respect, a fact that Boone remembered as he rocked in the seat and drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel.

The deputy slammed his door shut. He walked up to the side of
Boone's truck, adjusting his gun belt and pulling out a ticket book. “License and registration.”

Boone opened his wallet to remove his license.

“What’s that?” the deputy asked, pointing the tip of his pen at Boone’s wallet. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Duct tape,” Boone said. “You can make anything with duct tape
. This wallet once saved my life. It’s a long story, though, and I’m in a hurry.”

The deputy clicked
his ballpoint pen. "Where's the fire?"

"Box 425 Route 9, Tin City, North Carolina, sir," Boone
said.

"Excuse me?"

"The fire is on Route 9 in Tin City, sir. I'm responding to a call. I'm a firefighter."

"
I know all the firemen in this town, and you ain’t one of them."

"I'm
new," Boone said, "and I'm a fire
fighter
. That's why my license plate says firefighter and why there's a flasher on the roof." He patted the seat. "And I have turnouts and a hooligan tool next to me." The hooligan, a gift made by Boone's stepfather, was an adze and pick welded to the end of a steel pole.

"Do
n't get smart with me."

"I'd never dream of
associating you with smart, deputy," Boone said. "But can I get a rain check on that ticket? This is my first fire call, and I would like to respond before the owners have to put it out with a garden hose."

The deputy's lip started to jump. He unclipped the Taser from his belt. "Get out of the vehicle."

A Taser? What was wrong with this guy? Maybe it was Napoleon syndrome, a small man trying to compensate for his size. His face was heart-shaped and delicate, and Boone bet that his cranium would show the smooth markings of a gracile man, an anthropological term for a male skeleton that lacked the usual robustness.

The deputy pulled on the handle. The door opened. He signaled Boone out with a small wave, the way someone would call a friend over. Boone slid to the sandy loam of the shoulder. His boots sank a
half-inch in the soil, but he still towered over the deputy. Boone stood six four with hands wide enough to palm a skillet.

"
We’re on the same side, you know,” Boone said.

The deputy waved the Taser. "You've got an attitude problem, boy."

You're the one with the problem, Boone thought.

Judging by his dentition and light facial hair, the deputy was less than twenty-five, probably in his first couple of months on the job. It was obvious he cared more about Boone respecting the badge than doing what was right.

Damn it. His first call, and he was going to miss everything.

"Face the vehicle. Hands on the hood."

"You've got to be kidding me," Boone protested. "I was only speeding."

"Don’t sass me!"

A smile slowly formed on Boone's face. Down the highway, behind the deputy's car, he saw the familiar sight of Sheriff Hoyt's gold and white cruiser pulling off the road.

Paul Davis Hoyt was an ex-state trooper, a box of a man sporting a plush gray-brown
flattop and jowls dappled with ancient acne scars. He hitched his britches over a hickory-hard gut and stuck out a wide, flat hand. The palm was so red, it looked like he had been picking blueberries. He wore a dark blue uniform and a thick, leather belt that creaked when he walked alongside the empty highway. He was also a vet, just like Boone. As Hoyt reached the truck, Boone noted that he smelled of aftershave and starch.

"What in blue blazes is going on here?" The sheriff spat a stream of tob
acco juice onto the pavement, "Deputy Mercer, why're you frisking a Navy Medal recipient?"

The deputy jumped back like he
had been zapped. "A what?"

"
Yup. This boy’s a war hero."

Mercer bobbled the Taser, and it bounced from hand to hand as he stumbled forward to catch it. Boone snatched it out of the air with his big mitts, and then handed it
over.

"Y
ou dropped this," he said.

T
he deputy snatched it back. "Sheriff Hoyt, I apprehended this young man while traveling at a high rate of speed. While writing his citation, he became agitated and aggressive."

Hoyt nodded
at the Taser. "Looks to me like you're the one who got agitated, Pete. Didn’t you see the cherry top on the boy's car? He's on a call."

"Which I tried to explain t
o him," Boone interjected.

T
he sheriff raised his hand, indicating that Boone should stay out of it. "Tell you what, Pete, you head on back into town, and I'll take care of the ticket on this one. Stop by the Red Fox Java and get yourself a slice of that pie you like so much."

The deputy rubbed the back of his neck. "You sure? Because my shift ain't over for another two hours."

Hoyt took the ticket book from him. "I'll take care of it."

The deputy
grimaced, as if to say, I know you're pulling something but can't figure out what it is. But there was nothing he could say. After replacing the Taser, he returned to his cruiser. Boone and Hoyt silently watched as he hit the siren, made a sharp U turn in the highway, and roared back toward Stanford.

Hoyt
whapped Boone across the arm with the ticket book, then grinned. "That Pete, I tell you what. Two months on the job, and he's written more tickets than the other nine deputies combined. Now, about that fire."

"Yes sir," Boone said, "that."
He had given up on the idea of being the first responder. Now, all he wanted was to arrive.

Hoyt nodded for Boone to get back in
to the truck, then he began walking back to his own car. "I figure Lamar's wondering where you're at."

"You know how he is!
" Boone called before he slammed the truck door and watched Hoyt in his side mirror.

The sheriff rolled forward in his cruiser. Hoyt lowered the window. "Then let's not keep the old boy waiting. You know th
e rules. No passing. No tailgating. And son?"

"Yeah?"

"Try to keep up."

Hoyt's
cruiser jetted down the road. Boone popped the truck into gear. The massive tires spun in the sandy shoulder, then caught traction. He let out a war whoop as he roared after the sheriff’s taillights.

The dilapidated house sat atop a slight rise, next to a man-made pond that had once been used for irrigation, back when the overgrown lot had been part of a one hundred acre family farm. Behind the house were a half dozen rotting tobacco barns and a derelict chicken house.

Except now, they were not rotting. T
hey were on fire, all of them--the home, the barns, and the chicken house, as evidenced by the eight separate plumes of smoke that drifted into the cloudless sky. The only structure on the property not ablaze was a rusted out Airstream, a white and blue trailer with a tattered canopy and a picnic table on a patio. A TV antenna stretched thirty feet into the clearing clouds.

By the time Boone
drove down the long, tree covered drive that led to the fire, the roofline of the house was engulfed in flames. Fire goes up. If it was burning through the roof, the rest of the house was probably a loss, a stack of spent kindling.

The
rest of the Frisco VFD was already on the job. The six-person squad had set up hoses to the pumper engine, which was drawing water from a cow pond. Otto and Jimmy were training hoses on the roof of the house, and Julia was manning the pumper.

The only woman in the crew,
Julia was also the most fearless and in the best shape. A fitness instructor and adrenaline junkie, she stood over five seven, had the shoulders of an Olympic swimmer. She was also hot, even when she wasn’t in a fire coat—especially when she wasn’t in a fire coat.

Two other
firefighters had containment detail, and they were busy smashing the windows on the left side so the hoses could reach inside.

Lamar, a
solidly built man with cropped brown hair and hands as thick and coarse as cinder blocks, was the captain. He was also Boone's stepfather. He stood down the driveway, talking to the captain of another VFD and Sheriff Hoyt, who had beaten Boone by a good three minutes. Lamar stood straight and held his chin firm as he pointed out the hot spots of the fire.

"I'm here!" Boone
called to Julia on the pumper as he pulled on his fire pants and grabbed his jacket, gloves, and helmet. "What's my duty spot?"

The air smelled
like fire, a mix of ash and burned fat that left him with a sweet taste in his mouth and a sick feeling in the gut. He loved it.

"Ask Cap!
You know the procedure," Julia shouted over the mechanical clunk of the pumper, then winked. She wasn’t known for her subtlety. "Unless you need me to help take care of business."

“No, I got this.”

Sure, intellectually, Boone knew the procedure. But knowing and doing it automatically were two separate things, which Lamar preached all during training. Firefighters have got to know their parts so well they react intelligently without having to think. When a two-thousand-square-foot roof is collapsing on your head, there's no time to recall the procedures manual.

"Lamar!" Boone called as he ran over to Hoyt's cruiser. "What's my post?"

Lamar Rivenbark was the physical opposite of his stepson. He stood barely five feet, eight inches tall, and his shoulders were as wide as the handle of a fireman's mattock. His hair was almost completely gray, like the stubble on his cheeks. A lifetime of farming had given him a deep tan and a slight gait, a gift from a runaway tractor.

"Slow down now, no need to huff and puff." Lamar was born and raised in Bragg County, which meant he clipped the ending of all of his words. "You don't just rush into a fire."

"Right," Boone said and took a deep breath. "Now, what's my post?"

Lamar
removed his yellow helmet and scratched his head. "Maybe you got a genius IQ and worked in intel for the service, but you're still thinking like a soldier, all nerves and guts, like you can huff and puff and blow out the fire all by your lonesome."

"
Sailor, not soldier," Boone began as he surveyed the damage. Flames poured out of the windows, the doors, and through the roof near the chimney. The rafters had collapsed there, opening a gaping hole. "I can help. Um. I'm ready."

There you go, he thought, sounding
like an idiot. It was like the wiring connecting his mouth to his brain shorted out.

Hoyt and the other captain turned away. Their shoulders shook, and Boone could tell they were having a good laugh at his expense. He pounded his fire gloves together, making a loud, padded thud in protest.

"Back up Julia on the pumper engine." Lamar snapped his chinstrap. "You’ll be feeding out the lines."

"I was hoping to work the
attack."

Lamar slapped Boone on the shoulder. Even through the turnout, the blow was enough to knock
him back a step. "We've already rung four alarms on this job. The residence is empty. The other structures are all goners. Our job now is to wash down the fire, stomp out the sparks, and get back to the station in one piece. Which is why, for now, you got the pumper. Get to work and don't argue no more."

Boone held his chin high, looked his
stepfather straight in the eye, and said, "Yes, sir, Captain." Like a ship, on a job the captain was god and you had to do what he said, period, or somebody would get hurt.

As he started pulling hose, Boone felt a strong sense of déjà vu.
The situation seemed so familiar. A farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, a fire that burned so quickly that the firefighters who responded could do nothing but contain the fire. Last weekend, the men at the Frisco station house had talked about another fire. There was something about it in the newspaper, too. An empty house. A hot, fast fire. It could have been kids playing, or a lightning strike, or spontaneous combustion.