Those Who Favor Fire (30 page)

He looked at Rachel to see if she understood what he was saying, but she was still gazing silently at Holly’s face. He trailed his fingers absently through the grass. “I’ve painted paintings in my head,” he said, “composed music, designed machines. All things that should not be so difficult to lift from my mind and make. That’s the only part I couldn’t do: make the thing, whatever it was.

“But there’s a synapse. I don’t know what to call it. A hiatus. Even in the making of a birdhouse, even if you know how to use a hammer and where to place a nail, there’s something else you have to have in order to do it right. With a birdhouse, maybe it’s nothing more than a knack. In the case of a symphony, a really good symphony, you have to have knowledge, and experience, and whatever bridges the hiatus. I don’t know what to call it.” He shook his head. “It sounds too pretentious to call it a gift. But I think that I may have been given a little piece of it. Just enough. And there’s only one thing that ruins it.”

Rachel turned away from the carving.

Joe pulled his knees up to his chest. He shook his head. He looked everywhere but at Rachel—the sky, the trees—and finally closed his eyes. His hands lay still in the ferns. Rachel could see his throat working.

“What ruins it?” she said, moving next to him, kneeling by his side. When he made a small sound in his throat and dropped his head into his hands, Rachel put her arms around him. He tucked his head into her neck, and Rachel was reminded of the night a year earlier when he had called his father.

He had never told anyone, not even Rachel, what he’d learned that night. But now he did.

“When I called my father last May,” he said, his voice terrible, “he told me that Holly had died.”

At which Rachel pulled back sharply to look into his face and then took him again into her arms, shutting her eyes. “Oh, my Joe,” she said. But he did not seem to hear her.

“He told me that she had been in a terrible car accident in San Francisco. Right after she arrived there. Right after she left home. She wasn’t driving. She didn’t have a car and I’m not even sure she knew how to drive. But there was a lot of fog. It was late at night.” He took a long breath. “No one was sure what happened. And I don’t really remember what else my father said about it. He told me a lot of things that night. He told me that she had already been cremated. Everything over and done with.” (And here again Rachel felt as if she had slipped backward through the months to arrive at the feel of cold water around her bare ankles and the sight of ashes moving like a bird’s shadow downstream.) “He told me that if anyone was to blame for my not knowing, it was me. I was the one who had left without a word. I was the one to blame for a lot of things.” Joe lifted his head. “And that’s what ruins this.” He looked into the gallery of trees.

“But I still don’t understand why.”

Joe gestured impatiently toward the dead branches. “Everything I’ve done here is tied to what I did back there.” He scoured his face with his hands. “If I hadn’t given Holly the money, she wouldn’t have left, she wouldn’t have gone to San Francisco, she wouldn’t have died. And if she hadn’t died, I might … I’m sure I
would
have left Belle Haven a year ago, or at least never stayed anywhere near this long. If she hadn’t died, I might never have discovered that I could do something like this.” He nodded toward the carving among the trees. “If she hadn’t died, if I hadn’t stayed in Belle Haven, maybe there wouldn’t have been anything to discover.”

“Is that what your father told you that night?” she asked, looking again into his face. “That it was your fault Holly died?”

“I don’t want to talk about him anymore,” Joe said.

“What a bastard,” she muttered, shaking her head. “You can’t avoid being involved in other peoples’ lives. Especially when they’re your family. But that doesn’t mean you’re to blame for Holly’s death,
or that your”—she swept a hand toward the tree—“your ability is tainted by it.”

“It feels that way. Holly simply wouldn’t have died when and how she did if I hadn’t meddled with her life.”

“No,” Rachel admitted. “She wouldn’t have died then and there. But that doesn’t mean you killed her. It just means that you were involved in your sister’s life and therefore in her death.”

They sat together in the hot grass, considering the trees clustered around them. “It would be different,” she said after a bit, “if you had expected to gain something by giving Holly your father’s money. But you yourself told me that what you did was one of the few unselfish acts of your life. The first in a very long time. It was a risky thing to do. You didn’t do it for profit.”

“Of course not. What difference does that make?”

Rachel plucked a brittle frond from a dead fern and began to crumble it between her hands. She thought of Joe lying with her in the woods behind her house, leading her to the huge walnut tree where he had already begun to build Rusty’s house. “I’m sure it made a lot of difference to Holly. She probably valued your motives far more than she valued the money itself.”

“That may be true,” he said impatiently, “but my sister is still dead. And I am responsible.”

“You had no way of knowing what would happen.” She cast the broken frond away from her. “Just as I had no way of knowing that my love for apple cider would get my parents killed.”

They sat together for a while longer, matching Holly’s gaze.

“Where is she buried, Joe?”

This startled him. It was a question he had asked himself more than once, but he had always imagined Holly lying next to their mother, safe again. Whatever else their father had done, however righteous he might have felt when his children had fled, surely he would have brought Holly’s body home.

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “But we had a family plot. It’s where all of us were meant to be buried. Holly must be there.” He watched a hunting spider lurch along his bootlace and disappear into the grass. “Why do you ask?”

Rachel chose her words. She wanted nothing less than to feed his guilty assumptions. “Did you ever look for anything about the accident in the paper? Was there a death announcement?”

Joe looked into Rachel’s face. He became completely still. “No, I didn’t look. Why would I look?”

Rachel shrugged. She laced her fingers. Waggled her head. “She was your sister, Joe. Didn’t you feel horribly … removed from what was happening?”

“Removed? That’s not how I felt. I didn’t feel removed. I felt as if I had exploded into a million parts. Even so, I would have done more than I did, if I could have. But she had already been buried by the time I found out. Everything was over and done with and there was nothing I could do about any of it. And a death announcement would not have put me back together again.”

“But didn’t you want to know for sure what happened?”

“Know for sure?”

She looked back at him. Saw how pale he had become. She realized that some small part of him had already faced the possibility that his father was not to be trusted. But she knew as well that it was unnatural to assume the worst of a parent … or a child.

“Jesus Christ, Rachel, he’s not a monster. You think he killed my sister?”

And then she knew for sure that she should let this go. It would be cruel to speculate about things he had laid to rest. Joe had shouldered all the hurt he could. He couldn’t take on any more. Not right now. And she also knew that as much as Joe might seem to be defending his father, he was in equal parts protecting himself.

“Of course not,” she said. “The thought never entered my mind.”

She watched Joe’s body relax. She watched his chest expand.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand, though,” Rachel said. “I thought you were bringing me out here to explain why you’ve stayed in Belle Haven.”

“That’s right.”

“But you decided to stay over a year ago, Joe, long before you started carving like this. And a minute ago you said that it was that phone call you made to your father—learning about Holly’s death—that made you stay. So why bring me out here? Out of the blue? As if this”—she gestured again toward the blackened grove—“as if this is your explanation?”

“Because it
is
. The best one I can give you. Of course Holly’s death changed things. Of course I found it impossible to go home after … after the things my father said to me that night. But there’s more to
it than that.” He took a deep breath. “Almost from my first day in Belle Haven, I’ve felt like a changeling. Things have been cooking inside me all along. It’s hard to be sure about the reasons I’ve felt this way, but I have. And I have the feeling that there’s more to come.”

Joe took one of Rachel’s hands in his. He felt that her arrival had extracted from this place a portion of its magic. But her presence and her admiration had also affirmed what he had done. If it was less magical, it was also more real. Something he could count on. Something he had not imagined.

“I want to do this for the rest of my life,” he said, kissing her palm.

She was not certain, as she brought her other hand up to cradle his face, what it was that he meant.

        When Angela saw the package Joe had brought Rusty on his eleventh birthday, she nudged it with a knuckle and leaned close for a better look.

“Ask a man to fix a carburetor, barbecue a steak, mow a lawn,” she said, “and he breaks out all over in Y chromosomes, his biceps swell, pecker perks up, grunts like a caveman. But ask him to preheat an oven, buy a box of tampons, wrap a birthday present … his eyes glaze over, his palms sweat, ‘I don’t know how,’ he says. Which he’d never dream of saying if you asked him to build a rocket ship. The stronger sex. The world’s rulers. I give you”—here she bowed to Joe, who sat scowling at her kitchen table—“the answer to every woman’s prayers.”

“Oh, shut up, Angela. I did my best.”

“That’s what’s so amazing, Joe,” she said, kissing the top of his head. “I’m sure you did. But Jesus, honey, you must’ve been wearing boxing gloves.”

“Anyhow, who cares how it’s wrapped? Look at him. He’s ripping it off faster than a raccoon husking corn.”

“Oh, my,” Rachel said laughing and clapping her hands softly, “I do believe he’s made the leap, Angie.”

“You think? I don’t know, Rachel. Say
wash
, Joe.”

“Warsh,” he obliged.

“Well, tie me to an anthill and stuff my ears with jam. I’d never have believed it a year ago.” Angela picked up her camera and aimed
it at Joe. “Say
wash
again, Joe. This one’s for my scrapbook. Think of a caption, Rachel.”

“Something simple,” she said. “How about, ‘Just Joe’?”

“That’s to replace the one you gave me,” Joe said to Rusty, ignoring the women.

“It’s great, Joe. Mom, look at the knife Joe gave me.”

“Oh, Lord, Joe. I should’ve known you’d give him something I’ve got to worry about.”

“I have something else for you, Rusty, but it was too big to wrap.”

“A horse?”

“No, not a horse. Good grief, boy, what do you think your mother would do to me if I gave you a horse?”

“She’d make you take care of it,” Rusty said.

“Exactly. Now finish your cake and we’ll all take a walk up to Rachel’s place.”

Angela lifted her eyebrows at Rachel, who shrugged and smiled and filled her mouth with cake.

After the cake was gone and the dishes washed and put away, the four of them walked down the street, over Raccoon Creek, and up the hill to Rachel’s house. It was just approaching twilight, for Angela had closed the Kitchen up early in honor of her son’s birthday and the August evening was long and light.

When they reached the house, Rusty started up the front steps, but Joe called him back and led them all around the house and up the path into the woods. It was clear that the boy was mystified and excited in a way peculiar to children and a very few adults. He walked directly behind Joe, bumping into him now and again, not at all distracted by the lightning bugs that flashed along the edges of the shadowed trail like channel markers.

When they passed the big pine and the bed of moss, Joe turned around and gave Rachel a slow smile.

“Much nicer than flowers, Rachel,” Angela whispered; she knew why this particular tree, this exact plot of moss, made Joe smile, Rachel slow her step.

Rachel slid her hands into her pockets. “Much,” she said.

When they reached the huge walnut tree, Joe turned quickly and clapped his hand over Rusty’s eyes.

“Only two things you have to promise,” Joe said. “No fires, and no girls for a while yet.”

“Done,” Rusty promised, and pried Joe’s fingers from his eyes.

He was speechless, at first, when he saw the house that Joe had built in the tree. He blinked, gaped, took a slow step forward. Then he let out a whoop of delight and ran for the tree, launched himself up the ladder, onto the sturdy, railed-in deck and through the door.

In a minute he appeared on the deck again.

“You
got
to see this, Mom,” he called down, dancing from foot to foot. “It’s fantastic.”

So Rachel and Angela and Joe climbed up the capable ladder and onto the small deck. Angela cast a mother’s eye over the rungs, the rails, the beams that fixed the house to the ancient tree, and nodded her approval. Rachel, who had seen the house in various stages of construction, was nonetheless surprised to see it done, for Joe had finished it with the sort of details seldom spent on animals or children.

The door had wooden handles inside and out, a hardwood dolphin for a knocker, and the single word—
RUSTY
—carved on a small plaque above the door frame. He had made the door full size, furnished it with a lock, and carefully fit door to frame so the boy inside would not be bothered by mosquitoes or weather. For the same reason, Joe had bought three small glass panes that were set into metal, hinged frames. They fit snugly into the square holes cut in the walls, swung outward on their hinges, and came with braces so they could be propped safely open on windy days.

The house was an eight-foot square with a peaked, shingled roof and a smooth wooden floor. Joe had paneled it from the outside with wood he’d begged from farmers with fallen barns, loaded into Ian’s pickup, and carried into the woods, plank by plank. He had chinked the cracks between the weathered boards but had not paneled the inside of the house. In between the vertical supports of the frame he had built small shelves and cupboards and stocked them with books, licorice, a lantern and extra batteries, a tablet of writing paper, and a jug filled with sharp, fragrant pencils. There was a small table and a matching chair, a cot folded up and stashed against one wall, and in another corner the wooden trunk that Joe had carefully removed from the Schooner and carried up into the tree.