Those Who Favor Fire (52 page)

At night she dreamed about Mary Beth and Rusty sinking through the dirt. Awakened, she considered the course of events that might have been: if she, herself, had chosen to leave Belle Haven earlier; if Angela had not stayed on to try and make her leave; if Angela had taken Rusty north and Mary Beth, without him, had not stumbled onto the spot that killed her.
What if, what if, what if
sounded the nightly litany. Desperate for reprieve, she told herself again and again what she had once told Joe, about Holly, and what he had said to her, only days before: that she had been involved in Rusty’s life and therefore, nearly, in his death. But the notion did not soothe her, for she remembered, too, what she had told him about the importance of his motives, how they absolved him of any guilt. Remembering this, she could not escape the fact that her own motives offered no such absolution. She had stayed in Belle Haven for her own sake. To postpone the hard task of taking back her life. And in part because of this, Mary Beth had lost hers.

Rachel waited, through those last days, for some sort of peace to
descend. She waited for a pardon. When she sensed the image of Mary Beth fading a little, she thought that the beginning of forgiveness had come. But while the torment that spoiled her waking hours abated, it divided and multiplied in her dreams as if it had a life of its own.

As Mary Beth let go of Rusty’s foot, the dirt parted beneath her and she slid down through it. It closed above her head as she passed. The hole was not like a tunnel, open, stable. It was simply a soft vein of earth. It was very, very hot in the hole, but Mary Beth could no longer feel the heat. There was only stale, exhausted air in her lungs. There was an impossible interval between the last beats of her stubborn heart. She was dying quickly
.

Far below the surface of the earth, Mary Beth died, but her body kept moving. It slid faster and faster now, the earth slick and fire-hot. When she hit the deep bed of red coals, it consumed her. Her body moved the way a leaf turns and struggles as it burns. And then, as her body was reduced to its most resilient elements, it flared suddenly as if the fire had finally reached her volatile core and a blast of flame shot back upward. It split the dirt, erupted through the surface where Rachel stood, looking for signs of life, and caught her full in the face. It cauterized her eyes, bloodied her skin, consumed every hair on her head as if it were a fragile wick. But the fire did not knock her back. It spun her around and wrapped her up, drew her toward the hole and then down into it, down through the dirt, back down to the deep fire and the remnants of Mary Beth Sanderson. Only then did it let her go
.

Rachel did not awaken herself from the dream. Her instinct for self-preservation was no longer any match for her regret. She permitted the dream to run its course. Then she crawled out of her bed and made her way from the house to the old apple tree where she had meant her parents to be interred. Finally, everything awful had come to pass. Finally, she said, “I am resigned.”

        Rachel was cold. The huge willow had shed its leaves and gave her no protection. She sat in it and looked out through the thin branches that hung down all around her, nearly trailing on the ground. She felt like a bird in a cage.

Children were coming: ghosts, fairies, monsters. As they edged closer to the willow, she cackled and they jumped. “I’ll eat you up, my little pretties,” she said, showering them with licorice whips and sour balls.

She had thought this would be good for her, to sit in this tree and remember. She had hoped it would tie things off, heal her up, and send her away unencumbered. But, sitting in the tree, cold and very much alone, she realized that her departure had already begun and that she was impatient for its conclusion.

She climbed carefully out of the tree, snagging her witch’s dress, and began to walk back through town toward her hill. She walked past all the empty lots, past the boreholes, past Angela’s and Earl’s, past the place where the Schooner had gone down and Pal had died, toward the bridge where Joe was patiently waiting for her to be done.

        Rachel Elizabeth Hearn, who had always wanted to be called Suzanne, after her mother, and who loved her own eyes, which were her father’s, and who had made up her mind to save the money they’d left her so that she could someday, maybe, buy back some of the town she was leaving, looked down from her hill and knew that she would never come back here again.

“I want to leave now, quickly,” she said to Joe, taking the hammer out of his hand and throwing it into the back of her truck. It was hard for her to climb into the cab without looking back at her house, but when they had nailed up the last board she had turned her back, walked away carefully, had not once looked at the house and would not look at it now.

“Would you go back and lock the front door for me?” she asked from behind the wheel, holding the key out through the window.

So Joe went back to lock the front door, then climbed into the truck with her. As she drove down the hill, faster than she should, tears dripping off her jaw, Joe put the key into her purse. Then he reached into his pocket and took out the opal he’d been carrying with him for more than three years now. He held it low in his palm, looking at it, turning it slowly so that it flickered, and then put it, too, into her small bag.

When they reached the farm, Rachel helped him carry his things through the woods to his cabin. He didn’t have much. Only a few
things that people had given him as they’d left town for good. Bits of wood for him to carve. Bits of Belle Haven.

“This is a wonderful cabin,” Rachel said, standing just inside the door. He had furnished it with simple, comfortable things. The floor was bare, the walls plain.

“I only spent a couple of nights here,” he said, “when I was up checking on how the houses were coming along.” He put down the things he was holding. “It belonged to one of the horse trainers,” he said, realizing suddenly that he’d told her this before. “The main farmhouse is on past where the lane turns off to come into these woods, over a rise and out of sight. The people who raised horses here still live there. They wanted to sell everything except the house and a couple of acres that it sits on. Didn’t think they’d ever find a buyer who would agree to let them stay. But I didn’t mind.”

He realized that he was talking but not really saying anything, so he took the things out of her arms and put them aside. “Do you want to see the place I had chosen for you?” he asked.

They walked back through the woods to the lane and along it, around a bend to where it ended in grass, then beyond that and across a small meadow surrounded by trees. Along the far edge of the meadow there was a narrow stream. The trees were brilliant, the grass still very green.

“And if I came back here someday, would it still be here, just like this?”

He looked straight at her. “You ask a lot,” he said.

“You seem to have a lot to give,” she replied.

“It will still be here. But don’t ever make me a promise you can’t keep.”

Afterward, they went to say good-bye to Angela and Rusty, Dolly, Earl, everyone she could find.

“Do you know where you’re going?” he asked when they reached the truck.

“Well, west. That’s all I know at the moment. Except that I made myself a promise once, right before my parents died, to go places. I don’t know which ones. I suppose I’ll know them when I get there.”

“I understand, probably better than you think.”

He handed her into the truck and kissed her through the window, not wanting to hold her, afraid if he did he would not be able to let her go.

In early March, Joe opened his door, expecting Rusty, and found a stranger on his doorstep.

“My name is Andrew Harriman,” the man said, smiling, handing Joe a business card. “I’m here on behalf of my client, Miss Rachel Hearn. She seems to think that you have a lot for sale, and she would like to buy it.”

“A lot? A lot of what?”

Mr. Harriman chuckled. “A lot. A piece of land. A meadow near a stream. She said you would know what I’m talking about.” He made it sound like a question.

“Well, I suppose I do,” Joe answered slowly. “How much is she offering?”

“That’s what I asked her,” the man said, passing his hat from one hand to the other. “But she said to name your price.”

Joe smiled. Mr. Harriman smiled back. Like all real estate brokers, he worked on commission.

“Please come in, Mr. Harriman. Would you like some coffee? I just made some.”

“Well, that would be nice.”

Joe brought him a cup of coffee, a pot of sugar, one of cream.

“I’ll take a dollar,” Joe said, leaning against the wall.

“For the coffee?” Mr. Harriman said. He looked as if he thought he ought to be laughing but wasn’t quite sure.

“For the land,” Joe said, the hair on his arms standing on end, his chest swollen. “The coffee’s on me.”

Mr. Harriman wanted to believe that Joe was kidding, but in the end he saw how things were and agreed to handle the sale. “But I’ll have to charge you for my time,” he said. “You do understand that,
don’t you? I don’t know if you’ve ever sold any land before, Mr. Barrows—”

“No, I haven’t.”

“… but it is incumbent upon the vendor to pay the broker, to pay me.”

“Miss Hearn will take care of your fee,” Joe said.

“But I just explained—”

“Don’t worry about it. She’ll be glad to.”

Mr. Harriman frowned at Joe. “If you don’t have a lawyer, I can recommend one, but you’ll have to discuss fees with him directly.”

“I have one.”

“Then perhaps I should contact Miss Hearn before we discuss this further. In the future, can I reach you by telephone?”

“Of course,” Joe said, writing his number on the back of Mr. Harriman’s business card. Mr. Harriman gave him a clean one and left.

Well, how do you like them apples?
Joe said to himself as he shut the door. He felt as he had that summer night when he’d called Mrs. Corrigan, searching for his sister, thinking that perhaps she was alive after all. He stood in his cabin, on the verge of rejoicing, trying desperately to find a way back toward the calm and reasonable state in which he had been living. But when he suddenly found a way back it displeased him and made him wish that he were a simpler, rasher sort of man.

There was nothing left of Rachel’s house when Joe got there. Nothing more than black timbers and the stones of the cellar walls.

“Didn’t expect to see you back here again.” Mendelson was walking up the drive. “Ever seen a house burned right down to the ground like that?”

“I never have,” Joe replied, turning back toward the remains of Rachel’s beautiful house. Even the porch steps had burned. There was nothing at all left.

“There have been other fires since you left,” Mendelson said. “Down in the town. Nobody hurt, but a few shook up enough to leave, even though they swore they never would. Things would have been a sight worse if we hadn’t razed the houses soon as they were abandoned.”

“They weren’t abandoned.”

“Right,” Mendelson said, shaking his head.

“So what are you doing up here?”

“I came up to see you, Joe. Actually, I wasn’t sure who I’d find here. Didn’t recognize the car. Figured I should have a look.”