Stillwater

by Mary Jo Hazard

  “Mr. Howe, where’s the fire?” I shouted, dropping my bike and running alongside the truck. “Where is it?”

  The truck picked up speed. Mr. Howe shouted back at me, “Nelson farm—outskirts of town.”

  O’Malley the cop gunned his engine a few times and pulled out to pass the moving truck. Doc always said O’Malley had a lead foot. He turned on his red light and his siren and led the way to the Nelsons’.

  “Come on,” I said, motioning to Louanne and Maggie. “It’s not even dark yet.”

  “I’m in,” Maggie yelled, jumping on her bike.

  “Come on, you two. Keep up!” Louanne said, flying past us. “That truck is really hauling ass.”

  “Louanne,” Maggie said, laughing so hard she almost fell off of her bike, “don’t say things like that.”

  “Well, it is. And if you two don’t move it, the fire will be out by the time we get there.”

  We pedaled through the town and past the two cemeteries on the outskirts.

  “Not much farther,” I said, noticing the red glow in the sky. “Looks like a big one.”

  Flames were shooting out of the Nelsons’ barn as we turned off the main street onto the dirt road that led to their house. O’Malley the cop was standing right in the middle of their driveway. “Stay back,” he bellowed through his bullhorn. “Don’t come any closer. The stuff in this barn might blow up. Get back.”

  Mr. Gordon, a volunteer fireman and the owner of the hardware store, grabbed Louanne’s handlebars before she could go anywhere. “Right here, ladies,” he said, making her stop. Maggie and I stopped too. “Things could explode in that barn—go off all over the place. I can’t have you getting hurt. Flammable liquids are feeding this fire; I’m telling the three of you to stay back.”

  “Who died and left him boss?” Louanne said under her breath.

  We walked our bikes back to the lawn, sat down, and watched the smoke pour out of the barn. Firemen ran here and there, giving each other orders. Captain Steele came out of the barn yelling, “Full protective gear. Get those gloves and face masks on now.”

  I looked around for the Nelsons, but they weren’t anywhere in sight. Mr. Nelson used to be a bus driver for Stillwater High School, but he had to quit to help his wife take care of their daughter, Sylvia.

  A couple of years ago, Sylvia had come down with polio and almost died. The only hospital on the East Coast that had iron lungs was far away in Philadelphia, so they had to take her there. She spent a whole year trapped in an iron lung in the hospital. The muscles in her legs withered up while she was in the machine, and when she came back to Stillwater, she was in a wheelchair with big heavy braces on both of her legs.

  I was scared to death that Denny and I’d get polio. My mother worried too. She wouldn’t let us go swimming or go to the movies or even drink out of drinking fountains. She made us go to bed early—sometimes it wasn’t even dark. I’d lie in bed with my hands on my heart, feeling it beat, wondering if it was going too slow or too fast, reassuring myself that I was alive. I came down with weird symptoms I didn’t tell anyone about—chest pain, dizziness. I practiced lying perfectly still for as long as I could so that if I had to go into an iron lung, I could do it.

  The front door slammed, and Mr. and Mrs. Nelson hurried out on the porch and down the front porch steps. Sylvia had pushed back the curtain and was looking out the picture window. The Nelsons stopped dead when Captain Steele shouted, “Evacuate. Out of the barn! Everyone get the hell out!”

  Mr. Nelson didn’t keep animals in the barn, but he kept his truck in there along with the janitorial supplies that he sold to the schools and local stores.

  “Mr. Gordon,” I called, pointing to the barn. “Where’s Mr. Nelson’s truck. Is it in—”

  “’Fraid so, honey,” he said, nodding. “The fire burned so fast there was no way the men could save it.”

  I sighed and watched the flames and the thick black smoke roll into the night sky. The firemen ran out of the barn door and down the driveway just in time. Two seconds later there was a huge explosion—the roof collapsed and the walls crumpled to the ground, sending sparks and ashes flying everywhere.

  Mrs. Nelson stood on her porch steps. Her hands were tucked in her apron pockets, her shoulders were slumped, and she rocked back and forth on her heels. Mr. Nelson put his arm around her and steered her back up the steps into the house. She turned once and gazed back at the rubble. He opened the door for her, and they both went inside.

  “At least it wasn’t their house,” I said, lifting my chin. “And nobody got hurt.”

  Louanne put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Right. Could have been a lot worse.”

  The firemen poured water on the hot spots, and most of the onlookers walked back to their cars—the excitement was over. Captain Steele ordered the firemen to pack up the equipment and load it back on the truck.

  We were just about to leave when someone shouted, “Grace, over here. Yoo-hoo, Grace.”

  “It’s your mother, Grace,” Maggie said, pointing down the driveway. “She’s with Denny.”

  “Have you girls been here the whole time?” My mother asked when she got closer.

  “Yes, Mrs. Bryant,” Louanne answered. “We were here when the barn exploded. Did you—”

  “No,” Denny said, sounding as if he might cry, “We heard it, but we didn’t see anything.” He gave my mother a dirty look. “I told you if you did the dishes we’d miss the good stuff.”

  My mother ruffled his hair and said, “Hey, Mister, don’t whine, or next time I’ll leave you home with Doc.”

  My grandfather never followed the fire truck. He said that people “ought to mind their own business and not chase all over tarnation after a fire that they could read about in tomorrow’s newspaper.”

  My mother waved to Mr. Howe, who was sitting on the back of the fire truck. He stood up and started toward us.

  “Mom,” I said, glaring at my mother. “Did you really have to do that?” The last thing I needed was my friends seeing how my mother and Mr. Howe acted around each other. My mother got all flirty and smiley, and Mr. Howe got all puffed up and eager to please. It was so embarrassing.

  “Watch yourself, young lady,” she said, smiling at him, not me. “You be nice.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Hell of a fire, Sarah,” Mr. Howe said, hugging her. He was filthy, but she didn’t pull away. “Poor Nelson lost his whole inventory. Suspicious fire too—looks like arson. Check over there.” He jerked his head to the side and pointed across the street where a man and a small dog were standing by the fence. “Tony Dodd with his familiar. The crazy fool was here when we pulled in.”

  “John,” my mother stepped back. “Watch what you say—the girls! You don’t think…”

  Louanne narrowed her eyes and looked at Mr. Howe like she’d love to wring his neck.

  “Sarah, what the hell would I think? Dodd was at the Pratt fire in May, and now he’s at this one. Why does he ride his bike at night in the country? Put two and two together.”

  “You’re wrong,” Louanne said, her voice shaking with anger. She put her hands on her hips and stepped toward Mr. Howe. “The reason Uncle Tony rides his bike in the country at night is because if he rides in the daytime people are cruel—they stare at him and make fun of him. Last Easter Sunday some mean kids threw rocks at him and knocked him off of his bike—in front of the church—after Mass.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Mr. Howe said. “That’s got nothing—”

  “Yes, it does,” Louanne shouted. “If you were Uncle Tony, when and where would you ride your bike?”

  Doc was downstairs at his kitchen table reading the racing form and sipping Four Roses when I got home from the fire. If he liked the entries and felt lucky, he’d call his bookie, our dry cleaner, Vic Viscuzzi, and place some bets. If one of his long shots came in, he’d say, “When I win, everybody wins,” and buy Denny and me root beer floats.

  “How was the fire
?” he asked, looking up from the paper. “Did you bump into your mother?”

  “Yeah, she and Denny were there. They went out for ice cream with Mr. Howe. I didn’t want to go.” The less I saw of that man, the better. I sat down across the table from Doc and fingered the shiny aluminum edge of the table.

  Doc raised his eyebrows. “How come?”

  “I don’t know—not hungry,” I said, shaking my head. “The Nelsons’ barn burned down. Their truck was in it.”

  “They lost their barn? The fire department couldn’t save it?”

  “No,” I said. “All gone.”

  “Mitch Nelson’s had a run of bad luck—Sylvia’s polio, having to quit a good job, and now this.” Doc finished his drink and set the glass down hard. “He’s such a good egg. I’ll go over there tomorrow and see what I can do; he’s going to need help getting back on his feet.”

  Doc always put himself in other people’s shoes. He said he just did for others what he hoped they’d do for him.

  “Doc,” I said, leaning forward. “Mr. Howe thinks Uncle Tony set the Nelsons’ barn on fire. He called it arson.”

  Doc looked at me and rubbed his chin. “Well, Grace, that’s quite the accusation,” he said, reaching for his pack of Camels. He tapped out a cigarette and put it in his mouth.

  I traced the word arson in capital letters on his black Formica table with my index finger over and over and told him exactly what Mr. Howe had said. What if Uncle Tony was arrested?

  Doc sighed. “Just because Howe said it, doesn’t make it true.”

  “But,” I said impatiently, “if Uncle Tony didn’t set the fire, why was he there ahead of the fire department?”

  He struck a match and lit his cigarette. He was quiet for so long that I thought he forgot I was sitting there. I shifted around in my chair waiting for his answer.

  “Grace, never jump to conclusions,” Doc finally said, taking a drag, “without so much as an iota of thought and without real facts, just circumstantial evidence. For crying out loud, the poor fish probably saw the smoke and headed over that way. Like you and everybody else in town.”

  Doc wasn’t like Mr. Howe; Doc gave people the benefit of the doubt.

  CHAPTER 9

  The day after the Nelson fire, the temperature climbed into the high nineties, sapping everyone’s energy. It was late when I got up; I hadn’t slept well because I spent half the night trying to think of anybody in Stillwater, other than Uncle Tony, who could’ve set the Nelsons’ barn on fire.

  My mother was in her bedroom, painting her nails baby-doll pink—the shade Louanne said attracts men. It’s not a color you want your mother to wear, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Doc and Denny were in the kitchen playing poker with matchsticks. Denny had the biggest pile—Doc was letting him win.

  Maggie’s mother needed her help making mustard pickles out of the cucumbers that grew in their garden, so Louanne and I had decided to work on our tans in her grandmother’s backyard.

  Stillwater was like a ghost town when I rode over to the Dodds. Everyone had their window shades drawn to keep out the heat. No one was outside on their porch or hanging out their laundry. The only people braving the high temperatures were two firemen in front of the firehouse washing the truck, and just my luck, one of them was Mr. Howe. The other man was Mr. Stansbury; I didn’t know him very well.

  “Morning, Grace,” Mr. Howe called, motioning me over. “Hot day for a bike ride.”

  “I’m not going far,” I said, thinking he was going to apologize for calling Uncle Tony an arsonist.

  “Going over to visit that Dodd girl?”

  “Yes,” I said, even though it was none of his business where I went.

  “How many times do I have to tell you that your friend’s uncle is nobody to mess with?” Mr. Howe wiped some sweat off of his forehead, took a pack of Pall Malls out of his pocket, and lit one up. “Why don’t you girls play at your house?”

  “You can’t tell me what to do,” I said. “You’re not my father.”

  “Your father should have thought about you and Denny,” he said, raising his voice. “Your mom has got it tough taking care of you two kids.”

  Mr. Stansbury shook his head and looked down at the ground.

  I stiffened my shoulders and looked Mr. Howe in the eye. “Don’t talk about my father.”

  “Grace, listen to me,” he said, taking a long puff on his cigarette. “Like I said last night at the Nelsons’—everybody knows Dodd’s the arsonist. He’s looking at spending a long time in jail.”

  The other fireman nodded.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said, my voice rising. “You can’t prove anything; everyone knows you’re innocent until you’re proven guilty.”

  “Howe,” the other fireman said, sounding nervous, “it might not be the time or the place to talk to her about this, and I could use some help on the truck.”

  “Hold your horses,” Mr. Howe said, throwing his cigarette on the ground. He mashed it into the pavement with the tip of his shoe. “Grace, you think about what I said.”

  “You’re not my father,” I repeated, riding away. “But you could learn a thing or two from my grandfather.”

  “Where were you, Grace?” Louanne said when I rode up. She was fanning herself with a magazine on the front-porch steps. “Seriously, I’m about to die from heat prostration. I’ve been waiting for hours.”

  “Sorry,” I said as we walked around the side of the house to the backyard. “I got held up.”

  She’d already set up her stuff in the backyard, not too far from the riverbank. I threw my old blue towel on the freshly mowed grass not far from her, inhaled deeply, and smiled.

  “Lie down on your stomach, and I’ll put oil on your back,” Louanne said, shaking a big bottle of baby oil and iodine before opening it.

  I closed my eyes and pressed my face into my towel. The warm oil felt good on my back, and I tried to forget Mr. Howe and the fire and everything. Water gurgled over the dam behind us, and fat yellow jackets buzzed around the clumps of orange daylilies on the top of the bank. The buzzing of the bees and the sound of the rushing water soothed me and made me sleepy. I reached for one of Louanne’s movie magazines; Rita Hayworth was on the cover. She reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t think who. Louanne finished slathering my back and turned her new transistor radio to WPTR, which was playing “Wake Up Little Susie.”

  “That’s the number one song,” I said, lifting myself up on one elbow. “It’s the Everly Brothers. Turn it up.”

  “This is the most stupid song I’ve ever heard,” Louanne said, turning it up full blast. “Why would anyone get upset because they fall asleep at the movies? My father does it all the time. Sure my mother gets mad, but that’s her.”

  “It’s my favorite song.”

  Louanne ignored me. “Guess what? I want my parents to take me to Disneyland when I go home. Maybe they’ll take you and Maggie too. I really want to see the Sleeping Beauty castle. It looks amazing on television. And it’s close to Hollywood; we could see movie stars too. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

  “Wake Up Little Susie” ended, and a Camel cigarette commercial came over the air. “How mild, how mild can a cigarette be? Take the Camel thirty-day test, and you’ll agree, that Camels suit you to a T.”

  “Hey,” I said, turning over. “Remember how I was late?”

  She nodded.

  “Mr. Howe stopped me on my way over here.”

  “What do you mean?” she said, looking at me. “What did he want?”

  “He said that Uncle Tony might go to jail. We’ve got to find the real arsonist before that happens.”

  “Why did he say that?”

  “I don’t know, but he sounded pretty sure of himself.”

  “I hate Mr. Howe,” Louanne said, furrowing her brows. “I don’t know what your mother sees in that man.”

  “Me either, but we need to find the real arsonist.”

  “We need—” Lou
anne stopped and looked out at the river. “Did you hear that noise?”

  “Yeah,” I said, turning my head.

  “What the heck is it?”

  “It’s a boat. A motorboat,” I yelled, jumping up. “It must’ve gone under the bridge. Come on, the beach…”

  Vinnie’s butcher shop was on top of the riverbank next to the old iron bridge. He butchered his meat on a wooden chopping block in front of a wide window that overlooked the Hudson River. When a boat went under the bridge, he saw it before anyone else. But not today.

  “Where’s Vinnie?” Louanne yelled as we ran toward the riverbank. “I don’t hear his bell.”

  “Vinnie! Vinnie!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Your bell! Ring your bell!”

  “Oh my God!” Lou screamed. “Where’s Vinnie?”

  Every summer tourists rented yachts from a marina in Schuylerville, about fifteen miles up the river from Stillwater. Sometimes they didn’t understand how to operate them—or how the barge canal system worked. Vinnie noticed when the boats missed the buoy marking the canal and went to the right instead toward the dam. Then he’d swing into action, ringing his big cowbell like a crazy fool and yelling for all he was worth.

  It was high drama several times a summer in Stillwater, and we loved it. I never saw a boat go over, but Doc remembered three of them crashing to pieces on the rocks below the dam. Secretly, I wanted to see that too.

  Louanne and I raced to the edge of the steep bank and headed down the dirt path leading to her grandmother’s beach. The stretch of water before the dam looked calm and peaceful, but under the still water, the Hudson was deep and treacherous.

  The long white yacht was slowly moving down the middle of the river toward the dam. The low-level dam was about two hundred feet to the south of Mrs. Dodd’s property, and unless you knew it was there, it was difficult to spot—especially from a boat. Doc said that low-level dams backed up the water as it flowed over the top before it dropped down and created a backwash that trapped and recirculated anything that could float—including boats and people. The swift current pushed everything against the face of the dam and then tossed it over.