Strange Fire

by Tommy Wallach

  “Now that I think about it,” Clover said, “I do remember him coming in, just as I was falling asleep. I must’ve thought it was a dream.”

  “Maybe you’re still dreaming,” Michael said. “Maybe you need me to wake you up.” With that, he gave Clover a sharp rap on the forehead.

  “Ah!” Clover shouted, raising both hands to his temples; the shinefog had transformed Michael’s fist into a sledgehammer.

  “What’s wrong with you?” his mother said suspiciously.

  “Nothing.”

  She set her bowl aside and came over to where he was sitting. “Stand up.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m not asking.”

  He rose reluctantly. His mother stared hard into his right eye and then his left, pulling down the skin of his cheeks to get a better look.

  “You were drinking last night!”

  “Ooooooh!” Michael and Flora said at the same time. They loved seeing people get in trouble.

  “Just a little,” Clover said.

  His mother poked him hard in the sternum. “The amount’s not the issue!”

  “You let Clive drink.”

  “He’s older.”

  “But you let him do whatever he wants! It’s bullshit!”

  Clover stalked off, kicking his almost untouched bowl of porridge across the grass as he went, but was drawn up short by his father.

  “Clover Hamill, you get back here this instant.”

  Maybe in a couple of years, he’d have the strength to say no to that voice—but not yet. He turned around, careful not to look at Gemma; the pity in her eyes would only make him feel worse.

  “Apologize to your mother,” Honor Hamill said.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “That’s right you are. And you’ll be cleaning everyone’s dishes this morning, just to prove it.”

  Rage rising like a sun inside him—a bright red disc of fire. He forced it back down, out of sight. The world wasn’t just. When would he stop expecting it to be?

  “Yes, Da.”

  After breakfast he carried the bowls in a precarious column to the stream that ran along the western edge of Amestown, a tributary of the great river known as the Ivan. He took off his socks and rolled up the cuffs of his pants, then walked out into the flow. The water was icy cold, clear as glass. Minnows nipped at the particles of food that came off the bowls, clustered around his legs like a living cloud. His feet went numb, and his head finally began to clear of the shinefog.

  He didn’t go back to the campsite when he’d finished the washing; it would take at least an hour for the men to fold up the big tent and load the wagons. Instead he walked upstream, his feet sinking deliciously into the soft mud, alert for anything that merited investigation: the jeweled flash of a leaping fish, a puffed-up bullfrog in the rushes, the exposed root structure of an alder. The banks of the stream rose up until they were five or six feet high on either side; in one spot, a small waterfall issued out of an opening in the dirt. Glancing into the hole, Clover saw an incongruous gleam of white. He reached inside and pulled out a fist-size stone of flawless white: quartz crystal, if he wasn’t mistaken, polished by the flow of the water over who knew how many decades, just as the Earth itself had been polished into a sphere by the holy force of Gravity. Hypothetically, the stone could be traded with some boy back at the Anchor for candy, or a toy, or maybe even a couple of shekels—but Clover knew he would keep it, adding it to the collection of semiprecious stones and uncut gems he kept beneath his bedroom window.

  So caught up was he in admiring his new prize, he didn’t hear the footsteps. It was only when a shadow extinguished the sparkle of the crystal that he looked up.

  “Hello there.”

  The man was standing atop the opposite bank of the stream, just a few feet away.

  “Hello,” Clover said.

  “It’s good to see you again.”

  Clover squinted. The man was backlit by the sun, casting his face in shadow. “We’ve met?”

  “We have. I’m Dominic. Remember?”

  Finally, the lingering curtain of shinefog parted. This was the man Clover had spoken to last night, about the fire and the pumphouse.

  “I was about a hundred sheets to the wind last night, wasn’t I?” Dominic said.

  “I guess.”

  “And I said some crazy things.”

  He laughed, so Clover laughed along with him. They went on laughing until the laughter died and then there was only the burbling of the creek between them. Dominic sidestepped down the bank and came to stand right at the edge of the water. His eyes were hollow, ringed with sleeplessness, and there was an unhealthy reptilian sheen to his skin. A cricket chirped.

  “I’d sure hate to think you took anything I said to heart,” he said. “I was just blowing off steam. You didn’t repeat any of it to your daddy, did you?”

  Clover shook his head.

  “And you and me agree it would be best to keep it that way, don’t we?”

  Clover had never been one for telling lies, but he had a strong feeling what he was supposed to say right now. You know, I hardly remember a thing you said last night, and even if I did, I wouldn’t see any reason to tell anyone else about it. So farewell, stranger, and have a pleasant life.

  But something hijacked the words on their journey from his brain to his mouth. It was the thought of his brother—an adult now, able to drink whatever he wanted, to sneak out in the middle of the night, to marry Gemma if and when it suited him. And here Clover was, without hardly any rights at all. Lord, but he was sick and tired of being a child. He wanted to be a man. And men didn’t tell lies out of fear.

  “I’m meant to tell my father everything,” he said, puffing himself up like a rooster about to crow. “And that’s just what I plan on doing.”

  “I see.”

  Dominic hesitated, as if teetering on the edge of something momentous. Then he took a step forward, into the stream itself. Clover backed away, but the bank behind him was steep and muddy. He’d never be able to make it to the top before Dominic got hold of him. He looked around for a weapon, but there was nothing close by. All he had was the crystal.

  “I’m real sorry about this,” Dominic said, as he reached the other side of the creek. One more step and he’d be close enough to strike . . .

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  Clive stepped out from behind a tree just a dozen yards or so upstream. And for once, Clover was grateful that his brother was tall and strong, intimidating even at eighteen. Dominic took a step backward, out of the flow of the stream, muddying it up as he went.

  “I was just saying good morning to your friend here. We met at the gathering last night.”

  “Well, you’ve said it, haven’t you?”

  Dominic put on his smile again, fake as a skull’s. “I suppose I have.” He turned back to Clover. “Nice to see you again, young man. Glad we could have this talk. I hope you’ll remember what I said.” With that, he hopped up the bank and disappeared off into the woods. Clover felt a throbbing in his right hand. He looked down and saw that he’d been squeezing the stone so hard it had left a bloodless white patch in the middle of his palm.

  “You okay?” Clive asked, extending a hand to pull Clover up out of the streambed.

  Clover scrabbled up on his own. “I’m fine.” He gave Clive his best accusatory glare. “The real question is how you are.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where were you last night?”

  “Last night? I was, you know, sleeping. Obviously.” But Clive had never been a very good liar, and a few seconds later he threw up his hands in surrender. “Fine. You got me. How’d you find out?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Where were you?”

  “Burns said I shouldn’t talk about it.”

  “Burns? What does Burns have to do with anything?”

  “He—you have to promise me you won’t say anything to Da.”

  “I promise. Get on with it alrea
dy.”

  So Clive told him the story of what had happened in Amestown last night: the broken-down house and the painted lady in the tavern; Arthur Edwards in his nightshirt, with his Archbishop-in-a-box toy; his secret basement, and Burns’s wanton destruction; the sharp shock of the old man’s knife, and then . . .

  If it had come from anyone else, Clover wouldn’t have believed it. But Clive would never make up something like that.

  “You’re saying Burns killed him? Right in front of you?”

  “He was just protecting me.”

  “From an old man?”

  “From an old man who’d been doing the devil’s work for decades! I mean, you should’ve seen the stuff he had down there. I could practically smell the sin.”

  “What kind of stuff was it?”

  “Oh no,” Clive said. “I’ve told you more than enough. Now it’s your turn.”

  “My turn?”

  Clive gestured off into the woods. “That man I chased off—he was trying to get you to keep your mouth shut about something.”

  “Last night, at the gathering, he mentioned something about a fire, and someone named Riley. I didn’t understand much, to be honest, but I’m sure it’ll mean something to Da.”

  “I’m sure it would,” Clive said. “Only you can’t tell him.”

  At first Clover assumed he must have misheard. He and Clive never kept secrets from their parents—not about anything important anyway. “Why not?”

  “Because I want to go home,” Clive said.

  “What does going home have to do with it?”

  “He’s an Honor, Clover. If you tell him, he’ll have to look into it. We’ll have to stay out here.” There was something ragged and desperate in Clive’s voice, and Clover had a flash of insight.

  “You’re scared!” he said, unable to fully disguise the pleasure he took in that realization.

  “Sure, I’m scared! I’m dead scared!” Clive grabbed Clover by the shoulders. “What I saw last night—it was awful. And I get the feeling that man you were talking to was thinking about doing something awful too. Everything’s all wrong out here, Clover. I can feel it. So let’s just forget about it and go home, okay?”

  “But Da wouldn’t want us to—”

  “Promise me! Right now!”

  “Fine!” Clover said, wilting in the face of his brother’s intensity. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Clive so upset. “Fine, I promise.”

  “Thank the Daughter.” Clive clasped one of Clover’s hands between his own, squeezing tightly. When he let go, Clover accidentally dropped the crystal. Clive bent down to pick it up. “What’s this?”

  “I found it in the stream,” Clover said.

  Clive held the stone up to the sun. “What a beaut. It even lets some light through.” Clover hadn’t noticed the seams of pink and green veining the crystal. It reminded him of the black opal Bernstein had given him for his thirteenth birthday. A rainbow in rock, he’d called it.

  “I also found a place where the pike are leaping pretty strong,” Clover said.

  “Show me.”

  They spent the next hour exploring the woods and the stream together, talking about a whole lot of nothing. It was almost like old times, back before girls and duties and thoughts of the future had come between them. Back when they were friends first and brothers second.

  They were kneeling on the rocks at the edge of the creek, setting leaves with tiny twig passengers to race downstream, when an animal sprinted across the surface of the water, from one bank to the other.

  “Did you see that?” Clive said.

  “It’s a shrew,” Clover replied.

  “But it walked on water!”

  “Actually, they’ve got these hairs on their feet that trap air bubbles. So it’s more like they run on air.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I read it in this book about rodents they’ve got in the Library.”

  Clive shook his head, smiling. “You know just about everything, don’t you?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Well it seems that way sometimes. I . . . I’m proud of you, Clover. I’m sorry if I don’t say that enough.”

  Clover felt himself blushing. He hoped his brother wouldn’t notice. “It’s okay.”

  “And . . . and I want you to know . . . I’m sorry about Gemma, too.”

  Suddenly the warm feeling in Clover’s chest froze over. He didn’t want to talk about Gemma. It had been a mistake to bring her up last night, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. Things had just felt so different between her and Clive these past few months. They’d always been flirtatious, of course, but that flirtation had recently taken on a new sort of significance, an intimacy that made Clover feel even more left out than he had before. Now that he knew his brother was definitely going to marry her, he didn’t ever want to talk about it again. Talking about it only made it that much more real.

  But Clive had clearly struggled to broach the subject, and he planned to see the conversation through to the bitter end. “You know how it is between Da and Eddie,” he said. “Everything’s been laid out for Gemma and me since . . . since forever, really. I didn’t have a say in it.”

  And here came the rage again, billowing up inside Clover like steam. Did Clive really think that made it better—that he had to marry her, that he didn’t even want her?

  “You do have a say, Clive. Of course you do.”

  “It’s not as simple as that. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  “You don’t know!” Clover shouted. “You don’t know and you never will!”

  He stood up and started walking upstream, back toward camp.

  “You don’t want to finish the race?” Clive called after him. The hurt was plain in his voice, but Clover didn’t care. Everybody hurt. That was just part of life.

  “No,” he said. “You were gonna win anyway.”

  6. Clive

  CLIVE WAS DOWN IN THE clearing, helping Eddie and Burns load the tent into the big wagon, when he heard Honor Hamill call out in his most thunderous preacher voice.

  “Clive Hamill, you get the hell over here.”

  Eddie gave a little whistle. “Somebody’s in hot water.”

  Clive jogged uphill to the campsite. Behind the small wagon, he found his mother and father speaking in fervent, almost angry tones.

  Clive’s father noticed him. “Show me your shoulder,” he said.

  “My shoulder? But . . .” Finally Clive understood. He glared at his brother, who was standing between their parents, looking guilty as all get-out. “You told? But you gave me your word!”

  “Leave him out of this,” Honor Hamill said. “Let me see your shoulder.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Let me see your damn shoulder!”

  Grudgingly, Clive took off his shirt. His mother gasped when she saw the wound.

  “Clover,” Honor Hamill said, “go get the sergeant for me. And keep away afterward.”

  “Yes, Da.”

  Clover scurried off, clearly happy to be dismissed.

  “It wasn’t supposed to—” Clive started to say.

  “I don’t want to hear a word out of you,” his father growled.

  “At least Burns did a halfway decent job stitching it up,” his mother said, examining the wound more closely. “Did he remember to clean it first?”

  “Of course, Ma.”

  After a couple of minutes of uncomfortable silence, Burns finally appeared. He took one look at Clive’s fresh new scar, bared to the world, and let out a long sigh. “I’m about to get a talking to, aren’t I?”

  “That’s all you have to say for yourself?” Honor Hamill strode right up into Burns’s face. “You put my son’s life at risk and that’s all you have to say?”

  Burns maintained an impressive serenity in the face of the Honor’s rage. “I invited him and he came. He’s a man now. It’s his decision. No one was supposed to get hurt.”

  �
��Talking to Arthur Edwards was your job, Burns,” Clive’s mother said. “Not our boy’s.”

  “Wait,” Clive said, “you knew he was going out there last night?”

  “Well . . . I only knew . . .” His mother looked to her husband for help. Clearly she’d been caught off guard by the question, and Clive saw an opportunity to take the offensive.

  “You knew he was going to kill that old man? Why? What is this all about, anyway?”

  Ellen Hamill turned back to Burns, eyes wide. “You killed him?”

  “He came at us with a knife! I didn’t have a choice.”

  “You did!” Honor Hamill said. “You always have a choice!”

  “That’s easy for you to say.”

  “None of this is easy,” Clive’s mother said.

  After that, everybody started talking over everybody else: a cacophony of incrimination and recrimination, rationalization and sanctimony, until finally one voice broke through the rest.

  “All of you shut the hell up!”

  It was Eddie. He’d come up from the clearing at some point, though Clive hadn’t noticed him arrive. Eddie almost never raised his voice, so when he did, you couldn’t help but listen.

  “Maybe Clive shouldn’t have gone, but maybe he should have at that. Maybe, if Burns had been on his own, he’d be dead now.” Clive hadn’t even thought of that. When he looked over at Burns, the sergeant wouldn’t meet his eye. “And, Clive, you have to understand that part of our job as members of the Church is to be on the lookout for misuse of the anathema. That’s all Burns was doing last night—his job. Make sense?”

  After a moment, Clive nodded.

  “Good. Now that we’ve sorted that out, we have to deal with the much more important question: Just what in God’s name are we gonna do next?”

  Eddie looked to Honor Hamill, who looked to his wife, who looked to Clive. And Clive, for want of anything better to do, looked to the sky. But there were no answers to be found up there in the blue—only the blank and blameless clouds.