Caroline struggled to get free. “Wilbur, I’ve got to get Wilbur!”
“Somebody’s inside the house?”
“Yes, Wilbur!”
“Do you know where?” the fireman asked. He kept his hold on Caroline. “Do you know where he is?”
Her tears overflowed. “No one’s upstairs. He’s got to be in the kitchen, the dining room, or the parlor.”
Standing within earshot, Louie said, “He ain’t in the dining room or the parlor. I come through that way, and ain’t nobody in there.”
“Then he’s in the kitchen,” Caroline said. She explained in a shaky voice that the kitchen was in the right-hand corner at the rear of the house. “Around the stairs, then straight back.”
The redhead turned to his partner. “Come on, George, let’s get this guy.” The two firemen unfurled a lengthy stretch of hose and carried it inside the house.
Once inside, seeing became impossible. The redheaded Calvin had hold of the nozzle so he was in the lead. Staying close together, they felt their way along the right side of the wall. Following Caroline’s description of the kitchen’s location, they moved quickly through the hall and felt their way past the staircase. Then they crossed into the kitchen.
The moment Calvin stepped through the door he spotted the flames. George saw it also. He pressed the button on his radio. “Charge the hose!” The flat grey hose swelled with water as the two men inched forward. The smoke was so thick neither of the men could see one another, but they both held tight to the hose.
“Wilbur?” Calvin called out. “Wilbur, are you in here?” When there was no answer, Calvin passed the nozzle to George and began to feel his way along the right wall. With a heavily-gloved hand he moved around the bulk of the refrigerator and then the stove. He could see nothing. The smoke was so dense all he could do was feel.
“Wilbur?” he called again, but still there was no answer. He came near the center of the room when he saw a bright green glow a foot, maybe two, from where he was. He blinked several times, and the light came into focus.
It was the numbers on a glow-in-the-dark watch.
If it was Wilbur, he was in the path of the rapidly spreading flames. Calvin dropped to his knees and crawled toward the green glow. Before he got there he bumped up against Wilbur’s foot. He reached out, grabbed the leg, pulled it toward him, and caught hold of the torso. Wilbur was unconscious but still alive. Dragging him across the floor, Calvin moved swiftly and called out to George, “I’ve got a survivor.” George twisted the bale and aimed the nozzle upward. A powerful spray of water slapped against the ceiling and cascaded down the walls. The fire sizzled, spat, and steamed, then quickly died away.
“We’ve got to get this guy on oxygen!” Calvin yelled. He pulled Wilbur close to the doorway, then knelt and lifted the big man across his shoulder. Wilbur was dead weight and not easily carried. Calvin braced himself against the doorframe and stood. Following the hose line, he made his way back through the hallway and out onto the porch. When the crowd saw the firemen carrying Wilbur to safety, a cheer rose up.
“Wilbur!” Caroline screamed and ran to him. She fell to her knees alongside the lifeless body. “Please be okay, Wilbur. Please, please…” A cascade of tears rolled down her face and she began to pray, something she’d not done in a very long time. After years of disappointment and heartache she’d given up believing in miracles, but now she needed one and it was bigger than anything else she’d ever asked for.
“Please, God,” she said, “I swear I’ll never ask for anything else. Just please let Wilbur be okay…please…” Her voice was small and frail, but it carried a sense of urgency impossible to miss.
Caroline couldn’t say how many minutes passed as she knelt beside Wilbur; she only knew it seemed a lifetime. When he finally blinked his eyes open and let go of a choking cough, the ambulance had already arrived.
As they lifted Wilbur into the ambulance, the captain’s radio squawked again.
“We’ve got another survivor,” Fred Marcaine said. Fred was part of the team that had gone around to the back of the house to wet down the wall and check for hot spots.
Hearing the call, Caroline turned and searched the faces in the crowd. All of the residents were present and accounted for. She turned to the captain. “Another survivor?”
The captain shrugged. “A neighbor maybe?”
When two firemen came from the rear of the house carrying Joe Mallory he’d already passed out. Not from injury but from a full bottle of Jack Daniels.
The captain leaned over him and caught a whiff of the whiskey. “Whew, this guy’s not injured, he’s drunk!”
That’s when the police got involved. Once they’d pulled Joe’s wallet from his pocket, it took mere minutes to learn he was wanted in Mackinaw for theft of a tow truck.
Caroline
I’ve never been so frightened in all my life. Being frightened for yourself is bad enough, but it’s ten thousand times worse when you’re frightened for someone you love. When I heard the sound of Rowena’s name, my only thought was to get her and Sara to safety. When the police found that man in the backyard, they said his driver’s license identified him as Joe Mallory. I didn’t need anything to tell me who it was; I’d heard the call of Rowena’s name.
With all the craziness going on I didn’t stop to count heads until after Rose left with Barbara Ann; that’s when I discovered Wilbur wasn’t with the others. I was turning back to look for him when that fireman, Calvin I think his name is, stopped me. “Too dangerous,” he said, and he wasn’t about to let go of my arm.
I’m not a particularly brave person—in fact I’m not brave at all—but when someone you love is in danger, you don’t stop to think about yourself. All you can think about is saving them. One summer Mama and I were at the city pool, and a little kid who’d been running around fell in the deep end. Without stopping to think about it, his mama jumped in to save him even though she couldn’t swim a stroke herself. She was standing in water over her head, but she grabbed that toddler and held him up high over her head so he wouldn’t drown. When people saw she couldn’t swim, a bunch of bystanders pulled them both out. Well, I felt just like that mama when I realized Wilbur was still inside.
Much as it breaks my heart to see Grandma’s house in such a shambles, I’m just happy to have Wilbur alive.
Later that night when I got to thinking about Rowena’s husband being the cause of all this, I started wondering if I’d done the right thing in bringing her here. It didn’t take a whole lot of thinking to come to the realization I had no other choice. When you know somebody’s in trouble, you’ve got to stretch out a hand and help. If you don’t you’ll come to hate yourself, and that’s not something anybody wants to live with.
It’s funny, I came here a few months back with no family at all. Now I’ve got a great big family, and Rowena and Wilbur, they’re an important part of it.
The Aftermath
On the same night Wilbur was taken to the hospital, Joe Mallory was taken to jail. The fire had destroyed the kitchen and the back wall, and although the remainder of the house still stood it would be uninhabitable for a few days mostly because of smoke and water damage.
Once the blaze was out and the patrol cars gone, the neighbors left but Caroline stood looking at the house. She was alone when Calvin walked over and suggested she should wait until tomorrow before going back inside.
“There’s still a lot of smoke in there.”
“What happens now?”
“George and me are gonna stay and keep an eye on the place,” he said. “Make sure there’s no flare-ups, stuff like that.”
“Is it ruined?” she asked tearfully.
“Not at all.” Calvin shook his head. “The kitchen, maybe, but the rest of the place should be okay.” He gave her a reassuring smile. “It won’t look nearly as bad in the morning.”
~ ~ ~
With Wilbur gone to the hospital Caroline and the seven remaining residents were
homeless, but no one went without a bed. Max headed off to town saying he would spend the night with a friend. The neighbors opened their hearts and homes to the others.
Doc Payne went home with Missus Gomez, a widow with a forty-six-year-old daughter who was good-looking and extremely attracted to intellectuals. Before they even got back to the house, Mercedes had moved past the doctor title and began calling him Frank. She spoke in a throaty whisper and when she told him she was single, she leaned in so close her lashes fluttered against his cheek. It was three days before Doc returned to the house and weeks longer before he again picked up a dental magazine; he was far too busy visiting with Mercedes.
Louie stayed with the Casters who not only had a spare room but one with a television. “I don’t suppose you take in roomers,” Louie asked, but the answer was no. That lovely big room with a television and a refrigerator full of icy cold sodas was for their grandchildren when they came to visit.
~ ~ ~
As it turned out, Barbara Ann Percy welcomed the company. She had room enough for not just Rose and Sara, but Caroline, Laricka, and Harriet as well. With her house full of ladies in nightdress, Barbara Ann declared it a slumber party and brought out dishes of ice cream covered in chocolate syrup. After the ice cream was gone and Sara had drifted off to sleep, none the wiser about her daddy being hauled off to jail, they sat around the table and talked until there was nothing left to say.
Caroline tried to join in the conversation and she added a word or two occasionally, but her thoughts were on the house. She wanted to go inside, look around, see what had been damaged and what needed to be replaced. Although she’d never seen such things in the store, she was hopeful Peter Pennington carried refrigerators and stoves.
Max left thinking he’d spend the night at Maggie Sue’s place. He parked the car in front of her building, rang the vestibule bell, then proceeded up the stairs. Once on the second floor, he twisted the knob and found the apartment door unlocked.
“Sly little minx,” he said with a chuckle, believing she was waiting for him. As he crossed the living room he kicked off his shoes, then unzipped his trousers, and stepped out of them.
Unfortunately, the downstairs bell was broken and Maggie Sue had simply forgotten to close the deadbolt lock. When Max opened the bedroom door he found Herb Potter in the bed.
This time it was more than he could tolerate. Standing there in a pair of boxer shorts with his shirttail hanging loose, Max felt like a damned idiot.
“What the hell do you call this?” he screamed.
Maggie Sue said she called it an invasion of privacy and told him to get out. One word led to another, and before thirty seconds had passed he was hollering in a voice so loud the neighbors a block away heard him. Although Herb Potter was twice his size, Max demanded he get out of bed and fight like a man. By then Maggie Sue had already telephoned the police.
“She said she was gonna move in with me!” Max cried as the two policemen led him from the apartment carrying his trousers in his hand.
“You said you was rich,” Maggie Sue hollered after him. “You didn’t say you was crazy too!”
Hoping to circumvent any further problems, the officers suggested Max spend the night down at the stationhouse.
“It’s not like you’re under arrest,” the older cop said. “This will just give you time enough to cool down.”
“I ain’t gonna cool down!” Max yelled. “That damn woman’s a menace to society.”
The younger cop chuckled. “She ain’t a menace, she’s just Maggie Sue.” Which, in fact, was the truth.
While the other residents rested comfortably in neighboring houses, Max spent the night in a cell directly across from where Joe Mallory was sleeping it off.
~ ~ ~
Shortly after six Joe Mallory woke, and he was in a mood fouler than any he’d ever known before. He had no memory of being arrested and little memory of the events that preceded the arrest. Coming to the realization he was in jail, he took to banging on the bars and hollering to be let out. The racket woke Max.
The last he’d seen of Joe Mallory was at the bar back in Mackinaw. The agreement was he’d bring a picture of the girl and collect five hundred dollars. It took just a few seconds for Max to figure it out.
“Son of a bitch! You followed me here thinking you’d screw me outta that reward money!”
“Asshole,” Joe replied. “There ain’t no money.”
“You said—”
Joe gave a cynical laugh. “You’re a bigger asshole than I thought.”
Of course, Max came back at him saying he’d get the money one way or another. Once the threats started, they turned on each other. Deputy Carson overheard a good bit of the conversation and called the sheriff, and before the day was done Max had been arrested for the theft of Wilbur’s watch and a lengthy list of household items.
After he was fingerprinted and booked, it was discovered that Max had a number of outstanding arrest warrants: one from Alabama where he’d swindled a woman out of her savings, a second from Tennessee where he left town with a car not rightfully his, and a third from Arkansas where he allegedly held up a liquor store.
Although Max maintained he was innocent of all those charges he remained in jail, as did Joe Mallory.
Restoration
Wilbur remained in the hospital for several days. For the first two days Caroline arrived before visiting hours began and stayed until long after they’d ended. On the third day she returned to the house.
Because of the situation the Sweetwater house had been considered a crime scene and cordoned off, so no one was allowed to enter for those first two days. The morning Officer Sweeney removed the yellow tape crisscrossing the door Caroline waited on the front porch.
The reopening of the house was hardly a ceremonious thing; Sweeney simply yanked the tape down and told Caroline to go on in. She did. Alone. The odor of burnt wood still lingered and it would continue for a week or more, but the house was livable. The vase on the hall table had been broken, but other than that the only real damage was in the kitchen. That was in shambles. Where there had been a window, there was now a gaping hole, and charred remnants of the curtains were thrown about the room like bits of confetti.
Caroline licked her finger and ran it over a cabinet door streaked with soot. Probably salvageable. Fighting back the tears, she reached for the bucket kept beneath the sink. That’s when she saw the cover of what had been Ida’s favorite cookbook. She bent to pick it up and the pages, little more than ash, fell apart.
Caroline dropped to her knees and began to sob. She cried not for the loss of things, but because those lost things had been rich with the smell and feel of the grandmother she’d come to love. Swallowed by the sorrow of such a loss, she was deaf to the sound of footsteps when Calvin came in carrying an armload of two-by-fours.
He laid the boards atop the counter and squatted next to Caroline. “I know this looks bad right now. But once it’s cleaned up—”
“It’s not just the mess.” Caroline sniffed. “These things belonged to Grandma. They were all I had left of her.”
“Oh, so you don’t remember her?”
Caroline turned to him with a puzzled expression. “Of course I remember her.”
“Well, then,” Calvin said with a smile, “these things weren’t all you had. You’ve still got memories.”
“True,” Caroline answered and gave a wistful smile. That’s when she first noticed how very handsome Calvin was.
He extended his hand and Caroline took it. She stood and brushed the soot from her jeans. “Thanks.”
“No problem. There’s a lot to be done, so I guess we’d better get busy.”
“We?”
He nodded. “I’m off today, so I figured I’d stop by and close up this hole for you.”
“Thanks,” Caroline repeated. This time her smile was considerably broader.
A short while later Rose came walking in. “Sara’s busy making cookies with Barbar
a Ann, but I figured I’d help with the cleanup.”
Harriet and Laricka showed up a half hour later; by then Louie had already arrived and was holding up the long end of a two-by-four Calvin hammered into place.
No one needed to be told what to do. They each moved ahead, instinctively wiping down the cupboards, scouring the stove, and emptying spoiled or soggy food from the pantry shelves. There was no job too dirty or too hard; each task was simply something that needed to be done.
Caroline broke down and cried twice that day. The first time was when she found the cookbook; the second time was when she found Ida’s African violet beneath a pile of broken glass.
“It’s ruined,” she sobbed, thinking back on how Ida had fussed over the plant, moving it from the windowsill to the counter and then back again to the windowsill so it would get just the right amount of sunshine and diffused light.
Harriet looked at the broken flowerpot with a pile of dirt lying atop the violet. She squatted down, brushed aside the dirt, and picked up the flower. “Why, this ain’t ruined at all. It just needs replanting.”
“I doubt that will help,” Caroline said. “Grandma said violets are very delicate.”
“They ain’t that delicate,” Harriet answered, “they’re just a bit moody.” She scooped a handful of dirt from the floor and said, “Hand me that jelly jar; I’ll get this fixed.”
Early in the afternoon, George, Calvin’s firefighting partner, showed up with three large pizzas and several big bottles of Coke. “Lunch time,” he called out, and everyone stopped what they were doing.
Until the smell of hot pizza floated through the air no one had thought of food, but in less than a half hour there was nothing but crumbs left in the bottom of the boxes. Afterward, everyone went back to work.
George not only brought the pizza, he also stayed to help. When Calvin shouted out things like, “Can you put a brace under—” George had it done before he’d finished the sentence.
Previously Loved Treasures Page 22
