Fire Watch

by Connie Willis

  I unwound Stitch like you would a spool of thread, and threw the loose end of the wire over to the side of the road, where it dangled from the pole, all ready to hang Stitch next time he comes along.

  “You stupid dog,” I said. “Now hurry!” and I sprinted back to the side of the road and up the hill in my sopping wet sneakers. He ran about five steps and stopped to sniff at a tree. “Come on!” I said. “It’s getting dark. Dark!”

  He was past me like a shot and halfway down the hill. Stitch is afraid of the dark. I know, there’s no such thing in dogs. But Stitch really is. Usually I tell him, “Paranoia is the number one killer of dogs,” but right now I wanted him to hurry before my feet started to freeze. I started running, and we got to the bottom of the hill about the same time.

  Stitch stopped at the driveway of the Talbots’ house. Our house wasn’t more than a few hundred feet from where I was standing, on the other side of the hill. Our house is down in kind of a well formed by hills on all sides. It’s so deep and hidden you’d never even know it’s there. You can’t even see the smoke from our wood stove over the top of the Talbots’ hill. There’s a shortcut through the Talbots’ property and down through the woods to our back door, but I don’t take it anymore. “Dark, Stitch,” I said sharply, and started running again. Stitch kept right at my heels.

  The Peak was turning pink by the time I got to our driveway. Stitch peed on the spruce tree about a hundred times before I got it dragged back across the dirt driveway. It’s a real big tree. Last summer Dad and David chopped it down and then made it look like it had fallen across the road. It completely covers up where the driveway meets the road, but the trunk is full of splinters, and I scraped my hand right in the same place as always. Great.

  I made sure Stitch and I hadn’t left any marks on the road (except for the marks he always leaves—another dog could find us in a minute. That’s probably how Stitch showed up on our front porch, he smelled Rusty) and then got under cover of the hill as fast as I could. Stitch isn’t the only one who gets nervous after dark. And besides, my feet were starting to hurt. Stitch was really paranoiac tonight. He didn’t even take off running after we were in sight of the house.

  David was outside, bringing in a load of wood. I could tell just by looking at it that they were all the wrong length. “Cutting it kind of close, aren’t you?” he said. “Did you get the tomato seeds?”

  “No,” I said. “I brought you something else, though. I brought everybody something.”

  I went on in. Dad was rolling out plastic on the living room floor. Mrs. Talbot was holding one end for him. Mom was holding the card table, still folded up, waiting for them to finish so she could set it up in front of the stove for supper. Nobody even looked up. I unslung by backpack and took out Mrs. Talbot’s magazine and the letter.

  “There was a letter at the post office,” I said. “From the Clearys.”

  They all looked up.

  “Where did you find it?” Dad asked.

  “On the floor, mixed in with all the third-class stuff I was looking for Mrs. Talbot’s magazine.”

  Mom leaned the card table against the couch and sat down. Mrs. Talbot looked blank.

  “The Clearys were our best friends,” I said. “From Illinois. They were supposed to come see us the summer before last. We were going to hike up Pike’s Peak and everything.”

  David banged in the door. He looked at Mom sitting on the couch and Dad and Mrs. Talbot still standing there holding the plastic like a couple of statues. “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “Lynn says she found a letter from the Clearys today,” Dad said.

  David dumped the logs on the hearth. One of them rolled onto the carpet and stopped at Mom’s feet. Neither of them bent over to pick it up.

  “Shall I read it out loud?” I said, looking at Mrs. Talbot. I was still holding her magazine. I opened up the envelope and took out the letter.

  “‘Dear Janice and Todd and everybody,’” I read. “‘How are things in the glorious west? We’re raring to come out and see you, though we may not make it quite as soon as we hoped. How are Carla and David and the baby? I can’t wait to see little David. Is he walking yet? I bet Grandma Janice is so proud she’s busting her britches. Is that right? Do you westerners wear britches or have you all gone to designer jeans?’”

  David was standing by the fireplace. He put his head down across his arms on the mantelpiece.

  “‘I’m sorry I haven’t written, but we were very busy with Rick’s graduation and anyway I thought we would beat the letter out to Colorado, but now it looks like there’s going to be a slight change in plans. Rick has definitely decided to join the Army Richard and I have talked ourselves blue in the face, but I guess we’ve just made matters worse. We can’t even get him to wait to join until after the trip to Colorado. He says we’d spend the whole trip trying to talk him out of it, which is true, I guess. I’m just so worried about him. The Army! Rick says I worry too much, which is true too, I guess, but what if there was a war?’”

  Mom bent over and picked up the log that David had dropped and laid it on the couch beside her.

  “‘If it’s okay with you out there in the Golden West, we’ll wait until Rick is done with basic the first week in July and then all come out. Please write and let us know if this is okay I’m sorry to switch plans on you like this at the last minute, but look at it this way: you have a whole extra month to get into shape for hiking up Pike’s Peak. I don’t know about you, but I sure can use it.’”

  Mrs. Talbot had dropped her end of the plastic. It didn’t land on the stove this time, but it was so close to it it was curling from the heat. Dad just stood there watching it. He didn’t even try to pick it up.

  “‘How are the girls? Sonja is growing like a weed. She’s out for track this year and bringing home lots of medals and dirty sweat socks. And you should see her knees! They’re so banged up I almost took her to the doctor. She says she scrapes them on the hurdles, and her coach says there’s nothing to worry about, but it does worry me a little. They just don’t seem to heal. Do you ever have problems like that with Lynn and Melissa?

  “‘I know, I know. I worry too much. Sonja’s fine. Rick’s fine. Nothing awfuls going to happen between now and the first week in July, and we’ll see you then. Love, the Clearys. P. S. Has anybody ever fallen off Pike’s Peak?’”

  Nobody said anything. I folded up the letter and put it back in the envelope.

  “I should have written them,” Mom said. “I should have told them, ‘Come now.’ Then they would have been here.”

  “And we would probably have climbed up Pike’s Peak that day and gotten to see it all go blooie and us with it,” David said, lifting his head up. He laughed and his voice caught on the laugh and kind of cracked. “I guess we should be glad they didn’t come.”

  “Glad?” Mom said. She was rubbing her hands on the legs of her jeans. “I suppose we should be glad Carla took Melissa and the baby to Colorado Springs that day so we didn’t have so many mouths to feed.” She was rubbing her jeans so hard she was going to rub a hole right through them. “I suppose we should be glad those looters shot Mr. Talbot.”

  “No,” Dad said. “But we should be glad the looters didn’t shoot the rest of us. We should be glad they only took the canned goods and not the seeds. We should be glad the fires didn’t get this far. We should be glad—”

  “That we still have mail delivery?” David said. “Should we be glad about that too, Dad?” He went outside and shut the door behind him.

  “When I didn’t hear from them I should have called or something,” Mom said.

  Dad was still looking at the ruined plastic, I took the letter over to him. “Do you want to keep it or what?” I said.

  “I think it’s served its purpose,” he said. He wadded it up, tossed it in the stove, and slammed the door shut. He didn’t even get burned. “Come help me on the greenhouse, Lynn,” he said.

  It was pitch-dark outside and r
eally getting cold. My sneakers were starting to get stiff. Dad held the flashlight and pulled the plastic tight over the wooden slats. I stapled the plastic every two inches all the way around the frame and my finger about every other time. After we finished one frame I asked Dad if I could go back in and put on my boots.

  “Did you get the seeds for the tomatoes?” he said, like he hadn’t even heard me. “Or were you too busy looking for the letter?”

  “I didn’t look for it,” I said. “I found it. I thought you’d be glad to get the letter and know what happened to the Clearys.”

  Dad was pulling the plastic across the next frame, so hard it was getting little puckers in it. “We already knew,” he said.

  He handed me the flashlight and took the staple gun out of my hand. “You want me to say it?” he said. “You want me to tell you exactly what happened to them? All right. I would imagine they were close enough to Chicago to have been vaporized when the bombs hit. If they were, they were lucky. Because there aren’t any mountains like ours around Chicago. So they got caught in the fire storm or they died of flash burns or radiation sickness or else some looter shot them.”

  “Or their own family,” I said.

  “Or their own family.” He put the staple gun against the wood and pulled the trigger. “I have a theory about what happened the summer before last,” he said. He moved the gun down and shot another staple into the wood. “I don’t think the Russians started it or the United States either. I think it was some little terrorist group somewhere or maybe just one person. I don’t think they had any idea what would happen when they dropped their bomb. I think they were just so hurt and angry and frightened by the way things were that they just lashed out. With a bomb.” He stapled the frame clear to the bottom and straightened up to start on the other side. “What do you think of that theory, Lynn?”

  “I told you,” I said. “I found the letter while I was looking for Mrs. Talbot’s magazine.”

  He turned and pointed the staple gun at me. “But whatever reason they did it for, they brought the whole world crashing down on their heads. Whether they meant it or not, they had to live with the consequences.”

  “If they lived,” I said. “If somebody didn’t shoot them.”

  “I can’t let you go to the post office anymore,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “What about Mrs. Talbot’s magazines?”

  “Go check on the fire,” he said.

  I went back inside. David had come back and was standing by the fireplace again, looking at the wall. Mom had set up the card table and the folding chairs in front of the fireplace. Mrs. Talbot was in the kitchen cutting up potatoes, only it looked like it was onions the way she was crying.

  The fire had practically gone out. I stuck a couple of wadded-up magazine pages in to get it going again. The fire flared up with a brilliant blue and green. I tossed a couple of pine cones and some sticks onto the burning paper. One of the pine cones rolled off to the side and lay there in the ashes. I grabbed for it and hit my hand on the door of the stove.

  Right in the same place. Great. The blister would pull the old scab off and we could start all over again. And of course Mom was standing right there, holding the pan of potato soup. She put it on the top of the stove and grabbed up my hand like it was evidence in a crime or something. She didn’t say anything, she just stood there holding it and blinking.

  “I burned it,” I said. “I just burned it.”

  She touched the edges of the old scab, like she was afraid of catching something.

  “It’s a burn!” I shouted, snatching my hand back and cramming David’s stupid logs into the stove. “It isn’t radiation sickness. It’s a burn.”

  “Do you know where your father is, Lynn?” she said as if she hadn’t even heard me.

  “He’s out on the back porch,” I said, “building his fucking greenhouse.”

  “He’s gone,” she said. “He took Stitch with him.”

  “He can’t have taken Stitch,” I said. “He’s afraid of the dark.” She didn’t say anything. “Do you know how dark it is out there?”

  “Yes,” she said, and went and looked out the window. “I know how dark it is.”

  I got my parka off the hook by the fireplace and started out the door.

  David grabbed my arm. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  I wrenched away from him. “To find Stitch. He’s afraid of the dark.”

  “Its too dark,” he said. “You’ll get lost.”

  “So what? It’s safer than hanging around this place,” I said and slammed the door shut on his hand.

  I made it halfway to the woodpile before he grabbed me again, this time with his other hand. I should have gotten them both with the door.

  “Let me go,” I said. “I’m leaving. I’m going to go find some other people to live with.”

  “There aren’t any other people! For Christ’s sake, we went all the way to South Park last winter. There wasn’t anybody We didn’t even see those looters. And what if you run into them, the looters that shot Mr. Talbot?”

  “What if I do? The worst they could do is shoot me. I’ve been shot at before.”

  “You’re acting crazy, you know that, don’t you?” he said. “Comin’ in here out of the clear blue, taking potshots at everybody with that crazy letter!”

  “Potshots!” I said, so mad I was afraid I was going to start crying. “Potshots! What about last summer? Who was taking potshots then?”

  “You didn’t have any business taking the shortcut,” David said. “Dad told you never to come that way.”

  “Was that any reason to try and shoot me? Was that any reason to kill Rusty?”

  David was squeezing my arm so hard I thought he was going to snap it right in two. “The looters had a dog with them. We found its tracks all around Mr. Talbot. When you took the shortcut and we heard Rusty barking, we thought you were the looters.” He looked at me. “Mom’s right. Paranoia’s the number one killer. We were all a little crazy last summer. We’re all a little crazy all the time, I guess, and then you pull a stunt like bringing that letter home, reminding everybody of everything that’s happened, of everybody we’ve lost …” He let go of my arm and looked down at his hand like he didn’t even know he’d practically broken my arm.

  “I told you,” I said. “I found it while I was looking for a magazine. I thought you’d all be glad I found it.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll bet.”

  He went inside and I stayed out a long time, waiting for Dad and Stitch. When I came in, nobody even looked up. Mom was still standing at the window I could see a star over her head. Mrs. Talbot had stopped crying and was setting the table. Mom dished up the soup and we all sat down. While we were eating, Dad came in.

  He had Stitch with him. And all the magazines. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Talbot,” he said. “If you’d like, I’ll put them under the house and you can send Lynn for them one at a time.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t feel like reading them anymore.”

  Dad put the magazines on the couch and sat down at the card table. Mom dished him up a bowl of soup. “I got the seeds,” he said. “The tomato seeds had gotten water-soaked, but the corn and squash were okay.” He looked at me. “I had to board up the post office, Lynn,” he said. “You understand that, don’t you, that I can’t let you go there anymore? It’s just too dangerous.”

  “I told you,” I said. “I found it. While I was looking for a magazine.”

  “The fire’s going out,” he said.

  After they shot Rusty I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere for a month for fear they’d shoot me when I came home, not even when I promised to take the long way around. But then Stitch showed up and nothing happened and they let me start going again. I went every day till the end of summer and after that whenever they’d let me. I must have looked through every pile of mail a hundred times before I found the letter from the Clearys. Mrs. Talbot was right a
bout the post office. The letter was in somebody else’s box.

  Nobody knows what housewives do all day. Nobody cares either, and this places the housewife in the same position as Miss Marple, whom people are continually underestimating, and gives the housewife a certain freedom and power that make her the perfect heroine.

  I’ve used the housewife heroine in several stories, and she appears in this one in her guise as Young Mother. The role of Young Mother is a little more constraining in that when something important happens, she is likely to miss it because she is wiping somebody’s runny nose or putting on somebody’s boots. On the other hand, while she is pushing somebody on a swing or waiting for somebody to finish their Coke, she has a lot of time to think. And sometimes, taking somebody to the bathroom, she sees something everyone else has missed.

  And Come from Miles Around

  Laynie had to go to the bathroom again. Meg guided her through the crowded cafe to the back. The bathroom was crowded, too. Meg waited in the hall with Laynie. On the wall above the telephone, someone had written in Magic Marker, “Eclipse or Bust,” and had drawn a crude sun, a circle with uneven lines radiating from it. Under that someone else had scrawled in pencil, “It better not be cloudy I came all the way from Houston.”

  When Meg came back to the table carrying the little girl, Rich and Paulos had both disappeared. Meg ordered Laynie another Coke and stared out the window, wondering how long it would take a two-year-old to overdose on sugar. Emergency situations required emergency measures, and seven hundred miles in a car with Laynie was an emergency situation. With Rich’s colleague Paulos along, Laynie could hardly be allowed to indulge in her usual trip behavior, which was to hang over the backs of their seats, shouting “cow” at regular intervals and dropping her gum down their backs. This trip Meg had sat in the back seat with Laynie and a litter of sticker books and doll clothes, popping Lifesavers into her mouth every time she asked how much farther it was to Tana.