by Lee Martin
He went to tend to Brandi. His shouting had brought Hannah in from the kitchen, and she was helping Brandi sit up and get her wind back.
“I’m all right,” she said. “Just a little tumble. I’ll be fine.”
Angel tried to explain again. “I didn’t—I just—she—”
The words wouldn’t come, and finally she gave up and ran down the hallway to the bedroom she shared with Hannah. She slammed the door so hard that Brandi’s high school graduation portrait fell from its nail in the hall. Angel heard the glass in the frame shatter, and all she could do was throw herself on her bed and put the pillow over her head, trying to shut out what her father had told her, that her mother had said she was out of control, a hateful girl. Bits and pieces from their last night together flashed in and out of view—she’d argued with her mother about taking out that box of ashes; Angel had stomped off to her room and she hadn’t carried the ashes out like she was supposed to, and later, when the trailer was burning, she failed her mother again. She thought I didn’t love her. Angel couldn’t keep herself from believing that. She thought I hated her, and then she died.
Angel knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t stop herself from hating her father for having told her what her mother had said. He should have kept it to himself. It was nothing she needed to hear. He said it to hurt her, and she couldn’t forgive him. She wouldn’t, not even if he said he was sorry a million times. A billion times. Not even then.
She heard the footsteps falling hard on the floor outside, and then her door came flying open. Her father stormed in. She knew it was him without having to look—those heavy steps, the whistle of air as he breathed through his nose, the bitter smell of coffee on his breath.
“Get that pillow off your head and look at me,” he said. “You’re going to clean up that broken glass, and you’re going to apologize to Brandi. Do you hear me, Angel? I mean right now.”
She wouldn’t budge. She held tight to the pillow and said in a muffled voice, “Leave me alone.”
Apologize? No. Not now. Not after what her father had said. She heard Brandi in the living room pleading for some calm—“Ronnie, no,” she said. “Please, let’s just eat our supper.”
It was too late, Angel thought. In fact, it’d been too late for a long time, ever since her father walked out on her mother. They were playing at being a family now, but the family Angel knew was the one in the trailer out the blacktop. Sometimes she thought of them, that family, doing their best to love one another, not knowing what was coming at them from the future. She couldn’t say they were happy, but she couldn’t say they were unhappy either. They were doing the best they could, and she liked to think of them—the parts of her and Hannah and Sarah and Emma that they’d left back there—going along again with their mother and sisters and baby brother. That was their family, the ones who tried their best to love one another when their father made clear that he couldn’t love them enough.
Now he grabbed the pillow, but she wouldn’t let go of it. He tried to get a grip on her so he could lift her from the bed, but she squirmed away from him. She tried to curl into a ball, but he got an arm around her waist and another arm under her knees. She kicked her feet at him, and he said, “You stop that.”
But she wouldn’t stop, and finally he grabbed her by the arm and shook her. The pillow fell to the floor. She was screaming now. She was telling him to stop. She was saying, “No, no, no.”
“It’s time you took responsibility for your actions,” he said. “Damn it, Angel. Everyone else is trying.”
She jerked free from his grip. “Don’t talk to me about responsibility.” She went after him with her fists. He crossed his arms over his face and tried to move out of her way. She followed him across the room, hitting him again and again. She hit him on the bones of his hands and arms, hit him until her own hands were sore. “What were you doing out at the trailer?”
He was backed into the wall now. He lowered his arms and said, “When?”
“That night.”
“I was there earlier in the day before you kids got home from school. I had to talk to your mother.”
“That night,” she said again. “Tell me.”
“Angel, I wasn’t anywhere but here.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Angel.”
She took the knife from her coat pocket, the Case Hammerhead. She held it up to his face. “Say this isn’t yours.” He wouldn’t answer. She was crying now, practically pleading for him to explain that he was innocent. “Say you didn’t drop it behind the trailer that night. Say you weren’t there.”
Her father reached out his hand, and she let him take the knife.
“You know it’s mine,” he said, and that was all he said, his eyes going hard before he turned and walked away, leaving Angel trembling with the thought of what might happen next.
19
Ronnie stormed out of Brandi’s house and drove out the blacktop to Shooter Rowe’s. The Case Hammerhead was in his pocket. He was thankful for the dark and the little bit of ground fog starting to gather and swirl in the low-lying areas. He didn’t want to see the ruins of the trailer, nor to remember the night it burned. He pulled into Shooter’s driveway and saw a shadow pass over the closed drapes at the living room window. The porch light was dark, but there were lights burning inside the house.
Ronnie got out of his Firebird and felt the cold and damp around his face. The air smelled of fuel oil, and he took note of the flicker of flames at the trash barrel behind Shooter’s house.
It took a long time for the porch light to come on after Ronnie knocked on the door, and when that door opened and Shooter saw who was waiting on the steps, he didn’t waste any time. He said, “I won’t let you talk to him.”
Ronnie knew Captain was inside the house. He could hear what sounded like dishes being washed in the sink.
“You heard the talk?” Ronnie asked. “About me? About the fire?”
Shooter started to close the door, but Ronnie shot his arm out straight and braced it with his hand. Shooter frowned. “Can’t stop people from wanting a story,” he said.
“What did you tell my girl tonight? Have you talked to Ray Biggs?”
Shooter pushed against the door, but Ronnie pushed back.
“Your footprints were in the snow behind the trailer,” Shooter said. “You think Biggs hasn’t made plaster casts of those prints? You think he’s not on your trail?”
Ronnie stared at Shooter a good long while. His voice went hard. “Go on. Tell Biggs everything about that night. Let’s see if you’ve got the nerve.”
“You think I won’t? You want the whole story to come out?” Shooter waited a while for Ronnie to answer, and when he didn’t, Shooter said, “That’s what I thought.”
“Merlene was right about you, Shooter. You’re a hard man. No wonder Captain never felt close to you. Merlene, too, for that matter. She—”
Shooter put his shoulder to the door and drove it shut, Ronnie no longer able to stop him.
The porch light went out, and Ronnie stood in the dark, his wrist aching from where he’d tried to keep the door from closing. He shouted at the house. He said, “My prints weren’t the only ones there. You know that, Shooter. If you’re going to tell it, tell it all.”
No one in town knew about that visit Ronnie paid Shooter, nor did they know that Captain had a knife like Ronnie’s. That he had a Case Hammerhead lockback because Ronnie had bought him one.
“Now you’ve got your own,” Ronnie said the day he gave it to him.
It was an evening shortly after Ronnie had moved into town, a warm Saturday evening in late September, one of the last warm days before fall set in for good. It wouldn’t be long before the farmers were cutting their corn and soybeans, not long before the hickory nuts fell from the trees, not long before the time changed and the dark set in early and the countryside smelled of wood fires.
Ronnie drove out the blacktop with his windows down. Captain’s knife, along
with a leather sheath, a pocket stone, and a bottle of honing oil in a gift tin that said XX Tested, W. R. Case & Sons Cutlery Company was lying on the passenger seat. Ronnie had paid over seventy dollars for the set, money he’d asked Brandi to give him. He wanted to do something special for Captain, he told her.
Ronnie explained that he’d always let Captain keep him company when he was working on his car. “He’s sorta an orphan now, just like I always was. I know how he feels. Captain always admired my pocketknife. I’d like to give him one as a gift. Just something to give him a boost. It’s a nice thing I can do for him, and if you could spare the money—”
Brandi laughed. “Why in the world can I never say no to you?”
“Guess it’s just my boyish charm,” Ronnie said.
“Or could be I’m just stupid.” Brandi swatted him on the shoulder and then gave him a wink. “Ever think it might be that? Maybe you’re just taking advantage of me.”
Ronnie got serious then. “Let’s get my kids something, too. Would that be all right? Something for Christmas?”
“Yes, sugar, we can do that. We won’t let them go without.”
So that knife for Captain. Ronnie found him outside mowing the grass. He waited until Captain looked up and saw him. Then he waved him over. Captain cut off the mower and came across the yard. Ronnie picked the gift tin up from the seat, and Captain opened the door and got inside.
“We going for a ride?” he wanted to know. “Ronnie, where you been?”
“I don’t live out here anymore.” Ronnie glanced over at the trailer. Della’s car wasn’t there, and he guessed she’d taken the kids over to Lois and Wayne’s for supper. “I live in town now.”
Captain scrunched up his face. He rubbed at his nose with the heel of his palm. “Why is that?” he finally said. “You get lost or something?”
“Yeah, maybe that’s it,” Ronnie said. “Maybe I’m just lost.”
“Nah, you’re not lost. You’re right here with me. Right, Ronnie? You’re where you’re supposed to be.”
Ronnie hated to disappoint him, and he knew Captain would have a hard time understanding if he tried to explain. “You got that match trick down pat yet?”
Captain shook his head. “I can’t do it like you can.”
Ronnie had tried to teach him that trick with the matchstick, but Captain could never coordinate his fingers right to get the match to light as he flicked it across the box’s strike strip.
“Keep practicing. I had to practice a lot. Don’t worry. You’ll get it.” He tossed the gift tin over onto Captain’s lap. “Here ya go. A little present.”
“For me?”
“Open it,” Ronnie said.
Captain took the lid off the tin. “It’s like yours.” He picked up the knife and opened the blade. “It’s a Case Hammerhead. It’s what I’ve wanted.”
“Now it’s official,” Ronnie said. “We’re brothers.”
“Forever?”
“You got it, buddy. You and me. Forever.”
When Shooter found the gift tin minus the knife itself hidden behind the dresser in Captain’s bedroom—Shooter had been bringing clean laundry into the room to put in the dresser drawers, and he’d noticed that the dresser had been pulled out from the wall and not put back level—he knew exactly where it’d come from, and he didn’t like it, not one bit.
He got on the phone and called Brandi Tate’s house. Ronnie answered, and Shooter said, “Looks like you’d ask me before giving Captain something like that?”
Captain was outside burning trash in the old oil drum they used for that purpose. It was the one chore that Shooter didn’t have to fuss at Captain to make sure he did it. Captain liked to light the trash and then stand over the flames, letting the heat warm him. He carried a small box of Diamond matches with him, the same kind that Ronnie used to burn his own trash. Sometimes at the barrel, Captain practiced Ronnie’s trick with the match, but he still couldn’t get it right.
Shooter watched out the kitchen window as Captain stood over the burn barrel, the flames rising above it.
“You hear me, Ronnie?” Shooter said. “I don’t appreciate what you did. If my boy gets into any kind of trouble with that knife, I’ll hold you to blame.”
“Hold on now, Shooter. It was something Captain always wanted, and I was glad to get it for him.”
“Did you ever think that maybe he’s not steady enough to have a knife as sharp as that? Who knows what might happen.” Shooter paused to let that sink in. “That’s your problem, Ronnie. You never think anything all the way out.”
And with that he hung up.
When Captain came into the kitchen, Shooter said to him, “You get a little present today? That why Ronnie came by to see you?”
Captain took the Case Hammerhead out of his jeans pocket, and he held it out on his palm, his head bowed, reaching the knife out to Shooter, expecting him to take it.
The gesture caught Shooter by the heart. How quick Captain was to surrender the knife. How easily he offered to give it up. So that was the sort of life Shooter had made for him, one he’d never intended to create but obviously had: a furtive life of secret pleasures, ones Captain feared his father would eventually take from him.
Shooter couldn’t bear to ask for the knife.
“You be careful with it, understand?” he said. “That blade’s razor sharp.”
Captain pulled out the blade and studied it. Finally, he looked up at his father and his face was a face of delight. “Sugar tits,” he said.
Shooter shook his head. “That Ronnie Black. He’s nothing but a bad influence.” Shooter could tell that Captain wasn’t listening. When did he ever listen? He was folding the blade back into the knife and then taking it out again. Over and over. “You don’t want to turn out like him. You got that, Wesley?”
Captain nodded his head. Then he walked on past Shooter, heading for his bedroom, still fascinated with that knife, not hearing, Shooter knew, a single word he said.
The night of the fire, he asked Captain for that knife, told him to hand it over pronto.
“Just look how quick trouble can come,” Shooter said. “Why ask for it? Can’t you see now how we all need to be careful?”
But Captain swore again and again, and so fiercely, that he’d lost the knife. Shooter, as uneasy as it made him, finally had no choice but to believe he was telling the truth. Of course, by that time Shooter was desperate to believe as much, eager to convince himself that trouble could come and somehow folks could get through it and make it to the other side.
“I promised your mother I’d take care of you,” he said, and in an unexpected show of emotion, he threw his arms around Captain and gave him a clumsy hug. “That’s what I aim to do. I’m going to look after you.”
He was thinking of how Della had gone back into the fire that one last time, confident that she’d save Emily and Gracie and Junior. I’m going to get them all out, she said. And then, before anyone could stop her, she was gone.
20
The day after Angel confronted Ronnie, and he claimed his knife, Wayne and Lois were in Read’s IGA, unloading their cart at the checkout. They heard a woman’s voice two lanes over from theirs.
“It was on the radio last night and again this morning.” The woman was Anna Spillman, who’d come down the street from the Real McCoy to buy five heads of lettuce. Here it was, almost the noon hour, and Pastor Quick had miscalculated how much they’d need for combination salads and sandwiches. And now she was talking to Roe Carl, who was working the register at that lane. “It just breaks my heart,” Anna said, “to know someone set that trailer on fire and Della and her kids inside.”
Roe shook her head and clucked her tongue. She had a pencil sticking out of her nest of gray curls, and she pulled it out and wagged it at Anna. “You just don’t know,” she said. “You never know about people. Now you can take that to the bank.”
“I keep hoping it wasn’t Ronnie,” Anna said. “Even after all the trouble he
caused Della, I still think he’s got a good soul.”
Lois was reaching into the cart for the last bag of Brach’s candy—this one was Spice Drops—that she liked to keep on hand for the grandkids. Even Wayne was partial to them: Kentucky Mints, Root Beer Barrels, Star Brites. Not that she could afford them, what with Wayne having more trouble with the vertigo now. He was still having dizzy spells, which forced him to turn down jobs. The doctor said with vertigo, you could never tell. It might go away. It might hang on for a spell. Still, Lois wanted those candies. She loved their brightly colored packages and the way the Lemon Drops and Orange Slices glistened with sugar, the banana smell of the Circus Peanuts, the buttery toffee of the Maple Nut Goodies. Something to make her feel a little bit hopeful during these dark days.
But now this—what Anna Spillman had said. Lois couldn’t help but speak up. “They had a bad furnace.” Her voice was loud, as if she knew that if she didn’t shout she’d never get out what she wanted to say. Roe snapped her head up to see where that voice had come from. Anna turned on her heel to look. “That furnace,” Lois said again. “Della was burning wood. It was bitter cold and the baby had the croup. Something must have gone wrong with that furnace or with the Franklin stove.”
She looked to Wayne then, and he could see the pain and fear in her eyes. He felt the store start to tilt a little and he tried hard to keep it from spinning all the way around. He focused on a spot directly in front of him, the sheepish look on Anna Spillman’s face.
“It’s just talk about that fire being set.” He’d heard the rumors about the blaze being suspicious, and a man from the State Fire Marshal’s office had been to talk to him, asking questions about the condition of the furnace and whether he knew of any accelerants stored inside or outside the trailer. Wayne knew folks were talking about Ronnie. At first he wanted it to be true so he’d have someone to call to account instead of blaming himself for not making Della and the kids leave the trailer and bunk up at his and Lois’s house that night. Then he started to think it was better the other way, better if the fire was something no one could have helped. An accident flung down from the heavens. He wanted to believe that Della and the kids had been chosen because for some reason or an other that wasn’t for him to know, God needed them and this was his way of calling them home. Why he had to make them suffer so, Wayne couldn’t figure out. He preferred to think of them made whole again and at rest in the hereafter. He’d leave the mysteries to someone else to fret over. “All that talk about Ronnie,” he said, “it doesn’t amount to anything.”
