Slow Burn

by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

  I drove a few blocks farther north and was cheered by the sight of a couple independent pizza places and an actual head shop. After driving around for a little while I found a space at a two-hour meter on Seventeenth Avenue. I parked, walked up to High Street, and opened the door into Buckeye Donuts. It was one of the few times in my life I’d been there when the sun was actually up. I glanced at the painting on the wall to my right of my sort-of-namesake, former Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes, showing a young Woody and an old Woody perched together at Ohio Stadium like mythical twin giants. I turned my attention to the girl behind the counter and ordered my usual—four doughnuts, with the fifth one free, all glazed—and added a cup of black coffee. I departed the shop, pulled the first doughnut out of the bag, took a bite, took a sip of coffee, then headed to the scene of the crime.

  Orton Avenue was a short street of just a couple of blocks running north-south between Eighteenth and East Woodruff Avenues. The area was a maze of one-way streets built in horse-and-buggy days, now lined with cars there was really no room for. I could only imagine the difficulty of getting one fire truck up to a burning house quickly, let alone the several emergency vehicles the blaze had required.

  The house where the fire happened sat on the east side of the street and, like all the houses in that neighborhood, was elevated above the sidewalk. You approached by a set of five stairs to the small lawn, and then up another set of stairs to the porch. I looked around. The cars across the street provided one possible place for my mystery witness to hide. A single tree with a sizable trunk grew out of the strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk a little farther down, another option. What caught my eye was a house across the street and catty-corner to the house that burned, where the slope of the lawn had been replaced by a retaining wall, above which grew thick, square ornamental bushes. I crossed the street, went up the stairs of that house, stepped to my right, and crouched down. Possible, I thought, peering through a gap in the leaves. Just possible.

  I walked back across the street and returned my attention to the house in question. Red brick, two stories with a peaked roof and an attic. Two large windows upstairs with an attic window above those. Tall, narrow chimney, almost certainly not in use. Porch with a slanted roof supported by three red-brick pillars. The design repeated with minor architectural variations in houses up and down the street, all of them tired-looking and worn, like houses in a documentary about the recession. The only difference being that the other houses’ windows weren’t covered with plywood, nor did they have a ribbon of ancient yellow crime scene tape fluttering from the black railing along the steps coming up from the sidewalk. I walked up those steps, paused, then walked up to the house and up a couple of the steps to the porch. Here and there black crud still lined the concrete floor. I didn’t go any closer. There was no way to get inside even if I’d wanted to. And nothing left to see.

  I moved on to doughnut number two and went next door. I stood on the porch taking in a card table and white plastic patio chairs lying on their sides. A bike was visible through the window, parked in the living room. I knocked once, then twice. Then a third time. At last, a sleepy-looking boy in boxer shorts and nothing else answered my summons.

  “Yeah,” he said, shielding his eyes from the burning 10 a.m. sun.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said. “Wondering if you lived here couple years ago. When the house next door burned.”

  “What?” he said.

  “The house, next door,” I said, gesturing. “Where the fire was. Three people died. Did you live here then?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pretty early,” he said. “You know?”

  “Sure,” I said. “If you’re a barred owl. Late night?”

  “Had a party. Big party. Haven’t been asleep long.”

  I looked around. I spied two red Solo cups on the lawn and a crumpled bag of chips.

  “Inside?”

  “What?”

  “Was your party inside? Looks pretty undisturbed out here.”

  “It was everywhere,” he said, gesturing. Then his face changed: “Are you a cop?”

  “No,” I said. “Just somebody wondering if you lived here back then.”

  “No,” he said finally. “Was still in the dorms. Heard about it though.”

  “Good to keep up with the news. Anybody else live here then?”

  He didn’t say anything. I thought he was mulling the question until I realized he was falling asleep on his feet.

  “Son,” I said. “Any of your housemates living here then?”

  “What?” he said, jerking awake. Then: “No. No one. We all moved in this year. Sure you’re not a cop?”

  “Positive,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”

  I handed him my card, just in case, and left him standing in the door.

  I had similar luck at the house on the other side, except this time a girl answered my knock. She was wearing torn Hello Kitty pajama pants and an Ohio State T-shirt and looked as if she might have gotten an hour more sleep than the first fellow. Like him, she’d only moved in this year. Also like him, she knew about the fire, but not much else. I left my card and walked on. The experience was the same up and down the street, and after three more houses I was about to give up. Finally, at a yellow-brick house near the end of the block, a glimmer of hope from a young woman whom I didn’t appear to have dragged out of bed.

  “I think this one girl was here then,” she said.

  “One girl?”

  “She’s a friend of a friend, sort of,” she said.

  “Know where she lives?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Name?”

  “Can’t remember. Different.”

  “Different.”

  “Different kind of name.”

  “Different how?”

  “Just different.”

  “What did it sound like?” I said.

  “Kind of different.”

  “Never mind.”

  My card safe in her hand, I went back to the van, retrieved my phone from my coat, finished my doughnuts and coffee while I checked for messages. Calls—none. E-mails—the usual thicket of nonessential messages that constitute my inbox. Reminders from Amazon, alerts from various news outlets I subscribe to, and coupon offers from pet stores.

  Text messages. One. From Suzanne Gregory.

  Chelsea Fowler. She might be willing to talk. Use my name. Burn me and I’ll literally kill you.

  A phone number followed a moment later.

  Thanks! I texted in return.

  I started the van, spent another minute looking for more messages, and was about to pull out when I heard a ping and saw she had replied. In a manner of speaking.

  Don’t ever contact me again.

  8

  Roy pulled up in front of my house that night promptly at 7:00 in his old white van, the one that looked as if it had done more time in Iraq than he had. “Church of the Holy Apostolic Fire,” the sign on the side read.

  Anne and I lifted ourselves up off my front steps, walked over, and got in. Roy was driving, with Lucy in the passenger seat.

  “Thank you for the invitation,” Anne said.

  “Don’t thank me until it’s over,” Roy said.

  We drove north out of German Village, cut through downtown, then went west on Spring Street, past the state Bureau of Workers’ Compensation building, under the railroad tracks by the Arena District, and past North Bank Pavilion along the river. The downtown skyline glowed behind us. At Souder Avenue we turned left, then left again into the parking lot at Confluence Park. Instead of parking, Roy bumped the van over the curb and drove down the bike path a few hundred feet.

  “Is this legal?” I said.

  “Engine’s too loud,” Roy said. “Can’t hear you.”

  We pulled onto a flat patch of grass and unloaded ourselves. Night had fallen, but the sky was clear and the city center l
ights illuminated our surroundings. Lucy pulled a medical bag out of the rear, and Roy hoisted a heavy-looking backpack. I reached into the back and picked up a couple of canvas folding chairs in red bags labeled “St. Clare.”

  “Ever been in a homeless camp?” Lucy said to Anne. Roy’s wife, a nurse, was two inches taller than him, hippy but strong-looking, with short, spiked hair and dark cat’s-eye glasses. She’d traded her usual loose-fitting earth-toned blouse and dangling earrings for a blue St. Clare’s jacket and gold studs.

  Anne shook her head.

  “Never a good idea to come alone,” she said. “They know Roy and me pretty well.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Not exactly. But they’re like anyone else. They don’t like strangers walking into their living room uninvited.”

  Roy hunted the edge of the woods for a minute with a flashlight, found the gap he was looking for, then led the way down a path into the trees. “St. Clare Medical team!” he called as he walked.

  A few moments later we entered a large clearing. Between Roy’s flashlight and the fire in a stone-lined pit I made out a series of tents and crude cabin-like structures scattered through the trees. A pile of empty green camp-size propane bottles sat at the edge of the woods, with several bikes next to them and next to those, three empty shopping carts. A couple people looked up from the fire, and then, slowly, as Roy announced the presence of the team, more began to emerge from the tents and shacks and what seemed like the shadows themselves. To a person they shook Roy’s hand and accepted hugs from Lucy. They looked askance at Anne and eyed me with downright suspicion.

  For the next hour we helped while Roy and Lucy conducted a mini–medical clinic, checking blood pressure, taking temperatures, treating cuts and scratches, handing out prescriptions and in some cases bottles of pills. Anne drifted off at some point, and a few minutes later I spied her across the camp by the light of the fire talking with a woman holding a baby. I spent most of my time handing Lucy bandages and tubes of salve and helping Roy distribute water bottles.

  When we finished we tramped back up the trail, loaded everything back into the van, and then held our breath as Roy drove down and around places I didn’t think were covered by any traffic codes, until at last we were back on Souder and headed into downtown. Anne took my hand. I turned to her and saw that her eyes were shining.

  “All right back there?” Roy said.

  “You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” I replied.

  A few minutes later we parked the van on High Street in the Short North, and not long after that we were in the Surly Girl Saloon toasting the night’s expedition with pints of a local IPA.

  “I just can’t get over that mom with her baby,” Anne said. “She grew up in the suburbs. Had an apartment and a job a year ago.”

  “Things can change quickly,” Lucy said. “We see it all the time.”

  “Her problem is lack of a safety net,” Roy added. “But her mental health is good. It’s the ones with issues upstairs that get complicated. They need so much.”

  “Sam wasn’t there,” Lucy said. “You notice that?”

  “What we’re talking about,” Roy explained. “Lady who’s kind of in and out. On her meds, OK. Off, not so much.”

  “You think she’s all right?” Anne said.

  “Probably,” Roy said. “She tends to wander. But that’s the problem with living on the street. So unpredictable.”

  Anne said, “What will happen to her? To the lady with the baby.”

  “She’s at the top of the list for housing,” Lucy said. “Sort of thing ROOF is there for.”

  “ROOF?” Anne said.

  “Raising Optional Opportunities Foundation,” Roy said, eyeing his wife. “Helps with transitional housing. They provide some of the funding for expeditions like this.”

  “Rings a bell now,” Anne said. “One of the people I teach with volunteers at a shelter. He’s mentioned it. Don’t they do this big fundraiser?”

  “Yes,” Roy said.

  “It sounds like a good thing,” Anne said, turning to me. She was obviously moved by the experience of the evening. It was hard to blame her. I’d had the same reaction my first trip with Roy. “We should go to that,” she said. “What do you think?”

  I looked at Roy. He returned my glance, then studied his beer. Lucy was suddenly fiddling with her phone.

  “We could,” I said. “We definitely could.”

  “We should, then.”

  “We definitely should,” I said.

  Sometime later, back at my house, as we lay beside each other in bed, Anne said, “So what’s the deal with ROOF? Seemed like I put my foot in it at the bar.”

  “No deal,” I said.

  “Come on. What’s the big secret?”

  “Not so big, I guess.”

  “What then?”

  “Permission to speak candidly.”

  “Granted.”

  “It’s something I’m not ready to speak candidly about yet.”

  She hit me with a pillow. “Why not?”

  “Because, you know.”

  “Something bad?”

  “Something I’d rather not have come up right now.”

  “Right now?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Right now—with us?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I thought we weren’t keeping secrets from each other.”

  “We aren’t,” I said. “I just need more time on this one.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “Lame answer.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  After a long minute, during which time the only sound came from Hopalong’s breathing at the foot of the bed, Anne said, “It’s complicated.”

  “What?”

  “This. Us. You and me.”

  “Complicated,” I said. “I suppose. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

  “No,” she said. “But it could veer in that direction.”

  “Unless we keep it from doing that.”

  “Unless,” she said. She rolled away from me, leaned over the side of the bed.

  “Everything OK?”

  “Texting my mom,” she said. “Letting her know I’m going to spend the night.” She looked back at me. “If that’s all right.”

  “Of course,” I said, relieved. “And it doesn’t even sound complicated.”

  She rolled toward me and took my right hand. And lifted it toward her mouth. And kissed it.

  “Don’t be so sure,” she said. “Things are about to get a lot more complex.”

  She came up behind me, unheard but not unnoticed. Because of her perfume. She had always favored subtle scents, fragrances that pulled you on instead of pushing onto you—one of the many things I appreciated about her. Then she leaned forward and kissed me on the neck, gently, and I murmured, and she kissed me again, and I made another sound, and then she moved a little closer and kissed me on the lips and, well, wow. Then she shifted her head and blew ever so slightly in my ear, and I could feel her breath, warm and inviting, and I made a third sound. And then another sound interrupted, and the dream I’d been having evaporated in a moment and I opened my eyes, heart racing, as I realized John Mellencamp was singing from someplace on my nightstand.

  As I detected Anne stirring beside me.

  As I realized I’d been dreaming not of her but of Suzanne.

  “Andy Hayes,” I said, managing to answer before the call went to voice mail. The bedside clock said 6:55 a.m.

  “Daddy?”

  “Joe?” I said.

  “It’s Mike.”

  “Mike,” I said, sitting up. “You OK?”

  “Can you bring my Redwall book? I left it there last week.”

  “Redwall book,” I said. “Can I bring it?”

  “To the hike,” he said. “And I think Joe left his shirt there. The Darth Vader one.”

  “Hike,” I said, realizing two seconds to
o late it was the wrong thing to say.

  “We have to be there at eight-thirty,” Mike said. “You promised. Please don’t tell me you forgot.”

  “I didn’t forget,” I said.

  “Shit,” I said, after I’d hung up. “I forgot.”

  “Everything OK?” Anne said drowsily.

  “Boy Scout hike,” I said. “Mohican State Park. With Joe and Mike. Vans are leaving from the parking lot at the school at 8:30. Completely forgot. Shit.”

  She propped herself up on an elbow. “How could you forget?” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Just a question.”

  I got up, scrambled to find clothes.

  “Can you be ready to go?” I said. “I’ve got to get moving.”

  “Sure,” she said, curtly, sounding not ready at all.

  As I pulled a T-shirt on, I thought of the morning I had planned. Making us breakfast. Strolling up the street, maybe lingering in the Book Loft. Maybe a reprise of our bedtime activities before I had to take her home to Grove City.

  Complicated, I thought. No shit, Sherlock.

  A few painful minutes later we got into my van, scarcely half a dozen words spoken between us since we’d left the bedroom.

  As I started the car, Anne said, “What’s that smell?”

  “Smell?”

  Then I caught a whiff of it too.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  I thought I’d been missing something from Weiland’s Market. Figured I’d left a bag at the store. Wouldn’t have been the first time. But no, I’d left it in the van. The bag with the smoked trout spread, the gift I’d bought for Anne, the treat I’d picked up trying once in my life to be nice, in the back of the van. For three days.

  Which would have summed up the morning all by itself had I not remembered, halfway there, that I’d left Mike’s book and Joe’s shirt back at the house.