Boris sniffed around her feet, then stopped, his nose lifted. “What is it, little buddy?” Voices. The crackling static of the scanner. Shit. She kicked at a mound of trampled river grass. Maybe this time, she wouldn’t go. Maybe this time, she’d stay here beside the river with Boris and enjoy the silence. Would anyone care if she didn’t go with the FAST Squad this time? Yes, of course they would. She turned and trudged back up the path.
The voice of Rosemary, the dispatcher, grew louder as she approached the house. “Yes, chief, West Paris is coming with their truck, and we’ve called in for Northbury and Sutton.”
Chief? That was Cappy. And they were calling for the fire trucks. She ran up the steps, flung open the door, and picked up the scanner phone. “Rosemary?” she shouted. “What’s up?”
“Fire. Out at Hemlock Hill.”
“Hemlock Hill? Whose house?”
“Allingworth Farm.”
“Allingworth?” Roz and Heather. Mona grabbed her parka and car keys, and raced out to the truck. She gunned it down the driveway, turned right on River Road, then drove like crazy, in and out of the fog banks, out Wild Mountain Road and down Route 100 to Ben Beavers Road, and up Hemlock Hill.
As she gained altitude, the fog diminished, and before she came within sight of the farm, she saw the smoke: a thick column rising into the sky, the flames beneath it darting up in the black night. She smiled for a wild half-second, thinking it was only a bonfire, a winter party like so many others at the farm. Then she rounded the bend and saw a wall of burning orange and yellow, firetrucks surrounding it, black profiles passing to and fro in front of it like shadow puppets in a play.
My God. It was the farm stand. Heather’s Worthy Produce. Mona pulled onto the shoulder, turned off the ignition, and opened the door. She hopped out across the ditch and ran alongside the fence, toward the flames and into the acrid smell of smoke. Cappy, his yellow slicker gleaming in the firelight, stood in front of the truck, shouting at the men holding the hose: “Closer! To your right!”
Beside the truck, Roz and Heather were standing transfixed. Mona, out of breath, stopped in front of them. “What the hell—”
The two women stared at the fire, and didn’t respond. The heat was almost overwhelming here, but they didn’t seem to notice. Mona wrung her hands and started to walk away, then turned and came back. The farm stand, the weathered building painted with whimsical vegetables, berries, and fruits, where Heather had been about ready to put out her precious vegetables, was almost an institution in Wild Mountain. And now it was a burning hulk, punctuated by a few charred posts. There was a great cracking sound as a beam caved in, and the sign above it collapsed into itself. Now the W, h, and y were the only visible letters. Why. Yes, that was the question. Why?
Roz wore a parka over a long bathrobe, and Heather was wrapped in a blanket, her frizzy hair uncombed and matted, her face wet with tears. They stood in silence while the fire raged and people raced back and forth around them. In the greenhouse, Heather had been so excited about her new starts: lettuce, spinach, onions, and pansies, the tender sprouts of new life, the manifold shades of green. Everything for the farm stand. Had she brought them here yet? No, she wouldn’t have. She didn’t open until May. Mona stepped over beside them and put her arm around Heather, who shook and sobbed while Roz stood stone-faced.
Heather pulled her head up and looked at Mona, then searched the crowd, a worried look in her eyes. “Where’s Eli?”
“I’ll go.” Mona gave Heather’s shoulder a squeeze and headed toward the crowd. The West Paris firetruck, sirens blaring, pulled up beside the Wild Mountain truck, and the crowd dispersed, some people crossing the road to where another group of onlookers was drinking coffee and chatting, as if this were a potluck supper at the Unitarian church. How did all these people get here so fast? Mona walked up to Leo Bailey, the postmaster. “Seen Eli?” she asked. Leo shook his head, but then she spotted Eli with a group of young teens huddled in the driveway.
She ran across the road. “Eli!” she shouted. “Go to your mom!”
Eli dragged his feet, hesitated, then walked reluctantly toward the burning farm stand and Heather. The other kids stared back and forth, between Eli disappearing around the firetruck and the fire on the hill.
“Oh,” Mona said aloud and clutched her throat. Eli was the only nonwhite kid in town. His father, James, was black. Could this fire be a racial thing, like a cross-burning? She shook her shoulders. No, that was ridiculous. Not in Wild Mountain, Vermont. But then she remembered the time James Brae had been arrested in his own home and put in jail after someone had reported a black man, an intruder, who turned out to be James himself. That was a blotch of shame on the police department; and on the whole town, by extension, as almost everyone had loved the police chief, Matt Randall. But the NAACP had gotten involved, and eventually, Matt had left town, his tail between his legs. Some people, Edson Perry among them, still resented James Brae for making a stink about it, even though James was gone now, too. They’d satisfied their resentment by taking potshots at James’s ex-wife, Heather, who had come out as a lesbian. Could someone be taking more than potshots now?
“Mona.” Frank came up behind her. “You okay?” He opened his arms, and she stepped into the warmth of his body.
“Yeah.” She smelled his flannel shirt and felt his beard nuzzling into the top of her head. Thankfully, he didn’t try to talk.
They walked together to stand with Roz and Heather, and watched as the fire engulfed the Worthy Produce hut. It collapsed and shrank into a charred heap of rubble. Edson Perry and another guy in a fire hat hosed it down, and the embers hissed with steam.
“But how?” Mona asked. “How did it start?”
“I don’t know!” Heather shouted, suddenly finding her voice, but it came out higher and squeakier than ever, and she held Eli with a fierceness Mona had never seen in her. Eli extracted himself from Heather’s grasp and sat on the ground in front of them.
Roz took Heather’s hand. “Probably some kids,” she said, “or maybe just an accident.” Heather gave her a wild, incredulous look.
“I don’t know,” Frank said, rubbing his beard. “There seem to be a lot of people in this town who want Roz out of office. I wonder if it’s related.”
Heather moaned. “That’s what I thought.”
The firefighters had finished hosing down the remains of the building, and were departing back to their trucks. They gave Roz and Heather sympathetic looks as they passed. Iris Gold, whose petite face was usually perfectly made up, wiped soot off her cheek, making the black streak bigger, and took off her yellow fire jacket as she approached. She patted Heather on the arm. “So sorry,” she said, then made her way to the truck.
When the firetrucks left and the spectators drifted away, Mona turned to Roz and Heather. “Should we come up to the house with you?”
“No,” Heather said, “we’ll be okay.” She took Roz by the arm, and they walked slowly up the driveway, followed by Eli.
Mona turned back to Frank, who kissed the top of her head, then her forehead. She lifted her head and their lips met softly, then she pulled back again and they gazed into one another’s eyes.
“Will you come home with me?” he asked.
She smiled and nestled closer in to him, breathing in the smell of wool beneath the singed smell, the warmth of his skin. Now it was perfectly clear, perfectly obvious. This was what she had longed for. She looked up again. “Come home with me.”
Roz and Heather trudged up the driveway as Eli ran ahead. The firetrucks were gone, and the people, too, but the embers sputtered, and smoke had settled into their clothes and hair with an acrid stink in the damp night. Roz put her arm around Heather and took a deep breath. “We can’t let a couple of jerks push us down.”
“What?” Heather shouted, stopping and turning to face Roz. “A couple of jerks?” The sky had opened up above them, and stars shone like sharp points in the blackness. “Roz, people want you out of office
, and our farm stand was just torched! For all we know, half the town is involved in this. Charlie Perry and his gang taking back Vermont! Trying to run us out of town! What will they do next? Lynch us?” Heather stomped back and forth on the impacted dirt of the driveway, waving her arms, her yellow blanket flapping. Karma the llama stood in the field, her long neck rising above the fence, her soulful eyes deep and black.
Roz tied the sash of her brown corduroy bathrobe, pulled her coat around her, and stood quite still in that authoritative way that usually had a calming effect on Heather. “Pull yourself together, H. You’re getting hysterical.”
“And you’re living in some other world here, Roz. This isn’t about the field hands walking off the job, this is about homophobic maniacs!” The longer Roz stood there, so calm and unperturbed, the more Heather did feel hysterical. Hysterical? She was raving mad. Mad as in angry, mad as in insane. Insanely mad. Who was this person she was living with, this woman she’d committed her life to? Roz had grown up entitled, protected, and sheltered by her money and her family, and wouldn’t know a threat if it was right in front of her face—like right now. “Who are you?” she screamed. “Woman of steel?”
Roz turned and walked up the driveway toward the house.
“Good! Go!” Heather yelled, then turned around and kicked the fence. Karma snorted. She walked up to the llama and petted her cheek. “Sorry, Karma,” she said, then ran across the driveway and up the bank, and kicked the other fence.
Just as suddenly as it had come, her anger deflated, and her body sagged and slumped. What was the matter with her? She never screamed like that. “Oh, Roz—” She reached out her hand to apologize, but Roz was gone. “Hang down your head, Tom Dooley,” she moaned. “Hang down your head and die.”
She dragged herself, stooped like an old lady, down the hill to what used to be the farm stand, but was now a blackened heap of wreckage. How could someone do this? Had someone done it? She hugged her arms. Of course, she had overreacted, and it must have been an accident.
Out of the smoking remains rose two charred posts like skeletons. Her life’s work, her precious hut with the painted mural running all along the front, the drawings of tomatoes and melon vines and peas and llamas and dogs, and even Eli. This depiction of their life together, symbol of goodness and bounty, their family and farm, all gone.
“Hi there.” A deep voice sounded, and a figure seemed to levitate out of the ruins.
Heather started, then saw the yellow-and-black firefighter jacket, and a rhinestone earring glittering in the starlight. “Oh, Cappy,” she said, and wiped her hand across her wet face. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for evidence.”
“Evidence? You don’t think it was an accident?” she asked, surprising herself with her instinct to hope.
“Not sure yet.”
“Maybe someone was out walking and stepped into the shelter of the stand for a cigarette, then dropped the butt without stomping it out?” Even to herself, this sounded thin and weak.
“Doesn’t look like it,” he said. “There’s gas all over the ground.”
“Gas?” She was still hugging her arms, but they were trembling—or maybe it was her whole body that was shaking. “You mean somebody really came out here and set my stand on fire?”
“Looks like it.” He bent over again, and started raking the coals with a small hand rake.
“What are you looking for?”
“You never know what someone might leave behind. If there is anything here, we’ll find it. And the best time to look is now, right after it happens.”
“Can I help?” Another male voice rang out of the blackness on the other side of the embers. He stepped closer, a tall, thin young man with very black hair wearing a sleek black jacket.
Cappy stood up.
“Jake Perez,” the young man said. “Hello, Chief.”
“Oh, yeah,” Cappy said. “The reporter.”
Heather took a step back. A reporter? Oh, God. Was this going to be in the newspaper? She could just see the headlines: Lesbians Torched. She clenched her hands.
The reporter stepped forward.
“Watch your feet,” said Cappy, “those embers are live.”
Jake raised a foot clad in a heavy black rubber boot with a wide yellow stripe around the top edge. “Standard issue,” he said. “I’m on the brigade in Burlington. I’d be happy to help.”
No, Cappy, no! Send him away! Heather thought, but Cappy shrugged and handed him a small shovel. “Okay. You start over there.”
“So, what are we looking for?”
“Anything that’s not part of the structure.”
“There’s a lesbian couple living here. You think it’s a hate crime?”
Heather shrank farther back. “Here in Wild Mountain?” said Cappy. “I wouldn’t think so. Probably some juveniles acting up.”
“What have you found so far?”
“My God!” Heather screamed.
Cappy straightened up. “Hey, Heather, I didn’t know you were still here.”
“Cappy, what are you thinking? How can you let this guy just step in and ask all these questions and then write it all in the newspaper!”
“It’s not like people aren’t going to find out about it.”
“Hi, Heather,” Jake said, taking a notebook out of his pocket. He stepped out of the fire site and started walking around the perimeter toward her.
She was cornered, trapped—and, for the first time, defeated. She wanted to scream, but who knew what he would write then. She restrained herself, turned, and lurched back up the driveway, her fists clenched. Still trembling, her insides feeling like veggies in a blender, she crossed her arms and squeezed her upper arms. It wasn’t his fault, this hapless reporter, that her life was Out of Control. The whole nine yards, the whole enchilada, the whole she-bang, all up in smoke. As she heard herself thinking it, she understood that she was probably overreacting again—and she also knew that she couldn’t stop this flood of emotion.
Heather passed the llamas on the right and the apple trees on the left. She’d been down here just yesterday, looking at the trees. And what she’d found had been better than discovering a treasure chest full of gold. New buds. At the tips of the branches, the new buds. After months and months of snow and ice, a classically hard Vermont winter, the buds were out: the tiniest pale green sprouts, the beginning of a new cycle of growth.
When she opened the door, Roz was sitting in her big chair beside the fireplace. She stood up and opened her arms, and Heather stepped into them, more tears arising.
They were moving slowly toward the stairway and bed, both exhausted, when there came a loud knock on the door. They looked at each other in puzzlement, and Heather clutched her chest. “I can’t take anything more tonight.” She sank down onto a stair while Roz went to the door. Who could be so tactless as to knock on their door at this hour? Or maybe hostile? My God, what if the arsonist had come back to harass them?
“It’s Gus!” Roz called. “Come on over. He wants to tell us something.”
Feeling like she was about ninety-five, Heather dragged herself up and walked over to the front door. Gus Throckmorton, in his usual attire but with his long hair mussed and tangled around his upper body, stood looking up at the ceiling.
“Hi, Gus.” Heather exhaled noisily.
He mumbled something, and the two women gave each other a questioning look.
“What did you say?” asked Roz.
“Anu-sends-her-blessing,” he said, quick and quiet. “Oh, how touching.” Roz smiled, patted him on the back, and didn’t notice his little flinch at the contact.
“Thanks, Gus,” Heather said.
Gus turned around and headed out into the night.
21
IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR HER WHOLE LIFE UP TO NOW, Mona would probably have jumped into this relationship and never looked back. She’d probably, no, she’d most certainly want to marry him. In fact, where had the men like Frank bee
n when she was young? The nice ones, the kind ones, the ones who made you want to smile, who actually made you smile, or laugh, or giggle with abandon when they tripped over the rug—and instead of yelling at you for putting that trap there, made a funny face and did a little dance, incorporating tripping and lunging all the way to the kitchen, where they were making you breakfast?
Mona rolled over and gazed out the window that looked down on the river. She couldn’t see the water from this low angle, but the sky was a glory of blue, with a few tiny puffs of white clouds floating around like cotton balls, and the sun filling the world with life. Pure life, that’s what it was; and it was spring, and Frank was making her breakfast in her own kitchen. Even Boris seemed happy with Frank now. He’d followed him into the kitchen, where, no doubt, Frank was solidifying the relationship with bacon tidbits or something.
And, on top of all that, he had made love to her like no one else ever had. With such tenderness and sweetness, and silliness, too, and they’d laughed together. Maybe this was what middle-aged sex was like. You were so grateful to have this touching, tender pleasure, that you just laughed with delight the whole time. Or maybe not. Maybe that was just Frank. Yes, that was Frank.
She stretched and rolled over and threw off the white satin coverlet, stepped her bare feet onto the soft mohair rug, and hummed her way into the bathroom. Middle age was nice. Too bad she’d had so much else happen in her life that she already knew this wasn’t going to be happy ever after. Too bad she didn’t believe in the rainbow and the pot of gold anymore, because if she had, her happiness would have been complete.
In the shower, she let the warm water envelope her in a misty, steamy heat, and felt her relaxed body, that after-sex sense of rightness with herself and the world around her. How lucky that the fire had happened on a Sunday night, the night before Monday, the day the store was closed.
What did she just hear herself think? She turned off the water and stepped onto the bathmat, drying herself with the towel. How could she be so happy, when her best friends had just had the tragedy of their lives? Heather’s precious stand was torched, and Heather was devastated. Mona would go see them today, bring a casserole or something. This was terrible for Heather, and Roz, too—but she just couldn’t feel sad today. Today, Mona was happy.
Wild Mountain Page 15
