Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down

by Anne Valente

  ZOLA PEDALED THE mile to the Local Beanery, a stiff wind breaking through her sweater. A three-hour shift, her first back. A distraction but not enough. She relieved Marilyn, the middle-aged woman who worked early afternoon shifts, and stood behind the counter taking bites from an oversize muffin, the only lunch she thought to have in the bitter aftertaste of a funeral.

  The shop was empty. Two women drank iced tea in one corner. Near the far windows, two college-aged students sat with laptops at separate tables, neither seeming to know the other. Zola looked through the window beyond them, the sky growing overcast with deep stratus clouds. She felt Matt’s profile in her back pocket, a slip of paper she still hadn’t read, one she’d kept hidden in her clothing through the funeral. She watched a bulk of low clouds move in thick filaments across the sky and felt nothing, no urge to capture them to film as she once had. She’d taken photographs since seventh grade, an amateur, a skill her mother had noticed that holiday season with the gift of her first camera. She’d photographed icicles, frozen pines. She’d tried to snap snowflakes as they fell to see if each one was different. As her mother trained her telescope upon the stars Zola pointed her camera to the sky, sure she could capture constellations. She felt nothing now. Her camera gathering dust beneath her bed. The world dulled to a lack of color. She finished her muffin as the front door opened, a bell dinging a customer’s arrival.

  Zola wiped her hands against her pants and looked up to see Beth Zimmerman walk in. Josh Zimmerman’s sister, a senior. A girl who’d spoken at the vigil, whom Zola knew from Des Peres Elementary though not well, right between Beth and Josh in age though she remembered them as fixtures of the hallways, the lunchroom, the elementary school library. Beth had been in the coffee shop many times before, and her mother, too, their house not far from the storefront. She was in jeans, an old T-shirt. Zola knew from the newspaper that she’d buried her brother that morning.

  Large coffee, Beth said. Her face hollow, eyes empty.

  To go?

  Please.

  Zola pulled a paper cup from a stacked set. She didn’t ask what she’d been trained. Dark roast or light? Room for cream? She filled the cup. Beth stood waiting. She figured Beth knew who she was, a high school of 1,200 and even still they’d shared a set of hallways for nearly ten years between Des Peres and Lewis and Clark, though they’d never acknowledged it directly the many times Beth had been into the coffee shop. Zola wanted to reach across the counter and tear the pain from her chest with a clenched fist.

  Beth kept her eyes on the ground. Zola placed a plastic lid on the cup, set it down. She pressed numbers into the cash register, aware of Beth’s hands resting on the counter and quivering. Zola wanted to touch them. Let her hands leave the register and surround them. She stopped herself but not before she let her mouth fall open and say the words.

  I’m so sorry, she whispered. I’m sorry for your loss.

  Beth nodded. I had to get out of the house.

  Zola pushed the coffee across the counter. Please. Just take it.

  Beth took the coffee and hastened away from the shop, the small bell of the door ringing behind her. Zola watched out the windows as Beth climbed into her car and sat for a moment in the driver’s seat before pulling away. Homecoming Court. Zola knew Beth was nominated this year. The dance next Friday. A future untethered, impossible. Zola watched Beth’s car exit the parking lot, brake lights lifting, and then she was gone.

  NICK SAT AT the computer in his bedroom, his family in the living room down the hall watching sitcoms, a laugh track creeping through his closed door. He’d spent the afternoon researching, looking up every search term he could think to type in. The particulars of arson. Linked patterns. How the human body loses itself to flame. How it was even possible that there would be nothing left.

  A knock at his door. His mother peered in. We’re all watching a movie soon if you want to join us, she said.

  I’ll be out in a minute.

  What are you working on?

  Stuff for the yearbook, I guess. I know it’s early. I just need to keep myself busy.

  She came in and sat down on the bed. Your father said the funeral wasn’t easy.

  It was fine. I think people are just starting to get scared.

  Nick’s mother reached out and touched his hair. Are you doing okay?

  I’m fine. Just tired.

  Is there anything I can do?

  Nick glanced at her. Have you ever defended an arsonist?

  In my years at the courthouse, one or two.

  Were any of those fires fatal? Cases of arson where someone was killed?

  Not that I recall. Mostly just property damage. People acting out in anger, or business owners committing fraud for insurance.

  So you haven’t seen anything like this before?

  His mother hesitated. I don’t know if anyone’s seen anything like this before.

  What do you think it means?

  I really don’t know. I just want to make sure you’re okay. And safe.

  I’m fine. Just sad, I guess.

  We all are. She reached over and held his hand. Want to come out and watch a movie? It might be good to take a break from all of this.

  I’ll be out soon, Nick said. In just a minute.

  His mother kissed the top of his head. She slipped out of the room and Nick turned back to the computer screen, a Web page replete with information on multiple points of fire. He didn’t want to tell his mother the information that hadn’t appeared in the news: that no evidence of bodies had been found at the Blacks’ house. Nick wondered if Matt was home and picked up the receiver in his room.

  Is your dad home? Nick asked when Matt answered on the second ring.

  No, he’s not home yet. Take a break. Please. Just for the night.

  I don’t know if I can. There’s too much unanswered here.

  Let me guess. You’re at your computer.

  I’ve been looking all afternoon. It just doesn’t make sense.

  I know. But what can I tell you? My dad hasn’t said anything more.

  What do you think it means? That there’s nothing left?

  Honestly, right now I don’t give a shit what it means.

  Nick leaned back in his desk chair. He heard the subtle ache in Matt’s voice, something beyond frustration. What happened?

  Nothing happened. I’m just so fucking tired.

  Tyler?

  Nick heard Matt sigh.

  Look, you don’t have to talk about it, Nick said. Not unless you want to.

  I really don’t. Can we just take a break for today?

  Nick paused a moment. I think we should meet soon. All of us. We should keep working on the yearbook.

  Can it wait until tomorrow?

  Tomorrow would be better anyway. I’m sure Chris and Zol are as exhausted today as we are. But could you call one of them?

  I’ll call Christina later. I’ll see if she’s written anything. Paul’s Books?

  Nick glanced out his window. Paul’s Books. A nearby store he hadn’t been to in weeks, the place they sometimes met to discuss the yearbook if not at Christina’s house.

  Paul’s Books, Nick said. We can figure out a time later.

  Take it easy tonight, man. Just relax. Stay away from your computer.

  I’ll try, Nick said. He replaced the receiver to its cradle. He heard the start of a movie down the hall, the overture of opening credits. Photographs of fire swam across the computer screen before him. Photographs of nothing but rubble and ash.

  MATT LAY IN his bedroom until the cicadas beyond his window lost their teeming. He’d heard them whine a cascading symphony toward dusk, a noise rising over the browning grass and fallen leaves. He’d heard his mother come home an hour before from her volunteer shift at the animal shelter, what she’d resumed to stay busy, followed by the slow scent of cooking onions and garlic and paprika. She was making chili, he knew. An aroma that despite the day’s events made him hungry. He hadn’t called Christina. He
’d tried not to think of Tyler. An elbow against his throat. He heard his father come home at last, the drone of the garage door vibrating through the ceiling above him. He emerged from the basement just as his father stepped into the kitchen and pulled off his jacket.

  Long day? his mother asked.

  He kissed her forehead. Investigation ran overtime today.

  Matt sat at the kitchen table. His father opened the refrigerator, pulled out a beer.

  How was the shelter? Matt asked his mother.

  Slow today. We took in a cat. There’s still that pair of guinea pigs in need of a good home.

  Matt knew the particulars of his mother’s volunteering, that two guinea pigs had been rescued from a farm out in Festus. Nearly a month ago now, he recalled. Two guinea pigs neglected by their owner, found alongside three skeletal horses and four goats, all of which had gone to a rehabilitation facility in the Missouri hills.

  Matt’s mother glanced at him. How was the service today?

  Fine, he said. A brief pang in his chest that he’d told her not to come.

  You didn’t go? Matt’s father looked at her.

  He said not to. I wanted him to be with his friends.

  It was fine, Dad. A funeral. There wasn’t much either of you could have done.

  We could have been there for you.

  Lots of people were. Almost the entire school was there.

  Matt’s mother turned back to the stove. We’ll go with you if there are others.

  Matt didn’t want to think it. Others. Other funerals he didn’t have any energy left for. He turned to his father. What happened today?

  Matt’s father smiled and leaned against the stove. I knew that was coming.

  Can you tell us anything?

  We don’t know much. Not yet, at least. We’re still comparing the two fires.

  What about Eric Greeley?

  I told you, that’s not my case. But I know he’s still being questioned.

  So they’re just holding him at the station? Matt’s mother asked.

  They can’t really do that, not without evidence. He’s being brought in at shorter intervals for questioning, and beyond that, we’re keeping watch on his house.

  Matt imagined cop cars winnowing down the street past Eric Greeley’s front door.

  He said he didn’t know anything, Matt said.

  We know that. But it’s the only thing we’ve got right now.

  What else? Matt asked. Did you find anything at the Trenways’ house?

  I wasn’t there today. I was at the station lab, the entire day.

  He doesn’t need to know, his mother said. Just for once, can we have a nice dinner without all of this?

  Matt saw it in his father’s face. Something. Dad, what is it? Tell me.

  The autopsy report I showed you. From the Blacks’ home.

  Jim, his mother said.

  What happened? Matt said. What do you know?

  The Trenway house. His father glanced at his mother, her fists curled tight against the kitchen counter. I got the report back today. The same thing.

  The outlines?

  We found nothing. Not a single trace of a body.

  Is that even possible?

  It’s unusual. I’ve never seen anything like it before. No evidence of foul play. The exact same as the Blacks’ house. We’re checking outlets and wiring. But they’re still holding the Greeley kid for questioning. We’re still looking into the possibility of arson.

  Why, if you know there’s no foul play?

  Can we stop this? his mother said.

  Because it’s the exact same—the same origin. The same stance. The same maddening lack of physical evidence. Nothing left.

  Goddamnit, enough! his mother shouted. I said enough.

  The chili bubbled on the stove. Matt glanced across the table but his father wouldn’t look at him. Matt’s mother at a breaking point, a curse she let slip, a day of funerals that would only be followed by more. Matt wanted answers and there was nothing but questions. The funeral for Alisha’s parents that afternoon: wooden boxes containing only air. The same as the Blacks. Empty caskets. No indication of cause. No suspicion of foul play. Only a replication of conditions, the same origin, what his father had said without saying it directly: that the Trenways had burned in their beds, just like the Blacks, that they’d curled into their sheets and let the moonlight flood their windows and closed their eyes to a night that had seen their daughter buried, a night that broke through the panes and consumed every fiber of their bedroom in flames.

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF CREMATION (OR, HOW THE BODY BURNS)

  THE FIRST TO burn: human hair, illumined in blue flame as crematorium jets heat.

  The head snaps back, the body goes rigid. As temperature heats to 700 degrees bones within the body hiss open and explode. Rapid heat reddens muscle. Skin turns black then slowly divides. Flesh reduces into molecules, carbonizes, splits even smaller still into the atoms of oxygen. The body then exposed to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit for at least ninety minutes, muscle and organ burning away from the bones, a continued hissing, a series of perpetual detonations. The crematorium’s temperature lowered, bone smoldering for two hours longer, simmering down to ash.

  What is known: that house fires rarely exceed temperatures of 1,200 degrees.

  What is known: that even at 2,200 degrees, a crematorium leaves behind recognizable fragments of human bone.

  JACOB JENSEN

  Lewis and Clark High School Class of 2005

  September 12, 1986—October 8, 2003

  Jacob, a junior at Lewis and Clark, played center forward on the varsity soccer team. Known for his athleticism and his camaraderie on the team, Jacob began playing for Lewis and Clark High School as a freshman. He played junior varsity for only one year before advancing to varsity due to his talent and goodwill.

  A scholar-athlete, Jacob also maintained straight A’s in all of his classes including honors and AP courses. He was particularly skilled in biology and hoped to declare pre-med in college while also continuing to pursue soccer. At the start of his junior year, he was already entertaining scholarships from universities and colleges across the country. In addition to playing on the soccer team, Jacob was involved with the National Honor Society and with Students for Humanity, a charitable organization. His most recent work of community service was to organize a safe driving event with the local police department for new teenage drivers.

  Jacob was known as friendly and fun-loving. He was never without friends in the cafeteria or in the hallways, and he was always one to say hello to those he did not call close friends. His many talents and amiability will be greatly missed at Lewis and Clark.

  MEMORY, RECORD, ARCHIVE

  WE AWOKE THURSDAY knowing we would meet: not for a funeral or a vigil, but for the simple fact of beginning. We’d lain the night before in the overwhelming dark of our bedrooms, the television whirring down the hall beyond our closed doors. We felt the hollow of our chests fill with pressure the longer we lay there, a lonesome heat. We promised to call after dinner, after television, after our parents had gone to bed. We made promises we couldn’t keep when we found ourselves spent, unable to pick up the phone beyond the exhaust of a day spent grieving.

  We knew we’d meet in the morning, a daybreak that brought a continued news cycle on television spotlighting St. Louis, though our newspaper turned for a brief day to other things beyond the constant stream of reporters in our streets. In the Post-Dispatch: the United Nations Security Council moving for Iraqi sovereignty, a proposal pushed by President Bush and backed by the United Kingdom, Chile, Cameroon. China’s first astronaut in space circling the planet in the Shenzhou 5, a twenty-one-hour trip in a shuttle that felt far-off and remote to us. The Marlins heading to the World Series, beating the Chicago Cubs in seven games. Steve Bartman: the name of the man who interfered with the foul ball at Wrigley Field, whom Chicago blamed for killing their first World Series chance since 1945, whom Illinois governor Rod Blago
jevich urged to join the witness protection program. We looked at the photo, a grained image of a man sitting in the stands wearing a Cubs hat. We turned the page, toward other news stories beyond the impossibility that a man’s life could be forever changed by a game.

  We sat with coffee. Tea. We ate pears and yogurt and cereal. We imagined the Trenways’ house, a cluster of wreckage, a ranch home we’d never entered but knew. The end of Zola’s street. A corner home she could see from the edge of her yard, its burnt scent still filtering through screen windows, settling upon couches and kitchen tables like dust. We needed to get out. To leave our streets. We agreed to meet at Paul’s Books, where we once met to discuss the yearbook as a change of pace from Christina’s house, the small shop located in a strip mall less than a mile from each of our homes.

  Nick gathered clippings: every news story he’d cut from the paper. Every story and sub-story on Lewis and Clark, on the fires ravaging both homes. A manila file folder he’d begun to organize though he spoke nothing of it to any of us. A folder he kept in the drawer of his computer desk, newsprint and photos, a record of fragments and scissored pieces. He placed the folder in his bag and drove alone. Zola brought Matt’s profile, still unread, still folded in the pocket of the same pair of pants she’d worn all week. She biked to the bookstore while a mile away Christina climbed into her car, bringing nothing but her purse and a mix CD that Ryan had made though she drove noiseless through the streets, the radio off, the sky clouded for the second day in a row. Matt left his house quiet behind him, his mother reading and eyeing him carefully, his father already at work. He brought nothing to the bookstore: no reports, no photos stolen from his father’s desk. He brought only the profile he’d written the night before for Jacob Jensen, the only person he could think to set down to paper in the night’s darkness. He brought the knowledge that nothing remained at the Trenways’ house and the silent ache that Tyler hadn’t called or pushed his way through Matt’s window past dark, an apology.