Burn What Will Burn

by C. B. McKenzie

  They didn’t talk much but to grunt. They pointed their forks at what they wanted and when they got what they wanted they nodded cordially at no one in particular. The girl ate and drank the same as the men, though I thought she could have eaten more than that and would have eaten more if the men had not been there or if only I had been there.

  Shawnda was pretty in a raw-boned way and tall and shapely, but her teeth were very bad. She held one of her hands near her neck all the time. She watched the volunteer firemen very carefully, but avoided looking at me. The once she did look at me directly, I blushed.

  The volunteer firemen seemed in no hurry at all to leave, to go home or go to the fire site. They lingered over their coffee as the announcer on the weather band radio described the fire damage as limited to a few sections of privately held land. The granite ridge of the Grays deflected the fire away from BLM and state park property on the westside and because of the calm weather the flames had never threatened to jump The Little Piney on the southside and get the northside of the creek where Rushing was, where I lived.

  There were no reported deaths or injuries, not to man nor to domesticated animals.

  “’ Bout as good as could be expected,” Kendrick suggested.

  We all nodded.

  “How did y’all get summoned?” I asked as I cleared their plates.

  “First off we got a ’nonymous call.” Kendrick turned to the pump jockey. “What was it, T. Bo? About three or four a.m.?”

  “Little after four a.m. is about right, Kendrick,” said the Exxon fellow who picked bacon from his teeth with the corner of a matchbook. “Took us a while however to get dressed and locate one another. Especially our Chief of Auxiliaries, Mr. Goodman here. And then we had to find the fire truck keys. And then about then Jake Wells calls up but it wasn’t no water in the pumper to speak of so that was another issue.”

  The men chuckled at their ineptitude, which seemed exaggerated, both the laughter and the ineptness.

  “One thing and another,” Mr. Goodman said as he nudged his new grocery store girl, Shawnda, with his shoulder. “Like most the time happens around here, right? We muddled through cloudy waters like we usually do around here, didn’t we?”

  “Muddy waters,” the other two men agreed together.

  The girl blushed and tried to cover herself more, but she was not wearing enough slip to cover much. She put a hand around her long bruised neck. She looked at me, her host, first, then at Mr. Goodman, her boss, then at T. Bo, the pump jockey, and then at Kendrick, the watermelon seller and then around again at each of us in turn.

  * * *

  The firemen reassembled themselves in their gear, trundled out of the house and resituated themselves on their old vehicle, turned around and aimed back at Doker, away from the fire site.

  “The Regulars will be out shortly from B’ville,” Kendrick said. “Some of those Marshall Island people are still striking over at the Tidy Chicken plant in Danielles and about seven hundred and sixty-nine chickens caught afire or the Regulars they’d have been out here sooner.” He shrugged. “But we don’t see much danger of your place going up and Mr. Goodman and Shawnda have got to open up the grocery store and T. Bo has got to open up the gas station and I got to get a shower before I go on home to the wife, so we best be off.”

  “We appreciated your hospitality, Mr. Reynolds,” Mr. Goodman said.

  He nudged his girl.

  Shawnda nodded at me. Shawnda blushed.

  “I appreciated yours, gentlemen,” I said.

  All the volunteer firemen nodded in unison.

  “Just lucky it was a calm morning,” T. Bo said as he assumed his position on the back of the truck. “Or else the whole hollow could have gone up, droughty as this summer’s been. Then we’d a had to do some real work.”

  His partners laughed very loud.

  “It was an unseasonably dry season for a long while,” I admitted, of the weather.

  “Yes, it was an unusual, awful summer around here this year.”

  Mr. Goodman, fireman, grocer, bon vivant tooted his horn and drove off.

  A few minutes later a pumper from Bertrandville paused in front of the house. A professional fireman warned me to stay away from the fire site until they had declared it safe.

  I said I would stay away and I did.

  I got a yard broom and started sweeping the ash into neat little piles, but there did not seem to be any real point to that work so I quit it.

  * * *

  The sheriff arrived at my place in his Tan-and-White around noon. He was coming from the direction of the creek and he slowed and braked in front of my mailbox.

  I stood with the chickens on the front porch, behind the wavy bugscreen, behind the duct-taped Xs.

  He sat behind the smoky glass of the cruiser for over a minute.

  I counted.

  Then his shotgun-side window slid down and he flicked his cigarette onto the straw-dry grass of my front yard.

  I stepped off the porch and heeled out the cigarette.

  “Mr. Reynolds,” he said in a quiet way that invited me to step toward him.

  “Sheriff,” I said when I was near enough for him to hear me.

  Behind the bullet-perforated mailbox I stopped.

  I waited for something. I didn’t want it, but I expected something from the High Sheriff of Poe County, something revelatory, something terminating. For me there aren’t enough tie-ups for all the loose ends in the world and I can live with that. And I am not one who trusts neat solutions or needs them, but everybody else pretty much seems to think that explanations, false and contrived as they may be, are necessary as air.

  Loose ends are natural in the world, but most people don’t like loose ends.

  Still it remains that the best proof that things are how they should be is that they are like they are.

  And so, while I didn’t want that last word or the next word or any wise word or any more threats from anybody and would have been glad enough to watch Sheriff Baxter just drive off without another sound or sign passed between us, I expected it.…

  Closure.

  “The fire burned pretty good,” he said. “Once it got started.”

  I let out a breath I had not realized I’d been holding, as this sounded, as delivered, merely an observation.

  “It surely did,” I said. “But then it just quit.”

  “It burned what would burn,” the sheriff said. “And then it burned itself out.”

  He pushed up just a hair the brim of his once-white hat, now smudged gray by smoke and ash, tilted his chin down at me. Then stared ahead through the dirty windscreen.

  I waited. He sat his car for a while and didn’t smoke a cigarette, didn’t move his head, did not blink.

  “You understand what it means, Mr. Reynolds, when I say even a crooked stick can hit itself a straight lick in a certain situation?”

  “Yes, Sheriff. I understand exactly what that means.”

  Baxter pulled his hat brim back down, frowned thoughtfully.

  “I can fuck you up, Mr. Reynolds. I can fuck up your regular day very bad. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

  He didn’t look at me when he said this and as this statement and question did not sound a threat I took it as an invitation to parley.

  “I can probably mess up your day as well, I think, Sheriff.” I said this as true and hoped it was or could be if needed, though I had my doubts.

  “You might can,” he admitted. “If you live long enough to get to your lawyers.” He said this in a mean way, but then he actually smiled at his joke.

  I nodded and said, “I guess we’re in agreement about the situation.”

  He put the cruiser back into gear.

  “I won’t find that revolver, will I, Mr. Reynolds?”

  “That gun is history,” I said.

  His lips curled up. He shook his head slightly, then revved the engine of the Tan-and-White.

  “Shame,” Baxter said. “That was
a good gun.”

  I was poised to say more, ask a veiled question or two.

  But he pressed his finger to his closed mouth, sealed his own lips. Then he pointed that finger at me.

  “Word to the wise, Mr. Reynolds,” said the Sheriff. “I think you understand me?”

  “I think I do,” I said and hoped I did.

  * * *

  It was about like that, as I recall it.

  I think he said,

  As he drove away,

  Again,

  “Good gun.”

  But maybe it was,

  “Good, son.”

  * * *

  That weekend County Road 615 was crowded with sightseers. There’s scarce little to do in our neck of the woods and a burned-down forest is a hot ticket. Because it appears a quaint, inviting place from the outside quite a few of the rubberneckers stopped off at First Rushing Evangelical True Bible Prophecy Church of the Rising Star in Jesus Christ on Sunday, so the Right Reverend Mean Joe Pickens Senior allowed his grandson to redo his special music program of singing and harmonica-playing for the assembled in hopes of a good harvest offering of dollar bills and dimes.

  I stood in the sideyard of the church, nearby an open window, and tossed a fifty, folded small, in the collection plate when it came to the end of an aisle and I listened and Malcolm Ray sounded sweet and seemed overjoyed as he sang those old hymns of salvation and played his harmonica. Mean Joe preached a real heartfelt and heated sermon and seemed very pleased with himself as well.

  And I didn’t feel too bad either, altogether did not feel too bad at all.

  * * *

  We are all sinners, by a natural inclination that is fermented in our daily choice of evil ways, without merit in ourselves, damned and damnable all together from birth to death and every second in between, the Right Reverend reassured.

  We are universally corrupt, not one deserving, every one separate and together born in sin and lived in sin and dead in sin from the very moment, the very first second of conception and one of us just as worthless as another of us, and all as worthless of Grace as the others are worthless of Grace as the Word makes plain, which was in the beginning and will be unto The End. Amen.

  Still, Grace persists, apparently, rears its fine savior’s head here and there, high on the splintered cross of Calvary, elevated above the smoke and fumes of hellsfire that surround us and threaten to consume us, suspended beyond disbelief above this polluted vale of sorry tears and wasted years, above this fouled den of sudden and perpetual iniquity.

  But where and when this fine Grace does that, appears to us mortals, I missed in the Right Reverend’s message.

  I might have been taking a piss in the church outhouse as he was illuminating this particular point.

  I know that some believe Grace appears when called upon boldly.

  Or anoints us by an informed God’s choice.

  Or insinuates itself randomly, maybe, like a pleasant virus.

  * * *

  Quite a few of the congregation, uncomfortable with the Right Reverend’s reminders of their iniquities, of their intrinsic sinfulness, of their own corruption of mind and flesh and spirit, squirmed all throughout that hellishly fiery preaching, twisted like hooked night crawlers, seated as if slow roasting on smoldering hardwood benches.

  Three old front pew women, though, wafted serenely back and forth throughout the extemporaneous sermonizing like loblollies flexing in a stiff breeze, unperturbed by the gale-force edicts directed at their fallen fellows, moved by the message but steady in themselves, settled over their deep, righteous roots. Their giant bosoms cantilevered over enbibled laps, they fanned themselves and steam rose off their capacious, creped backsides like a powderly pungent, like a vaporized holy ghost.

  I stood looking in from comfortably outside, in the shade of an elderly pecan tree that leaned over the graceful whitewashed building protectively.

  I stood in my sensible walking shoes, with a hat on my bald head and a thermos of beer in my small hands, and did not hardly even break a sweat.

  * * *

  I noticed Miss Ollie there at church, not entirely unfashionably dressed, and I waited outside for her until after the long service was over and then took her for a drive in the Cadillac and we wound up all the way in Hot Springs where we visited the Alligator Farm, the IQ-Zoo and Tiny Town and then removed ourselves to the comfortable Arlington Hotel, right downtown.

  It was too early for dancing to the jazz trio but we shared a very nice piece of pie in a downtown diner and then strolled along the upper promenade for a long spell.

  “It will be even nicer in the autumn, don’t you think, Mr. Reynolds?” Miss Ollie said on the drive back.

  I said it would be much the same. But for the foliage.

  CHAPTER 15

  Malcolm enjoyed his visit to Memphis, even though the momma that abandoned him was nowhere to be found and Elvis was dead.

  His own daddy’s death seemed to have scarcely fazed the kid.

  But then if you don’t expect any good from your people then you will never be too disappointed, I suppose. Like Miss Ollie said, a lot of our problems in life are just the results of too high aims combined with too low means, encountering walls too high with ladders too short.

  * * *

  Tammy Fay’s dog Stank wound up staying with the Wellses, since the Wells clan, for all their other numerous faults are, truly, dog people if ever there were and good dogs often prefer not-so-good people, aren’t, in fact, very particular at all about who they wind up with as long as they wind up with dog people.

  * * *

  Mr. Goodman’s new checkout girl, Shawnda, moved into the Old Lion, but kept working at Goody’s Grocery Store a few hours a week and learned to use the cash register, probably, eventually.

  * * *

  I never heard another word, direct or indirect, from Law Enforcement about what happened on the bridge over The Little Piney.

  Sheriff Sam Baxter didn’t run for reelection in the fall, but put his family place across The Little Piney up for sale. Burned black and empty as it was now I was not sure who would buy it, but somebody did eventually and turned it into a tree farm for pulpwood pine.

  Sheriff Baxter moved to South Texas where he had some connections and got a job with the Drug Enforcement Administration which, I’m sure, suited him well enough.

  * * *

  The grand jury decided that Joe Pickens Junior, the drug dealer who had jumped bail, had been shot and killed by Buck King the bounty hunter who had been trying to apprehend the fugitive from justice, Joe Pickens Junior. During the struggle, Buck King was wounded and drowned. A snapping turtle had decapitated Buck, which outcome seemed suspicious to me, but then snapping turtles can do a lot of damage and they are always hungry for dead flesh.

  Warnell Ames would stand trial for the rape and murder of Tammy Fay Smith.

  * * *

  After the grand jury hearings were rather more uneventfully finished than seemed seemly, Dr. Doc Williams retired from his private medical practice in Doker, Arkansas, and moved into a reasonably priced condominium in gulf coastal Mississippi. He learned to play golf I have overheard from Nurse and gave his trial testimony in absentia due to health reasons.

  Nurse got a job at Northwest Arkansas Regional Medical Center in Bertrandville, which is where I go weekly for my blood tests and to visit with my new physician who believes in the efficacy of powerful, modern psychotropic medications.

  The clinic in Doker became Kountry Kousins Kraft Shoppe.

  * * *

  Once he got going, Warnell Ames confessed to all the summer’s murders—the drowning-decapitation of Buck King and the shooting of Joe Pickens Junior—as well as to the rape and murder of Tammy Fay Smith and additionally to the rape and murder of a lady tourist three years before, the rape and murder of Tammy Wynette, the Tate-LaBianca murder mutilations previously attributed to the Charles Manson gang and to the assassinations of Martin Luther King and all the dead
Kennedys.

  He also confessed to setting fire to about seven hundred and sixty-nine chickens at the Tidy Chicken poultry processing plant in Danielles, though he was nowhere near Danielles when that fire was started.

  With the help of a group of anonymously hired, overpaid but excellent criminal defense lawyers imported from Houston, Texas, Warnell successfully pleaded insanity, avoided a potential eventual lethal injection and was incarcerated in a maximum-security mental institution in the Delta region of Arkansas for an indeterminate period of time, most likely life.

  * * *

  Where Miss Ollie visits him irregularly.

  * * *

  I don’t believe anyone other than Sam Baxter knows I killed his father.

  I haven’t told anybody, because I got nobody to tell.

  Maybe one day I will have someone to tell about all that.

  But I know firsthand that people are devious and hard to trust, so I’m not holding my breath that I will ever have someone I trust enough to share my life and my secrets with.

  Since I’ve none to discuss that killing with, none to really trust it with, I try not to think about it. I don’t dwell on what I did because it’s not healthy to dwell on things like that.

  * * *

  Naturally the crazy man, Old Baxter, comes to me unbidden in dreams. With the rest of them. My dead.

  But truthfully Old Baxter does not seem angry at me. Seems to forgive me as the rest do not, does not linger at my shoulder like the others do, means me no more harm than I meant him.

  Sometimes I think I did the old man a favor.

  I like to think so.

  I know I did his son a favor.

  The old man is dead anyway.

  And the dead don’t need me.

  * * *

  The second day of the New Year next I got an unexpected package.

  It had been a Holiday Season less lonely than I was recently accustomed to. I recognized my mother’s death date somberly, with a long, slow walk in a stiff new pair of mail-order walking shoes I had gifted myself and then I had a mediocre but filling chipped beef dinner at Miss Ollie’s EAT

  For Christmas I had a little tree on the front porch that Malcolm helped me decorate with popcorn strings, which the chickens liked. Miss Ollie gave me a modestly priced, but water-resistant Timex wristwatch and I gave her a generous gift certificate to a mail-order leatherwear company since she had pointedly told me that she wanted exactly that.