Stranded

by Lorena McCourtney

  So I took a tape measure and measured height and circumference, and Abilene sketched the hookups and various lumps and bumps, and I measured them too. Then we spent the next two evenings out in the trash room working on building a fire hydrant. We ruined several large pieces of Styrofoam until we got the knack of how to cut it without breaking it, but, fortunately, there were plenty more pieces to experiment with. We cut and glued and taped, tore apart and remeasured and cut again. It was not easy stuff to work with. Great sculptors, I suspect, are not soon going to switch to Styrofoam as a medium for their artistic work.

  Koop batted bits of the stuff around for a while, then found a place to sleep in some shredded newspaper that had probably also been packing material at one time. We did as much giggling as cutting, gluing, and painting, and we both wound up with splotches of red paint in odd places. We’d found a shelf with various partially full cans of paint in the laundry room.

  “How did you get red paint behind your ear?” Abilene inquired.

  “Probably the same way you got it on your right elbow.”

  Even Koop had a speck on his tail.

  Up close, our fireplug certainly wouldn’t fool anyone as authentic, but from a distance it was passable, bright red and light enough to toss around. I took it to the Wednesday afternoon rehearsal, getting a few odd looks as I carried it through town. I can usually walk anywhere without drawing any more attention than your average stray cat, but carrying a bright red fireplug does tend to increase one’s visibility. Several people peered out from store windows. Suzy at the flower shop saw me, did a double take, and came to the door to laugh and call, “Going to a fire, Ivy?”

  Fortunately I didn’t run into any oversized dogs, or I might really have been in trouble.

  This was a partial dress rehearsal, with a full dress rehearsal scheduled for Friday evening. Time was growing short, with the big performance only a week and a half away. There were two tiny dressing rooms behind the stage, although they were barely big enough to turn around in, and Charlotte was flying up and down the stairs, getting two sets of chorus-line costumes distributed and the ladies dressed, undressed, and dressed again. I lugged the imitation fountain down to the stage, and the ladies pranced an enthusiastic, if somewhat ragged, revolving wheel routine to the music of “Tiger Rag.” Although they all had to stop and take a break when Lulu Newman’s hip developed a glitch. She was the centerpiece in all the circular movements, her statuesque figure holding everything together.

  Stella Sinclair, who was in the street scene, had brought her potbellied pig, DaisyBelle. DaisyBelle took an unfortunate dislike to our fireplug, and I had to rush onstage and rescue it from being trampled into Styrofoam bits when she charged, tossed it a good ten feet, and charged again. No one seemed particularly fond of DaisyBelle, who liked to run up behind people and stick her snout where it didn’t belong, but the fact that Stella had personally paid for the new set of spangled chorus-line costumes apparently insured the pig’s welcome.

  On the night of the performance all the props would already have to be downstairs, crowded in behind the stage. Otherwise I’d be carrying them right through the audience since there was only that one stairway up to the third floor. The first row of seats would be reserved for actors and chorus-line ladies to sit in when they weren’t performing, because there was so little space backstage. I had to wonder if things hadn’t been somewhat more upscale when Gypsy Rose Lee was here.

  After the rehearsal, everyone gathered in the lobby for coffee, cookies, and a rehash of the evening’s successes and problems. The fireplug drew praise, as did the Three Stooges’ rendition of “Three Little Fishies.” Ben Simpson had given a well-memorized if, to my mind anyway, not particularly rousing impersonation of Will Rogers, but now he kept arching and rubbing his back. Charlotte Sterling, looking frazzled from all her trips up and down the stairs, came up and leaned against the wall beside me. Across from us, Stella was feeding DaisyBelle dainty bites of cookie and cooing about what a good pig she was.

  “Good pig, my eye,” Charlotte muttered. “If that ugly creature gets a little too cozy with her snout just one more time—” She hacked the air with one hand. “Instant pork chops.”

  After DaisyBelle’s attack on our fireplug, I also wasn’t feeling too kindly toward her. A couple of small hams in addition to pork chops would be nice, I decided.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” Charlotte added in a confidential tone, “but dressing sixteen not-so-young ladies is more work than dressing sixteen two-year-olds. At least the two-year-olds don’t keep worrying about how big their butts look.”

  I was scarfing down chocolate chip cookies, but Charlotte just had coffee, black. She looked as if she needed the caffeine to keep her going.

  “It’s great how everyone works in unison to pull this all together,” I offered as a generic soother.

  “Although we may wind up pulling each other’s hair before this is all over. If Emily complains about that Moe wig one more time …” She rolled her eyes. Then, as if she’d like to think about something other than costumes, pigs, and wigs, she asked, “So, how’s the search for the secret room coming?”

  “So far it isn’t. I’ve been too busy. But I’ll probably get back to it within the next few days.”

  “If you find a secret room, are you going to have a grand unveiling like that guy did on TV when they whacked into some old gangster’s vault?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that, but it could be fun, couldn’t it?” I smiled. “Maybe we could make it a money-raising event for the Ladies Historical Society.”

  Charlotte laughed. “Great idea.” She gave DaisyBelle another venomous glance. “We could sell barbecued ham sandwiches on the side.”

  “Actually, by now I’m pretty sure there isn’t any secret room,” I admitted, “but I’m going to keep looking. I did find a cartoon from the 1930s under a baseboard. Maybe, if nothing else, I’ll find a gold nugget Hiram had hidden away somewhere.”

  “Oh, much to my surprise, I had a bite on the Randolph place. Some Texas people on their way to ski at Aspen.”

  Someone came up then, looking for a can opener, which Charlotte promptly pulled out of her apparently bottomless purse.

  I was feeling frazzled too, by the time I got home. I’d jaunted up and down those stairs to the third floor quite a few times myself. I was happy just to plop in front of the TV for the evening. Abilene reported that Dr. Sugarman had sent her on several errands with the pickup that afternoon, so she was happy too.

  We went to bed about 9:30, rather earlier than usual. We left the bedroom doors open, as we usually did, because Koop likes to prowl around in the night, sometimes sleeping on Abilene’s bed, sometimes on mine, sometimes getting a midnight snack. I was in the midst of a pleasant dream about pork chops smothered in mushroom gravy when something landed in the middle of my chest.

  I oofed and floundered awake. “Koop, what’s the matter with you?”

  I sat up and tried to push him off my chest, but he seemed to have developed Velcro paws. His fur felt electrified.

  Now he added a hiss and growl to his stiff-legged stance, then suddenly leaped off me and skittered toward the doorway, yowling.

  At that moment I became aware of a peculiar smell. Smoke! And a strange flickering light in the hallway. I dashed to the doorway in my nightgown, then started screaming.

  “Abilene! Abilene, we’re on fire!”

  The flickering light—oh, and now a tongue of flame!—came from the trash room where we’d been working. Abilene’s bedroom was closer to it than mine. I dashed down the hallway, screaming at the top of my lungs. More tongues of flame. A faceful of smoke that made me cough.

  Abilene met me at her doorway in her flannel pajamas. Koop whipped around her feet, then tore down the hallway away from the fire. The fire crackled hungrily now as it licked around the door frame. Dark smoke billowed out of the room. Bicycle tires, I remembered.

  “I’ll call 911!” The cell phone, where w
as it? I couldn’t seem to think straight. Lord, help me! Where is it? Oh yes, my purse.

  Where was my purse? In the bedroom. I backed toward the door, afraid to take my eyes off the leaping flames for fear they’d explode into a firestorm behind my back.

  “I’ll get water! There’s a bucket in the kitchen—”

  “No!” Water buckets weren’t going to do it. Maybe a hose would, but we didn’t have one. And I wasn’t going to let Abilene risk her life for this old house! I grabbed her hand, yanked her down the hallway, then gave her a shove. “You find Koop, then go out the front way. I’ll get the cell phone and meet you there.”

  Abilene, unshovable when she doesn’t want to be shoved, dug in her heels. She looked back at the fire. The kind of person who’d stand and fight till the walls crumbled to ashes around her, I thought, partly exasperated, partly admiring. But I shoved again, and she reluctantly moved on down the hallway, calling for Koop.

  I flicked the switch in my bedroom, and the light came on. The electricity was still working. Thank you, Lord! The red numbers on the digital clock read 12:02. I spotted my purse on a chair, grabbed it, then hesitated momentarily. We might lose everything. What else should I save?

  Clothes? Mementos? No, not stuff. My few important papers and records were still in the motor home, and all that really mattered were Abilene and Koop. I left everything behind and raced for the front door, frantically fumbling for the cell phone as I ran. The hall was filling with smoke now. I had the feeling the flames were right behind me, a fiery demon on my tail, but when I glanced back I saw they were still back at the doorway to the trash room. But becoming bolder as they edged along the carpet like dancing elves. Evil elves.

  I glanced up the stairs as I flew by, then stopped short. What if Koop had gone up there? And Abilene went after him.

  “Abilene!” I yelled. I peered up the stairs, ascending into blackness. Much as I loved dear Koop, I couldn’t have Abilene risking her life getting trapped up there while looking for him.

  “Out here!” She was at the door, her shoulder holding it open, an iron arm clasped around a squirming Koop, the other hand reaching for me.

  Outside … yes, we were safely outside! Thank you, Lord … I took several deep breaths of unsmoky air and punched in the numbers on the cell phone. Then I wondered, did Hello even have a 911 system? I’d never checked. Would a call go through to a local 911 system, or was I calling some other city, some other state?

  A voice answered, and I yelled, “Where are you? Are you in Hello?”

  “Yes.”

  Another grateful Thank you, Lord, and then I yelled “Fire!” and gave the address.

  From the front of the house, except for a bit of flickering light behind the etched glass in the doors, everything looked oddly normal.

  “Maybe it isn’t as bad as we thought,” Abilene said. “Isn’t there a fire extinguisher in the laundry room? I could go back and—”

  I grabbed her arm again. “No!” Yes, there might be a fire extinguisher in the laundry room, but the door was only a few feet up the hallway from the trash room. Too dangerous. “Just hold on to Koop.”

  I suddenly realized I should call Kelli too. This was her house. But I didn’t have the number … Yes, I did. I’d dialed it any number of times that weekend when I’d tried to call her about the utility bills and finally added it to my list on the cell phone. With shaky hands, I pulled it up from the list and dialed it. Ring, ring, ring, ring. C’mon, Kelli, answer! Finally she did, after a good dozen rings, a sleepy, “Hello?”

  “Kelli, this is Ivy. The house is on fire—”

  “On fire? Oh no! Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “We’re outside, all three of us. We’re okay. I’ve called 911—”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  Then we retreated to the far side of the hedge and watched and waited. I could feel Abilene still wanting to rush inside and do something, and I held on tight to her arm to keep her from it. Koop kept squirming, but Abilene held on tight to him too. The glow behind the etched windows in the double front doors grew brighter, and now it flickered through the living room windows too.

  Finally, finally, somewhere in the distance I heard the wail of a siren. At the same time I realized we were both barefoot, me still in my nightgown, Abilene in her pajamas. But firemen had undoubtedly seen underdressed people before. I was just grateful I wasn’t wearing those skimpy things from Victoria’s Secret that Sandy had once given me.

  The fire engine arrived. Some of the men ran through the front door dragging a hose. Others raced around the back way. Crashing noises. Glass breaking. Yells. With the front door open, we could see full-fledged flames down the hallway, like looking into a roaring furnace.

  Kelli arrived a few seconds later, running. “I parked down the street so I wouldn’t be in the way!” By now, other people were congregating on the street. I didn’t realize I was shivering until Kelli whipped off her coat and wrapped it around me.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. We were asleep. Koop woke me up—” I broke off, for the first time realizing Koop may well have saved our lives. Thankfully for us, his aversion to cigarette smoke apparently extended to other kinds of smoke as well.

  “Where did it start?”

  “In the trash room. We’ve been working in there on a Styrofoam fire hydrant for the ’20s Revue—” I broke off again. Had we somehow started the fire? But we hadn’t been in there since last evening. Unless we’d somehow started something smoldering then, and tonight it had burst into flame …

  “I was in there earlier this evening to get some plastic bags to take to the clinic. I didn’t see anything then, no smoke, nothing,” Abilene said.

  “It doesn’t matter. Just so you’re both safe. And Koop too.” Kelli put an arm around my shoulders and squeezed reassuringly. “If the house burns, let ’er burn.”

  As well it might. Flames shot up from the back side of the house, and the crackle exploded to a roar. Smoke rose, a black blot against the starry sky. Sparks created stars within the blot. Ashes fell around and on us. I smacked one that burned my arm.

  Koop wasn’t acting like a hero at the moment. He squirmed and twisted in Abilene’s arms, even hissed at a passing fireman.

  “Why don’t you put him in the Bronco?” Kelli said. “He’ll be safe there and can’t run away.”

  Abilene left to do that, her tread steady in spite of the bare feet. A second fire engine arrived. More firemen dragged another hose around to the back of the house.

  I don’t know how long we stood out there. Not as long as it felt, I’m sure. But long enough for my toes to feel like something out of the freezer case at the supermarket. Gradually the flames at the rear of the house died back. The roar dropped to a pop and crackle. It was some minutes after all sign of flames had disappeared when a stocky man in fireman’s gear came up to us. He loosened the strap on his sloping yellow hat. An ugly scent of burned, wet wood hung in the air.

  Kelli stepped forward. “I’m Kelli Keifer, the owner of the house.”

  “The McLeod place, isn’t it? Where old Hiram McLeod was killed a while back?”

  He didn’t say it, but I wondered if he was connecting the two, the death and the fire.

  “Yes. Hiram was my uncle. Great-uncle, actually. Ivy Malone and Abilene Tyler have been living here.” Kelli motioned to us. “Is everything okay?”

  They didn’t seem to know each other, because he also introduced himself. “Fire Chief Wally Burman. The fire’s out, but we’ll leave a man on watch for the night just to be sure.”

  “Ivy says it started in the room my uncle used for storing all kinds of discarded materials and trash. Paper and plastic, pieces of wood, rags. Everything. I should have hauled it all to the dump a long time ago.”

  He asked more questions. Kelli answered some, I answered others.

  “Can you tell yet what started the fire?” she asked. “I’m thinking it may have been
something electrical. The wiring in the house is really old.”

  “That’s possible. We’ll do a more complete investigation in the morning. The back door on the house was locked, and we had to break our way in.” He looked at me. “You said you’d been working with paint in that room?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And paint thinner?”

  “Yes, but we didn’t spill any, and we didn’t have matches anywhere near the room.”

  “Do either of you smoke?”

  “No. Never.”

  “What about a heater? Wasn’t it cold working out there?”

  “Yes, we did have an electric heater with us. But we didn’t leave it there. And Abilene said she was out there earlier in the evening, and there was no sign of fire then.”

  “The paint and paint thinner weren’t even in the trash room,” Abilene added. “I’d moved them back to the shelf in the laundry room.”

  “Well, as I said, we’ll investigate further in the morning.”

  “Don’t oily old rags sometimes spontaneously combust?” Kelli asked. “Uncle Hiram could have used some of those old rags for most anything.” I could see she didn’t want the fire chief blaming us. Neither did she want us to feel as if we were to blame.

  “We’ll consider that when we investigate. It’s possible.” He started to turn away, then turned back as if he’d just thought of something. He gave Kelli a calculating appraisal. “Do you still have a key?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Were you in the house this evening?”

  Kelli looked startled, as I was. Was he shifting from thinking accident as cause of the fire to a possibility of arson? And was he thinking about Hiram’s death here, and the town’s pre-judgment of Kelli as murderer? Murderer now turned arsonist?

  “No, I haven’t been here in several days.”