He bounced on his feet like a prizefighter. Then Jake stood aghast before the fountain of flames, briefly stunned and marvelling at the shooting tangents. He just loved this fire. Its bedlam. His arms shot up and, as if he were some minor god kicked out of his lair by a rival lord, he bellowed, a guttural vexation and, perched on the precipice of the fire, he repeatedly spun in circles. He felt holy and mad and oddly exuberant. Twice he kicked the air with his foot chin-high. Jake dashed back to the car and his right palm landed on the horn and he left it there and he made hooting noises himself while the horn blared away. He was looking around for someone to hear, or see, or notice, and finally, back in the centre of town, he detected headlights. Right away that car was racing in his direction, cherries flashing blue and red on the rooftop, and a moment later the vehicle’s siren wailed.
A few house lights in the neighbourhood popped on.
“Yeah!” Jake cried out, enjoying the reaction. “Yeah!”
He glimpsed through the trees and homes other vehicles that also flashed lights, which indicated another cop and probably that volunteer firefighters alerted by the cops were heading for their station. The car that tailed him a few minutes earlier skidded to a sharp stop.
The officer climbed out slowly, awestruck. “Ho-ly fuck.” He audibly sucked in his next breath.
Jake nodded vigorously. He wholeheartedly agreed.
The cop got back on his radio but now the town was waking up. Shouts hither and yon and Jake speculated that phones were ringing off their hooks. This was news. This was an event. He looked back at the fire and thought it astounding, the most splendid and amazing sight he could ever hope to witness. For the first time since the last time he enjoyed sex, which was a very long while ago, he felt compulsively alive. The cop, considerably older than him, now stood right beside him, gazing at the fire as though he shared the same sentiment, and passion, exactly.
Before long, a soaring siren pitched in as the first vehicle in the Fire Department, a pumper, left the station.
■ ■ ■
The night’s last kiss was warm, welcome, and it lasted awhile, although Tara, ever so gently, eased Ryan away with a light press of her fingertips against his chest. The two separated, yet stayed close, and were gazing at one another when a horn blared. Unusual at any time, but an annoyance at night. Ryan’s police instincts were alert but he lifted Tara’s hand in his to say a proper good-bye. They shared quick kisses and after the third, a police car raced past them, lights flashing. That ended their evening, and Ryan stepped back onto Main Street to see whatever the commotion might be, and saw the fire.
“Oh no,” he said, stunned.
Tara joined him on the road. “What’s that? A house on fire?”
Ryan whispered. “They’ve done it now. It’s the bridge.”
“Oh my God.”
“I gotta go.”
“Go,” she told him, but Ryan was already running. His car was pointed in the right direction and he scrambled inside and tore off. A second later his coloured lights were flashing and moments after that the siren wailed. He was waking up the whole town. Every able-bodied man might be needed to fight this fire. He drove, and he couldn’t believe a burst of flames, their height, that radiant orange plumage.
“My God,” he prayed, because he needed a miracle here. “Please. Let it be somebody else. It’s got to be somebody else.”
■ ■ ■
The change in a depressed Willis Howard that took him from the calm of his television set late on a warm summer evening to a full-blown distemper was so swift, chaotic, driven, and arbitrary that he barely recognized himself and certainly not the vehemence that compelled him. He’d drummed through this rant before but never when he stood so precariously balanced on the cusp of such wrath, as though he was seized by a nausea so intense and crippling that it reduced him to a bodily reflex, one blithering scold upon another.
“MOTHERFUCKMOTHERS!” Language like that never crossed his lips and he felt that he jumbled them up somehow but he never spoke words laced with such venom. To merely hear any such utterance, offhand in a teenager’s diction, or rough and senseless from the tongue of someone old and embittered, or a foul-mouthed logger, caused Willis to cower within himself, uncomfortable with the expression of crudity. And yet, he was the one uttering profanity and doing so having lost all modicum of self-control.
For they’d done it, the bastards. Always they got their own way, they ran the town and ran and ruined people’s lives. Whether he was a child sucker-punched by a vile, rude boy or an adult contending with the animosity and gainful superiority of loggers, their slurs, their slights, which conceded no respect for the opinions of others and only niggling concern for the lives of others and what meagre attention they could muster came couched in mockery and disdain. No matter his station in life, the rabble reduced him, they brought him low. Damn loggers. Damn them to hell’s bottommost sewer. Now they’d done it, burned burned! the old covered bridge that solicited thousands of customers nearer to his doorstep every year to spend their money in his shop and now they cut the town off from that resource so that their own precious resource their goddamn trees could be better served. They might as well have taken his own heart and soul but nonetheless his bank account along with a multitude of body parts and ripped that bloody stew from his entrails. “FUCKERS!”
He longed to burn each and every damned logger slowly on a spit with forks through their eyelids.
Willis Ephraim Howard, Esq., needed to pull on his shoes and tie up the laces before stepping out. On his front porch he could smell the old covered bridge, the smoke and more than a hundred years of sedate composure, faithful service, and pastoral peacefulness burning—history and ancestry, memory and fable, vanishing—a stench made disparate by the taunting lust of the fire seen from his eyrie above the treetops, and he heard the menace of the roaring, as though from the bellows of a great subterranean furnace. That roaring.
■ ■ ■
Hidden amid trees, Denny settled. The august fury of the fire spooked him, knocked him off his stump. He needed time alone to recover, to resume his posture, to remember why the action was taken, to recall that he’d been shoved into an untenable position. The fire entered a phase when the gasoline was consumed and the blaze retreated. A spontaneous lull. Tucked behind protective brush he imagined that the fire might simply go out, a charred remains the net result, the bridge still standing, still functional. His heart slumped then as abject failure loomed. Yet the fire fanned itself on a breeze, the heat imbued in the timbers assumed command, and the fire this time was no longer artificially inspired but fully legitimate as it fed upon the timbers, soon beyond control, the sage old wood wildly consumed.
This emotional slippage, from fear of failure to the restoration of the action’s success, confirmed for Denny O’Farrell his own righteous intent, and while he took no solace in the vanity of the flames or in the destruction of the beautiful old bridge, he reaffirmed that this needed to be done and the weight fell upon him to stand as the man for the job. The bridge burned and he took no pleasure in that ecstatic flurry but reaffirmed his choices here.
Then that still, quiet reverie broke.
In a twinkling, as though the soul of his life buckled.
But it was not him. The bridge just snapped.
Denny spent his life amid the noise of harvesting timbers, so he knew the sound to be that of wood breaking. But he did not know how, where. The outcry came as concussive, like cannon fire, the initial stammer and dull thump of the shot followed by the rupture and chaos of explosion. A thunder, yet as quick as lightning, and that decisive. The render of the sound was accompanied by a chorus from the throng of spectators, both those nearby and those on the run to soon arrive. A reaction to the sound. Denny needed to see what occurred, and risked being spotted to nip through the woods closer to the river and the flames. He arrived at the riverbank in time to see w
hat he never perceived, the near edge of the bridge, having broken from its moorings, falling into the Gatineau River.
The river will douse the flames!
In one illogical instant, he feared that the bridge might be saved by the river, and returned to its rightful position.
The rush of water carried one end of the burning carcass downstream, twisting the far side of the bridge so that the attachment points there were bent beyond their capacity to sustain the weight, breaking away in a slander of great guttural cries. Upright, one end a bow, the opposite a stern, the boat-like bridge artfully sailed upon the surface. The gargantuan flames appealed to the crisp black air, sparks rampant as though the river itself burned in sympathy, as this fiery proud ship sailed on down the stream.
Ashore, townsfolk were rapt.
Denny could move from his lair now, and in keeping with his plan join the throng. He’d set the fire but with no visible means to do so. And so he was free to mingle, to pretend that he’d arrived, like the others, from afar, to act the part of an astonished onlooker.
And he was astonished as the bridge slowly wended its way downstream, and in the current perfectly followed the contours of the shore. The sky lit up, the riverbanks aglow. He was not sure when his brother joined him, as people constantly milled around, changing positions to alter their perspective. He became aware that Ryan stood beside him.
The brothers exchanged a glance.
“I thought so,” Ryan said. A moment ago he was asked by the shopkeeper, Willis Howard, if he intended to arrest his brother.
Denny minded his peace awhile. Then he said, “Hey, Ry, Dad said you were on a date tonight. How’d that go?”
Ryan remained beside him awhile, passively observing the fire. “I better not find out that my date was part of your plan,” he said, “that it had anything to do with your timing.” The two brothers stared at each other briefly, both unyielding, then Ryan walked off. He wanted to get the Fire Department—able volunteers who were allowing themselves to be mere spectators—on their toes. They needed to follow the bridge downstream in case it came ashore. He needed to avert that greater disaster, should the bridge set a forest, or the town, ablaze.
■ ■ ■
She hums to dispel the dark, her fright, this outlandish fire.
Unnoticed in its dark patch of firmament, a slim sliver of moon is eclipsed by a burst and roar as flames catapult into the night sky, illumining the broad bend of shore. Air erupts in a scintillation of light, while across the water hillsides glimmer a reddish hue. Some people are electric, a few are in a daze, awakened by the dirge of shouts, sirens, and ringing telephones as townsfolk swarm to the riverbank, most mystified, all stunned, to take in this apparent cataclysm in their lives.
Mrs. McCracken hums.
the beautiful the beautiful river!
Gather with the saints by the
Alone in the dark in her nightgown she seems particularly diminutive on this occasion. Perhaps more elderly, also, and more frail than usual, as if not being fully clothed accentuates the vulnerability of an older age. She sits upon a boulder in the shoreline park as the bright burning bridge slowly passes by, yet to thwart the gravitational pull of a dawning heartache her posture remains oak-straight. Did she ever intend to live so long to bear witness to an event this crude? A scurrilous act. Arson. The culprits deserve not a single stitch of mercy. Not one stitch. Hang them. She concludes what more than a few farther away are whispering, Oh, they did it now. This time. Set the river ablaze. Those men. Those boys! Her back taut, yet she feels herself go wonky, a trifle cockeyed, as if rather than being aroused from sleep she’s been shaken from a groggy stupor. The river, can you—? In flames. Right before our very own eyes!
Sparks ignite on the crackling air.
that flows by the throne of
Her gaze remains transfixed upon the floating blue womb of the inferno and to her surprise Mrs. McCracken begins to feel strangely invigorated. She quits her song. Thoughtful now, somehow less furious. An odd idea crops up—I might linger awhile. She has not dwelled on such a thing in a very long time, there is simply no value to the exercise, but she is thinking now that she just might stay. Here. On earth. In this town. Awhile. For the first time in ages her life is possessed by genuine purpose, for she needs to ascertain how this conflagration will revise her study of the world, who might be uplifted, who brought low to lie seared or mangled or ruefully destroyed.
Oh my, she winces as the thought strikes home, gossipy tongues will wag!
The river. In flames. Oh! Burning. As though water combusts.
Overhead, ash drifts, settles on trees. Specks bloom crimson an instant, then cool on the palms of darkened leaves.
The old lady intermittently attempts to resume her hum.
Her new friend, such a perplexing young woman—A vision that girl, oh!—aglow in the river’s firelight, also wears white on this night albeit with a fashion sense appropriate to her youth and beauty. Yes! We shall gather by—Tara approaches down the well-trammelled couples’ path as if stepping on air, or upon a ribbon of shimmering dust. Arms meditatively entwined. She moves more slowly than the others who so urgently converge. Her heels kick up a shy trace of ash. Why yes now. Mrs. McCracken interrupts her hymn as a measure of boldness mixes with her familiar cunning, although she admits to an abiding confusion. Saddened by the grief of this hour, she still feels quite capable of looking forward. Despite a wish to remain circumspect, she smiles, and repeats, more as affirmation than as an afterthought, Why yes now. You know? This might make a dollop of sense, in a strange way, in the longer long run.
If Tara Cogshill arriving on the shore appears uniquely resplendent, perhaps angel-like, to Mrs. McCracken, then the woman sitting upright on a rock in her shimmering white nightgown, radiant in the glow of firelight under a canopy of undulating smoke looks positively otherworldly to Tara, as though transported from another realm. Amid the horde, she is the only person to have segregated herself off as solitary. The swirl of smoke that on occasion dips to touch the ground reflects a ruddy tinge of fire, and the woman’s white gown mirrors the brightest flames off the blazing river.
Mrs. McCracken is watching her, Tara sees, not the fire.
Coming closer, she detects the blaze caught in the wash of those eyes.
Tara stands beside her while the old woman remains seated upon the rock. The younger one places a hand upon the senior’s shoulder, and the frail-looking old lady covers that hand with her own.
They remain that way, gazing out.
Mrs. McCracken says, “My storm.”
A reference that derives from a conversation they shared at the cemetery, but Tara does not know why she’s mentioning it now, so asks, “Why say that?”
“Raine,” Mrs. McCracken answers obliquely, “with an e.”
Tara wonders if her friend has not lost her senses in the trauma of this event, or perhaps she’s sleepwalking, in a way. Or she’s merely being difficult or oddly sentimental or she’s confused and disoriented. She’s worried about her. The two women turn their attention back to the old covered bridge as it sails on downriver. “It’s like the river is burning,” Tara remarks, and given the flames’ dancing reflections off the oily black surface that is exactly true.
“Yes,” Mrs. McCracken agrees. “It’s on fire, isn’t it?” To Tara, she seems a long way off.
“It’s like a burning ship. It’s lying in water, in water ! It’s a fire on water. Amazing how it plain refuses to burn out.”
“That makes sense,” Mrs. McCracken contends. “It wants to carry on.”
“How do you mean?” Tara asks, but she’s a long way off herself and isn’t really thinking about her question.
The older woman, though, takes it seriously. “The bridge,” she divulges slowly as the thought takes hold, “would rather be a fire than extinguished.”
And yet th
e old covered bridge, true to an ingrained dignity long nurtured, does eventually burn itself out upon the waters, quietly vanishing miles downstream into nothing forevermore.
II
RECKONING
16
Well-kempt, his home did show a few anaemic signs of ageing. Broad-planked oak floors, which he laid himself, and adored, for he felled the trees as well, reflected a patina only time could stain. Here and there the scuff of constant feet left them gently scooped. The north side of the dining room floor dipped to meet the wall, as though all material gravitated towards and down the riverbank and to the water on that side of the house. As if everything secretly drained away. For reasons that he could not readily decipher, although he suspected that either shadows cast by the tallest pines or meandering fair-weather cloud were the culprits, the room seemed a tad dreary today, given the brightness of the morning. As he hung up the telephone, he listened to a cardinal’s clear whistle, high on the fir out back, which ordinarily might cheer him, and yet today the ensuing silence felt grim.
A phone call bid him come in from garden work, so now he washed his hands under the kitchen taps. He scoured his palms thoroughly and, looking up, was hooked by his reflection in a small mirror off to the side. So the house was not alone in showing its age. Alexander Gareth O’Farrell leaned back against the counter while he worked the towel, and continued to wipe his hands long after they were dry.
The River Burns Page 21
