How Fire Runs

by Charles Dodd White

  He brought her next to him and they sat there until the others came back from the polls.

  “Well, look at the lovebirds,” the old woman cracked. She had a sticker that said I VOTED, HAVE YOU stuck to her chest. “Absolutely shameless! Come on and get us back to the house. Some of us have more to do than sit around in the shade making eyes at each other all day.”

  Kyle and Laura made several subsequent runs with a dozen more voters through the course of the day. By four o’clock they finished their last run and drove out to meet Gerald and Orlynne at Frank Farmer’s place. Gloria and the kids were out front tying red, white, and blue balloons to the mailbox and the front gate. The children waved as they pulled in. Both of them were dressed in peony pink dresses with blooming sleeves.

  “Frank’s out back,” Gloria told them. “He’s getting the grill going.”

  They pulled all the way into the carport to leave room for the later arrivals and went around the side of the house.

  Frank had just laid the charcoal and squirted enough lighter fluid onto it that Kyle was about offer a word of warning when Frank struck a match, lit the entire book aflame and pitched it in. The grill moaned, spat, and thumped with a momentary gust of yellow flame. He grinned above it all.

  “Just in time! You all want a beer?”

  He didn’t wait to hear their answers, tugging a couple of Dos Equis longnecks from the pail of ice at his feet. He snapped the caps with an opener he had dangling from his key chain. Kyle took his beer and studied the sky.

  “You not worried about the forecast?”

  “Naw, that storm’s not supposed to get in until midnight. We’ll have plenty of time to enjoy the evening before then. How did you all make out today?”

  “Good, good. We got a decent number of folks in. Have you heard from Gerald and Orlynne?”

  “They called about five minutes ago. I asked them to pick up some bottles of sodas and paper cups in case we get more folks turning up than we’re expecting.”

  Kyle was pleased to see that Frank was in a good mood. He knew first-hand how hard it was to preserve that appearance with your stomach turning somersaults while you waited for the call from the election board. Or maybe Frank was just better suited to it. Kyle had come to believe that it was important to understand when stepping aside was the better action, especially when a man who had the will to do the right thing was ready to assume leadership.

  Several of Frank’s supporters began to show up in the next half hour. Many of them from Frank and Gloria’s church, though despite that affiliation they seemed to have little problem in accepting the campaign-funded beer. By the time Orlynne and Gerald arrived it was a generally mixed gathering of old and young, black and white. Frank had brought a sound system out and set it up on a picnic table underneath a dogwood tree. It was playing Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition,” which Kyle hoped wasn’t a reflection of any kind.

  “I didn’t know this many black folks lived in the county,” Gerald declared in a voice that drew a sock in the arm from Orlynne. “What? I didn’t. It’s great, though. Maybe this isn’t the fool’s errand I thought it was.”

  Before Kyle could offer comment, Frank came up and shook both Gerald’s and Orlynne’s hands, thanked them for the work they’d done.

  “We were glad to do it, Frank,” Orlynne said. “Did the election board tell you when to expect the call?”

  “Sometime between eight and eight-thirty, they said. Plenty of time for everybody to fill their bellies. We’ve got hamburgers and hot dogs. We’ve even got a rack of ribs going.”

  “Ribs, you say?” Gerald asked, his interest piqued as he drifted away from the conversation and toward the billowing meat smoke. Frank went along, guided the old man by the shoulder.

  “He has terrible manners,” Orlynne observed. “I wonder why it is I find it so damn charming. If you two will excuse me, I’ll make sure he doesn’t go do some public damage with all that particular charm of his.”

  Kyle told her to go on.

  “It seems like they’re really well matched, doesn’t it?” Laura said.

  “Yeah, it does. I’m glad to see it.”

  “You know, I’ve got an idea.”

  “I like to hear your ideas.”

  “Well, I couldn’t help but noticing that beer pail is running a touch low. And given this is an evening destined for victory, it might be a good idea if we made a run so that the stock wasn’t exhausted when we’d find ourselves most in need.”

  “See, that’s one reason I love you. You’re a provident woman.”

  “You love me, huh?”

  “Yeah, I do. Why don’t we ride out there and get those beers. Maybe get a few minutes to do a little something else too.”

  She smiled, took his hand.

  “Hand me the goddamn keys, then,” she said.

  32

  GAVIN HAD ENTERTAINED A FEW VISITORS IN THE FRONT SITTING ROOM, had glasses of champagne brought on a tray Conner Polk carried, though it seemed the reserves were depleted more quickly than possible. He would have preferred having Jonathan there, but he needed him out in the community, getting out as many people as he could. Polk was already drunk, nearly spilled the bottle each time he poured. No doubt, the fool was drinking it off each time he disappeared into the kitchen. The newspaper reporter Sealy was his only reliable and consistently stimulating company for the evening. The day had started well. Victory felt like something that lived there in the house, but as the hours had slipped by he had noticed how deserted his surroundings had become. There was such busyness with the details of the election that, at first, he didn’t notice it, but after he had cast his vote and he had returned to the compound he had become aware that those he had come to rely on weren’t there to support him. Most upsetting of all was Harrison. When he had first joined him at Little Europe he didn’t have a high opinion of the man. But over time, Harrison had become essential. Much more than a bodyguard or a drug dealer. He was intelligent in an uncommon way.

  He drew himself away from his distraction, suggested Sealy go for a walk with him now that the sun was going down and the weather had cooled. The young man was willing, began to gather his notebook and recorder.

  “No, leave that,” Gavin said. “This is a walk, not an interview. I’ll give you the interview after we know the results.”

  Sealy nodded, placed his things back on the sideboard.

  The sky was odd and it breathed a tremor over the treetops. Gavin had never understood the source of omens in the weather. He remembered his father reciting the old mariners’ dictum that a red sky at morning guaranteed a violent storm, but even as a boy he had questioned this. He had once had to shelter in a bathtub during a tornado when he was a small child and they lived in a trailer park not far from the Ohio River. His father was on the road driving his semi when it happened and it was only Gavin and his mother at home when the warning buzzed across the Emergency Broadcast System. What had happened then terrified him in a way that even now he couldn’t fully explain. It was as though the entire surface of the earth revealed itself as an illusion and the terrible roaring thing that was beneath loosed itself with all of its indifference to those who lived. He wept hysterically. His mother had thanked God that they had been spared, but he knew in his heart that there was nothing left of Him to thank. What he did remember, though, was how clear the sky had been that morning, how it held nothing but a promise of calm weather.

  “It looks like you’ve cleared a lot more land since the last time I was out here,” Sealy observed, indicating the swath of hacked and burnt thorn bordering the river.

  “Yes, everyone has been very industrious. They want to get it ready for winter greens. I hope we might begin turning a steady rate of business at the farmers market this time next year.”

  “I didn’t know that’s what you had in mind.”

  “Of course,” Gavin said, pointed toward a path that would lead them closer to the river bank. “It’s only ethical to be a farmer, if yo
u intend to participate in a country as an upright citizen. Are you familiar with The Georgics?”

  “Not since college. I remember old Virgil going on about how to read natural signs.”

  “Yes, he does. I have to confess I was never much interested in that. It always seemed to me that forecasts are so often better understood as postscripts. The context applied to the content as a matter of afterthought. However, I was always moved by how he understood the inherent hostility between nature and man and how in coming to terms with that hostility, by actually learning to seize it, we discovered a truer sense of ourselves.”

  “You would consider yourself an idealist then, or a realist?”

  “I would consider myself a man who operates within a certain set of limits. Sometimes I’ve found that I’m the beekeeper, but sometimes I’ve found it more instructive to become the bee, even if for only a finite period of time.”

  Sealy walked along beside him until they could see the faint rush of rapids through a break in the trees. The humid air rose to meet them. Gavin could feel it move over him like a new skin.

  “What do you think you’ve learned from that? From those times you were the bee?”

  Gavin placed his hand on the reporter’s shoulder.

  “I’ve learned that the beekeeper is kept as much as the bee.”

  POLK WAS stumbling drunk by the time Gavin went up to his room for the night, but still he continued to drink. He poured the last of the champagne into a plastic Coca-Cola cup and emptied half a pint of Old Crow whiskey in, sipped it as he went out to the porch. After the board of elections had called there had been little left to say to anyone. He could have told Gavin how it would have turned out, but he knew the bastard was too proud to see it. He considered how satisfying it would be to stand there at his door and tell him that all the big words and ideas he’d held onto with the faith of a backwoods preacher were as worthless as anyone else’s dreams were, but even drunk he was unable to do so. Polk hated himself for his weakness, but weakness had kept him alive this long. Cowards had their own kind of wisdom too.

  He wondered how long the others would stick around before they scented blood. They’d already begun to drift away, as if they prematurely sensed the long slide into nowhere. The trick was to time your escape perfectly, not get pulled along with the collapsing gravity of it all. He would need money. He knew Gavin kept some in his room locked away, though he had no idea how much. It had to be significant, though. Harrison wasn’t worth much, as far as he could see, but he didn’t lack the ability to keep his clients happy. There was almost something to admire about that. Plus, there was Delilah. If he was about to split, there was that to take into consideration. He’d seen her running around with that silly ass Jonathan, but it didn’t take much to see that that was all a game, her having fun at that fool’s expense. She needed a real man, someone who measured his angles and understood how to be smart about not getting caught by circumstances, not some drug dealer with muscles and a buzzed haircut. There was no doubt that she flirted with him a time or two. Maybe that was just her way, but dammit it got to him, not knowing what she meant to do and leaving him here out in the middle of the damn woods trying to sort it all out. He emptied the cup in a long swallow and filled it again with the remaining half pint of Old Crow.

  The night was making him anxious and his body needed to move; he needed to make himself kinetic in order to avoid going out of his head. He got the machete from the outbuilding and went out to where he’d been clearing thorn. He took a few swipes, heard the brush softly rattle by his hand. Even though it was much cooler at this hour and the work wasn’t enough to draw sweat, the alcohol in his bloodstream made it hard to manage. He stabbed the point in the ground and stood there looking at a sky that held no stars nor moon. There was a pulse of lightning high above but no thunder.

  He pulled out the machete and began to beat his way through the thorn. It quivered and split and snapped back against him until the barbs razored his skin. His blood ran. For a while that relief was enough to sustain him, but in the field of night he soon became aware of the enormity of his task and he slung the blade deep into the thicket. There was only one way to make headway against it all.

  He found the can of gas in the back of the shed. It was already mixed so that it could be used for the chainsaw, but that didn’t matter. It would still burn. He carried it out and dumped the contents among the thorn. The reek of the fumes was nearly enough to make him vomit, but he covered his mouth with his free hand as he struck the lighter. He edged closer, extended his hand to the end of the fuel trail. It took, ran, and writhed like a serpent composed of light. Then the flame found its voice and made a soft boom amid the undergrowth. The branches snapped and cracked. He watched it and felt like a god standing there.

  Above him, though, the sky began to move.

  33

  HARRISON WOKE TO A DARKNESS SO COMPLETE HE BELIEVED HE must still be masked. But as he breathed, he realized that there was nothing over his face. The recognition gave little comfort. His back was against an iron stanchion and his hands were bound behind it. When he tried to move them he could hear the soft rattle of chains.

  “Jay?” a voice called from a few feet away. It was Emmanuel’s, though it was strained and weak.

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “How bad you hurt?”

  “Just my head. You?”

  “I think my arm’s broke. I think they did it after they knocked me out.”

  “Have you seen them?”

  “No.”

  “I wish I could touch you.”

  “Yeah. I wish I could touch you too.”

  They sat listening for a while.

  “Is this a warehouse?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. It’s dirt underneath us and the ground isn’t level.”

  Harrison thought he heard some underlying sound in the near distance. A heavy door opened at the end of the room and a momentary intrusion of streetlight revealed the cinder-block walls against banked earth, a low ceiling. There was a confusion of silhouettes as someone entered and shut the door behind them. A flashlight switched on, the beam in his eyes so that he could see nothing more, only hear their scuffing steps as they advanced.

  “This doesn’t have to take long,” a man’s voice said.

  “Where are we?” Harrison asked.

  “It speaks,” said the man

  “It does. It’s curious about its current set of circumstances,” answered a woman.

  Harrison realized it was Jonathan and Delilah.

  “I want to do this on my own,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” Jonathan asked.

  “He might be a badass, but he ain’t nothing up against a bullet.”

  Jonathan lit a propane lantern so that they could see. Delilah drew a small automatic from the waistband of her shorts and held it at her side.

  “You get on. This is between us now.”

  Jonathan said, “I’ll wait at the car.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “Just let me have the goddamn room a minute, huh?”

  He filed out and closed the door with a weighted thump. Delilah set the handgun flat on the floor and bent over to turn the hissing lantern as high as it would go. The magnified light sharpened her shadow against the wall as if it were an imprint from a more vivid form. She raised the lantern and carried it until she was just beyond Emmanuel’s reach.

  “He’s pretty,” she said. “I guess I should have expected that.”

  “You don’t have to do this, Delilah,” Harrison told her.

  She laughed, held the lantern up so that she could scrutinize every detail of Emmanuel’s battered face.

  “Of course I don’t have to. I want to. That makes all the difference, doesn’t it?”

  “I get loose of this and I’ll make a difference for you, bitch,” Emmanuel said between clenched teeth.

  “Yeah, I bet you would. There’s no danger of getting loose though. We made sure of that.”


  She strutted back to Harrison, picked up the handgun. She looked more herself holding it.

  “Let him go, Delilah. Let him go and do whatever you want with me.”

  “Fuck no, I’m not letting him go. I didn’t do this so you’d have a chance to be a hero for your tarbaby piece of ass. I did this so I could make you hurt as much as possible, and I know the best way to do that is by making him hurt as much as possible. So don’t fucking beg me. We’re past begging now.”

  “Where are we?” he asked softly. He needed her to come closer.

  “We’re at the river. This is the utility storage for the old railway bridge. And once we’re done with you two you will be rolled down the bank into the black waters of the Tennessee. Forever and ever, amen. And you can stop whispering so that I’ll come over there and you can try to grab me. Those chains you are hooked up to are run through an eyebolt and looped back on themselves. You can’t move your arms much more than about a foot.”

  He tested the truth of what she said and found that she was right.

  “I’ve thought quite a bit about how to do this. Make sure it does everything I want it to. It would have been easy to just shoot you both in the back of the head. Roll you for whatever money you had on you and make tracks. But that wouldn’t be enough.”

  “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  “Hurt me? You didn’t fucking hurt me. You still don’t get it? This is about who gets to walk away at the end. It’s about who’s strongest, who’s ready and willing to kill. That’s something you and Gavin have both never understood. There’s no reason to this. This is just impulse. That’s what makes a difference between having and being had.”