I wheel on her. “What do you mean ‘if anybody did it’?”
Dakota starts to answer, but I don’t let her.
“Somebody did it. The barn didn’t just burn itself.”
“Well . . . they do sometimes, Hank,” she says, like she’s talking me off a ledge.
I shake my head. “No. I don’t know about other barns. But I do know about our barn. It didn’t go up in flames by itself.”
“Think about it,” she pleads. “Sometimes things happen, and there’s nobody to blame. Barns burn, and it’s nobody’s fault.”
“You’re wrong! This is somebody’s fault.”
Dakota reaches for my arm, but I shake her off and storm outside. She is so wrong. This whole nightmare is somebody’s fault. And if it isn’t an arsonist’s fault, then whose fault is it?
Whose fault is it?
Nine
My heart is pounding as I gaze at the pile of black ash and rubble. Either the fire inspector doesn’t know I’m here or he’s ignoring me. How can he ignore me? It’s my barn . . . was my barn. I want to ask him what he’s found. I have a right to know.
Wes’s dog trots up to me and barks twice.
I reach down and pat him until he stops barking. “I’m okay, Rex. You don’t have to worry about me.”
The big German shepherd wags his tail. Wes, my foster brother, rescued the dog, and now Rex is Wes’s anger-meter. The dog barks when he senses Wes is getting too angry, and I know the warning’s helped Wes control his anger.
This is the first time Rex has barked at me.
A horn honks. I look up to see Mom’s van swerve into the driveway. Most days Wes rides the bus, but not today. Kat and Wes are both in the van. Rex abandons me and races to greet his owner.
Kat’s the first one out. Usually she’s the one who has to stay home from school. Her cancer is in remission, but her kidneys aren’t working like they should. Mom says that’s why Kat’s so weak and gets sick so often. Kat looks more like a fourth grader than a seventh grader. But when she opens her mouth, out comes the wisdom of somebody twice her age. Her cat, Kitten, still hasn’t shown up. I don’t think any of us want to admit that the cat probably didn’t make it out of the barn.
“Hank!” Kat jogs up and hugs me. It’s the first smile I’ve seen from her since the fire. “Wait till you hear what we’ve come up with.”
I look at the fire inspector. He doesn’t even glance our way, and I know he can hear us.
“A Fur Ball!” Kat shouts. “Isn’t that a great idea?”
“What?” I’m only half listening to Kat. Mom is shouting something to me, but she’s too far away.
Wes stumbles toward the house, carrying Kat’s book bag and his own backpack while fighting off Rex’s nonstop nuzzling and tail wagging.
“A Fur Ball!” Kat repeats. “Like a dance! I called Gram Coolidge from the car, and she’s going to help me. She said they raised a ton of money with their policemen’s ball last year.”
Mom walks up and puts her arm around Kat. “I am so proud of these kids. It was all their idea.”
“What was their idea?” I can’t focus. The investigator is walking out of the rubble. I can’t let him leave without talking to me.
Wes and Rex come outside again. Wes drops to the ground to wrestle with his dog. “Kat came up with hers first,” he says.
“But tell him your ideas, Wes!” Kat beams at me. “Wait till you hear what Wes is going to do.”
Wes is flat on his back now, with Rex standing over him. “Okay, Rex. You win. I give.” The dog sits at attention, and Wes gets to his feet. “These are just ideas. I don’t know if they’re going to work or not.”
“They’ll work. Go on, Wes,” Mom urges.
Dakota comes out of the house. “What was all the shouting about?”
“Wes and I are going to raise money for a new barn!” Kat answers. “Gram’s going to help me put on a Fur Ball and invite cats and cat owners and everything. And sell tickets and take donations.”
“Cool, Kat,” Dakota says.
“And listen to Wes’s ideas.” Kat motions for Wes to talk.
“Okay. Like maybe a doggy day care thing, where people pay to have me dog-sit or walk their dogs. And we could take pictures of people with their dogs. I thought I could set up a stand in the park. Call it ‘Bark in the Park.’ And maybe the old people at Nice Manor could help. Buddy already called and asked what they could do. They’ve got great stories about dogs they had when they were kids. So maybe we could have some kind of story night there, like ‘Tales of Tails,’ you know, like dog tails. Or maybe that one’s stupid.”
“They’re wonderful ideas!” Mom exclaims. “I can’t believe you came up with so many ideas so fast. We’ll have that barn rebuilt in no time.”
I know I should say something. They’re all looking to me to be excited with them. But I’m not. Not about fur balls and dog tales. I want somebody to pay. Whoever burned our barn should be the one to rebuild it or at least pay for it.
“All I could come up with,” Mom says, and I can tell she’s trying to get us out the awkward moment of silence, “was elephant painting. I saw it in the paper or a magazine or something. You put paintbrushes in the trunks of elephants, and they just love to paint on canvas. Of course, we don’t have any elephants.”
“That’s great,” I say, but there’s nothing behind the words, and they know it. “I mean, the cat and dog things. Thanks.”
Silence falls again.
“Well,” Mom says, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but all this creativity is making me hungry. How about a snack?”
“No kidding,” Wes says. “Think Popeye left us anything to eat?” Wes refuses to eat anything Mom fixes, and even Mom can’t blame him. She can do surgery, but she can’t fry an egg without burning it.
The others trail in after Mom. I feel guilty for bringing them down, but it’s not in me to fake it. They’re trying to help, but they’re not. They just don’t get it.
A stick cracks. Leaves crunch. The fire inspector is walking toward his truck.
“Wait!” I shout. “Wait a minute!”
He tosses a shovel into the back of his truck, then waits for me. He’s a large man, heavier than Dad and half a foot taller. His hard hat is off, but it’s left a deep hat line like a band around his head. He could be my dad’s age, except for the deep wrinkles carved into his forehead.
“Did you find anything?” I ask. The stench of smoke is strong. The wind picks up leaves and black ashes, then drops them all around us like dirty snow.
He leans against his truck and pulls off his rubber boots. They’re like my mud boots, the mud boots I used to have before they burned up. “My findings aren’t official,” he begins.
“So you did find something, then?” I knew it. I felt it. “How much longer do you have to investigate before you can give us some answers?”
“I’m finished.”
“What? You’re done?” I can’t believe it. “I thought it would take weeks for you people to investigate.”
“Well, I have to write up my report. But I don’t need to come back here again,” he explains.
“Then you have to tell me what you found out. How did they do it? How was the fire started?”
“Look, my findings are confidential until I turn in the report. Sorry, kid. I understand how you feel.”
“No you don’t. Not unless your barn burned down and your horses were scarred for life. I’m not asking you to name the arsonist or anything. I just want to know how it happened. Please?”
I think he’s going to turn me down again. Then he looks out at the road, where Dad’s truck is pulling in.
“That’s my dad. If you can’t tell me, you can talk to him, can’t you? He’s a fireman. We won’t tell anybody. I promise. I just have to know.”
We wait in silence while Dad drives up, shuts off the engine, and walks toward us.
“Say, Brady! Didn’t think you’d still be here,” Dad says
, like they’re old friends.
“Dad, he won’t tell me anything about the investigation,” I complain.
“Sorry, Chester,” Brady says. “You know how it is.”
Dad picks up Brady’s mud boots and sets them in the truck bed. “I know how it is,” he admits. “But it would be nice to put this business to rest and get down to the business of rebuilding, if you know what I mean.”
I hold my breath while Brady thinks this over.
“Well, I don’t suppose it could hurt.” He nods to the barn. “Come on. I’ll show you what I found.”
We follow him through what used to be our barn. I know every step of this place, even with nothing but charred boards lying everywhere. The wood over the earthen foundation has mostly burned away. Pieces of the roof lie strewn about as if someone tossed them there.
“What I look for are burn patterns,” Brady begins. He’s standing in the middle of what used to be our round pen. “Right away, I was pretty sure we weren’t dealing with accelerants.”
Dad nods. “I saw that too.” He glances at me. “If somebody had dumped gasoline, there would have been a strong burn pattern.”
“It was a pretty straightforward investigation,” the inspector continues. “Basically I was looking for the area that was most charred. See?” He stomps the concrete footer by the old entrance. “There’s no concentration anywhere there shouldn’t be. Not here. Not by any of the doors.”
“Ah,” Dad says. He nods like he gets this.
“Wait. What does that mean?” I demand. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
Dad walks over to me. “Wherever a fire starts, you expect to find the biggest destruction at the place of origin. If it’s arson, that’s usually by a door, so the arsonist can escape.”
“But—you said usually, right? Not always?” I feel like I’m holding on to ashes that are blowing away.
“Not always by a door,” the investigator admits. “But out of place. See, in an electrical fire, the biggest burn—the most charring—will be on the wall by the electric—the wires or the fuse box.”
“Was it? Was it there?” I demand. Dad and I bought the best, the safest wiring we could find. We were so careful.
“Nothing unusual there either. I ruled out faulty wiring pretty quick.” Brady walks to where the loft used to be. The whole hayloft collapsed in the fire, stacking burned rafters onto burned floor. “Here’s where I think it started.”
Dad and I move there, not stepping on the area, like it’s a grave site.
“It doesn’t look worse than anywhere else to me,” I insist. “Look at this.” I pick up a piece of straw that hasn’t burned up. It’s gray from smoke, brittle, but not burned up.
“Straw smokes and smolders,” Dad explains. “It doesn’t always burn. Look at the floor, Hank. It’s blacker than black here.”
“But it can’t be the loft,” I insist. “Dad, tell him. We never put up wet hay. We know how combustible it is. We’d never do that.”
“Not saying you did, son,” the investigator says. “Sometimes something makes a hole in the roof. Water gets in. You just never know. What I do know, what I’m putting in the report, is that this fire was not caused by arson.”
Ten
Winnie Willis
Ashland, Ohio
Nothing in the world works on me like a ride on my horse, whether I’m riding alone or riding double with Catman, like I am now. I signal Nickers, and we lunge into a canter.
Catman has to hang on, his long arms wrapping around my waist. It’s been great having him back in town again. When he graduated last year, he decided to take a whole year off to make a “cat-umentary”—a documentary about the life of cats in rural America. He’s traveled all over the country filming felines. “Far out!” he shouts.
The wind blows my hair and cools my skin. Nickers’s hooves strike the fallen leaves with a swish, crunch. I feel the tension and worries blow away. I don’t think I’ve slept since we learned about the fire. I’ve been too worried about Cleo and Hank, Kat and her kitten, and everybody at Starlight Animal Rescue.
But it’s more than feeling helpless about the fire in Illinois. We’ve had our share of tension in Ohio, too. In the Willis household, money is always tight. But for the past year, we haven’t had any money to be tight with. Nobody wanted to buy Madeline’s last invention or Dad’s last two. My little sister, Lizzy, has had to use her babysitting money to buy groceries. And I’ve had to go back to mucking stalls at Spidells’ Stable-Mart just to keep Nickers in feed.
So far, being a senior in high school hasn’t been all that great either. Already, kids are talking about where they’re going after graduation, what they’re going to do with the rest of their lives.
And I’m not.
I always thought I was meant to be a veterinarian because I love horses so much. I never stopped to think how much it would cost. But when you’re a senior, suddenly it’s time to think about that kind of thing. It’s time to get real. I couldn’t even come up with the cash to apply to OSU, much less to get the equipment for their pre-vet courses. Dad would have borrowed the money, but what then? I’m not smart enough to get scholarship money. I’d never be able to afford veterinary school, even if I made it through the pre-vet program. Better to realize that now instead of later.
We canter up the long dirt drive to Catman’s house. I slow Nickers to a spirited walk. I think both of us, maybe all three of us, could have kept going all day. Maybe we should have. The tension that drained from me on the ride is already creeping back.
“Calvin! Winnie!” Mrs. Coolidge steps out of the house and waves us over.
For a second I freeze, remembering the way she yelled for us to hear the awful news about the fire.
But this time she’s all smiles, so I relax a little. Mrs. Coolidge motions us to the side yard, where Catman’s dad is wrestling with some kind of plastic lawn ornament. I don’t ask. The whole Coolidge place is pretty hard to explain. The three-story house with boarded-up windows reminds me of the spooky houses you see in scary movies. Strings of orange and red lights dangle from the roof, where they stay all year.
“What’s the skinny?” Catman asks, sliding off Nickers’s rump.
I dismount and unbridle Nickers so she can graze. The Coolidge yard is one of my horse’s favorite places to visit because the Coolidges almost never cut their grass.
“It wasn’t arson!” Mrs. Coolidge announces. “I am so very relieved. I just couldn’t imagine anyone doing something so cruel as to burn down the Rescue. Mr. Coolidge just got off the phone with his brother. Tell them, dear.”
We join Catman’s dad on the lawn, where he’s trying to get the life-size plastic Pilgrims to stand up without leaning against the Native Americans.
“The official determination according to my brother, Chester Coolidge, is that the fire is not believed to have been suspicious in origin.” Bart Coolidge pats the little plastic Pilgrim boy on the head, as if he’d been the bearer of this good news.
Mrs. Coolidge dashes to the garage, where I’ve never seen a parked car, only plastic lawn ornaments. She comes out with a giant plastic turkey, a green turkey.
“Need some help?” I volunteer.
“Thank you, Winnie.” She staggers slightly and shifts the turkey from under her arm to directly in front of her. Between her and us sits a row of plastic jack-o’-lanterns stretching the whole distance across the lawn, in spite of the fact that Halloween has been over for a couple of weeks now.
“Look out for the pumpkins!” I holler, hustling to the rescue.
She trips anyway, picks herself and the turkey up, and keeps on coming as if nothing happened. I take the turkey from her, and she brushes off her pea green velvet jogging suit. “Mr. Coolidge does love those pumpkins,” she says, smiling.
“That is true,” Mr. Coolidge agrees. “We can leave our pumpkins in the capable care of our Pilgrims and Indians until we get back from Illinois.”
“Back f
rom Illinois?” Catman repeats. “We’re going to Nice? Crashing at Uncle Chester’s pad?”
“We are indeed,” Mr. Coolidge answers.
“I can dig it.” Catman high-fives me.
I’m glad they’re going to help out at the Rescue. “You’ll be back in time for Thanksgiving though, right? Lizzy’s already been working out the menu.” I don’t add that she’s taken on a third babysitting job to fund Thanksgiving dinner for everybody. It will be the first time Catman’s family and mine have gotten together for Thanksgiving.
Mrs. Coolidge turns to me and frowns. “Oh, dear. In all the hubbub, I forgot about our previous commitment. Oh my. We promised to give Bart’s brother and his family as much help as we can with that barn. And I volunteered to cook their Thanksgiving meal. I don’t mean to be unkind, but my sister-in-law has trouble heating frozen dinners in the microwave.”
“You’ll be gone on Thanksgiving Day?” I ask, hoping I’m getting it wrong.
“I told the girls at the beauty parlor we’d be gone all week. And Mr. Coolidge got Stanley to take over for him at the car lot. Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear . . . Do you think your family will mind so very much if we’re not there for Thanksgiving? I hope I haven’t hurt anyone’s feelings.”
A pang of disappointment shoots through me. You’d think I’d be used to disappointment by now, but this one still hurts. “Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Coolidge. No big deal.” I smile and try to sound like I mean it. “It’s great that you can help out like that.” I edge closer to Nickers and put my arm over her neck. She lifts her head, still munching the long grass that sticks out from her lips like green straws.
Mrs. Coolidge takes off her mittens, puts them on a young plastic Pilgrim girl, then wrings her hands. “Well, I do hope the new Mrs. Willis won’t be terribly upset with us.”
My dad and Madeline have been married for three years, but Mrs. Coolidge still calls Madeline the new Mrs. Willis. “She’ll understand. So will Lizzy. Lizzy’s the cook in our house.”
“Well,” Mr. Coolidge chimes in, “we felt it incumbent on ourselves at this time of year to offer assistance in the great task of rebuilding that shelter before winter sets in.”
Dark Horse Page 4
