Fire Is Your Water

by Minick, Jim;

  A half-hour later, two more fire companies turned into the lane. As soon as they saw the fire, the men turned off the sirens. The barn was lost, they knew, and all they could do was protect the other buildings.

  Neighbors came and asked how it started or where Peter was. The older men saw calves and chickens in the alfalfa where Kate had driven them, and they sent boys out to check on these animals. Later, these neighbors would fashion a pen in the tractor shed, but now they simply leaned against their pickups and watched the blaze. Mostly they stayed silent, or they talked in low voices about the animals. They could see the milkers down in the meadow, the raw sores where a few were burned. They wondered if they’d have to be put down, or if Ada or Mark Hoover could heal them. They knew Ada and Mark could take out fire by using Bible verses and old chants for healing burns. But sometimes the burns were too severe. And not everyone believed.

  Others joined the watchers—women and children, relatives and friends. They heard the sirens or saw the smoke from five miles away. When new people arrived, they greeted each other, their bodies already turning toward the fire. The women touched their faces or pulled their children close. The men spat and swore under their breath. All of them grew silent in their watching.

  Light from the fire made their faces glow, and as day fell away to darkness, firelight cast strange shadows among them. Even when the watchers stilled, their shadows shifted and moved, twisting away from the smoke and blaze and the fire trucks’ revolving lights. Night’s cool air touched their backs, and women drew collars tight against their chins. The men shifted, glanced at each other, and watched another fire truck pull in. For a moment, their shadows disappeared in the truck’s headlights. Their eyes followed the firemen as they ran new lines, stumbling in their heavy gear to open valves, the water disappearing into the fire.

  As the watchers stood in the shadows, they considered how much they could spare to give to the Franklins to help them through the coming year. The entire world of this one place—all its animals and people and plants—everything passed through this building’s doors. The barn was a bank of hay and wheat, corn and oats, now all gone.

  But mostly, the watchers considered their own luck, their own good fortune. The women whispered quiet prayers. In their pockets, the men touched a buckeye, fingering the smooth nut, wearing away its ridges.

  Like a mighty, anchored ship, the barn slowly sank. First the roof fell, then the sides, each collapse creating a shower of sparks hurling upward into the night. One side leaned and fell outward, and the men rushed away to return with their hoses to douse the blackened boards. Each collapse exposed the bones and ribs of the barn, mortised posts and beams all pegged together more than a hundred years ago. Those beams charred and ignited also, and soon they became wicks for this immense and hungry fire.

  3

  For a few minutes, Ada and her mother stood in silence behind the fire trucks. The men all looked tiny before the tower of flames, and they all looked the same in their heavy coats and shiny hats. Yet Ada knew one of them was Jesse. She just couldn’t tell which one. Jesse with his thick mustache and broad shoulders. Jesse who almost got her to say yes. Jesse who had other women saying yes.

  The wind picked up and the inferno thundered. Sparks ascended to fall over them as ash. When one of the barn walls crashed to the ground, Ada flinched. Her mother stared straight into the blaze, a blankness on her face Ada couldn’t read.

  From down the road another siren approached, this time an ambulance. Mid Kelso, their neighbor, worked her way through the people. Ada guessed she had made the call to the fire station.

  “You OK?” Mid asked when she reached them.

  Kate only nodded, her arms folded in front of her.

  “Mama’s hands are burned,” Ada said. “Come on, Mama. We can’t do any more, and I need to look at your hands.” Mid gently turned her away from the roar and heat and shouts of men. As the women passed through the crowd, hands reached out to touch them, fingers lingering on their shoulders.

  Ada glanced back and saw the medics with their bags, searching for anyone injured. She didn’t want their help, not yet.

  In the kitchen, she told her mother to sit and asked Mid to watch the door, to not let anyone in yet. “I need to powwow over Mama’s burns.”

  Ada washed her hands and began her silent prayer, the one she always repeated before doing a chant. Lord, make me thy instrument. Give me strength to heal Mama’s hands. All power to you, in Holy Jesus’ name. Amen.

  But something wasn’t right. Something was missing.

  As she dried her hands, Ada repeated the prayer. Usually by “amen,” her hands tingled and heated up, and she knew the Spirit was in her. But now, no tingle, no warmth, nothing. Where are you, God? The question opened the flood of sound swirling inside, that immense roar that slipped along the rafters of her thoughts. For a moment, she crouched again by the barn wall and saw that burned hole in her dress, the swinging, flame-covered door. Those chained-in cows stared at her, their blue-black pupils bottomless pools deep enough to drown in.

  No, she whispered, and the roar quieted. But it didn’t disappear.

  Ada drew a glass of water, hands trembling. All the while she kept tamping down the rumble in her head by saying her prayer: Make me thy instrument. Help me do right. Her fingers never tingled.

  Ada put down the glass and turned. Her mother lifted her head, expectant and crying, the pain, at last, surging through her body. Ada pulled a chair to sit facing her so that their knees touched.

  Just do the motions. Say the chant and maybe the powwow will work.

  Gently she picked up her mother’s left wrist and placed it in her lap. The hand was so raw that she whispered, “Mama!” Her mother’s eyes didn’t waver, sure of her daughter.

  The skin was all charred away. Only black and red flesh remained, no pink, no blisters even, like her brother’s burn from years ago. Fluid seeped onto Ada’s lap, staining her skirt. On her mother’s palm, the worst burns formed ovals in the shape of a chain.

  Ada had to close her eyes. Uncle Mark had taught her to look directly into the wound, to face the Devil, but she couldn’t. When she looked at her mother’s hand, the rumbling fire roared again. She pinched the bridge of her nose, listened to her own breathing, tried to hear God’s voice above all the din. But the rumble wouldn’t stop.

  Just say the chant, she kept thinking. Just get through this. Then, God, where are you?

  With her mouth inches from the wound, she whispered the secret words Uncle Mark had taught her. You just have to have faith. Have to have faith.

  Ada paused to wave her right palm slowly over the burn. She leaned again and repeated the chant, lips almost kissing the wound. Three times she waved her hand over her mother’s palm, and three times she leaned in to speak directly to the fire. She told the Devil to leave this place; she asked the Lord to come heal this burn. In the quiet of the room, she heard her mother breathing, heard the mantel clock, the distant shouts and low rumble from outside. Ada knew her chant wasn’t working.

  When she finished, Ada only glanced at her mother. Nothing had changed.

  Then Ada went against her uncle’s teachings once more and did something she had never done before—she repeated the chant a fourth time. Again, nothing. At the very least, the chant should stop the pain, and at its best, the words sometimes even healed the flesh. But for the first time in her life, Ada couldn’t heal, couldn’t help her mother, couldn’t help anyone, not even herself. God had disappeared.

  Ada placed her mother’s hand back in her lap. Soot smudged her mother’s forehead and cheek. Ada had to answer the question in her eyes.

  “It isn’t working, Mama.” She stared into her lap. With the back of her hand, she wiped her tears. “It isn’t working at all, and I don’t know why.” Then she clutched her mother and sobbed on her shoulder. Her mother’s awkward hug came round her, burned hands not quite able to hold on.

  4

  Ada stood in the middl
e of the kitchen, while Uncle Mark told the medics they weren’t needed. “I’ll take care of these two.” He filled the doorway, blocking their view. The two men hesitated before turning away, and Uncle Mark closed the door behind them.

  He stepped close to Ada, looked her over intently, eyed her pale face and trembling hand. “You all right?”

  Ada nodded and pointed to her mother.

  “Brother, I think I have some burns for you to powwow over,” her mother said. He sat before her and began whispering the chants.

  Ada shuffled to the corner and sat. All she wanted was to look away, but instead she watched. Her uncle said the same chant. He paused and waved his hand over the burns. He leaned close again to whisper those sacred words, all of it just as she had done. This time, though, her mother relaxed and the pain faded.

  Ada turned to stare out the window, into the darkness with its strange firelight. Stars appeared where they shouldn’t be, a vast, new emptiness right there beside her. She heard her father enter, but she didn’t get up.

  “She’ll be all right,” Uncle Mark murmured when he saw Peter’s face. “She got these from the cow chains.” He spread salve on the wounds. “She won’t be able to help with the milking for a while. Or cook your supper, for that matter.”

  Kate looked up, ash on her face, dark hair blown wild. “We saved them. All but Seven. At least for now. Might have to put Star and Betty down. They’re burned the worst.”

  Peter said, “I’m so sorry.” He kissed her on the forehead and did the same to his daughter.

  “We tried, Papa,” Ada whispered.

  “I know, sweet Ady, I know.”

  No, no you don’t, Papa, she thought. How could she tell him that if she hadn’t panicked, they would’ve saved Seven? And how did she tell him she couldn’t heal her mother’s hands? How did she put words to this?

  She remembered the sparrow, the first time she had healed. She’d had trouble with words then, too. She was ten and had crawled into her hiding place beneath the kitchen window. The brick wall stayed cool there, that side of the three-storied house shaded by a giant catalpa. Close to the house, Ada’s mother kept lilacs and ferns, hydrangeas and peonies, and there beneath the lilacs that framed the kitchen window, Ada spent her afternoons reading and petting the soft ears of her brown-and-white beagle named Doctor.

  One day, a loud thump against the glass startled her, and a second later, a small bird fell at her feet. It rested on its side, speckled breast barely moving, brown wings spread. Ada crouched beside the sparrow and watched the beak open and close and the black pool of an eye slowly grow empty. She petted its soft feathers cupped in her hand. The bird didn’t struggle, just opened its beak, while its head sagged to the side.

  “Help this little bird, Lord,” Ada whispered. As she stroked its back, her hands grew tingly and her fingers buzzed with warmth. The sparrow’s heart fluttered in her palms, and slowly it lifted its neck and closed its beak. For a moment, the shiny eye peered into her, and the rest of the world blurred to just Ada and this speckled sparrow. Then she lifted her hands into the narrow opening and spread her palms. The sparrow paused before flying away. Ada saw no wings, no tail, just the swift shadow of a bird once more alive. But she had felt that heartbeat.

  For the rest of that week, she carried the secret memory of the sparrow with her, touching fingers to palm to feel again that small, frail life. All the while, she wondered what had happened, what she felt. The next Sunday in church during prayer, Ada closed her eyes and silently asked. Again, her hands tingled and grew hot. She felt warmth welling up inside, and she understood the Lord was filling her with his Spirit. When the congregation said the Lord’s Prayer, Ada couldn’t repeat the words, she was so stunned. She sat through the sermon unable to hear, the warmth in her fingers slowly disappearing.

  A few days later, Ada and her mother stood at the sink, her mother washing dishes, Ada drying. Ada asked, “How did Uncle Mark make my warts go away?”

  “He’s a powwow doctor,” her mother said. “The Lord gave him the gift to make people and animals better.” She picked up another plate. “He can remove warts, stop blood, take out fire from burns. I’ve seen him stanch blood coming from a cut on your grandfather’s leg. And he’s even healed a cow that ran through a fence and cut herself.”

  Her mother rinsed the last cup and handed it to Ada. “Once when we were fishing, he removed a hook caught right here, between my thumb and finger. After he said the chant, the bleeding stopped and the pain went away.”

  Ada held the cup. She didn’t know how to tell her about the sparrow or what she had felt in church.

  “What’s the matter, Ada?”

  “I want to powwow like Uncle Mark.” She spoke about the sparrow, her prayer, and the warm tingling in her hands. Her mother understood.

  After church the next Sunday, Uncle Mark, Aunt Rebecca, and their two girls came to the Franklins’ for dinner. Uncle Mark walked in last, ducking his head in his shy way. He was a small man with glasses and a square forehead, and he quietly hugged his sister and tousled Ada’s hair.

  Usually after the meal, Ada ran outside to play with her cousins. But she knew this visit was for her. Her father said it was his turn to dry, while Aunt Rebecca had the other children pulling out coloring books. Ada turned to find Uncle Mark with his cap on, holding the door for her.

  “Why don’t you show me that new calf?” he asked, and together they walked out.

  He strolled beside her with his hands behind his back. “Have you named this calf yet?”

  She shook her head. She had never been alone with Uncle Mark, never talked with this quiet man who smelled of hay and always seemed to squint, the wrinkles circling his eyes.

  They reached the barn. “Your mother says you want to powwow?”

  Ada nodded.

  He paused, for the first time his eyes resting on hers. “I learned it from my grandmother, your great-grandmother Ida. When I was about your age, she took the fire out of a burn right here”—he pointed to a long scar on the back of his hand. “I was putting splits into the wood stove and got too close to the firebox. Mama grabbed me and Grandma whispered over my wound. The pain disappeared just like that.

  “A little later, I asked my mama how Grandma did that, and she told me. When I said I wanted to be a powwow doctor, too, Mama said, ‘You have to believe. You have to have faith.’ I spent the rest of that year learning.”

  In the barn, they found the calf asleep. Ada reached into the pen, and the small creature wobbled to its feet. She rubbed its curly forehead while Uncle Mark let the calf suck his fingers. “We could name this one Molly. What do you think of that?”

  “That sounds good.” She glanced at her uncle and kept petting the calf.

  “Hello, Molly dolly.” Uncle Mark watched Ada, waited for her to face him. “You have to believe, Ada. Do you have faith?”

  “I do,” she said with a determined nod, and this made him smile, which made her smile.

  Ada told him about the sparrow, about her prayer and the warm tingles, and about how the same feeling had spread through her in church.

  Uncle Mark nodded once and looked at his hands. He knew those tingles, too. “It’s like the Lord is in you right then, working through you. And you have to remember that, Ada. Nothing happens without Him. You understand?”

  Ada said yes.

  Uncle Mark pulled his hand from the calf’s mouth. “Now why’d I let this thing get my hand all slobbered up?” He laughed and tried to wipe it on some straw before he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped off the stickiness. Ada’s cheeks hurt from grinning.

  For the rest of the summer, Ada and Doctor hiked the two miles to Uncle Mark and Aunt Rebecca’s farm every Sunday afternoon. There, she sat in their kitchen, and Uncle Mark taught her all the cures he knew. She would walk back through the fields reciting that day’s chants, memorizing the words that called on the Holy Spirit to work through her.

  But now, all of that was gone. In the
kitchen, Uncle Mark finished wrapping her mother’s hands.

  Thank you, God, for helping Mama and Uncle Mark and for bringing Papa home safely. Ada prayed for Nathan, too, on his long journey across the ocean.

  But she wondered whether these words really mattered.

  Outside, the embers glowed.

  She had entered the fire, and now she didn’t know who had come back out.

  II

  One for sorrow

  —From the nursery rhyme “Counting Crows”

  5

  Will waited by the gas pumps and checked his new uniform. He liked how he looked: the gray khakis with a red leather belt, the striped shirt with an Esso patch on one shoulder and a green keystone on the other that read “Pennsylvania Turnpike.” He liked how he was part of something larger now, something that whirred and hummed and moved.

  Above the pocket, “Burk” was bordered in red. He smoothed this with his fingers, and then he bent to look at his reflection on the gas pump glass, brushing his cowlick under his cap. When he stood, he found Buddy Dickson watching him.

  “Burk, if you’re done primping, I got a job for you.” Dickson, the manager, was pudgy and a good foot shorter. He thrust a broom and shovel into Will’s hands. Then he turned and walked away. Will glanced at the men working the pumps at another island before hurrying to catch up.

  Dickson hummed a hymn, one Will recognized but couldn’t place until Buddy hit the chorus and sang, “When the saints, oh when the saints, oh when the saints come marching in.”

  Will wondered if they were hoofing it to a damn revival, but he didn’t speak as Dickson marched on, lurching forward.

  Fifteen steps from the pumps, Buddy Dickson paused. He faced Will, his dark eyes intense. “Will Burk, are you saved?”

  Jesus, Will thought. He had to look down to hold in his surprise, hold in the Hell no that he wanted to blurt out. Instead, he remained quiet. He’d had fourteen years of silence, living with his terse father before he died, so he was well practiced.