by Robyn Carr
She had asked Mattie if she could drop by their house. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for exactly, but maybe some Cavanaugh wisdom would teach her something about Mike that would make things work. She was willing to do anything—short of changing who she was. Since she felt she had only just discovered the real Chris Palmer, and since she had only just discovered she liked her, she would not abandon herself again. It wouldn’t be worth it. Becoming who you thought people wanted you to be made a mockery of real love. Henceforth she would only settle for the real thing.
“Chrissie, you look so different. You’re doing your hair different now, huh?” Mattie asked, after she greeted Chris and the children that evening.
“I just got it cut.”
“You brought us presents. Oh, Chrissie, you shouldn’t have done that. Really. We have so much. Bring everyone in. Come in, come in. I have a bundt cake.”
“We brought the dog—I hope you don’t mind. Carrie wanted Big Mike to see the dog.”
“You brought that dog?” Big Mike asked, walking toward the front door with his newspaper in his hand, hiking up his low-riding pants. “You brought that Creeps to my house?”
Carrie and Kyle giggled happily, looking up at him. How did the children know he was funny, when he never smiled? How did they know he was making jokes? Cheeks stood just behind them, right inside the door, his tail wagging while he growled.
“I don’t know why you bring him here. He hates me.”
“He doesn’t really hate anybody, but he’s very crabby.”
Big Mike hunched down and reached between the children to scratch under Cheeks’s chin. Cheeks growled louder; his tail wagged. “This dog is a mess,” Big Mike said. “Look at him. He wants to be petted, but he makes all this noise. What a terrible dog he is. I think somebody hit this dog in the head, huh?”
“We think somebody was mean to him when he was a puppy,” Carrie said. “We think it was a man. He’s always crabby to men, but not to girls.”
“You’re so tough, aren’t you, Creeps. Come on, then. Come on, Creeps,” Big Mike said, straightening and walking into the living room, the wagging, growling dog following, the children giggling.
“Come in and have coffee, Chrissie. It’s so cold. We might even get a little snow.”
Chris took off her coat and tossed it over a chair. The kids were already sitting at Big Mike’s feet, laughing as he said the dog’s name wrong and made him look stupid, growling while he was being stroked.
Chrissie carried the presents into the kitchen. Mattie, who had waddled ahead of her, already had a coffee cup filled. “These are for the whole family, Mattie, but they’re mostly for you. We picked them out together, and I want you to open them early.”
“You shouldn’t have, really. We have so much already.”
“Go ahead. It isn’t much.”
It only took Mattie a minute to get inside the first box. Chris had tried to get exactly the right thing. A Christmas platter, a decorated lazy Susan, red napkins in green holly rings—enough for the whole clan, plus extras.
“I thought maybe you would like something like this. You have everyone here at Christmas, right?”
“Perfect, perfect. How nice you are to do this, Chrissie. How nice. Everyone will love it. Yes, they all come here, though I don’t know why. Chris and Stacy have a big place with lots more room. They could have Christmas there, but they don’t.” Mattie lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think they don’t like Big Mike to drive so much. At night, and all.” She resumed in her normal voice. “Everyone comes here to this tiny house where we can’t even move, but they come. I don’t know why.”
How they care for one another, Chris thought. As if they had secrets from one another, which they didn’t. “I know why,” she said, smiling. “This is where they belong. I love watching your family together. You’re right, Mattie. You have so much.”
“We’ve been blessed, me and Big Mike. Oh, we had our troubles like everyone else. Broken bones, for instance.” She laughed. “You don’t have four boys without broken bones. And the like. But we do okay, I think. Kids. They put you through it, huh?”
“You know, you’ve probably seen all that stuff in the paper about me, and Mike might have mentioned—”
“He told us a little bit about your aunt coming, but we don’t ask him, Chrissie. It isn’t our business, this with your aunt and all.”
“Well, still, I’d like to explain some of that.” Big Mike came into the kitchen to fill his coffee mug. “I want to tell you both,” she amended, “that I haven’t been taking advantage or—”
“You never mind about that, Chrissie,” Big Mike said. “You don’t need to tell us anything.”
“It must seem so bizarre, all this ‘missing heiress’ nonsense. That’s not really what I am at all. I was out of touch with my aunt because I was sure she would be too angry to even speak to me. I didn’t know I was ‘missing.’ And I’m not an heiress. My aunt still runs the family business, which was half my dad’s, but, well, it’s not Exxon or anything. It’s worth a lot, I guess, but that doesn’t mean I’m really rich.”
They looked at her, Big Mike by the coffeepot with his mug in his hand, Mattie at the kitchen table with her.
“I’m really not as different as I must seem.”
“You don’t seem different to us, Chrissie. We don’t care about that story.”
“But Mike…” Her voice drifted off for a moment. “I think Mike might have some trouble with it. I’m looking for a way to make him believe that I’m the same person who checked groceries at Iverson’s. It’s too bad it all came out so fast, and in such a bizarre way.”
“Little Mike is a pretty smart boy,” Mike said. “He doesn’t do things he doesn’t want to do. And he doesn’t believe a lot of stories.”
“Well, the stories are pretty much true,” she said. “It just seems that Mike liked having us with him a lot more before he found out where I came from.”
“You don’t have to tell us about this,” Mattie said, almost entreating Chris to shut up.
Chris was afraid she might cry. I love him, she wanted to say. I love him and I want him to love me the way I am, whether dead broke or monied.
“The boy likes to take care of everyone,” Big Mike grumbled. “He does that with us, too. He’s always taking care of us. He built that storage shed out back. He comes over, says he bought this storage shed. I say I don’t need a storage shed, but he wants me to have it. So fine, I tell him. I have it. Thank you very much. But he can’t let it go at that. He has to build it, too. Then he can go home, right? No. Then he has to put my lawn mower and things in it. Now he can be done with it, huh? No. He comes over to use the things he put in it. Sometimes he has to clean it out. And fix the roof. And trim the trees around the house. And paint this and that. Whew,” he said, waving a hand. “He just likes to be useful.”
Chris smiled in spite of herself. “How do you handle him when he gets like that. How do you act?”
“I act like I always act. ‘What do I need some damned storage shed for?’ I say. He builds it anyway.”
“That’s Little Mike,” Mattie said, laughing. “We should slice up this cake.”
“You just tell Little Mike you don’t need it—he’ll force it on you anyway.”
“But,” Chris said, “I can’t do that.”
“No, I guess not. Then you tell him to stick it in his ear if he doesn’t like it.”
“Don’t tell her what to say, Mike,” Mattie said. “Never mind him, Chrissie. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s an old man who gets himself into all the kids’ business. He gives them marriage counseling. If they listened to him, they’d all be getting divorces. Never mind him. We just want Little Mike to be happy, is all.”
“Me, too,” she said.
“Then everything works itself out, huh?”
“You want to make him happy, huh?” Big Mike scoffed. “Tell him, ‘Stick it in your ear, I don’t want a damned s
torage shed,’ or whatever. He’ll be happy.” Big Mike went out of the kitchen.
Mattie got out plates and started slicing pieces of cake. You couldn’t come to this house and not eat, Chris decided. They fill you up in any way they can.
“What’s hard for Mike,” she told Mattie, “is that he wants very much to do for us, give to us. It makes him feel good.”
“Yes, he’s that way. He does for everyone.”
“I think he’s afraid there isn’t anything I need anymore. With this business about my aunt, about money.”
“Well, I didn’t raise the boy that way, Chrissie. Little Mike knows the important things money can’t buy. I made sure my kids knew that, growing up. We didn’t have too much then, when they were little, but I was real careful that they knew what’s important. And I was real careful they knew people learned that two ways. One way was if they didn’t have a lot of money but they had a good life. The other way was if they had a lot of money and that wasn’t all they needed.”
Mattie put a plate and fork in front of Chris. “He’s a bullheaded boy, Little Mike, but he’s pretty sharp. Don’t listen to the old man, just give Little Mike some time to remember about that. A little time. He had some trouble in the third grade. In the seventh grade, too, if I remember. Maybe remembering things takes him a little time.”
It might serve just as well, Chris thought, to tell him to stick it in his ear. “A little time,” she repeated.
“He’ll catch on eventually.” Mattie laughed. “Will the kids eat the cake?”
“They’d love it,” she said. And then the sirens came. Time stood still. The shrill noise mounted. They lived near the firehouse. Mattie continued slicing cake and an odd staticlike sound came from the living room.
“What’s that?” Chris asked.
“We turn on the scanner sometimes when we hear the sirens. We worry a little bit, but we don’t tell him. He knows it, but we don’t tell him. He likes to think he’s on his own.”
Mattie’s hand went into her apron pocket, and something in there rattled softly. Chris knew without asking that they were rosary beads. “Bring your cake,” Mattie said. “We’ll listen.”
Big Mike said it was a house fire. At first it didn’t sound too serious. She heard Mike’s voice on the radio. The engine, Big Mike explained. Then the truck with the hydraulics. Another engine—maybe it was getting a little hot. Then another alarm. Police and ambulances. Chris started getting nervous following the fire by radio calls like this. She would never have one of those things, never! Then she wondered if she could get to Radio Shack before they closed to get her own.
Next the hazardous materials squad was called in. There had been an explosion. Mike’s company was initiating rescue, though it was not Mike’s voice they heard. And then, with eerie screeching through the little living room, came the news that there were firefighters down.
“God!” Chris said, straightening. “What do we do now?”
“Shh. We listen, that’s all.”
“Will they say the names?”
“No, they don’t.”
“Oh, God, why can’t he be a house painter? This is horrible. Horrible!”
“No, they know what they’re doing. They know.”
“I don’t know if I can take this.”
“What would you change?” Big Mike asked. “What one thing would you change?”
“I would have sent him to law school,” Chris said.
“Oh? He’s been a firefighter twelve years now,” Big Mike said. “If I had had the money to send him to law school, maybe about twenty-seven people would be dead. He takes chances, yes. About twenty-seven people, alive right now because he didn’t go to law school, should thank me because I didn’t have the money.”
Because, Chris thought, he goes into fires to pull people out whenever he has to, no matter how scary and dangerous. And he can’t think in terms of luck or miracles, because how often can you expect your luck to hold or a miracle to happen? He can’t think about being heroic; he’s just doing the job he was trained to do. An informed risk. Like love. Please, God.
Mattie rattled her beads.
Chapter 12
Engine 56 was the first on the scene, followed by the truck with hydraulics in close pursuit and another engine on its way. Two engines and a truck were standard equipment response for a house fire. There were no cops yet. The firefighters could count on an automatic response of two squad cars; they could also count on beating the cops to the fire. Mike’s company’s average response time was three minutes.
A civilian stood on the curb. He would have called in the alarm. The neighborhood was old but high-rent. The houses were all two-story, Victorian styles, around sixty to seventy years old but usually in excellent repair. The biggest problem with the houses here would be basement fires that could spread to the attic because of the absence of fire-stops. A maze of kindling.
This particular house had a nice big circular drive and an attached garage, from which smoke poured.
“I don’t like ’em,” Jim said, speaking of garage fires. Garages could be full of surprises; people stored paints, thinners, gas cans and such there. Not to mention cars.
As men sprang off the truck and engine, the neighbor jogged over. He was a little breathless, nervous. “There was a bunch of kids around here earlier—might’ve been a party. They have a lot of traffic around this place.”
“Do you think there’s anybody inside?” Mike asked the man.
He shrugged. “Could be. People coming and going all the time—parties and stuff. Could be a bunch of drunk teenagers in there.”
Jim returned to the engine with a gas can in his gloved hand. He had gotten it from the driveway. He shook his head and set it down. This one might have been set; people didn’t often leave empty gas cans in their driveways. Mike talked to the man briefly to determine when he had noticed the smoke, whether he’d seen anybody around—standard questions. He called for the peanut line to fog the site of the fire, while the ladder-company men approached the place with axes and pike poles. The truck men would cut the utilities and open it up; engine men would set up hoses and water. They pulled out tarps that would be used to protect the contents of the house from water, mud and other internal damage.
But the number-one priority was life. Structural consideration was always number-two. Jim was moving quickly, despite a hundred pounds of turnouts and equipment on his body, to the front door, next to the garage. He applied a firm shoulder to the door, pushed it open and went in.
Judging from a big bay window that faced the street and smaller windows above, the house might have a living room or dining room on the ground-level front, kitchen in the back. The front door and garage were to the right, bedrooms upstairs. Maybe as much as three thousand square feet, and a basement and attic. And this one just might have been torched.
The chief’s car pulled up, and he relieved Mike with the civilian. Mike was moving to join Jim in the house when it blew. The garage door cracked down the middle, and debris flew down the drive. Two firemen en route to the site fell like dominoes. There was a medley of curses around the truck and engine while two firefighters ran to the felled men to pull them away. But they were rolling over to stand up on their own steam.
Mike crouched away from the explosion for a second, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the front door. It was no longer accessible, but blocked by debris and rolling gray smoke. Flames were licking out of the place where his best friend had gone in.
Then the chief was there beside him. “We have a man in the building,” Mike told the chief. “Number 56 will initiate rescue; tell engine 60 to take over incident command. I’m going after Eble. Jim.”
The chief called in a code 2 for the hazardous-materials squad. They didn’t know yet what they had to deal with. They didn’t know yet what had exploded or whether there was more. They’d use as little water on it as possible until they knew more about it.
Mike couldn’t get in the front door, b
ut the flames from the garage had not yet reached the living room window. A shovel lay in a flower bed at his feet, and he picked it up and smashed the big bay window. He hurriedly cleared the glass and climbed in, covering his mouth with the air pack mouthpiece. This meant, unfortunately, that he couldn’t call out to Jim.
These old Victorian monsters were built like mazes with lots of rooms clustered amid stairwells and hallways. Jim would probably have gone through the downstairs quickly, looking for people, and then headed for the upstairs bedrooms.
The first thing that struck Mike as odd was the total absence of furniture. What kind of place was this? People coming and going, but no furniture? To have a lot of company, you had to have a couch to sit on. He got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was guessing what was wrong.
Typical of these old houses, there was a front staircase, now blocked by debris from the explosion and with flames climbing in through the damaged wall that separated house and garage. But there proved to be another set of stairs behind the kitchen. Mike took them quickly. At the top he looked down a hallway, with bedroom doors on each side, to the landing of the front stairwell. There he saw him, lying twisted, half on his side, half on his back, maybe dead, maybe unconscious.
Jim’s blackened and bleeding forehead was either injured from flying debris or hurt by his fall but not burned. And he was alive, thank God. His red, watering eyes stared up into Mike’s face. A wooden chest of some kind lay on top of his leg, a board across his ribs. His arm was stretched out toward his leg, as if he’d attempted to free himself. He was wearing his air pack, but his eyes were filled with agony.
Mike tossed off the trunk as though it weighed two pounds rather than fifty and threw off the board. He couldn’t let Jim lie there or take the time to immobilize the leg. He grabbed Jim’s collar and dragged him backward a little way before bending down to lift him. He heard the awful growl of his friend’s pain. More than 260 pounds of Jim Eble in his arms made Mike’s heart pound, his muscles strain and bulge, but this was his best friend. There was no lighter load.
