Cuffy had a cousin, a widow, named Mrs. Theobald. The Melendy children had never seen her but they knew about her. They knew that her first name was Coral, that she lived in Ithaca, N. Y., was very fat, had two little old white poodles, couldn’t stand the heat, had fallen arches, and knew how to make the richest fruitcake in the United States.
One day Mrs. Theobald sneezed as she was going downstairs, lost her footing, fell and broke three ribs. The doctor and the neighbors begged her to go to a hospital. But no, she would not go and leave her poodles to the care of another.
“My cousin, Mrs. Evangeline Cuthbert-Stanley, will be delighted to look after me for a week or two,” declared Mrs. Theobald. “I will telegraph her.”
Mrs. Evangeline Cuthbert-Stanley, believe it or not, was Cuffy’s real name, and when the telegram came she was far from delighted.
“Why, I can’t just go and leave you children by yourselves,” she clucked. “Here Mr. Melendy’s down in Washington for the Lord knows how long.”
“Willy’s here,” Mona said. “He wouldn’t let anything happen to us. And there are the dogs, and after all I’m past fifteen.”
“It’s not anything happening to you that I’m worried about,” sniffed Cuffy. “I’m only thinking of the state the house’ll get into with me gone. Rush will step out of his clothes every night, leave them on the floor, and step into clean ones every morning till they’re all gone and he has to go without any. Randy will leave paint water around in glasses till they make rings on the furniture, or someone drinks one of ’em by accident and dies of paint poisoning. Mona will forget to make her bed day in and day out till I get home. She’ll get talcum powder into the rug, and her shoes will collect all over the house. She’s always taking them off and going barefoot nowadays. Shoes on the mantelpiece, windowsill, piano, everywhere. I know her. And nobody will wash the dishes!”
“What will Oliver do?” asked Randy, who was listening with grave interest.
“Oh, Oliver. Well, if you were all like Oliver! He’s just as tidy as a little cat, aren’t you, my lamb? Picked up his toys good as gold, ever since he was a baby. But I know what he will do, though. He’ll disappear at bedtime meek and quiet as can be. Just disappear. And you’ll never be able to track him down till he’s good and ready, hours later. Next morning he’ll have circles under his eyes from lack of sleep—oh, no, I can’t leave you alone—”
“Yes, you can, Cuffy, yes, you can,” they told her. “On our honor, we’ll be tidier than we ever were before. We’ll make Oliver go to bed at half past seven if we have to tie him in.”
Almost persuaded but still reluctant, Cuffy went to pack her suitcase, and Rush, before she could relent, flew to the telephone to send her wire to Mrs. Theobald. He loved Cuffy, they all did, but wouldn’t it be delicious to savor absolute freedom from authority for a while?
“But what about food?” moaned Cuffy suddenly, sitting down on her bed, with her best shoes in her hands. “Oh, I can’t go. Left to yourselves you’ll eat nothing but liverwurst and baloney, and jelly sandwiches and bought doughnuts and cheese. Oh, no, I can’t—”
“Cuffy,” said Mona, taking a shoe out of Cuffy’s hand and putting it firmly on her foot. “We will drink a gallon of milk a day. We’ll eat carrots for breakfast. We’ll eat spinach and oatmeal till it comes out of our ears. We’ll be good as angels. We honestly, honestly will!”
“Well, all right,” said Cuffy unhappily. “But if Coral Theobald had any sense she’d of chloroformed them blame poodles long ago. Don’t see how she broke her ribs anyway. All padded in fat like that—”
“Now, Cuffy, be charitable. You know you like her, she’s a very fine woman,” said Rush, sitting on her suitcase and snapping it shut with a click of finality. “This will be a nice vacation for you.”
“Vacation, my eye,” retorted Cuffy, banging on her hat as though she were slapping the lid onto a kettle. “You don’t know Coral, poor soul. And you don’t know them poodles. But I’ll be back before the week is up, you mark my words.”
Willy had harnessed Lorna Doone to the surrey and driven around to the front door. Rush carried Cuffy’s suitcase, Randy her handbag (her satchel, Cuffy called it), and Mona had her coat. Oliver brought up the rear with three graham crackers and a slice of cake done up in a piece of paper towel, because “She might get hungry on the train.” It was his own idea.
“Don’t forget to keep the screen doors closed,” commanded Cuffy, one foot on the carriage step. “If it storms don’t forget to put a pan under that leak in the Office. Mona, you remember to give Oliver his vitamin B, and, Rush, you’re to lock all the doors every single night! Don’t change the beds till Friday. The doctor’s telephone number is hanging by the hall phone. Oh, dear, there’s so many things that I don’t think I ought—” Cuffy took her foot down from the step.
But between them Rush and Mona simply boosted her into the surrey.
“We’ll be all right,” they assured her. “You go on and don’t worry. Make your cousin Coral give you a fruitcake to bring home.”
Still looking anxious and rebellious, Cuffy was driven away from her brood.
“Go to bed on time!” they heard her calling from far down the drive. “Call me long-distance if anything goes wrong. Don’t forget to feed the dogs!”
As if any of them would forget that!
They went back into the house feeling reckless and independent. Rush went galloping up the stairs three at a time, and in a few minutes they could hear him banging out the Revolutionary Etude fortissimo, with the sustaining pedal down. What a noise! Mona took her shoes off and put them on the hall table.
“I think I’ll make a pie,” she said, stretching her bare toes luxuriously. She walked over to the mirror and began fussing with her hair. “And I think I’ll wear my hair up all the time Cuffy’s gone.”
“Okay, and I’ll do a portrait of you,” said Randy. “I’ll make it big this time, life size almost. I’ll make you wearing a long dress and jewelry, and I’ll call it ‘Reverie,’ or ‘Youth,’ or something like that.” All the time she was talking Randy was moving the living-room furniture. Pushing tables and chairs against the wall, and rolling up small rugs.
“What are you doing, for heaven’s sake?”
“Making more space. I want to practice my arabesques here where I can look in the mirror. Cuffy never lets me.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t see why not. As long as you move it all back again.”
As for Oliver, he was busily sliding down the banisters over and over again. Cuffy didn’t like him to because there was no newel post at the bottom, and she was always afraid he would fly off the end and crack his spine. Oliver knew he never would, but was kind enough to humor her. However, now that she was gone it seemed too good a chance to waste. Down he went, wind whistling in his ears, stopping just short of the end, and then up he went again, one sturdy foot after the other. He was singing to himself. He sang two lines of a song.
“Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,
And we’ll all stay free-ee.”
These two lines he sang over and over, without amplification and without much tune, but he enjoyed it, and while he was singing and climbing upstairs he was planning not to weed his garden at all until the day before Cuffy came back. He was planning not to take any baths until the night before she came back. He was planning to fish all day, taking his lunch with him, and no nonsense about resting afterward.
“Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,
And we’ll all stay FREE!”
Mona’s pie was a terrible failure. Randy found her almost in tears over the dough.
“Every time I try to roll it out the darn stuff just follows the rolling pin and curls up around it like a snake. I can’t make it lie down!”
“Cuffy puts flour on the rolling pin.” Randy, hot and panting from a half hour of arabesques, sank into a kitchen chair.
“Oh.” There was silence for a minute.
“But now look at it, will you. It won’t stretch. It just goes into holes.”
“Put it on anyway, and maybe we can patch it.”
By the time they’d patched it, the pie (lumpy with rhubarb) looked like a badly built igloo.
“But I bet it will taste delicious,” said Randy warmly. And it probably would have, too, if Mona had remembered to put in the sugar.
Willy Sloper had supper with them. As a special treat they had it out on the lawn among the mosquitoes, because it was so hot; and Mona made iced coffee. “Just this once,” she said. “I don’t think Cuffy’d mind, do you?”
“Maybe she wouldn’t,” Randy agreed doubtfully. But Rush only winked at them over his glass, and prudently said nothing.
When they had tasted the pie, and each according to his manners and temperament repudiated it (Oliver leapt to his feet at the first bite as if he’d been stung, uttering howls of anguish), Willy saved the day by driving them all to Carthage in the surrey, and buying ice-cream cones. When they got back it was only half an hour after Oliver’s bedtime, and he went to his room as docile as a lamb.
By nine o’clock it was so hot that Rush suggested a swim before they went to bed.
“We shouldn’t,” Mona said. “Cuffy wouldn’t like it.” But her tone had no conviction.
It was almost dark, and there were no stars. The sky glared suddenly with heat lightning, and there was a trembling of thunder in the air. Dead still it was, not a breath anywhere. They could hear a whippoorwill someplace in the woods.
“It sounds more like a machine than a bird,” Rush said. “Sometimes it almost runs down when it’s been going on for a long time. It begins stuttering: ‘Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, whip-ip-ip-ip-oor-will, whip-ip-ip.’”
The water in the pool was warm. They basked in it up to their chins, like crocodiles. Mosquitoes whined along the surface and they splashed them away. It was too late in the summer for fireflies, but now and then a pale moth, almost luminous, hovered just above their heads.
Something, the iced coffee perhaps, or the heat, kept Rush awake for a long time that night; and even when he began to doze he had restless dreams. He kept seeing Oren Meeker, and the harsh faces of the men at the still. He imagined himself running through a midnight forest with these men in pursuit. Among the trees sat giant whippoorwills with phosphorescent eyes, and their calling was so loud that it was terrifying. Only what they were calling was, “Meeker’s still! Meeker’s still! Meeker’s still!”
He kept running and running, more and more frightened, and then suddenly the woods split asunder and he was face to face with a terrible animal, a sort of fiery hippopotamus, and it was making a hideous, braying noise.
Rush opened his eyes. The dream vanished but the noise remained. He sat up in bed, heart knocking, and listened. It was, yes, of course—it was the Carthage fire siren.
Rush tumbled down the stairs to the telephone, hardly knowing what he was doing. He took down the receiver and waited for the night operator’s sleepy question, “Number, please?”
“Hello, Miss Clisbee, where’s the fire?” Rush said.
“Over to Meeker’s farm.”
“Meeker’s! Is it bad?”
“Pretty bad, I guess. They’ve even sent for the outfit over to Eldred.”
“Gee.” Rush hung up. An instant later he picked up the receiver again. “Thanks,” he said into the mouthpiece.
Randy hated waking up before she was ready to. “Go ’way!” she grumbled, as Rush shook her shoulder. “Leave me ’lone!”
“Randy! Wake up! Meeker’s farm’s on fire!”
“Meeker’s farm? Is it? How do you know?”
“Miss Clisbee told me. I’m going over, I want to see if Mark’s okay. Don’t let on to Mona if she wakes up.”
“But I’m coming too!”
“No, sir, you’re not. This isn’t for girls.”
“Yes, sir, I am.” Randy leaped out of bed. “Mark’s my friend just as much as yours.”
“Well, then, hurry!” Rush gave up in exasperation. “I’ll get our bikes out of the garage. I’m going to wake Willy up too.”
Lucky it’s hot, Randy was thinking. I don’t have to waste much time on dressing. She stripped off her pajamas, put on her playsuit and sandals, and was ready to go. Down the stairs she flew on tiptoe. It was pitch-dark, but a light might waken Mona.
Outside the night was full of a strange clamor; braying fire siren, the windy bells of the engines, the rumbling thunder. The wind had sprung up while she was sleeping. It was vast and warm, and she felt that it was almost visible: a billowing, formless tide like clouds, or heavy smoke. She ran toward the garage, and bumped into Rush.
“Willy’s not here,” he whispered. “Left a light burning, and his radio on as usual.”
“But where—?”
“To the fire probably. His bike’s gone too. Here’s yours. Does the headlight work? Good, so does mine. Let’s get going.”
It was spooky but exciting coasting along in the dark behind Rush. The warm, enormous wind fanned Randy’s face and arms; the woods murmured like an ocean, and Randy did not dare to look at them. She knew how huge and powerful they became at night. Rush was too far ahead. She rang the bell on her handlebars to give herself courage, but instead it frightened her almost to death.
“What time is it, Rush?” she called tremulously.
“It’s late. After one o’clock.”
“Gosh,” Randy said.
They left their bikes in the weeds where Meeker’s road turned off; Rush’s flashlight had gone dead, but they didn’t need it after all. The sky was bright with the ominous light of fire. Now and then the lightning came: a flash of icy blue above the burning gold and crimson.
As they ran panting along the uneven ruts they stumbled and tripped. The tall weeds brushed against them, and reaching briars scratched their legs. Randy fell headlong over a root, and Rush pulled her up again before she had time to find out whether or not she was hurt. The road seemed endless. Rush felt as though he were still running in his nightmare.
Once there was a burst of light and noise behind them. Rush pulled Randy into the milkweed at the roadside. The Eldred fire engine went snorting past them, all brass, bells, red paint, and lights. It left behind it a hot smell of gasoline, and a sudden quiet.
“Listen!” said Randy.
Her eyes opened wide with horror, for now they could hear the fire itself: a rich, jovial, mighty crackling.
“Oh, Mark! Oh, Mark! Oh, Mark!” moaned Randy, beginning to cry.
“Shut up, Ran, he’ll be all right. You’ll see.” Rush was pale, all the same, and he began running faster yet.
Suddenly they came out of the woods; and stopped dead in their tracks.
The farmhouse was now a raging bonfire. Still through the flames they could see the shape of it, the dark hollows of its doors and windows with smoke and fire coming out. The flames drove upward from the walls and roof, high, high, in a great, dazzling, lifting mane. The voluminous smoke billowed higher still in genii shapes, red-brown against the blue-black sky, and shot through with flying sparks like fiery bees. Beside the house the dead pine was ablaze, every branch outlined in burning veins of light.
Down in the hollow stood the two fire engines and a handful of cars. Firemen were scurrying about untangling hoses, and from the well to the house stretched a long line of men and boys passing pails of water from hand to hand: a bucket brigade. On the outskirts stood the onlookers: small knots of women, old men, and children, their faces white in the firelight, their fascinated eyes glittering with reflected flames. Somebody had tied the two Meeker dogs to a fence, and there they stood barking incessantly, first one, then the other, then both together.
“Where’s Mark? I don’t see Mark,” Randy kept saying.
“He’s there someplace. Stop asking me that. He’s bound to be someplace. Come on down and see.”
They passed three old men and heard a snatch of conversation.
“Hope they don’t pump the well dry with them hoses.”
“Well, they say they got some kind of chemical to spray on too.”
“Hope they have aplenty. Looks like it’d take more’n a Flit gunful.”
“There’s Mark!” cried Rush.
And there he was, coming out of the barn between the team of work horses, a hand on each bridle, light shining on his dazed face. Randy never forgot the way he looked then, so thin and small between the great bony horses.
“Oh, Mark, are you all right?” she cried, running up to him and forgetting the deep distrust she felt for all horses except Lorna Doone.
“Why, h’lo. Yes, I’m okay.”
“Anything we can do, Mark?”
“I guess maybe you could help bring out the cows, Rush. They’re afraid if the wind don’t change the barn might catch.”
“How did it start?”
“I dunno. I was asleep. The dogs woke me up barking, then I smelt smoke and when I opened my door the stairs was on fire. I looked right into it like a furnace and then I closed the door, and next thing I knew I was out the window and halfway down that ol’ dead pine, the one that’s on fire now. It was a good ol’ tree.”
They all looked at the blazing tree.
“Then I heard someone calling my name. It was Herb Joyner; he saw the light from his bedroom window and came arunning in his pajamas right down the valley, and across the oat stubble in the back meadow. Barefoot, too—it must have hurt. He’d put in the call to Carthage before he left—”
“But—but Oren?”
“I dunno where he is. He went out right after milking. I hollered his name all the way down the tree … Guess he’s still out.” Mark looked at Rush. “You know. Sometimes he doesn’t come home till morning.”
“I’ll start getting out the cows,” Rush said.
“So will I,” said Randy, and followed him into the barn.
The darkness smelled warm and healthy. It was full of deep, soft breathing and the rustle of hay. Randy stepped timidly up to the first cow. In the shadow it looked big as a mastodon, and its huge, still eyes stared at her out of its light face. Gee whiz, Randy thought, they say animals always know when you’re scared of them. And I’m scared …
“Come on, bossy,” she said aloud in a sweet, false voice.
The cow came out with a heavy dignified tread and sighed a great sigh that smelled of hay. Randy put up her hand and found the bridle. She stepped forward and the cow stepped with her, mild and docile. Randy felt love in her heart for the creature. Beautiful, trustful, obedient animal. I must tell Father we should have a cow, she said to herself, and to the cow she said, “Don’t be frightened, don’t be scared. We’d never let anything hurt you.”
“Randy Melendy!” said an outraged voice. “What the dickens you doin’ down here? I thought you was all safe asleep. What would your papa say?”
Randy looked up into Willy’s indignant face; he was soaking wet and there was a bucket in his hand.
“I’m herding cattle,” she said.
“Well, isn’t that nice! I suppose you brought the whole family along, too?”
“No, just Rush.”
“Oh, just Rush. And where is he, may I ask? Operatin’ a hose or givin’ the fire chief pointers, no doubt.”
“Oh, now, Willy! Don’t be mad, we’ll be careful. Rush is herding cattle, too.”
Soon all the cows were out. They stood at the edge of the pasture dazed in the brilliant light. Now and then one of them would comment on it in a great questioning voice.
The fire blazed higher than ever, high and arched, like a fiery sickle curved over the barn.
“’F they don’t get both them pumps workin’ soon they’re gointa lose the barn sure. House is a goner already,” said the watchers.
But now a stream, two streams, were directed at the flames. The bucket brigade, too, still did its work nobly, sweating, spilling great puddles of water, but never resting.
Nothing helped much. The fire had gone too far. It had burst its bonds like the undisciplined giant that it was, roaring, and chuckling, and reaching, hungry for everything in sight.
“Roof’l cave in soon now,” someone said. “Better move back, sister, never can tell.”
Randy stepped back in a daze, unable to look away from that dazzling spectacle.
“Where’s Oren? Why the dickens don’t he come home?” said a man. And another replied in a startled voice, “Gee whilikens, you don’t suppose—! The kid said he was out all evenin’!”
“Naw, naw, he’d have smelled it sure.”
Randy felt scared. She ran to find Rush or Willy or Mark.
Rush and Mark were getting the hogs out of the sty, and at the sight of those hideous, rumbling creatures, Randy did not offer to help.
“Step back all,” commanded the fire chief suddenly. “Step back quick!”
And then there was a sound, a hollow, crashing, terrible sound. For an instant the flames swelled out sidewise, in a great mushroom of fire, and then curved upward again stronger than ever. The roof had caved in.
“Look, the barn’s caught,” yelled somebody, a woman, in a high, thin voice.
It was true. From the upper part of the barn the hay protruded: from the loft windows, and the door. It bulged out between the warped planks, squeezed through the cracks like oats sprouting through a rotten sack. Everywhere that the hay protruded little tongues of fire were licking.
“How fast it goes!” whispered Randy.
Mark was standing beside her, but he said nothing. He stood there staring at the destruction as though half asleep.
“Why don’t the dang rain rain?” growled a bystander. “Look at it, will you, holdin’ off just’s long’s it kin!”
After a long while the fires began to subside. A hundred other little fires seemed to leap and blaze in the puddles of water that had spilled from the buckets and leaked from the hoses. The Carthage firemen and the Eldred firemen worked like Trojans. They fought not only the fire but the wind, which, vast and dry, was in league with the fire, coaxing it on, fanning it high, carrying sparks toward the strawstacks, the dry meadows.
At four o’clock the battle was almost over but no one felt victorious, for the house was gone. Nothing remained of it but smoldering ashes and a charcoal skeleton. The barn fared little better, though it still carried the travesty of a roof.
The onlookers began to leave in tired groups. They felt let down, saddened at the outcome of the fire. There was a commotion of rattletrap cars; metal doors slammed, voices called, the Meeker dogs commenced to bark again. Above and beyond these sounds could be heard the tireless chopping and chopping of firemen’s hatchets. Flashlights played about the wreckage.
The fire chief was talking to Willy Sloper and presently Willy came over to the children.
“Come on, kids,” he said. “Show’s over.”
“But, Mark—” Randy said.
“Mark’s comin’ too. C’mon, Mark.”
“Gee, thanks, but I can’t. Oren wouldn’t like to come home and find all this and me not here.”
“You come on. I’ll fix it with Oren. It’s late. You know how late it is? Past four o’clock. Every rooster in the state will commence hollerin’ in about ten minutes.”
Mark argued no longer. Dog-tired, he followed Willy. Rush walked beside him, wide awake and full of thoughts; but Randy pitched and stumbled against him, suddenly half asleep. Rush put his arm through hers to guide her.
“My nose smells of smoke,” Randy muttered.
“Your nose smells smoke, you mean.”
“No, smells of it. I think it’s going to forever. My hair too.”
The whole valley had a scorched smell, in fact. Now and then there was a rift in the odor, and the large wind came through, carrying the undisturbed fragrance of night woods.
The lightning flared suddenly. For an instant Randy could see all things in sharp detail: Willy’s old scuffed heels, the clover pressed flat in his footprint, the moth hovering over the wheel rut. Then darkness again and renewed thunder.
Also a drop of rain.
“There it comes,” said Willy disgustedly. “Just missed the bus by a couple of hours. How do you like that!”
They were too weary even to resent it. By the time they came to the mailbox and picked up the bikes the rain was pelting down. They did not dare ride in all the wetness and confusion. Willy steered Randy’s bike and Rush his own. They ran along the road, wet to the skin, slipping on loose stones, stumbling into ditches. Randy began to cry from strain and exhaustion, but nobody knew it. She swallowed her sobs quietly and the tears on her face might have been rain water. She would have died rather than let Rush know how she felt. “I told you so” is one of the horridest phrases in the English language.
“Mark can sleep in my room,” Rush said.
“No, he can sleep in the cupola,” Randy said. “That’s the nicest place, and he once said he’d like to. And the bed’s made up.”
“Whatcha snifflin’ about? Cold?” inquired Willy anxiously.
“I guess so.”
“We’ll be home in a jiffy. Better get right to bed, and take a hot-water bag with you.”
“Listen to Grandmother Sloper,” jeered Rush.
“I wish Cuffy was here,” Randy said, with a gulp which she turned into a queer sounding sneeze.
“You and me both,” agreed Willy unhappily.
Rush and Mark reached the driveway first. They walked with their heads bowed down against the rain and the bicycle between them.
“Do you think Oren was—at that place?”
“The still? Must’ve been. Sometimes he don’t come home at all.” Mark plowed on silently. Then Rush could see his pale face turned toward him. “What gets me is that he didn’t hear the racket even up where he was.”
“The wind was in the wrong direction, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s right. Yes, it was. But even so—”
“Oh, well, don’t worry about it. He’ll know soon enough. Probably knows now.”
That night Mark got his wish. He slept in the cupola. The rain beat on the little metal roof. It spattered against the four windows, and ran down in a long stream from the spout. The gutters tinkled and hummed. The thunder sounded as if it had been cut up in squares. It tumbled down the sky like giant blocks tumbling downstairs. Mark snarled himself into his favorite sleeping position and felt as if he had come home at last. The fire, the violence of the last few hours, the probable reactions of Oren, were thoughts too dreadful to contemplate now. A safety door in his brain locked itself against them, and soon he was asleep.
Mona couldn’t understand why nobody but Oliver woke up the next morning. She had already started breakfast when Willy came in and told her what had happened.
“I think it’s mean,” complained Mona bitterly. “Somebody might have wakened me and Oliver. We like excitement too. And here the very first exciting thing all summer happens in the middle of the night and we sleep through it like—like hibernating bears!”
She was really very cross, and offered Willy a cup of cocoa as if she were offering him poison. He did look battered and smoke smudged and worn out, she noticed.
“Don’t wake the kids up,” Willy advised. “They had a hard night. I hope Mark sleeps all day. The poor kid’s in for a shock, I’m afraid.”
“Why?” said Mona, saucepan in mid-air. “Willy?”
“Oren never did come home.”
“What do you mean?”
“They think maybe he was in the house.”
“In the house! Oh, Willy!”
“Yep. I went back there soon’s I brought ’em all home. Been there ever since; Herb Joyner and me milked. Ain’t never milked before and it’s quite a chore. Real tricky.”
“Willy, you deserve some sort of medal. Have you had any sleep at all?”
“Nope, but I’ll get it tonight. I ain’t sleepy now. Anyways, like I said, Oren ain’t showed up yet. I figure I ought to stick around over to Meeker’s. Herb and me’ll do what’s necessary about the farm. Tell Mark that if he wakes up. Hope he don’t wake up all day.”
“I’ll look after him, Willy,” Mona said, her crossness forgotten.
It was two days before they found out for certain that Oren had been in the house all the time. The origin of the fire remained a mystery that was only guessed at. It was guessed at a great deal. Some people thought the fire had been set by one of Oren’s enemies, for he had many. A few illogical ones insisted that the house had been struck by lightning, but nobody paid any attention to them. Until they found that he had carried no insurance, some others believed that Oren had set the fire himself and then been trapped.
There was no one to tell them the answer.
Who but the dogs had seen him, the night of the fire, coming unsteadily down the hill from the woods; fumbling at the catch of the rusty screen door, and once inside groping for the lamp and muttering? In all that dark storm-clouded valley, who was there to see the windows flower into light, and Oren sitting at the kitchen table, his drowsy head between his hands?
And hours later not even the dogs (since they were shut outside) were there to see the lamp flame burning too high in its cracked glass flue, or to smell the scorching pages of the kitchen calendar hung above it, or to hear the wild, ever-strengthening crackle of fire set free.
Nobody saw, nobody heard. Not even Oren, who, head on the table, and jug upset beside his hand, was sleeping the deepest sleep of his life.