Breathing hard, Butch banged on the Skarsvolds’ front door. Holding a cell phone to his ear, he yelled for the 911 dispatcher to send the police and fire truck right away. He gave the address, told them his name, then cut the line. “Fire!” he shouted, continuing to bang on the door. “Wake the hell up in there. Fire. Fire!”
The door creaked open. Lena, looking bleary eyed and disoriented, rolled her wheelchair back so he could come in. “What … what’s going on? It’s the middle of the night.” She spoke with a kind of forced precision; the way drunks did when they were trashed and trying not to show it.
“Your garage. It’s burning. I called 911. Is Frank here? I saw his truck outside. The wind’s picked up. We gotta make sure none of the flying debris lands on your house.” Behind Lena, Eleanor descended the stairs with slow, measured steps. Frank appeared a few seconds later, rushing into the living room, his protruding stomach covered by a white T-shirt with so many holes it almost didn’t qualify as clothing.
“What the hell?” demanded Frank.
“The garage, it’s on fire,” said Butch. “Come on. We gotta get out there.”
“You called the police?” asked Eleanor, her eyes glassy with shock.
“Mom, let me handle this,” said Frank. Turning to Butch, he said, “I’ll get my coat and find some shoes and meet you in the backyard.”
“You own an extension ladder?”
“Yeah,” said Frank. “It’s in the garage.”
Butch noticed that the new renter he’d met earlier had also come down the stairs. Hurrying back out to the porch, he ran around the side of the house, finding that the fire had nearly doubled in size while he’d been gone. Not knowing what else to do, he rushed from one piece of burning debris to another, stomping each out. Frank joined him, huffing and puffing so hard Butch was afraid he was going to have a heart attack. They both choked on the thick black smoke, waving it away from their faces.
As the fire truck arrived, sirens blaring, Butch began to see neighbors emerge from their houses to see what was going on. Several people darted across the street to where he was standing, among them, the block captain, Rich Novak.
“Jeez,” said Novak. “That garage is so old, I’ll bet it was tinder dry.”
Butch felt another presence move up next to him. It was the new renter. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t remember your name.”
“Jane.”
“Right.”
“Did you see who set it?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the flames.
“Probably the same kids who spray painted the garage doors.”
“Had to be,” said Frank. He stepped between Jane and Butch. “There was nothing in there that would combust on its own.”
“My money’s on gasoline,” said one of the neighbors, an old guy in a gray bathrobe and pajamas. “An old-fashioned Molotov cocktail.”
The skin on Butch’s face had grown hot and raw. Two police cruisers eventually pulled up and parked in the middle of the side street, closing it off to traffic. When Butch turned back to the house, he saw Eleanor framed in the kitchen window, watching. She did that a lot. Quiet watching. Unlike her sister, Lena, who tended to insert herself and her opinions loudly into every conversation, Eleanor was more measured, less sure of herself—the kind of woman, Butch suspected, who looked carefully before she leapt.
“I wonder if the arson investigators will ever figure out who set it,” said Novak.
Butch understood the deeply human pull toward fire-setting. The flames were mesmerizing, a glowing monster that owed its life to a single spark. A single intentional spark, Butch thought to himself. The spark itself was simple physics. No moral goal or purpose needed. The intention, however, was where the human element entered the equation. And the human element, as Butch knew so well, was a wildcard, the place where the uncertain and the unpredictable slipped in and took over the story. Like Eleanor, who sat in front of the kitchen window, a look of deep concern on her face, all Butch could do was wait and watch.