I ran into the hallway and down the flight of stairs, grabbing the curvature of the wood at the base of the banister and swinging myself toward the kitchen, somehow intuitively aware that the fire was there. Rather than going from the hallway directly into the kitchen, I jerked the dining room door open, then pushed through the swinging door with such force, I slid on the old Formica floor and fell onto my backside. The heat of the flames, which by this time were engulfing the pantry—an L-shaped room that ran along the backside of the house off from the kitchen—caused me to forget the initial pain from the fall. Smoke billowed into the room from the open door between the two rooms, and I immediately began to cough. Covering my eyes with one arm, I crawled toward the stove, where the fire extinguisher I’d bought stood like a prepared soldier.
I’m not sure why I thought to do it; I pulled myself up at the counter, twisted the sink’s cold-water knob, then pulled the coffee carafe from the cup holder of the Rubbermaid dish drainer. I filled it with water, poured the icy water over myself, soaking my pajamas—my hands shaking all the while, sloshing the water to a puddle at my feet—and grabbed the extinguisher. Having never used one before, I wasn’t completely sure how, but I told myself I’d seen it done in enough movies and television shows. I pulled the pin, stumbled toward the pantry door, then aimed the nozzle toward the floor, to the base of the flames.
As they began to diminish, I moved in closer, conscious of the scorching heat before me and the cotton material plastered to my skin. At some point I was aware of sirens blaring in the distance and then of neighbors—those people who come in your hour of need—behind me, beside me, some with their extinguishers, a few with heavy blankets for beating out the last of the embers. I began coughing again, and then Aunt Mae-Jo’s arms were around me, her hands gripping the tops of my arms, pulling me out the back of the house, pushing me down to the floor of the porch, and then drawing water from the well.
“Drink this, honey.” She handed me the tin dipper. She was dressed in a blue flannel gown and an opened terry cloth robe.
I drank it like an old dog in from the hunt, then looked up at her. “Why? Why?”
She took the dipper from me, filled it again from the old bucket, and handed it back. “Drink some more. Why what, honey?”
“Why would someone do this?”
Aunt Mae-Jo squatted down beside me. “What are you talking about, Jo-Lynn?”
I finished off the water before I answered, “Aunt Mae-Jo. Someone did this. I saw them. Three men.” I coughed again. I coughed so hard I lost my breath, then gained my composure. “My eyes feel like they’re on fire.”
Aunt Mae-Jo stood, pulled a handkerchief out of her robe pocket, dipped it into the bucket of water, and brought it to me. “Use this. I’ll go inside right quick and get your Uncle Bob. You’ll want to tell him what you just told me. Don’t move, now.”
Telling Uncle Bob was the easy part. I repeated it to the sheriff from Raymore—Larry Ganksy, tall and boyishly handsome in what I thought to be his early thirties—who took meticulous notes and said “Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm” a lot. However, repeating it to Mother and Daddy, my brother Stephen, and everyone else that came by between the dark hours of Sunday night and the light of Monday was exhausting.
I asked Daddy to call Evan—who had repeatedly left messages to call him back—and give him the news. “I’m just too tired for any confrontations,” I said.
Though Mother frowned at my request, Daddy agreed to make the call on my behalf.
I didn’t think to wonder how my neighbors gained entry into the house to help put out the fire until much later in the night, after I’d crawled between the warm covers of a bed in Aunt Mae-Jo and Uncle Bob’s house. By then I’d been seen by paramedics from Raymore, had my wounds bandaged, and was only partially lucid, what with having been given a mild sedative. But I knew enough to know I’d not given anyone entry.
Monday morning, over plates of fried eggs, grits, sausage, and toast I asked Uncle Bob, “How did everyone get into the house? One second I was fighting the fire alone and the next thing I knew, half the town was there.”
Uncle Bob grinned at me. “You don’t really think those old locks will hold in an emergency, do you?”
I frowned. “I’ll get Mr. Valentine to put dead bolts on first thing.”
Doris called my cell phone early the next morning, before I left for the big house. She was nearly hysterical. I told her if she breathed one word to Aunt Stella, I’d quit this job before it got started.
The sheriff pulled into the driveway at the big house just as I arrived. I’d made the walk easily from Bob and Mae-Jo’s and had just cornered the large oak that shielded the big house from the highway when I saw the squad car bouncing over the ruts and then come to a stop. I waved to him as he stepped out of the car. He nodded, slipped an army green baseball cap with a gold sheriff’s star logo in the center on to his head. “I see I timed my arrival perfectly,” he said and smiled.
“Would you like some coffee? We can step over to the store. Uncle Bob left a half hour ago so I imagine there’s hot coffee brewing there.”
He shook his head. “I’ll only be here a minute. Now that you’ve had some sleep, do you remember anything about the men you saw? Anything at all?”
“No. I’m sorry, but no. I couldn’t see their faces.”
“Build?”
“They were slender. Wore dark clothes.” I paused. “I guess you can say they moved like young men . . . not older men.” “I can’t say,” he said. “I wasn’t there.”
“That’s all I know.” I shrugged. “Sorry.”
Valentine Bach came by midmorning, surveyed the damage, and said, “Pretty damaged, but we can fix it.”
“Mr. Valentine, first things first. I want dead bolts on every outside door before nightfall. Apparently, the locks on these doors are worth diddly-squat.”
Valentine told me he’d get right on it. His great-grandson had been his chaperone this time. As always, the young man kept his eyes locked on me the entire time I spoke with Valentine, leaving me feeling as though I were still wearing the water-soaked pajamas now in the trash. Finally, when Valentine told him they’d need to go into Raymore to get the supplies, he looked from me to his great-grandfather and said, “Yes, sir, Pappy.”
They drove off just as Karol drove up. “I came as soon as I heard,” she said, slamming the car door shut. “It was all everyone was talking about in the hotel this morning.”
“You’re kidding me.”
She grinned wide. “Nope. I have never seen small towns quite like these two. It’s like they’re sisters or something. Everyone knows everyone.” She reached for my left hand then gently pulled back my oversized sweater sleeve. I wore a short-sleeved shirt because of the burns, because I had to apply ointment and change the bandages so often. Karol now looked at the patching of four-by-four gauze squares against the swollen and tender flesh. “Ouch.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks. Only hurts when I think about it.”
“So try not to think about it.”
I nodded. “Let’s go inside.”
After we’d taken tentative steps into the kitchen and peered around the damage, Karol looked at me. “You really think this was on purpose?”
I nodded. “I was talking to my husband on the phone, and I heard a glass break. When I looked out the window I saw three men running through the back and then saw the fire.” I paused for a moment. “Two weeks ago, a few nights after Uncle Jim’s funeral, I saw them then too. Only then there were two, not three.”
“You told the sheriff ?”
I nodded but said nothing.
Karol walked over to the sink and peered out the window, then turned back to me. “Mark Michaels is arriving here later today with someone from the company he’s considering for the town’s development. Oh, and get this: even Mark knew about it.”
“About what?”
“The fire.”
“Mark Michaels knew about the fire?”
“I don’t know how . . . but he did.”