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Bonnie and I are in the three-seasons room drinking iced tea and enjoying the warm breeze when we see the big moving truck pull in front of the white Cape Cod across the street. It’s been empty since Kip and Ellie Stodge moved down to Florida six months ago, and Bonnie’s been missing her afternoon coffee with Ellie ever since. A couple of minutes later this big black Mercedes—one of the classic boxy ones from the 70s, but in pristine shape—pulls into the driveway, and out comes a man big enough to wrestle a bear. He’s six-foot-six on the lowball, with shaggy red-orange hair and a deep tan, in white pants, two-tone white and brown wingtips, a red paisley shirt a size too big. He’s got a wide-brimmed white fedora with a red band covering his face, and dark square glasses over his eyes.
“Well, would you look at that?” I say to Bonnie after a long sweet sip of tea. “Don’t see a guy like that around here every day.”
“Like what?” she says without looking at me, like I’ve already said the wrong thing.
Only one way to find out. “Looks a little light in the loafers,” I say.
She sips her tea, takes her time answering. “Like you’d know.” Bonnie can be a little uptight, and since Ellie moved, she’s gotten worse.
“I got the gaydar,” I tell her. That’s what our granddaughter Elsie calls it.
Bonnie sighs. “Sure you do.”
We watch for a minute with the plastic binoculars Bonnie got at an outdoor concert last spring as the big guy opens the door and gives some directions to the movers, then goes and fishes a pet taxi out of the sedan. Something that looks like a furry snake pokes its head out.
“What the hell was that?” I say, and hand the binoculars to Bonnie.
“I don’t know,” she says. “A ferret, I guess. People have them.” She looks for a little while longer, then puts the glasses down. “We should introduce ourselves,” she says. “Welcome him to the neighborhood.”
“At least wait ‘til he’s settled in,” I say, but she’s not listening.
The movers haul in a few boxes and a lime-green couch and loveseat, but mostly it’s big contraptions, stainless steel and copper boxes covered over with sheets.
“Think I’ll bake him some blueberry crumble,” she says. Then, a flash of bleach-blonde hair and she’s gone.
A little later, when the movers are gone and the house smells like blueberries and brown sugar, she wraps the crumble up in a brown wax-paper box with a little red ribbon on it. “Let’s go be neighborly,” she says.
So we go.
The name on the mailbox has already been covered over with fresh decals and reads “John J. Johnson.” Sounds like a porn star.
“This is an awfully big house for just one person,” she says as I ring the doorbell. “Did you see anybody else come in?”
It does seem big for one man, but it sits right on a little lake and there’s a big deck out back that’s perfect for looking out at the water. I’m about to say no and reiterate my working theory that he’s gay, when the front door opens. I have to crane my neck just to look at his face. He’s still got the sunglasses on.
“Hello?” he says, in a soft lilty voice that makes my skin crawl.
Bonnie takes the lead. “I’m Bonnie Peet, and this...” she points the box toward me, “is my husband Charlie. We live across the street, and we wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood.” She hands him the wax paper box. “It’s blueberry crumble. My specialty.”
He gives us a big smile, and it’s terrifying. “Oh, thank you,” he says. “Won’t you come in? I can’t offer much, but my teapot’s unpacked.”
He opens the door and Bonnie ushers me in. The furniture’s all lime-green leather, and there are stacks of boxes everywhere, most unopened. The furry white thing, a cross between a cat and a snake, comes running out from under the couch and winds its way between our ankles. It looks about to crawl up my pant leg, but when he snaps his fingers it comes to him like a dog and sits at his feet.
“Is that a ferret?” Bonnie asks. “I’ve never seen one like that before.”
“Ermine, actually,” he says. “Quite tame, if you take the time. His name’s Copernicus.”
“He’s cute,” Bonnie coos in its direction. The thing sniffs the air like it’s sizing her up for lunch.
Johnson makes tea, and it’s not bad, even though I’m a coffee man myself.
Bonnie asks him what he does.
“Retired machinist,” he says. “Moved here from Indiana.”
“So what’s the allure of this little hamlet?” Bonnie asks.
He leans back, smiles, and just for a second his square glasses tilt down over the bridge of his nose and I get a good long look at his face, those deep-set, pale blue eyes staring right at me. “I’m a bit of a weather buff,” he says. “I’d heard the summer storms out here are spectacular.”
“We get some beauties here,” I say, because if I don’t speak up, I’ll be completely shut out of the conversation. “Last spring we had a storm that knocked Nola and Fred Beasley’s big birch tree down, fell right through the roof.”
He wrings his hands together. “Splendid.” Then he notices his glasses have fallen down his nose and pushes them back up. “Light-sensitive,” he explains. “Macular degeneration.”
I’ve seen that face before, somewhere.
We stay there and talk for a while. He seems to like Bonnie’s stories about the neighborhood, which Bonnie’s eager to provide. Then I tell him about the time my brother got his left nipple bitten off by a raccoon out by the lake. At first he just stares at me, like I’ve told a bad joke, but in a second his upper body starts to quake and he laughs, a loud, high cackle that just about makes me shit my pants right there in his dining room.
Finally, Bonnie gets up. I usually let her decide when it’s time to go. “Well, welcome again, John,” she says. “Let us know if you need anything.”
He looks at us sort of thoughtful, like he’s not sure whether to trust us, then smiles. “You know, I could use some help picking out patio furniture once I’m done unpacking.”
She smiles back. “It’s a date.”
Ellie and John are a little late getting back from picking up Halloween decorations, and I’m about to crank up the grill and eat my chicken without her when his old Mercedes pulls up in his driveway. She stumbles out of his car with a tub full of petunias dangling from her hand, turns around and waves at him, then at me before she wobbles through the patio door. They do this at least once a week—if I didn’t know better, I’d worry.
“Have fun?” I ask, in that way that she knows I’m not happy. Not much light left for grilling now.
“I did,” she says. “I got a great haul.” Her breath smells like margaritas. She opens the bag and shows me all the cardboard skeletons and pumpkins I’ll just have to pack away on the first of November. I don’t really see the point, but it gives her something to do.
“What kept you?” I ask, though I don’t have to.
“We went to Champs’ afterwards,” she says. “I might’ve got a little tipsy.”
“Did John?” I ask. Light in the loafers or not, I don’t take well to anyone drunk-driving Bonnie around.
She shakes her head. “He doesn’t drink,” she says. “He just orders a club soda and we talk. Mostly I talk. He just listens.”
“Oh,” I say, putting the chicken on with a sizzle. “Dinner’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes. Best go dry out.”
“I have to pee,” she says, and goes inside.
I’m waiting to flip my chicken breasts when I look over and see John stepping off his porch with that ermine on a leash and a harness. The way it skitters around is just damned creepy. He’s wearing a black paisley shirt this time, with black and white wingtips—seems to have the same shirt in about ten different colors. He walks the thing around a little and heads down the block, when he passes Cora Welling walking her old shih-Tzu Jasper. For a minute Jasper and the ermine circle one another and touch noses, then the little white devil goes at Jasper like a snake striking. Little Jasper tenses up, then keels over. There’s some commotion, and I hear John tell her he’ll take her to the vet, and he puts the little weasel thing under his arm to put it inside. It’s agitated, and he’s petting it to calm it down.
And that’s when it hits me.
I yell for Bonnie to finish off the chicken because I’ve got to use the little boys’ room. I take her laptop in with me. I search a few different names because I’ve forgotten how it’s spelled, but after my third try, there he is, a picture of him on the cover of Newsweek from ’78, bald as a stone, wearing a high-collared black jacket and round wire-rimmed sunglasses, holding another ermine—this time a black one. Doctor Zaz, he’d called himself then. Built those weather-control devices, and once held all of New York City for ransom, threatening to level it with tornadoes if the government didn’t pay him some ungodly sum. It was quite the scare for a while—preempted the network shows for three days, and Dan Rather made his reports right outside Zaz’s big black tower in the Adirondacks. I’d been in the Navy back then, and I remember there was talk of sending some planes out there to blow his base all to hell. Didn’t need to, though—some masked fella stopped him, just like always. For an evil genius you’d think this guy would have a better win-loss record. When the feds locked him away everybody thought he’d just escape and do it all over again, but I guess that last time knocked the wind out of his sails.
The only other news story I can find is a two-year-old article from an Indiana newspaper, one that said he’d been paroled. In the interview, he said he’d found Jesus and was going to live a quiet life.
Then I hear Bonnie cursing up a storm and run out to find her trying to pick a charred chicken breast from between the grill grates.
The chicken’s crusty and black and tastes like propane. I wait until after to tell her about John.
“Hmmm,” she says, looking at the laptop. “Nope. I don’t think so. John’s thicker than that. And he has eyebrows. You’ve never been good with faces, dear.”
“So you think I’m crazy?”
She shrugs. “Paranoid, maybe. John would never do something like that.”
“If you say so,” I huff, and let it lie.
John sits next to us in church, but when he sings it’s in a deep baritone that doesn’t sound anything like his speaking voice. He buys Girl Scout cookies. He sits out there on his back patio feeding them to the furry little snake and lets the neighborhood kids toss stones off the little boat dock in his backyard. Jasper, the shih-Tzu, died at the end of October—heart failure, Cora said. I know it’s his fault, and the furry snake’s, but Cora’s already forgiven him. He goes to every city council meeting, and he and Bonnie volunteer at the homeless shelter every Tuesday.
And I don’t buy it. Not for one damn minute.
At night, I hear low whirring sounds coming from his garage. Not loud enough to disturb anyone, and he’s careful to stop by ten every night. I’ve tried to sneak across the street once or twice to get a peek, but the windows are covered over and I can’t see a damn thing. Bonnie says he’s probably building himself a little boat to tool around on the lake.
Finally, one day when Bonnie has him over for shandy, I ask him what he’s making in there.
He gives me this coy little smile and says, “Something I hope I’ll never have to use.”
My hands start shaking.
Bonnie notices I’m out of sorts after he’s gone home and asks why. I tell her.
She just rolls her eyes. “You think John’s building a doomsday device in his garage. Try repeating that and listen to how it sounds.”
I do. It sounds positively batshit. But it’s still true.
About a week later, Bonnie invites him for Thanksgiving dinner without asking me first. Lucky for us, he politely declines. “I’m meeting up with an old friend in Chicago,” he says.
“A lady friend?” Bonnie asks.
“An old flame.” John shrugs, pulls out an old picture of her from his wallet. The picture’s old, maybe from the mid-70s. It’s a woman—tall, muscled and put-together, in a red leather jumpsuit and a crimson scarf, long curly black hair falling over her shoulders. She’s got on a little too much eye shadow.
“She’s...interesting,” Bonnie says, and for a second she looks a little disappointed. “But very pretty.”
John smiles, takes a good long look at the woman. “She’s definitely unique. I was into edgier fare when I was young.”
Probably his hag, before Bonnie.
The day before Thanksgiving, when his Mercedes pulls out of the drive, Bonnie stands at the edge of the yard to wave goodbye. I take a deep breath and relax for once.
Christmas is a few days away, and it’s about fifteen degrees warmer than usual, so the ground is muddy and wet. But Bonnie and her friends are going out caroling anyway. One of her traditions, though I wish she didn’t drag me along. If even one person doesn’t have some egg-nog ready for them, I’ll hear about it until New Year’s.
So the girls show up at his house and start singing “White Christmas,” when he shoots them an odd little grin. “Wait a moment,” he says, stopping them in the middle of the song. “I’ve got an idea.” He runs inside for a second, and I hear him clanking around in the garage. When he comes back, he asks them to start singing again. Before they get to the chorus the weather drops a good twenty degrees and the drizzle turns into snow.
It keeps falling all that night and into Christmas Day, a layer just thick enough to cover the ground and all the spruce trees. But it only snows here in town; everyone else in the county gets rain. Bonnie says it’s a Christmas miracle. She’s a good woman, but sometimes a little dim.
Come Christmas night the lake is frozen solid, a good eight inches of ice even though it’s just above freezing. Kids come from all over the neighborhood to skate. John turns on the floodlights, puts out buttered rum for the parents and hot cocoa for the kids. He’s got the whole neighborhood out there in his backyard.
Nobody asks why the lake is frozen. I look around while the kids are skating; in one unlit corner of the lake, just beyond the lights, is a copper rod with little blue rings lining it, sticking about six inches out of the ice, making a soft, high-pitched squeal I have to strain to hear. I don’t touch it, of course. I’m no idiot.
I feel a big, beefy hand on my shoulder, hear that high-pitched nasal voice behind me. “Charlie,” John says, and I turn around. He’s standing there in a big white leather coat and black scarf, holding a cup. “Come join us. Be merry.” He reaches out and puts it between my fingers. It’s warm and smells like butterscotch.
“It’s called a buttery nipple.” He whispers the last two words like he’s saying something dirty. “You’ll like it.” I’d think he was coming on to me, but he and Bonnie talk that way all the time.
“Thanks,” I say, and leave it for now. If he’s planning to level the town, he isn’t doing it tonight. And I have to admit, he’s a damn fine bartender.
I look out the window while the big black Mercedes pulls up along the curb and Bonnie climbs out. She leans in for a minute after she closes the door. She’s all smiles. I’ve got some corned beef in the crock-pot that’s been waiting for her for about two hours. It’s dry now, and the potatoes have disintegrated in their skins.
I hear her key turn in the door; I’ve got Field of Dreams on the TV and I don’t turn from it when she comes in.
“Dinner’s in the crock-pot,” I tell her. “Help yourself. Not very good anymore, though.”
“Sorry,” she says, peeling off her coat. “We went shopping and lost track of time.”
I still don’t look at her. “You ever think you spend way too much time with that guy?”
“He listens to me,” she says, scooping a hunk of meat out of the pot. “Why? Are you telling me you’re jealous?”
“Nope,” I say. “I just think it’d be nice if you spent some time with me, too.”
She sits down at the table instead of on the couch next to me. “It’d be nice if I you’d give me a reason to.”
“Touché.” I change the channel to ESPN.
It’s gotten all springy and warm after the long winter, and Bonnie and I are in the car on the way back from the antique barn out on Route 30. Weather’s starting to pick up a bit. We get our fair share of storms out here, but usually nothing too severe until late May. Today’s different. The sky’s starting to turn dark green and there’s a wall of clouds behind us that looks like a mountain range in the rear-view mirror.
Then the classic country station goes dead, and the Emergency Broadcast System alarm goes off. The mechanical voice says it’s a tornado warning. It’s right behind us, and we’re still ten miles from home and there’s no ditches or overpasses in sight.
I floor it and pray.
The rain hits the windshield like bullets, so heavy I can barely see. We make it home, but the storm sirens are blaring full-blast and the street’s empty. Bonnie taps me on the shoulder and points: there’s a big funnel cloud across the cornfield, half the width of a football field. Sounds like a train roaring past the house, and rain and bits of tree branch are hitting me in the face. A few blocks away I see it tear the roof off the Cartwrights’ house and hope to God they aren’t home. We try to get inside to hide in the basement, but I fumble the keys at the door and drop them on the porch. As I bend over to pick them up, I see John stepping out his front door, wearing safety goggles and a black metal box on his back that looks way too heavy for him. In his left hand is what looks like a megaphone, but with a four-foot antenna sticking up from it. He shouts to us to get to cover; I yank the grate off the crawlspace under the porch and we slide inside on our bellies. We’re getting pelted by flying leaves and wood splinters, and right over those trees that tornado’s tearing up everything in its path. I’m man enough to admit I’ve never been so scared in my life.
But John doesn’t run. He just stands there, right in the tornado’s path. I can barely see through all the debris, but I catch a glimpse of him walking slowly toward the funnel. For a second I think he might be one of those crazy storm-hunters who try and get themselves killed just for the thrill of it. Bonnie motions for me to go get him, but the wind’s so strong it’d sweep me away. Chunks of wood and glass smack against the aluminum siding, and I hear something crash through the living room window.
Just when it looks like the wind’s about to take him, he raises that megaphone contraption, points it at the tornado, presses a button. There’s a high-pitched sound like a defibrillator revving up, so loud my eardrums almost burst, then a flicker of light, quick as a camera flash. In front of him the tornado starts to curl up, the wind slowing to a crawl, and in about five seconds it spins itself out, showering him with leaves and cornstalks and roof tiles.
As the wind peters out, a red wig bounces across the lawn and stops right in front of me, and when I look up I see him: bald as a stone, goggles and fake eyebrows blown right off his face. For just a second he turns our way and sees me through the grate. He looks around to see if anybody else is watching, then runs back into his house and slams the door behind him.
Once we’re back inside, I call 911. I’m no fool. He probably caused that tornado to begin with.
The dispatcher asks me if something hit me in the head during the storm, and if I need an ambulance. When I say I don’t, she says, nice as possible, that I ought to get off the line in case there are people with real emergencies.
I don’t sleep much that night, and I keep the shotgun under the bed, just within arm’s reach, in case he tries anything.
Next morning, there’s a knock on the door. It’s him, wearing a wide-brimmed white hat tilted low over his eyes. He hasn’t bothered to put his hair or eyebrows back on. I start to go for the shotgun, but Bonnie holds me back.
“We need to talk,” he says, his voice deeper than I’ve ever heard it. He has a hint of an accent I can’t quite place.
Bonnie opens the door.
We sit at the dining room table while Bonnie serves him a glass of lemonade. For a minute or two he stares into it, then lets out a long sigh.
He takes off his sunglasses and looks at me with those enormous, cold blue eyes. “So,” he says. “You know.”
I play dumb. You never know what he might do. “I don’t know anything,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Yes you do. It was only a matter of time. But this is a lovely little town. I had to do something.”
“So you did save us!” Bonnie says. “Well, then....” She leans over and kisses his cheek. “Thank you so much, John.” I nearly keel over in my chair; I’d never have let her get that close.
He smiles at her, but it’s sort of sad. “No, thank you, Bonnie,” he says. “I know I should have told you, but you’ve both been so welcoming, and I didn’t want to frighten anyone. I know who you think I am, but I haven’t been that man in thirty years.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” she says. “Everyone deserves a second chance. Right, honey?”
I nod, but I can’t take my eyes off him, thinking at any second he’ll grab her round the throat and hold her hostage while he escapes. That’s what his kind does.
He says thank-you, finishes off his lemonade, and turns to leave, but stops at the door. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell anyone,” he says, his back still turned to us.
“Of course we won’t, John,” Bonnie says. “Your secret is safe with us.”
He nods, and then he lumbers out the door.
Later, after Bonnie lies down for a nap, I make a few calls. People need to know these things.
That evening we meet at the barber shop—the one place we’re sure not to run into him. There’s me and Len Kofstra from the insurance agency, and Bob Griffin, who runs the bowling alley, and a few others. Shouldn’t have brought Bonnie, but when she saw me going out the door, she knew something was up and told me she’d follow me if I didn’t take her.
I tell them what I saw, and who John J. Johnson really is, and we all agree we can’t have someone like that running loose in our town. Sooner or later somebody’s bound to rub him the wrong way, and that’ll be it for all of us.
Of course Bonnie comes to his defense. “He’s been nothing but friendly,” she says. “He goes to church every Sunday and isn’t stingy with the collection plate. Not to mention saving our lives. How can we be talking about getting rid of him?”
The rest of us ignore her. “Men like that never really reform,” I say, and consider the matter closed.
“So what do we do?” Bob asks. “You already tried the cops. They won’t help.”
I sigh. “I guess we’re on our own.”
Then Len pipes in. “Some of my clients are bikers. They can put the fear of God into him if I asked nicely.”
But Bonnie starts to cry when he brings it up. “That’s horrible,” she said. “You can’t.” That plan dies in a hurry; the last thing we want is to make him angry, considering what he could bring down on us.
“So we’ll be inhospitable,” Bob suggests. “It’ll take time, but he’ll take the hint, eventually.”
We leave to spread the word, thinking we’ve solved our problem. On the way home I tell Bonnie that the plan includes her too.
“I didn’t agree to this,” she insists. “And John’s my friend. I’m not about to treat him like garbage just because you don’t like him.”
I stand my ground this time. “Dear, if you don’t go along with the plan it’ll all fall apart.”
“Then let it!”
We have a good row about it in the car, but by the time we get home she sees things my way.
She sleeps on the living room couch that night.
As it turns out, John doesn’t seem to notice the shunning. He still smiles and waves, and if people turn their backs, he just shrugs it off and goes on his way.
Some of the guys decide to lean on him a little more: Len loses track of his homeowner’s insurance statement, and George Gunnarsen, the mailman, accidentally misplaces his utility and phone bills. But John doesn’t make a peep about it. George says he probably just pays everything online.
Everyone gives him a wide berth in church, and we even get Reverend Hayes to give a sermon on whether evil men can ever really reform. John shoots Bonnie and me a quick look after the Reverend’s speech. There’s no anger in his face, just a little smirk that says, I know you told them.
We sleep in the basement that night, just in case, but nothing happens. You can hardly blame me.
After a few weeks we start talking about giving up on the silent treatment. We agree to keep a close eye on him, hoping that will be enough to ward off any trouble.
And then we notice Sam, the McPhersons’ older boy, spending an awful lot of time at John’s house when school’s out—mowing the yard, trimming the lilacs, walking around without a shirt while John watches from the deck. Then they disappear into the house for a while—just for a lemonade, Sam says when I ask.
On hot days he lets Sam and his friends swim in the lake, diving off the dock in his backyard while he watches from his deck, an iced tea in his hand and that ermine on his lap.
That’s the last straw. Bad enough he could wipe out the whole town if he wanted to, but someone like him could easily have other perversions—those types are into all kinds of twisted things.
I tell Sam who John really is, but he just shrugs. “Cool.”
“He didn’t try to touch you, did he?” I ask, and he looks at me like I’m the bad guy for asking.
“Jesus, no,” he says. “Why would you even think that? He just likes having someone to talk to.”
But Sam’s only fifteen, and kids sometimes lie to protect people when they shouldn’t.
We meet in the barbershop again, though this time I told Bonnie I was going bowling with Len. We decide one of us should have a talk with him, let him know the situation. If he’s really the changed man he said he was, he’ll understand.
“In that case, Charlie, I think you’re elected,” Len says. “He’s your neighbor, and you’re the one who sussed him out.”
“Thanks, asshole,” I say, but he’s right.
The next day I knock on John’s door. He invites me in, fixes me the best cranberry vodka I’ve ever had, and we sit on his deck. He just stares at me for a few minutes, sipping his drink, then lets out a sigh. “What’s on your mind, Charlie?” he says in his real voice, instead of the lilty one he uses to fool everyone.
I finish off my drink with one gulp. And maybe it’s the vodka, but I figure I ought to get right to it. “Listen...some of us were talking, and we think, after that whole tornado thing, it might be better if you moved away from here.”
He raises a prickly, fake red eyebrow. “Who, exactly? Everyone?”
“Well, yeah,” I say. “People have a right to be safe in their own neighborhood.”
He stands up, and whatever courage the vodka gave me disappears. “You have nothing to be afraid of. I think you’ve seen that by now.”
I can see he isn’t getting the point. “The thing is,” I say, “reformed or not, some folks wouldn’t be comfortable with a man with your history around. And we all want to know what you’ve been doing with Sam.”
He seems shocked that I’d even mentioned Sam. “I don’t know what you think is happening,” he says, “but I would never do anything inappropriate with him. Sam’s a decent boy, very considerate. After all you’ve told them about me, his parents still let him come here.”
I try to explain, though by then the vodka’s made me a little sluggish. “You have to understand....”
He cuts me off. “No, I don’t,” he said. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but this is my home, and I’m staying.”
“Now look,” I say. “It’s nothing personal...”
He leans over me, so close I feel his breath on my face. He could tear me to little pieces if he wanted to. But he just snatches up my empty glass and turns his back to me. “Good day, Charlie. Give Bonnie my best.”
After that little talk it’s clear we’ve got to do something, and fast, before he gets fed up and flattens the whole neighborhood with grapefruit-sized hail, or worse.
We meet again when Bonnie’s out to lunch with some old friends from high school. Len’s the one who thinks up the plan. Being an insurance agent, he knows how to make it happen quickly, so he won’t have time to get out. He calls one of his buddies in the fire department to make sure they take their time getting there.
I know it seems a bit much, and the truth is, we all have our qualms about it. But it’s got to be done, and if it only costs us a few sleepless nights to keep the neighborhood safe, it’s worth it.
So late that Friday night, after Bonnie falls asleep, I sneak out. She’s a light sleeper, so I have to poke her a couple of times to make sure she’s really out. I haven’t breathed a word of our plan to her; she won’t understand. And if she ever does find out, I’ll be sleeping on the couch permanently.
We gather in the garage, put on black sweatshirts and ski-masks, and wait until all the lights are off in John’s house. Len’s sealing the doors up with industrial glue when that weasel pokes his head out from behind the blinds, makes a high-pitched squeak, then slips back inside. I don’t mind telling you, we all need to change our shorts after that. But Len’s a cool customer, and before long he’s got the fire going. We all run and jump into a ditch to watch it burn. I half-expect John to come bursting out the living-room window any second, the weasel under his arm, and then we’ll have hell to pay. But the flames go higher and start to eat up the roof, and there’s no sign of him. He can’t still be asleep; we hear the smoke detectors inside.
By the time the fire trucks show up it’s too late for anyone to get out, and the roof caves in. The sirens wake Bonnie, but by then I’ve crawled into bed next to her and pretend to be as stunned as she is. Everyone comes out to watch the house burn, and as the firemen finally start to put it out Bonnie shoots me a glare like I’ve never seen before. She’s been annoyed with me plenty, but she’s never hated me before.
In the morning the only thing still standing is a blackened support beam. There are some burned-up tools lying around in the garage, and the husk of a big metal box, but we can’t tell if it had been his weather-control machine or a freezer. The fire department go through the wreckage looking for bodies, but don’t find anything—we thought maybe he’d burnt to ash. They find a big trapdoor in the basement, but the tunnel behind it is collapsed. So we got him, probably.
I have the jitters for a week after that, thinking a tornado could come along at any minute and fling us to God-knows-where. But the weather’s beautiful all week, and I finally start to relax—he’s gone, and we’re finally safe.
Bonnie got a call from her church group this morning and is out at the store picking up some butter and brown sugar for yet another batch of blueberry crumble. She’s been gone a long time—must’ve run into one of her friends at the supermarket. Once she starts chatting there’s no stopping her.
It’s starting to look inhospitable out there. The weatherman said it was supposed to be clear and sunny all day. I hope Bonnie gets back soon—she’s not so good driving that big Chrysler in the rain. I call her cell to make sure she’s okay.
She doesn’t answer. Hardly ever does if she’s in the middle of a conversation. I leave a voicemail. She doesn’t call back.
Off in the distance the sky’s turning dark, and I hear the first thunderclap. It’ll be a good one, the kind of storm that knocks down power lines and busts tree trunks and leaves a big mess to clean up in the morning.
Then the storm sirens go off.
I’m a bit slow on the take, but not dense. I know what’s coming.
I try to call Bonnie one last time to apologize, though I know it’s useless, then run for the basement.
