Right away the slithery sounds started again.
“They don’t like you doing that,” Nummy said.
“You can’t be sure. Maybe they’re the degenerate boozers you’re not, and they’re all excited by the smell, they think it’s cocktail time.”
The cocoons hung all around Mr. Lyss, and he turned from one to the other, saying, “Cheers,” as he raised the gasoline can to them.
The sacks bulged and rippled now like they hadn’t done before, and Nummy said, “You better get out of there.”
“I suspect you’re right,” Mr. Lyss said, but he took time to pour out what was left in the can.
The ceiling creaked louder than before, and there was the sound of wood cracking.
Certain that this was like one of those movies where people are eaten alive and nothing nice ever happens, Nummy closed his eyes. But he opened them at once because with his eyes closed he wouldn’t know if something might be coming to eat him, too.
The air was full of fumes. Nummy had to turn his head away from the cocoons, toward the door, to get any breath at all.
Mr. Lyss seemed to be breathing with no trouble. He dropped onto one knee beside the basket. One at a time, he removed the caps from the paint thinner, the charcoal starter, and the lamp oil, and he tossed each can on the carpet under the cocoons, where the contents gurgled out of them.
The fumes were worse than ever.
“I got some gas on my hands, Peaches. I’m a little leery about striking a match. You do the honors.”
“You want me to light up a match?”
“You know how, don’t you?”
“Sure, I know how.”
“Then better do it before the air’s so full of fumes it goes off like a bomb.”
Nummy slid open the box and selected a wooden match. He closed the box-you always close before striking- and scraped the match on the rough paper side. He only had to strike it twice to light it.
“There,” he said, showing it to Mr. Lyss.
“Good job.”
“Thank you.”
On the creaking ceiling, the plaster began to crack between the knotty-pine beams.
Mr. Lyss said, “Now throw the match where the carpet’s wet.”
“You’re really sure?”
“I’m very sure. Throw it now.”
“Once I throw it, we can’t never undo what we done.”
“No, we can’t,” Mr. Lyss agreed. “That’s the way life is. Now throw it before you burn your fingers.”
Nummy threw the match, it landed on the carpet, and-whoosh!-flames jumped from the floor to the sacks. Suddenly the bedroom was bright and hot, and the things in the cocoons went crazy.
Some plaster fell down, Nummy saw one of the burning cocoons begin to split open, and then Mr. Lyss had him by the coat and was pulling him into the hallway, telling him to run.
Nummy didn’t need to be told to run, not the way that he needed to be told to throw the wooden match, because he’d been wanting to run from the moment they saw the cocoons. He went down the stairs so fast he almost fell, but when he stumbled, he bounced off the wall, and somehow the bounce got him balanced again, and he made it all the way to the bottom still on his feet.
When Nummy looked up the stairs, he saw Mr. Lyss plunging toward him, and on the second floor, a big burning something staggered out of the bedroom. Nummy couldn’t say whether it was a bug like Mr. Lyss thought or more of a walking snake, because it was a not-finished thing that hadn’t been in the cocoon long enough, just dark shapes changing inside whirling fire.
A walking snake would have been more interesting and maybe even scarier than a bug, but either way, Mr. Lyss didn’t care about what was behind him, only about getting out of the house. He shouted, “Go, go, go!” as he grabbed his long gun from where he’d stood it against a wall.
Nummy hurried out the front door, into the night, across the porch, down the steps, and onto the lawn, where he stopped and turned to see what would happen next.
Mr. Lyss stopped next to Nummy and faced the house, holding the long gun in two hands.
Fire swelled bright in the upstairs. A window exploded, glass rained down on the porch roof, and Nummy thought something was coming out after them. But another window exploded, and he thought maybe it was just the heat that did it. Fire crawled on the roof now, and fire came downstairs, too, and there was thick smoke.
Mr. Lyss lowered the gun and said, “Good riddance to them. Come on, Peaches.”
Side by side they walked the narrow lane out to the mailbox, which was painted pretty with the words SADDLE UP WITH JESUS, though Nummy couldn’t read them and had to trust Mr. Lyss’s say-so that they were any kind of words at all.
Mr. Lyss held the long gun at his right side, pointed at the ground, so people in passing cars couldn’t see it. They turned right and followed a sidewalk overhung by pines that smelled better than the smoke.
The air was cold and clear. Nummy breathed through his open mouth until he blew away the last of the taste of gasoline fumes.
“I don’t hear no sirens yet,” he said.
“If the firemen in this hickville are anything like the cops, they’ll let it burn to the ground.”
Rattling the box in his hand, Nummy said, “I still got them matches. You want me to keep them?”
“Give them to me,” Mr. Lyss said, and he tucked them away in a pocket of Poor Fred’s coat.
They walked in silence for a minute or two, and then Nummy said, “We burned down a preacher’s house.”
“Yes, we did.”
“Can you go to Hell for that?”
“Under the circumstances,” Mr. Lyss said, “you shouldn’t even have to go to jail for it.”
Cars passed in the street, but none of them was a police car. Besides, there were no streetlamps in this block, and it was dark under the pines.
“Some day, huh?” Nummy said.
“Quite a day,” Mr. Lyss agreed.
“I’m never going to jail again for my own protection.”
“That’s a damn good idea.”
“I just thought.”
“Thought what?”
“We didn’t leave no I-owe-you.”
“Nowhere to leave it with the house burnt down.”
“You could leave it on the driveway under a rock.”
“I’m not going back there tonight,” Mr. Lyss said.
“I guess not.”
“Anyway, I don’t have a pen or any notepaper.”
“We’ll have to buy us some,” Nummy said.
“I’ll put that on my to-do list for tomorrow.”
They walked a little farther before Nummy said, “Now what?”
“We leave this town and never look back.”
“How do we leave it?”
“Find some transportation.”
“How do we do that?”
“We steal a car.”
Nummy said, “Here we go again.”
chapter 62