hauled to the grove of oaks in which the three vehicles that once belonged to Hiskott’s servants are hidden.
Among them, the Harmony family has six of those three-gallon emergency-supply containers of gasoline. Once filled at the station, they are lined up on the porch of the residence that Hiskott took for his own.
In the afternoon, after the breeze dies out, after we shut down the electric supply at the breaker box and cut off the propane feed, Bill Harmony and I enter the house. Starting on the top floor, we pour gasoline in strategic places, especially over the remains of the hybrids. I keep Bill out of the kitchen, so that he will not see the small skeleton in the pantry.
The lights don’t work in the reeking cellar, and I choose not to descend into that gloom with a flashlight. I empty the sixth can down the steps, into that sinister darkness. The gasoline fumes are overwhelming. The house is a bomb waiting for the fuse to be lit.
The family has used its half-size tanker truck, the white rig with HARMONY CORNER in big red letters, to hose down the six houses below the one that we will burn. Refilled, it stands ready nearby to keep this new fire from spreading to the unburned fields.
We set the house alight an hour before sunset. At night, the conflagration would be more visible from the Coast Highway, and some traveler would be more likely to report it to authorities.
Annamaria and I gather with the family to watch. Thirty-six of them are present, including Jolie, who has returned from Fort Wyvern. The flames are satisfying, and I use Purvis Beamer’s smartphone to send video of the blaze to Ed.
No one cheers the fire. Indeed, they watch mostly in silence, and if the atmosphere of the event is like anything else, it is most like an hour in church.
When the house is smouldering ruins and the embers have been watered down, we all gather on the beach, where picnic tables and folding chairs have been set up for dinner. The air is cool enough for sweaters and jackets, but everyone agrees that the beach is the best place for this first meal of their new freedom.
The waxing moon and many candles provide enough light, because this is only the dark of nature and not to be feared. The waves are low, breaking gently along the coast as if shushing crying children to sleep.
The stars are a grand display that lifts my heart. Considering Project Polaris, I expect those far suns and their distant worlds to seem a little threatening this night, but instead they say to me that the vast universe, like Earth itself, is a place of promise that is no less magnificent for the fact that it is also a field of contest upon which the one struggle was fought, is fought, and will be fought from the beginning of time until time is ended.
Dinner on the beach is less solemn than the vigil at the burning house, but remains a quiet celebration. Many smiles and just a little laughter. This extended family has been through great suffering and humiliation, and the way back to a normal life will not be an easy road.
These are good people, and I make new friends here. They hug a lot, and when they take my hand or lay a hand upon my shoulder, they often are reluctant to let go. But they understand intuitively that they must not embarrass me with gratitude. Although they obviously realize that I have many secrets to keep, they don’t press to know them, but seem satisfied that I should be always a mystery, as are so many things in this life.
After dinner, Jolie and Annamaria and I and the two dogs — Raphael and Boo — walk together along the beach, near the foaming surf, and the girl is quietly enraptured with everything she sees, everything she hears, everything she thinks. Now that the yoke of slavery is lifted from her and from her family, I am able to see more clearly the brilliance, the courage, and the pure heart that form the essence of her. I can imagine the woman she will become, and the world could use uncounted millions like her, though just one will make a difference.
Jolie comes to tears at the thought that we will be leaving in the morning and that we may never see one another again. That such a bond can form in but a day bewilders her, as it delights me, and she is afraid that her life, now recaptured, will prove to be marked more by parting and loss than she can bear. I am, she says, like her new brother, and brothers can’t go away forever. She is a girl who feels things strongly, and though cynics might mock her for that, I never will, as it is perhaps the best of graces: to feel deeply, to care profoundly.
In my bones, I know that I am not long for this world. The life I have led and must lead brings Death and me face-to-face with such regularity that I, as imperfect a man as any other, will sooner or later fail whatever higher power it is that has sent me on this series of missions. Therefore, I can’t lie to Jolie and say we will see each other again in this world.
Annamaria soothes away the girl’s tears as I cannot. She says that each of us has his or her role in life, and if we know ourselves well enough to understand what that role is, we will be happy doing nothing else but what we can do best. She says that I, Odd Thomas, fully understand my role — a statement with which I might argue on some other occasion. She tells Jolie that I am one of those wanderers of legend, who goes where he feels he must and, in the going, finds those who need him, and in finding those who need him, fulfills his destiny. This sounds more grand to me than the truth of my life, but this touch of myth enchants the girl and mellows her sadness with mystery.
Somehow, Annamaria knows that Jolie’s mother, in homeschooling, assigns her many writing assignments of all kinds. She suggests that the girl write down her part of the story in which we have recently been involved and that she mail it to me, care of Ozzie Boone, my writer friend in Pico Mundo, so that when I compose my account of the events in Harmony Corner, I can include Jolie’s point of view. When she hears that I have written a series of memoirs that will not be published in my lifetime, if ever, Jolie is electrified. Although she may never hold a real book of this story in her hand, only someday a copy of my manuscript, she is enchanted by the prospect — and the fact that we will continue to have a connection puts an end to her tears.
As we walk back the way we came, to rejoin the family, Annamaria says, “One thing you must remember when you’re writing, Jolie. If the story you and Odd collaborate on is to be seamless, you should write just as you are, just as you talk, just as you think, and not try for some writerly voice that isn’t yours. What you don’t see that I do is that you and Oddie are in many ways two of a kind. You and he so love the world, in spite of all your suffering, that you are in what some might call a heightened state of consciousness. You and Oddie embrace so much with such great enthusiasm, that one thing reminds you of a dozen others, your mind is here and there and also
Annamaria doesn’t seem concerned about drying
In spite of the chill, no one wants to bring the gathering to an end, but it comes to an end just the same.
Back in Cottage 7, I take a long hot shower even though I showered earlier, between leaving Hiskott’s house and returning to burn it down.
Raphael stays the night with me, and Boo goes wherever it is he has to go. A good dog is a comfort. The golden retriever comforts me, and perhaps Boo comforts someone in a place that I can’t imagine. I leave a lamp on, but I do not dream.
When I wake near dawn, I lie listening to Raphael snore, and I find myself considering what it means to be fallen. We are fallen in a broken world, and one thing that occurs to me is that after thousands of years, when we think of fallen angels, we think of them as we always have: busy spreading misery on Earth. But the universe in its immensity is nevertheless of a piece, and what applies at one end of it applies at the other. No doubt misery, like happiness and hope, is found throughout the stars. The alien artifacts housed in Fort Wyvern are of extraterrestrial origin, but perhaps they are at the same time part of the ancient history of humanity.
I shower again on rising, and afterward take a call from Ed. We agreed earlier that he will stay in touch with Jolie and be her secret friend, but that he will not again allow her through that last pair of steel doors, into Wyvern. We say our good-byes. His last words to me are “Live long and prosper.” Mine to him are “Open the pod bay doors, HAL,” and I think he laughs.
Leaving, Annamaria drives the Mercedes we have borrowed from Hutch Hutchison in Magic Beach. Along the last length of blacktop leading to the county road, thirty-six members of the Harmony family stand side by side, waiting for us, which I wish they would not have done. Jolie stands with her mother and father and her uncle Donny at the end of the line. She waves. I wave.
The Coast Highway takes us south toward what will prove to be a place called Roseland, which will be far worse than Harmony Corner in its worst days. In Roseland, I will have to put Jolie entirely out of my mind, for to
