WITH AN EXTREME BURNING
Books by Bill Pronzini
The Stalker
Snowbound
Panic
Games
The Jade Figurine
Dead Run
Night Screams
Masques
The Hangings
Firewind
The Last Days of Horse-Shy Halloran
Quincannon
WITH AN EXTREME BURNING
Bill Pronzini
WITH AN EXTREME BURNING
Copyright © 1994 by Bill Pronzini
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-61232-100-4
Slow Burn
ONE
He awoke at his usual time, seven-thirty, and as usual in the first groggy seconds he reached out for Katy on her side of the bed. Then he remembered. Even before his fingers touched the cool, empty sheets, he remembered.
His grief was easing now, after more than three weeks; he felt one small twist of pain, nothing more. He rolled onto his back, opened his eyes. Sunlight in the room, slants and patches of it. The quality of light told him it was going to be hot again today. What day was it? Saturday. Another long weekend. Almost the end of August, though. Next weekend was Labor Day, and right after that fall classes started … first week of September this year. Easier, then—a little easier. Not so much time alone. He had better see Elliot Messner right away, before it was too late to take on an extra class or two, maybe teach a couple of rudimentary history courses in the university's extension program to fill up weeknights or Saturdays. Work and plenty of it was what he needed, at least for this semester, until more time built up between himself and the accident.
He lay listening to the quiet. There were usually birds in the big heritage oak outside the bedroom, that damned mockingbird that was worse than an alarm clock sometimes, but not today. The silence beyond the open window had a flat, padded quality. He could smell the heat gathering, absorbing the early-morning coolness; smell dust and the dry brown grass on the hillside above. For some reason, the smells made him remember an exchange during the excessive heat of early July. Katy: “Dix, I'm worried about fire this year. It's so
Like accidents and fire.
Like dying in flames so hot they reduced five and a half feet of flesh, skin, and bones into an unrecognizable four-foot lump of charcoal—
There was a curtain in his mind, as thick as metal, forged over the past three weeks; he yanked it down now, locked it tight. Abruptly he swung himself out of bed. In the bathroom he used the toilet and then put on his swim trunks and robe. Downstairs to the kitchen. Grind some beans, start the Mr. Coffee. And then down to the bottom level, out onto the rear terrace.
Mist in the valley below, a thin, floating strip of it that would be gone in another hour or so. At this hour and from this height, the town had a somnolent look except for the broken ant-stream of cars on the freeway that cut through the south end. Los Alegres. Population: 32,000 and growing, thanks to tract-home developers consuming east-side farmland at alarming rates. He'd been born and raised here, spent nearly all of his life here. Just seven of his forty-one years away, beginning with his army service in North Carolina during the 'Nam years. (Some people seemed puzzled when he told them he'd never left U.S. soil, much less fought in Asian jungles; it was as if they thought every male who had been drafted in those ugly days had been immediately shipped overseas, leaving the homefront military bases entirely in the hands of over-aged officers and National Guard weekenders.) Then four years at UC Irvine, earning his master's with a thesis on post—Civil War Reconstruction in the border states. And when it came time to choose a teaching post, straight back to Los Alegres to accept a position on the faculty at Balboa State. Just a country boy at heart, Katy would say, forgetting that Los Alegres was little more than an hour from San Francisco and hadn't been “country” in thirty years. My roots go deep, he would say. Trite but essentially true. Katy's had gone just as deep: She'd been born and raised here, too, and never left for more than a few months at a time. Never would, now.
When they'd bought this house eight years before, just affordable on their combined teaching salaries thanks to the $50,000 cash bond her father had left them, it was an ascension in more ways than one. High on the hillside above the town and the valley: trees that had sprung tall from their deep roots. For him, a symbol that he'd Made It. One acre of the Ridge, one acre of the American dream—and to go with it, a full tenured professorship,
Teaching didn't fulfill him quite as much as it had when he was younger. Living on the Ridge didn't seem to
