I tossed the flashlight on the floor, put the. 38 in my coat pocket and got Sammy out of bed. He said, “Daddy,” but stayed asleep on my shoulder.
Gasoline.
Me and Bev tied up.
The sleeping kids locked in their rooms.
It all came to me in a rush. I began to run.
I yelled, “Out of here! Now! Out!”
Bev hesitated momentarily, then bolted with JoAnn toward the front door. I rushed behind her carrying Sammy, and in that instant, the garage blew.
A bright red spray of light leaped from it with a sound like an atomic bomb. Pieces of the garage and the van scattered into the trees and the yares›“Yed. Then the glass front door fragmented behind me and flew at us and the hot blast knocked us through the railing and off the deck, dropped us ten feet to the ground.
I came down on top of Sammy and fragments of the railing and the glass door came down on top of me. Sammy awoke with a painful scream. I felt my back prick suddenly with heat. I leaped off of him and hit the ground rolling, putting out the fire and grinding glass into my back. I leaped up and dove for JoAnn who had broken from Bev and had one side of her pajamas pants on fire. I knocked her down and rolled her in the dirt and put her out to a chorus of screams.
I ripped what was left of her charred pants leg open and saw that her skin was only a little pink. Beverly was getting up from the ground. She clenched her fists and started to yell. No words. Just expulsions of rage. I saw the. 32 lying on the ground near her. I picked it up and put it in my coat pocket with the. 38.
Another eruption tore out the window in JoAnn’s room, and we ducked beneath a salvo of glass and wood fragments.
“No more,” Bev yelled. “No goddamn more!”
JoAnn broke suddenly for the house. “Fred,” she screamed.
I grabbed her. “Stay here,” I said.
I raced up the steps and onto the deck. A multi-forked tongue of flame licked at me from JoAnn’s bedroom window. I flinched away.
I looked at the front door. No help there. The doorway was nothing more than a gate to the inferno; flames coiled and writhed where the glass had been.
I darted down the steps, around to the side of the house where there was a little hill that rose up to JoAnn’s other window. I stood there panting for a moment not knowing what to do and certainly not knowing why I was doing it.
Big yellow streaks of lightning cracked the black dome of heaven and I could smell the ozone from the bolts and I could smell the fire and the things it had consumed.
Without realizing what I was doing, I jerked the screen off the window, used the butt of the. 38 to beat out the window glass. I reached through, flicked the latch, felt the heat jump along my hand. I put the. 38 in my coat pocket, shoved the window up, started hoisting myself inside.
Bev grabbed my by the leg before I could work completely through. “No,” she said. “No!”
I tugged away from her and fell inside. The heat hopped on me and clung. I rose up sweating. The far side of the room blazed. JoAnn’s bed was blown in half and the split mattress was roaring and jumping with fire. Sheets and blankets were twisting into ash. Flames danced against the wall and filled the open doorway and the place where the window had been. Fire writhed out from beneath the closed closet door.
The way JoAnn’s bed was blown, I realized there had probably been a gas can and a timer tucked under it. Rage went through me almost as hot as the fire that chewed and popped around me.
The fire showed me Fred. He was lying on the floor. One leg was being fondled by tiny yellow flames. I got him and beat the fire out against my leg, realized Bev was calling m walmost ase through the window.
“Hank. Get out. Hank. You jackass. Get out.”
Fred and I went through the window. I hit on the ground and rolled and I came up on a knee. Another blast of lightning. Cool rain splattered on my face.
Bev took Fred away from me, got me under the arm and jerked me up, pulled me away from the house. Before we had gone far, she turned suddenly and started hitting me with Fred. “He’s a teddy bear. A goddamn teddy bear. You idiot.”
I pushed her toward the pickup and yelled for the kids to follow. We began to run. When we reached the pickup our world went to pieces with a roar. We turned, saw it go as the back of the house blew and the third floor dropped down and a savage demon of flame stretched up from the center of the rubble and hissed at the rain, then nodded the tip of its orange-red head toward us as if in appreciation of the feast.
23
The rain slammed us as I drove to a convenience store not far from our house and parked beside the telephone booth out front and got out and dialed the fire department number written on the front of the phone. I smelled so bad from Snake’s urine and the smoke from the fire, I had to leave the door open so I could breathe. The rain sounded like pea gravel pounding on the booth. I got the fire department and gave our address and didn’t give my name. I had a great and growing distrust of authority these days. I wasn’t even sure the fire department wouldn’t arrive to put fuel on the fire, instead of putting it out.
My call had been mostly to prevent the woods from catching on fire and threatening our neighbors, because I knew the house was gone and no number of trucks and hoses could save it. Everything that had been precious and essential to us, except our lives, were gone. Photographs. Tax records. Insurance files. Clothes. The kids’ toys. Books. Albums. Birth certificates. Our dog. The gatherings of twenty years of marriage.
I got in the truck and Sammy said, “Daddy, what’s that smell?”
I didn’t answer. I rolled down the window and pulled away. I didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t know what to do about Fat Boy and Snake. I knew I wanted to kill them, but I didn’t know how, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to ever see them again. They had sent little evil things down inside me to jiggle my bones, play tunes on them I hadn’t thought could be played.
We hadn’t gone far when JoAnn began to cry, then it hit Sammy too. He suddenly realized what the flames had taken and he broke down.
“Ssssshhhhh,” Bev said. “It’ll be all right.”
“No. No it won’t,” I said. “It won’t ever be all right.”
I pulled over beside the road, opened the door to the front of the truck, wandered into a bar ditch and fell down on my knees. Water was roaring through the ditch and it soaked my pants. I bent my head into the brown rush and ran my fingers through the water and through my hair, trying to get the smell of Snake off me. I stuck my face under the water and came up screaming. The heavens beat my face with rain, flashed lightning and rolled thunder in response. Finally, I just leaned there on my knees and cried.
The kids were out of the truck now, calling, “Daddy,” and crying. I knew I should stop and get back in the truck and act strong, say it was all right and we’d get through everything, but I didn’t feel that way. I felt worse than that time with Arnold at the liquor store. I felt as if I should have my Southern manhood card revoked.
Bev came around front of the truck and yelled for the kids to get back inside, then she came over and got down on her knees in the water with me. She put an arm around my shoulders and kissed my ear and said, “It’s okay, baby. Don’t. Please don’t.”
“Goddamn me,” I said. “Goddamn me.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “Come on, baby. I didn’t mean what I said. Really. I promise.”
She got an arm under one of mine, helped me get up, led me back to the truck. The kids were crying. I started the engine and watched the windshield wipers slap the rain. Bev put her hand on my wet knee. A small surge of strength and optimism stirred through me.
“It’s going to be all right, kids,” I said. “It’ll be all right.”
“Do you know where we’re going?” Bev said.
“Yeah,” I said. I pulled onto the highway.
