“Thirty-nine fire companies on the line…some from as faraway as Newark…smoke inhalation…list now stands at twelve known dead and thirty-one missing…governor has declared…”
She felt a moment’s bitter rage at the mock-serious voice, the handsome face so composed in front of the projected image of an inferno.
“…like the end of the world…thought I was dead…winds from the fire reached…barn just exploded like a bomb or something…couldn’t reach her because the flames just…including two firemen overcome by…and the roof blew over to the next house and started that one burning…like the end of the world.”
“…already an estimated nine thousand acres have been…”
She wandered away. A placard at a table set up in a corner read INFORMATION. Behind it, a tight-faced man talked on a telephone. When he saw her again, he shook his head. Most Munro’s Furnace residents remained unaccounted for. A stack of papers marked with scribbled lists, names of survivors, the missing, the dead covered the table in front of him. She turned away.
Scanning faces in the crowd, she realized with a shock that most looked to some extent familiar, so strong were the similarities. Yet she recognized no individuals.
More people, some bent over with the weight of their possessions, shambled in through the double doors. She spotted one group and threaded through the crowd to reach them as they made their way toward a row of vacant cots along one wall. Wandering after their parents, the children hung together, silent, awed by their surroundings.
Manny set down the stuffed sack and began to rummage through it. She caught up with him just as he uncapped the jar.
“Where’s the little girl?” She scanned the grimy faces of the other children. “The little blind girl?” The mother seemed furtive and scared as she fumbled with a snarl on one of the hastily tied bags. Athena couldn’t tell if she was trying to open or tighten it.
“Where is she?” She stared at the bundles. Had they gathered up every scrap of trash they could find? Had they stopped to loot a neighbor’s home?
“Hey, Miz Monroe. We made it, see? Thought we was burned for sure.” Manny tilted his head back and let the jack run down his throat in a steady stream. “Damn shame ’bout the town.”
“Answer me.”
“Oh.” He looked surprised. “Molly. Wasn’t no time to get ’er. Happen so fast. Think it’s true ’bout it startin’ at the gin mill?”
“No time?” She heard her own voice rising. “No time?” The faces blurred. She pressed her fists roughly against her eyes. Burning. Melting. Release. She saw her hand strike at Manny’s jaw. Stinking liquid sloshed across his chest as she knocked the jar away. She heard herself yell above the shouting all around her, saw herself punch the stupid, sullen face again and again. She caught him off guard, knocked him against the wall. She sobbed as she struck him.
And suddenly Doris was there, leaning unsteadily on one crutch, pulling her away.
Around them, people cursed, but Doris pushed through them. “Excuse us. Out of the way, please. Nothing to see.” To Athena, all the faces seemed uniformly hostile. “Honey, what the hell are you trying to do? What was that all about? I said, out of the way. Show’s over.”
They glimpsed white jackets with Red Cross insignias, and Doris waved a greeting to someone.
“Come on, honey, let’s go outside for a while, get some air.”
The wind hit them, rolling over them in invisible waves, buffeting them and blowing sand around their legs, sand pure as snow. The air felt cool in lungs that still ached with the memory of smoke. They walked in silence for a time, around the building, then across the shaggy road and into the trees.
“The heat’s broken,” Athena murmured, looking up at the sky. “Like a fever. I didn’t think there’d ever be a morning like this again. And look at me. I’m crying. I’m really crying.” The cooling tears still glistened like snail tracks on her cheeks.
“You feeling better now, honey?” Her leg in a partial cast, Doris hobbled beside her.
No sound hazed the crispness of the air; empty cicada husks clung hollowly to the nearby trees. “The summer’s finally burned itself out,” said Athena.
Doris stared. Her friend’s face seemed almost colorless from strain, and she detected a weary sway to her movements. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“My leg hurts. My leg often hurts.” She moved on. The pines held no menace for her now. “How are you?”
“Oh, I’m all right. I’ll be out of this thing in a couple of weeks.” They came to a slight rise in the ground. “I stopped off at the hospital to see Steve. He’s stable now. They say he’s doing real good.”
She gazed off through the trees. “Thank God,” she barely whispered. “When Matty wakes up, will you take us to see him?”
“They asked me a lot of questions. ’Thena? What did you tell them at the hospital?”
“The truth. That he was maimed by the Jersey Devil.”
“And you…you killed it?”
She didn’t answer, only watched the highway down below them. “Sometimes, when I see that road, I just want to go down there and get in the first car that stops and never look back.”
“ ’Thena?” They walked on.
“I’m not leaving, Doris. I thought you’d want to know. I’m staying in the barrens.”
“Honey, Steve was pretty sedated still when I saw him. Really out of it. He said things. About the boy.”
“It doesn’t have to be a curse. Do you understand? You should’ve seen Steve’s face. In the car, he came to for just a minute and saw Matty. He looked so terrified. But it could be a gift. I know it, feel it.” She stopped walking. “The Spencer boy was one. It seems to happen when they reach puberty. One or two in every generation, down through the centuries. What happens to them in the end? Are they always killed or driven crazy? Do you see what I mean? What if they can be helped? Will the wildness pass in time? As they grow older? And then what?”
“I don’t understand.”
She made a noise like a laugh. “The funny thing is, it was all true, all those books we read, each with a little piece of the truth. Maybe that’s all we ever get.” She peered into the blue silence of the sky. “It doesn’t have to be a curse, Doris. I…I sense it. They have, I don’t know, abilities. They can move things with their minds. It happened in my kitchen, and I used to hear stories about Spencer’s. They don’t control it. It just seems to happen around them. That’s one of the stages. And they can hear each other’s thoughts. I felt that, heard it pass between them. And in the shack, I felt Matty try to warn me. He must have known all about Marl. Since he was a baby. Felt him as another part of himself. An imaginary playmate.” She faltered, her voice low. “If the madness can be released somehow, controlled…”
The other woman just shook her head.
“You were right, Doris. Your theory. That night at my house. They brought it with them, the colonists. It was lurking deep within, waiting for the right combinations. They need someplace like this to survive, someplace isolated and wild. But it doesn’t have to be….” She took a deep breath. “I really feel that. We don’t know anything about it yet. Only…only what I’ve pieced together. As children they have some kind of communications handicap. They seem backwards. But they’re not. Not at all. Then the wildness comes. But what if one of them could pass beyond it? What’s the final phase? Oh Doris, that poor damn boy.” She took her by the arm. “Marl was his name. The hell he must’ve gone through. I think he tried to hold it back, to resist the change coming over him. Maybe that’s the key. Maybe they all try to fight it. Maybe that’s what twists them, warps them.”
“I’m sorry, ’Thena. I just don’t…”
“I made my son a promise. I’m not going to let it happen to him. I’m not. I don’t care what it takes.”
