By the time Rachel had made her way to her bedroom, Joe had found his way slowly through the woods behind her house, covered his apples with a bit of canvas to keep off the frost, and climbed the ladder to his house. He’d built it in a mighty walnut tree on land he didn’t own, with wood he’d salvaged from fallen barns near and far, with nails others had given him outright, with his own potent sweat.
He would never again sleep in this refuge. The fire had come, winter was close behind it, and much as he loved this place, he would not die for it. But on this Halloween night he was content, unafraid, wrapped in worn but mended blankets, and could see the stars without even opening his eyes.
Chapter 2
It was easy for the people of Belle Haven to remember the day when the fire began. Most of them had been at the Fourth of July parade, in itself quite memorable and as perfect a companion for a fire’s genesis as anyone could want. When Rachel thought about that day she often wondered how much of her memory was authentic, pure, and how much had been garnered from more than a decade of conversations, of all the things said and written about the fire, of scrapbooks and church sermons and the songs children made up when they skipped rope. In a way it didn’t matter. Whether her memory of that day was purely her own or a blending of things she’d encountered since, Rachel knew that it was in many ways her most important recollection, one that was somehow linked to all the rest, even those from much further back into childhood. For her, as for most people in Belle Haven, the fire was a landmark against which nearly all events were measured. Things had happened either before or after the fire took root: births, deaths, marriages, divorces, catastrophes, celebrations. There were other ways to recount their history but none more familiar.
The Fourth, that year, had been too hot, too dry, too hard. The farmers walked around with their heads tipped back, watching for clouds, feeling the air with their skins, aware of the dust. The children were all tired out before the morning had waned. The smaller ones sat in the shade, panting like cats, their hair wringing with sweat, waiting for the sound of the band. The air was white with heat. Cicadas screamed. The tar on the street was so hot that the smell of it hurt Rachel’s nose as she sat atop the mailbox outside Paula’s Beauty Salon waiting for the parade. She’d imagined that the mailbox would be a clean, comfortable perch. She had not counted on it being so hot. Her thighs stuck to the metal.
“You all right there, Rachel?”
“Great,” she said, sliding her arm through her father’s. “But maybe I’ll get down now. I’m too big for this sort of thing.” She seemed too mature for many such things, now that she was ten.
When she slid down off the mailbox, her skin stuck, came away from the metal all at once, and would have sent her sprawling if her father had not held her by the arm.
“You’re about as graceful as I am.” Her mother laughed. She had on a blue-and-white gingham dress with a red belt. Rachel was wearing a pair of red shorts, a white blouse with blue stripes on it, and a red ribbon in her hair. She had painted red and blue stars on her Keds. Her father, who was an electrician, wore what he nearly always wore in the summertime—dull green work pants with a short-sleeved, Perma-Prest, one-pocket shirt, leather belt and boots, a plain cap. For the Fourth, he always flew a flag up at the house and, when the Belle Haven veterans marched by, saluted theirs.
“I hear the tubas,” Rachel said. The children came running from under the trees and sat along the hot curb. Rachel’s mother stepped back and slapped the flat of her hand against the beauty-shop door. “Band’s coming, Paula,” she called through the screen. Paula carried a half dozen hair clips on the collar of her blouse and a pair of scissors in her hand when she came through the door. Cora Ball, completely unabashed, swept out behind her in strange array, a pink sheet draped around her shoulders and dusted with bits of her gray hair, half her head glinting with clips.
“Who’s gonna be lookin’ at me … and who cares anyway?” Cora laughed, and Rachel found herself filled with admiration.
Before the sound of the band became much louder, the parade leaders turned onto Maple Street and down toward the crowd. Teenage boys with painted faces and homemade tricornes popped wheelies on their bikes. Three antique cars puttered by, their horns off-key. Kids with soapbox cars. The veterans, hot and breathless in their tight, old uniforms. A horse-drawn hay wagon done up like a float with a papier-mâché Statue of Liberty that everyone said looked just like Molly, who worked at the checkout over at the A&P. A girl in white boots and flag colors, twirling a baton. Then the school band: small, ragtag, magnificent.
Finally came the polished fire engine and the volunteers who manned it, sweaty and exhausted in their gear. It was, for many of the children, the most wonderful part of the parade, for as the truck trundled slowly past they were permitted to run alongside, step up on its running boards, run their fingers along its hoses, smell the gleaming smell of it, feel its engine rumble. Rachel was just wondering whether she was now too old for this when the radio inside the cab began to chatter.
The firemen shooed the children back. The siren burped, the big truck swung slowly off Maple onto a side street, the firemen all waved their arms for people to stand clear, and then the truck was away, siren going, lights spinning,
