toward another doorway-one closer to her chair.
I moved back into the kitchen just as I heard Spanning open the door again. He was silent. Someone started making stomping noises, and I used that to cover my progress across the kitchen and into the hallway. I was halfway down the hall when I heard Spanning shout, “What the fuck are you doing?”
“My feet fell asleep,” Travis said.
“You’re going to be asleep
“Did I ever tell you what happened on the night Gwendolyn DeMont died?” Travis said.
Spanning was silent.
“It was a hot July night,” Travis said, his voice taking on a slightly different quality. “So hot. Much hotter than tonight. All the windows were open, but there was no breeze. It was very late. Everything was still and quiet. But in the middle of this still and quiet night, I was awakened by a noise. It wasn’t a big noise, just a soft little noise, but I heard it. I was just a boy, already in bed, in my pajamas. But the noise woke me.
“I went downstairs, very slowly, and I saw a light on in the study. My father’s study. I was scared until I saw him. He was sitting at his desk.
“At first, I was so happy to see him, so pleased to think that he had come home. He hadn’t been there in so many days. Every night, I had waited up for him. Every night, I had hoped he would come back. But he didn’t, not until that night. I wanted to run to him, to say, ”Daddy! You’re back! You’re back home again!“ But then I saw that he was crying.”
“Crying?!” Spanning said.
“Yes, crying. I ran up to him and hugged him, but it was almost as if I wasn’t there. I asked him what had happened to make him so sad. He said, ”Do you know who loves me more than anyone else in the world?“”
There was silence, then Spanning scoffed, “You probably said it was your mother, because God knows she had him by the balls.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I said, but I was wrong.”
“Then it must have been you.”
“No-you know that isn’t true.”
“Well, if he said it was me, he was right, but he sure as hell didn’t give a damn about me. He was too busy with you and your mother to bother with me.”
“But he didn’t see me for a dozen years,” Travis said. “If he loved me so much, he would have done for me what you did for him, right?”
Spanning didn’t answer.
“If you love someone, you take care of them and protect them, right?”
“Of course you do!”
“You didn’t run away from your responsibilities, did you?”
“Goddamned right, I didn’t.”
“You were more of a father to him than he was to me.”
“Some ways.”
“He could be selfish, couldn’t-he?”
“But even so, he loved you. We all knew that. He always talked about how much you had done for him. He knew. In his heart of hearts, he knew. He knew you’d do anything for him. He knew you even gave up the woman you loved for him. She could have had you, and everything would have been fine. But she wouldn’t take you, would she?”
There was a long silence. “You see?” Spanning said. “You see? You know, don’t you? I thought he might not have shown them to you. You were just a kid. But he came home that night and showed them to you, didn’t he? Now, where are they? I just want them back. Your mother wouldn’t give them to me, so I was going to get them myself.”
“But then those old biddies at the apartment building called the cops on Deeny, right?” Rachel said.
“Yeah. And then this cousin-one of the damned Kellys who turned their noses up at him! The whore’s family! A Kelly goes in there and takes everything out of the apartment. But then I see how it works. You planned this, Travis. You’re staying with your cousin. I know you know about them. I even tried to get old Ulkins to tell me. You saw what happened to him. Now tell me-where are they?”
“I wonder how pissed ol‘ Deeny is,” Rachel said, apparently knowing what the follow-up would be if she didn’t distract him from whatever “they” were. “Maybe she’s fetching the cops on you as we speak.”
He laughed. “She’s in this as deep as I am.”
But evidently it made him worry, because once again he went to the door. I opened my pocket knife to the sharpest blade. I heard him go out on the front porch again, and I came around the corner of the doorway. I tried to cut the ropes on Rachel’s wrists, but she whispered, “Give it to me and get out of here!” I placed it in her hand, blade side against the ropes. The screen door squeaked open and I pulled back.
“None of this whispering between yourselves!” Spanning shouted.
I heard him cross the floor, then a loud crash, and trying not to think about what was happening, hurried to the back door.
“I didn’t touch you! What’d you fall over for?” I heard him saying.
“I thought you were going to hit me.” Travis’s voice.
“Well, if you think I’m going to let loose of this gun to pull you up, you whispered for nothing, because you can stay down there for all I care!
After that, I was outside again.
I wouldn’t have gone, except that I had decided to light the fire. It was a moment’s work. One match and it was blazing. I threw the shotgun cartridges in and ran toward the front of the house. I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take the shells to explode, or if they would, or what would happen to them, but if those spray-paint canisters were going to do what I thought they would, I didn’t want to be looking into the fire when they blew.
I never found out if it was the stench of the burning latex, the smoke of the other substances, or the rather fantastic banging that the paint cans made in that bathtub, but Gerald Spanning ran out of his house, and I ran in.
Rachel was already up and cutting Travis’s bonds.
“That story you told him about the night Gwendolyn died-” she was saying.
“Total bullshit,” he said, and she laughed as we helped him to his feet.
Outside I could hear Gerald swearing at Deeny-whom he blamed for starting the fire-and turning the hose on.
“Get Travis out of here,” Rachel said to me. “Spanning will be back in here in no time.”
Travis, holding his ribs and leaning very heavily on me, said, “We aren’t leaving you.”
“Then stay the hell out of my way.”
She had no sooner said this than we heard Spanning come charging back in through the kitchen door.
She was ready for him. As he came running into the living room, she hit him with a kick in the face that dropped him in place. I don’t think he had a clear idea what had happened to him at that point, but she had disarmed him by the time he was slowly getting back up on his feet.
He shook his head to clear it.
“Nobody,” she said, “has called me a wop since third grade.”
He charged toward her. A mistake.
She took hold of his arm and with one smooth, beautiful twisting motion, threw him head over heels. He came down so hard and so fast, I’m surprised the floor withstood the blow. One of the chairs didn’t.
He stood up again, this time with fists raised, and took a few clumsy steps forward. He didn’t stand a chance.
Both of her feet and both of her fists connected with him about four times each-if I counted the sounds of the blows right-before he hit the floor again. This time he stayed down.
She hadn’t broken a sweat.
Travis said, “You’re a cruel woman, Rachel Giocopazzi.”
“Why?” she asked, already tying Spanning up. “Because I knocked this piece of shit on his ass?”
“No,” he said. “For trying to get us to leave without seeing you do it.”
