Meteors in August (20 page)

Then I saw the man, Elliot Foot himself, standing on the sidewalk, his arms crossed over his thin chest. He didn't rant or pace or pound the walls; he didn't rush inside to see what he could save. Elliot Foot stood and smiled like a man who had just laid a royal flush on the table.

In a flash I saw the purpose of all this, knew without a doubt that Elliot Foot had torched his own bar to scald the temptation out of his heart. He wanted the Last Chance to burn to the ground. His hands seared my thigh the night I spoke in tongues. He didn't need a match; those fingers were on fire. Others would blame Olivia Jeanne; he counted on that, on the simplicity and logic of the deed. If she had any sense left, she was crossing the border into Canada this very minute. Only a fool would stick around long enough to leave the decision to a judge and jury and newspaper in this town.

Maybe Elliot instilled deeper fears in her that night. Perhaps she loved him well enough to smell the fever of repentance and know that her Winnebago would go next. Parked in front of the bar, she would have felt the first wave of hot air in her face.

At last the hose was hooked to the hydrant. Vern and Ralph yanked it off the truck themselves and shoved their runt of a brother out of the way. He looked delirious, too distracted to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

When we saw the arc of water, the single dirty stream, women cheered and men scrambled to help aim the hose. Elliot Foot stopped grinning, wondering if something might still be saved. A second truck arrived and skidded up to a hydrant around the corner. Hope surged through the crowd.

I lost my parents in the mob. Most everyone in Willis who could walk had gathered in the street to gawk at the fire: it was better than the traveling circus that had come through the valley six years ago, better than the woman with four arms or the pinhead fetus in a jar.

Gangs of kids ran wild. Fire released some native urge, turning children into thugs and thieves. A band of ten-year-olds circled a younger child, demanding his belt and then his shoes. They would have stolen his comb and pocketknife too, but the boy's mother swooped down and dragged her son away by the wrist.

Someone hit me square in the back and I pitched forward. It was Coe Carson and Zachary Holler jabbing at each other's chest behind me. They argued, but I couldn't make out the words. They jostled me again without seeing who I was. Zack Holler, the boy who had changed my life, who had thrown me into the arms of Freda Graves and forced me into weeks of lies, Zack Holler could look right through me without a glimmer of recognition.

I heard him say, “Do what you want. I'm going in. It's free.” The veins of his forearms bulged. He lurched through the crowd, knocking people out of the way. In the months since I'd seen him he'd lost his adolescent leanness, and his strong body had begun to reveal its brutality. Full-blown, Zack Holler would crush other men's fingers as he shook their hands; he'd slap their backs too hard and knock them forward. I hoped for a small tragedy, a wound to weaken him. I believed in fate but knew it was wrong to yearn for misfortune, so I was careful not to pray for an accident; instead, I reminded God how I trusted His infinite wisdom.

Zack Holler darted through the doorway of the burning bar before anyone got wise to his plan. Skittery sparks shot across the floor. Through the tinted windows I saw flames lapping at the frame of the storeroom door.

Coe Carson faced me. He still didn't remember who I was, the girl in the gully, the girl on the ground with Zachary's sister, the girl on the tree house floor with Zachary—but Zack Holler wouldn't be proud of that; he'd forget to tell Coe. “Dammit,” Coe said, “did you see that? He says it's a great time to get free booze. No hassle, he says. He's going into a burning building for a goddamn bottle of tequila. I'd buy him one, you know. I'd buy him one every day from now till Christmas if I had to. You think he cares? ‘What fun is that?' he says. He gets off on it. He gets off on scaring the shit out of himself. What kind of crazy person lives that way?”

Before I could answer, Coe Carson shouldered and shoved his way to the bar, Coe, who would never be able to grow a beard or get a real job at the mill, according to my father. I hoped he didn't want to be a hero. His arms were thin as a girl's, smooth and freckled. Going into the bar after the likes of Zack Holler made less sense to me than going after a bottle of tequila. Bravery is a fool's damn luck. But Coe Carson knew himself. He stood in the street where he could watch the doorway.

A siren ripped down Main. People jumped to clear a path. As he hit the intersection of Main and Center streets, Sheriff Caleb Wolfe slammed the brakes and spun into a quarter-circle stop. A big Indian climbed out of the passenger side, a real Indian, not a questionable quarter-blood like Caleb Wolfe himself. This man had a broad face and high round cheeks, the smooth hairless chin of a full-blooded Kootenai. His blue shirt could have fit around two ordinary men, but it wouldn't close over his dark chest. A thin black braid hung halfway down his back.

I didn't need to be told this was Red Elk, the father of the slim boy who stole Nina that summer night long ago, a night much cooler than this one. I saw Billy Elk take Nina in his arms and make her disappear. But he forgot the second part of his magic trick, the part when the girl reappears, when all her scattered molecules are gathered from the air, a fuzzy image, almost transparent, wavering, a body underwater, and then Nina, Nina whole and laughing.

Now I saw the man my father hated, the
red-skinned dog
he tried to drive out of town, the
heathen
he threatened to strangle with his bare hands. No wonder Mother was afraid. Red Elk could crush a man under each foot and keep on walking.

I realized there were no other Indians in the crowd. They bore a history of blame; none dared come close enough to be accused.

The crowd swarmed around the sheriff's car, and it vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. Caleb Wolfe strutted in front of the bar, pushing the horde back a step each time he passed. His short bowlegs seemed to snap as his feet hit cement. Someone aimed the high beam of a flashlight into his face. He squinted but didn't raise his hand to block the light.

“There's a boy in there,” a woman yelled. “Look, can you see him?”

Caleb Wolfe whirled toward the door. An explosion from the storeroom doubled the size of every flame with a single blast. The fountains of water from the hoses seemed futile now, children pissing on a bonfire. Sparks scattered like milkweed, and each spark became the seed of a new flame.

Red Elk opened the door. Thirty feet away, the heat hit us like a wall and we shrank back. Air had turned to smoke inside the bar. But the big Indian stood his ground, as if to see how much he could bear. Then he threw himself into the fiery pit. I gasped; my lungs burned as I watched him, a shadow in flame.

A sound like thunder rocked the building. Flares climbed, finding the driest wood, the pulpy rafters. The thunder roared again, and we saw a beam tear loose and fall, engulfed in a blaze. The fast, brilliant bodies of flames writhed across the floor.

I was sure the Indian and Zack didn't have a chance. I imagined the rafter had fallen on their backs or pinned their legs. I heard their cries above the rush of air on fire. The church bell rang and rang. High in the steeple, its insistent, foolish voice beat out a single tone.

But I was wrong. Red Elk dodged collapsing beams. The Indian had been inside less than a minute when the front window burst, splintering onto the sidewalk in a thousand smoky shards.

He sailed through the jagged opening, a huge man, suspended in this long moment when every mouth opened but no one made a sound. He hit the sidewalk with a thud, suddenly back in the world of gravity. His face was black with soot and his chest heaved. Zachary Holler was slung over his shoulder, draped on his back like a sack of meat.

Caleb Wolfe cleared the clot of people from a circle of cement in the street and helped Red Elk lay the boy down. “Give us air,” he yelled. “Give us air!”

Red Elk tilted Zack's head back, put his hands on the boy's chest and leaned forward and back, forward and back—but Zack Holler was as still and stunned as Jesse was when they pulled his pale body out of Moon Lake. The big man breathed into him, put his mouth over Zack's mouth, shared his smoky air with the white boy. But that paltry bit of oxygen was too little for either of them. After a few mouthfuls, Red Elk sat back on his broad haunches, gulping. Caleb Wolfe took over. He pounded Zachary's chest and swore. I think it was the cuss that called Zack Holler back, that pulled his soul down to the gritty street and made his rib cage swell with the first living breath.

“Water!” Caleb cried. “Jesus, his hands.”

Coe Carson brought two pails for his friend and lifted Zack's red hands into the water. Coe's knuckles bled from grinding them into the gravel. His lips moved, a plea; tears rolled down his cheeks. I prayed for a miracle that would deliver me from the kind of accident I'd wished upon Zachary.

Dr. Ben hobbled down the street. Stooped, his white head bobbing, the old man took his time. The doctor saw it this way: if the boy was dead, why should he bust a gut getting there; and if they had him breathing, a minute or two either way wasn't going to change anyone's chances. I hoped that when Dr. Ben lay on his bed, wheezing out his last gasp, he would look down the long tunnel of this night. At the edge of his own dark dream, I hoped he'd see a vision of himself, walking and walking, but never moving closer, never reaching the bed to sit beside himself.

By the time the good doctor crouched beside Zack Holler the sheriff had given the boy his second life.

Father stood across from me in the ring that had formed. He was pressed up close to Miriam Deets. Lanfear was on the other side of his wife, and he and my father spoke a few words to each other over Miriam's head. Lanfear couldn't see what I saw, that Daddy clutched Miriam's hand, the left one, the one Lanfear could no longer hold if he strolled side by side with his wife. Father's eyes looked strange, milky as the eyes of a fish tossed up on the beach, two days dead. He gripped Miriam's fingers, his own fingers clenched as if in pain. She let him hold her. Maybe she was sorry she'd refused his money all these weeks, sorry for his sake as well as her own. I thought her touch was all that saved him, all that kept him from leaping on the big Indian. He'd worked with Red Elk day after day, holding back his anger. Now he saw his chance: Red Elk was down and out of breath. I was afraid my father might sink low enough to jump the man while he was on the ground.

Zack rose into fierce consciousness, wailing. He jerked his hands out of the water, but Caleb Wolfe forced them back down. Dr. Ben filled a syringe and rolled Zack far enough on his side to shove it into his buttocks, right through the thick denim of his jeans. Zack's head dropped before the needle was out.

The doctor began bandaging Zack's hands. They grew large, snowpaws. I imagined Zack grabbing a bottle of tequila in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. He didn't know how hot they were, that the glass was ready to crack. His touch shattered them, sending slivers of glass into his fingers and palms, splattering alcohol up his forearms and into his face, alcohol that burst into flames, torched by a wild spark.

Joshua Holler clawed and kicked to get to his boy. Seeing him gave me an image of Zack as a grown man: his fingers thick and dirty, good for poking into other men's chests; his jowls and belly slack from all those brews with the boys. I was wrong to wish for Zachary's misfortune: men like this heaped misfortune on themselves.

There was no sign of Zack's mother. Ruby Holler was probably out at Ike's Truckstop, slapping coffee and greasy slabs of beef and gravy in front of thankless truckers on their way to Canada, strangers who didn't give a damn that the center of town was going up in smoke.

I wondered where Gwen was too. I thought of the steamy windows of Gil Harding's Duster in the school parking lot last winter. Tonight they could stay home in Gwen's upstairs bedroom. I imagined them falling onto Gwen's flowered quilt, bouncing and laughing, laughing because this bed was soft, softer than the grass in the park or the vinyl seat in the back of Gil's car, softer by far than the rough boards on the dirty floor of the tree house, the only place I'd ever lain down with a boy, softer than the street where that boy lay now.

Gwen didn't know about any of that. And she wouldn't be sorry when she heard. Her mother wouldn't be sorry either. No, they'd say Zack was to blame, a boy who plays with fire gets burned. But I regretted it all the same because I'd wished for it. I had dreamed this pain into the body of Zack Holler, ached for him to feel one quarter of what I felt.

Late as it was, I dared to hope Gwen and her mother might still come. Their cool hands on Zack's bruised forehead were the only hands that could soothe him in his deep sleep. I scanned the crowd. Miriam Deets stood on her tiptoes to kiss Lanfear on the nose. My father was gone.

Red Elk scooped Zack off the pavement and carried the limp boy to Joshua Holler's truck. The closest hospital was in Rovato Falls, but if Zack was in a bad way, they'd have to take him all the way to Missoula, a hundred and seventy miles south. A lot could go wrong on the way to Missoula.

I thought of Joshua Holler, alone on a dark Montana road. His journey would be endless and silent—unless Zachary woke again. And what could a father do? What was there to do with a wailing boy but thump him on the back of the head and pray you hit him hard enough, but not too hard.

And Joshua Holler might notice, as if for the first time, all the white crosses along the highway, at least one at every curve, the markers of death, reminding him that a car had spun out of control in this very place.

I worked my way back to the alley. The roar was steady now, the fire sure of itself and strong, drowning every other sound like a river surging down a gorge. The firemen had given up on the bar and turned their hoses on Saddles & Studs, the Western clothing store next door. Already its roof smoldered and one wall was sure to go. My uncle Les and his three boys had organized a human chain from the back of the Last Chance, a line of men and women passing buckets, hoping to save something that was clearly destroyed. Arlen joined them. She was proud to see her boys working together, inspired for the first time.