White Picket Fences (23 page)

Chase dropped the hose on the grass, walked to the gate,
and slowly pulled the door open. Coyotes ate cats. Everyone knew that. He didn’t want a cat to be eaten by a coyote just inches from his gate. He stepped out onto dirt and a greenish brown sea of coastal sage, wild mustard, and cactus. He thought he saw a flash of black and white at the base of a young pepper tree a few feet away.

“Kitty?”

Another momentary glimpse.

The neighbor’s cat, Ozzie. That’s who it had to be.

Chase looked back over his shoulder to the safety of his yard. He saw the hose happily gushing water on the grass. The concrete path that led to the garage was quiet and empty. His mother was nowhere to be seen. He knew if he went to her she would help him get the cat, but he also knew she’d be mad that he’d opened the gate when he wasn’t supposed to.

The cat meowed.

“Ozzie?”

Meow.

Chase walked toward the pepper tree, his heart thumping in his chest. A rustling made him jump, and he saw a cat he did not recognize dash away farther into the brush. Not Ozzie.

Stickers poked at his toes through his open flip-flops. Chase looked down and saw a little pile of dingy cigarette butts, several chocolate-brown beer bottles, and a slim cigarette lighter the color of lemon Jell-O. He crouched down, yanked a sticker away with a wince, and studied the evidence of disobedience. He knew teenagers went back there sometimes. Mr. Barrett next door had once yelled at them to go home or he’d call the police.

None of that mattered to Chase in that moment, though. His eyes were drawn to the lighter. He knew fire slept inside the hard plastic. He had seen people flick the metal wheel at the top with their thumbs to wake the fire from its nap. He was in awe of the power that people with lighters had. The fire had to do whatever they commanded. When they wanted it, it had to appear. When they didn’t, it vanished.

Chase knew in an instant that he wanted that kind of power. But he didn’t like fire. He didn’t like it when his mother burned candles or his dad lit a fire in the fireplace because in his head were dream pictures of a fire that towered over him like a man. He didn’t like that dream. He wanted to flick it away.

Still on his haunches, he reached for the lighter and curled his small fingers around it. It was warm and light and reminded him of a PEZ dispenser without the cartoon-image head. He held it upright like he’d seen others do and rubbed his thumb on the striking mechanism. Nothing happened. He tried again. And again. On the fourth try, a tiny flame appeared like a genie out of a lamp. Chase toppled over in surprise, the lighter fell from his fingers, and the flame skittered away.

The jolt of surprise lasted only a second. Chase picked the lighter back up and again ran his thumb across the striking mechanism. The tiny flame obeyed the summons and hovered, bending and bowing like a dancer.

As Chase watched he slowly became aware that what he thought was a dream was real. The dream where there was just him and no Delcey, because Delcey was inside his mommy’s big tummy. The dream where there had been smoke and power and heat. The dream that came to him in pieces.

The baby-sitter’s house. A little boy like him with an orange stain on his shirt.

Blue mats. A crib. Nap time.

There had been a lighter too, but different than this one.

And a tall boy with red hair. Keith.

“You’re not supposed to be in here.”

“That’s not for little kids.”

“Get back in the other bedroom where you belong.”

Smoke. Heat. Power.

Someone is crying.

Mommy! Daddy!

Then there were black boots and water and ashes, and everything became colorless and heavy.

The dream wasn’t a dream. It was real.

He turned the lighter, looking at it from every angle. “I remember you,” Chase said. And the little flame waved.
I remember you,
it seemed to whisper.

Chase felt powerful talking to the little flame that was but a tiny ghost of the dream fire. The flickering sliver of orange and yellow and blue was beautiful, graceful. Why had he been afraid of it? The fire had to obey him.

His next move was impulsive, spontaneous. Chase would remember it as being the moment he wanted the little ghost to know he knew how to make it happy. Chase knelt down and made a tiny pyre of sticks and dried grass, a miniature altar where he would show the little ghost that he was not afraid.

He touched the lighter to the pile of brush, and the flame fell on it like a hungry dog. Snapping noises like the clicking of teeth rose from the burning sticks, and wisps of gray smoke
curled upward. It was astounding how grateful the little ghost was. Chase smiled and tugged a handful of brown weeds from a few inches away and tossed it to his pet. A tiny whooshing of the fire swirled upward. Chase grabbed another handful to feed the happy flame. The little ghost stretched to grab the gift, and Chase felt its heat on his face. A thin arm of flame reached past the pile to a clump of brown grass.

Yes! the
little ghost seemed to say.

Chase felt a flicker of fear. The little ghost was not paying attention to him anymore. It stretched higher and then opened its little arms, the clicking sounds now sounding like applause. A fist of fire reached for him, and Chase stood up.

The little ghost was crawling away from him now, touching everything in its path. It was getting bigger, spreading like a spill of milk across the brush.

“Hey!” Chase said.

But the little ghost ignored him. Instead it turned toward the fence and his house.

“No!” Chase yelled.

Mine,
the little ghost seemed to say.

Chase looked toward the house, to where his mother worked in the garage and where Delcey lay sleeping in her crib. He saw the hose spouting a frothy rush of water onto the grass. Chase dropped the lighter and ran to the gate. He grabbed the hose and ran back as far as the length of rubber would allow him. The fan-shaped sprinkler head sent a sweeping arc of sparkling water over the little ghost’s crackling form. Smoke rose as the water rained down, and the little ghost fought against it.

“Stop it!” Chase shook the hose, willing the water to work
faster. Dull black began to replace the glowing yellow and orange. The water was winning. Chase could feel his heart madly beating under his shirt.

The little ghost hissed his name as it faded:
Chase.
And then it was gone.

For many long minutes Chase stood motionless as the water fell on charred, muddy dirt, unable to turn back to his house.

The little ghost was not little. Ghost was big. Ghost was powerful. Ghost could not be trusted.

Streams of mud began to cover his flip-flops, and he turned around and walked back to his yard. He tossed the hose onto the grass and then turned back toward the gate and pushed it shut. The latch wouldn’t catch. He shook the door. Metal thumped against metal, but the latch wouldn’t catch.

He banged on the door over and over, hot tears streaming down his face. It wouldn’t catch.

His mother found him that way, many minutes later, pounding on the gate and crying.

“Chase! What’s wrong?” she’d said as she ran toward him.

“I can’t lock it! I can’t lock it! Someone left it open, and I can’t lock it!”

His mother reached up, lifted the catch, and slid the metal in easily. She knelt down.

“It’s okay now. See? I fixed it.”

Chase just stood there, staring at the locked gate, his chest heaving as relief swelled within him. Then his mother lifted her head and sniffed the air. Her eyebrows crinkled. Chase couldn’t breathe as he waited for her to say something.

But after a moment she stopped sniffing. The curious angles
of her eyebrows dissolved. She looked back down at him. “Delcey’s awake. Want to go to the beach now?” Her voice was gentle.

Chase nodded slowly. His mother took his hand, which stung from beating against the fence, and led him away.

“Did you have fun playing with the hose?” she said as she turned off the spigot.

He could not answer her.

There were only a few details Chase wanted to know. He wanted this question answered: what happened between the moment Keith shooed him away and the moment Chase and the stained-shirt boy realized their room had caught fire and they had to get out? If there was a news article or a county record archived on the Web, it was entirely possible someone knew those answers and could fill in the gaps. He typed a series of words into the Google search engine:
House fire. Day-care provider. Laguna Hills 1995.
The year Delcey was born.

He pressed the Google Search button.

Fifty thousand hits were delivered to his screen. Frowning, Chase scrolled down the first page. Then the next. On page five he found the link to a law journal that cited a suit brought by a couple named Brent and Michelle Tagg against Laguna Hills day-care provider Carol June White. The Taggs had sued Ms. White for the wrongful death of their baby girl, Alyssa Rose Tagg, who died unattended in the upstairs bedroom of Ms. White’s home when Ms. White’s house caught fire. The house’s two smoke alarms had dead batteries inside them. The fire was
believed to have started in Ms. White’s son’s room. The son had admitted to lighting a cigarette in his bedroom shortly before the house caught fire.

The fire had occurred in May 1995. Two other unnamed children had also been left unattended in the house but were safely rescued.

The Taggs won their lawsuit.

The article went on to cite other cases involving wrongful deaths, but by then Chase had stopped reading.

A hot weariness fell over him as his brain at last acquiesced, turning over the memory of the crib, the cries, the name of the baby who had been napping in the room with the blue mats. He saw the crib in the smoke. Saw Ghost swaying in the corner of the room. Heard the cries of a baby who struggled to breathe. Alyssa.

And in that same moment he remembered another detail that had eluded him. He’d been in Keith’s room a second time. When Keith wasn’t there.

Chase didn’t hear the bell ring.

twenty-nine

T
ally stepped out of Chase’s car, and a breeze swept past her, welcoming her with a caress, it seemed, to the garden of remembrance.

The cemetery, a montage of grass and stone and pastel dashes of petals, lay quiet and somnolent in the late-afternoon sun.

Matt climbed out of the backseat holding a Dr Pepper. His eyes scanned the sloping lawns and the silent rows of marble and granite interruptions. “Wow.” His voice broke the quiet. “Creepy and cool at the same time. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a cemetery.”

Tally sniffed the air, catching the fragrance of oaks, fresh-cut grass, and wilting roses. “Me neither.” Chase didn’t appear to drink in the landscape or hear the comments. She turned to her cousin. “Have you?”

Chase slung his camera over his shoulder and shut the car door. “When my grandpa died.”

“The one who was a little boy in the ghetto?” Matt asked.

Chase started to walk away, toward the oldest part of the cemetery. “Him too.”

Her cousin’s stride was quick and purposeful. Chase didn’t look back to see if Tally and Matt were following him, and for several moments, they didn’t.

Matt turned to her. “What’s his problem? He hasn’t said a word since we left school. Did you take the last Twinkie at home?”

Tally stared after Chase, watching him stroll past monuments to former lives. She was sure of one thing: Chase had learned something about the fire he hadn’t known before. “I don’t know. Maybe he has a lot on his mind.”

“Like what?” Matt’s tone was dubious.

Tally shut the passenger door. “Just stuff.” She began to walk away.

Matt fell in step with her. “What stuff?”

A fraternal wave of loyalty swelled within her. Matt didn’t know about the fire. The only people in Chase’s life who did were his parents. And they acted as if it had never happened. She was the only one he had ever trusted with his scattered memories of the fire.

No one else. Not even his best friend.

“I just got here. How would I know?” Her tone was unconvincing and she knew it.

Matt touched her arm and stopped walking. “You do know. You know what’s eating him. I can tell you do. Is it a girl?”

“We shouldn’t be talking about this.” Tally took a step.

But Matt’s hand was on her arm, pulling her to a stop. “About what?”

When she didn’t answer, he looked away in disgust and then turned his head back to her. “I think I have a right to know. I’m, like, his best friend.”

“Well, maybe he can tell he’s not yours,” she said.

“Not my what?” Matt made a face.

“Not your best friend.”

“I just said, I’m his best friend.”

“But is he yours? You’re friends with everyone, Matt.”

He nodded, but it was clear he didn’t agree with her. “You’re saying I’m a bad friend.”

“No. You’re a great friend. You probably are Chase’s best friend. But maybe he can tell he’s not your best friend.”

Matt stared at her, no doubt assessing the difference between being a best friend and having one. “What the hell is going on here?”