Last Summer Boys(78)
“You’re the sorriest boy I ever met, Caleb Madliner, but I ain’t letting you die tonight!”
I step backward into empty air.
Chapter 24
END TIMES
I lose him soon as we hit water. Was gonna let go anyway, but he kicks me, gets me good in the ribs, and I yell even though I’m underwater. I swallow half of Apple Creek before I break the surface. When I do it’s nothing but smoke in the air, and I cough a fit and it’s forever before I can suck in a breath.
Caleb is nowhere in sight and a piece of me wonders if he’s hiding below, waiting to pull me under and drown me. I tread water and wait for his hands to close on my ankles. They never do. Caleb is gone.
Lots of thoughts go through my mind, but now they’re about Pete and Butch and whether they’re safe. Smoke pours over the bank. Pieces of falling ash sizzle in the water around me. I am just about to climb those roots again to go up and look for them when both my brother and my dog come sailing over the ledge. Pete misses me by a foot. He comes up shouting my name and whipping about in the foamy water.
“I’m here!”
Pete grabs hold of me and begins swimming for the far shore, carrying us away from that burning bank with his measured, powerful strokes. Butch is right behind us, his big head and pointy ears bobbing along in our wake.
I try telling Pete that I’ve lost Caleb. But that smoke gets its way again with my words; they die in another coughing fit.
Soon I feel soft mud bottom under my feet, but Pete won’t let go until we’ve crawled onto cool sand. Butch shakes himself, barking and whining. He won’t let us stay here. Too much smoke.
The far bank disappears under a writhing wall of yellow fire. I throw a wild look up and down the creek. But the water is empty too.
“I don’t see him,” I pant to Pete. “Couldn’t hold him . . . couldn’t pull him across . . .”
“He could only come by choice,” Pete says.
He rises to his feet and pulls me up too. Then, with Butch, we run back up the path.
At the top of the trail our family and the firefighters are watching for fresh fires on our side of Apple Creek. Everybody fans out and searches the length of the creek for Caleb. We never find him.
Twice tiny flames spring up along the edge of our lane. Little pockets of dried leaves that burst into licking flame only to be doused at once with a stomp of a boot or the splash of a bucket. Anna May stamps one of the fires out. Her skirt catches and Sam has to clap his hands against the fabric to put her out.
We fight the fire all night, my family and me and the men from the fire department. Apple Creek holds it, a wall of hellish light burning bright behind black trees of the far bank.
It is an hour before dawn when the wind picks up again and carries the cinders across the creek to the roof of our house. There, in the shingles above the attic, where the snakes sleep and the screech owls nest, a small fire starts. Just a few quivering flames at first. Then it spreads. Suddenly Stairways is on fire.
Dad races inside and next we know he and Ma and Doc Mayfield come out carrying Mrs. Madliner between them in Grandma Elliot’s old quilt.
The firemen work fast. Ladders and a pump. Cold creek water arcs through the night. Our stone house is strong. But the roof above the porch catches and now it’s burning; our home is burning. Black smoke pours from the windows. There’s a sound of groaning timbers; the bones of our old house are giving way. The men fight on. Another pump, more water. The porch collapses, its black skeleton crumpling in on itself, and I know that we’ve lost our house.
A bleak and gray light has started in the east, but by the time the dawn arrives, the fire has eaten our house. Early morning sun breaks over a fire-blackened stone shell. After more than two hundred years, Stairways is no more.
Knee-Deep Meadow is charred to a crisp, pockets of smoldering embers still spitting smoke that rises in thin columns high into a hazy morning sky.
The fire is out. But we’ve lost our home.
Chapter 25
THE GAME PRESERVE
Mr. Halleck’s house is enormous. It’s so big each of us boys could have our own bedroom if we wanted it. All four of us decide to stay in one room. It’s got a tall window that faces west. Ma and Dad take a room just across the hall.
Mr. Halleck has offered to let us stay here long as we need. Dad begins calling for apartments in town the very first day after the fire.
Two days after the fire, a police cruiser draws up to the metal gate in the stone wall that surrounds Mr. Halleck’s house and grounds. Dad lets them in and directs them up the lane to the house.
We meet them in the dining room. Ma and Dad and me.
Detective Ingleside is short, with a high and tight haircut. Like a Marine. He wears a gray suit and a black tie and surveys the room through heavy-lidded eyes. If he’s impressed, he don’t show it. The uniformed police officer with him is very impressed. He keeps looking out the window at the view of the valley. At one point he whistles.
Townie.
Detective Ingleside asks me about the night of the fire, about finding Mr. Madliner.
“Son, you say you found him by the side of the house?”
“Yes sir, but I was looking for my dog.”
“Did you see anyone else there?”