Firestarter(47)

Charlie was sitting up. The red pants and green blouse were smeared with dirt. Her face was pale, her eyes were terribly confused. "Daddy, what's burning? I smell something burning. Am I doing it? What's burning?"

Andy went to her and gathered her up. "Everything is all right," he said, and wondered why you had to say that to children even when they knew perfectly well, as you did, that it wasn't true. "Everything's fine. How do you feel, hon?"

Charlie was looking over his shoulder at the burning line of cars, the convulsed body in the garden, and the Manders house, which was crowned with fire. The porch was also wrapped in flames. The wind was carrying the smoke and heat away from them, but the smell of gas and hot shingles was strong.

"I did that," Charlie said, almost too low to hear. Her face began to twist and crumple again.

"Button!" Irv said sternly.

She glanced over at him, through him. "Me," she moaned.

"Set her down," Irv said. "I want to talk to her."

Andy carried Charlie over to where Irv sat propped up against the barn door and set her down. ""You listen to me, button," Irv said. "Those men meant to kill your daddy. You knew it before I did, maybe before he did, although I'll be damned if I know how. Am I right?"

"Yes," Charlie said. Her eyes were still deep and miserable. "But you don't get it. It was like the soldier, but worse. I couldn't... couldn't hold onto it anymore. It was going everyplace. I burned up some of your chickens... and I almost burned up my father." The miserable eyes spilled over and she began to cry helplessly.

"Your daddy's fine," Irv said. Andy said nothing. He remembered that sudden strangling sensation, being enclosed in that heat capsule. "I'm never going to do it again," she said.

"Never."

"All right," Andy said, and put a hand on her shoulder. "All right, Charlie."

"Never," she repeated with quiet emphasis.

"You don't want to say that, button," Irv said, looking up at her. "You don't want to block yourself off" like that. You'll do what you have to do. You'll do the best you can. And that's all you can do. I believe the one thing the God of this world likes best, is to give the business to people who say 'never'. You understand me?"

"No," Charlie whispered.

"But you will, I think," Irv said, and looked at Charlie with such deep compassion that Andy felt his throat fill with sorrow and fear. Then Irv glanced at his wife. "Bring me that there stick by your foot, Norma."

Norma brought the stick and put it into his hand and told him again that he was overdoing it, that he had to rest. And so it was only Andy that heard Charlie say "Never" again, almost inaudibly, under her breath, like a vow taken in secrecy.

17

"Look here, Andy," Irv said, and drew a straight line in the dust. "This is the dirt road we came up. The Baillings Road. If you go a quarter of a mile north, you'll come to a woods road on your right. A car can't make it up that road, but the Willys should do it if you keep her wound up and use an educated foot on the clutch. A couple of times it's gonna look like that road just up and died, but you keep going and you'll pick it up again. It's not on any map, you understand? Not on any map."

Andy nodded, watching the stick draw the woods road.

"It'll take you twelve miles east, and if you don't get stuck or lost, you'll come out on Route One fifty-two near Hoag Corners. You turn left-north-and about a mile up One-fifty-two you'll come to another woods road. It's low ground, swampy, mushy. The Willys might do it, might not. I ain't been on that road in five years, I guess. It's the only one I know that goes east toward Vermont and won't be road-blocked off: That second road is gonna bring you out on Highway Twenty-two, north of Cherry Plain and south of the Vermont border. By then you should be out of the worst of it-although I s'pose they'll have your name and pictures on the wire. But we wish you the best. Don't we, Norma?"

"Yes," Norma said, and the word was almost a sigh. She looked at Charlie. "You saved your dad's life, little girl. That's the thing to remember."

"Is it?" Charlie said, and her voice was so perfectly toneless that Norma Manders looked bewildered and a little afraid. Then Charlie tried a hesitant smile and Norma smiled back, relieved.

"Keys are in the Willys, and-"He cocked his head to one side. "Hark!"

It was the sound of sirens, rising and falling in cycles, still faint but drawing closer.

"It's the FD," Irv said. "You better go, if you're goin."

"Come on, Charlie," Andy said. She came to him, her eyes red from her tears. The small smile had disappeared like hesitant sunlight behind the clouds, but Andy felt greatly encouraged that it had been there at all. The face she wore was a survivor's face, shocked and wounded. In that moment, Andy wished he had her power; he would use it, and he knew whom he would use it on.

He said, "Thank you, Irv." "I'm sorry," Charlie said in a small voice. "About your house and your chickens and... and everything else." "It sure wasn't your fault, button," Irv said. "They brought it on themselves. You watch out for your daddy." "All right," she said. Andy took her hand and led her around the barn to where the Willys was parked under a shakepole leanto.