We shook our heads and exchanged a few clichés about fate that neither of us believed, and Leonor marched off. Did the heater business actually happen that way? Maybe Tang went back again. It sounded crazy; but Leonor wouldn’t much care if I believed her. Did she want Tang to seem out of control, and so a major suspect in case Sochi’s death was questioned?
Wait a minute. Sochi was still alive then. Was Leonor thinking ahead, already worried that Evan might try some way to get rid of her? Now the craziness was infecting me, too.
The rescue helicopter arrived about two o’clock, the thupa-thupa growing deafening as it settled onto the gravel turnaround out front. The pilot was alone, and disgusted: He was on his way to check out a family of five believed stranded on the other side of Whiskey Creek, and clearly thought the living should preempt the dead. He hustled Sochi into a body bag, and we followed in silence as he and Evan carried her out. He couldn’t say when the roads would be open. Expect a visit from the sheriff, he said, when they were.
The house seemed somehow emptier. I wandered into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Tang was stirring a big pot of something spicy on the back of the stove. “Chili,” he said. “Another storm coming.”
I told Tang about our scorched bedding. “What I can’t understand is, Leonor seems to think that you set the heater there on purpose.”
“What did she say exactly?”
When I told him how Leonor described him moving the heater, he scowled as if in puzzlement or disbelief. “I don’t know where she got the idea,” I said. “You know how she is. Of course, I figured she was mistaken.”
“Oh, yah. I know everything.” Then a smile began and Tang straightened up, starting to look positively pleased. “I’m in charge of it now.” He patted my shoulder. “You go ahead and forget the whole thing.”
By late afternoon I was stir-crazy. Jake came down from Evan’s room blinking like a disoriented owl, and I dragged him outside for a walk. Everything dripped and gurgled, streams and rivulets carved up the gravel paths and ate away the hillsides, and mud, mud everywhere. The air was intoxicating.
“How’s Evan doing?”
He shrugged. “I left him watching cartoons.”
“Think we can get out of here tomorrow?”
“No way.” Jake stopped dead and brushed a lock of hair away from my cheek. I started to tell him what I’d found out from Farley, and about Leonor and the heater. I could see him getting furious.
“Always stirring the pot. Why can’t you just let it be an accident?”
“Because I don’t believe it, and neither do you! You know what they’ll say: Evan did it.”
“Listen,” he said, “it’s a whole lot worse than you think.”
We turned and walked a few more steps. “He told me last night,” Jake said. “You know the Calabresi Curse? There really is one. It’s in the family. Genetic. Not a virus and not a bacteria — it’s this weird element, a prion, that starts to develop at a certain point and trashes your brain. Fatal Familial Insomnia, it’s called. FFI.”
“Insomnia? Oh, come on—” I was appalled.
“Yes! It kills people.”
I walked away from him and then back. “I can’t stand this crazy talk.”
“You see? That’s why Evan never tells anybody. Because of exactly that reaction. First the laugh, total disbelief, and then finally the ‘Oh you poor dumb bastard’ look.”
FFI. Evan had explained the whole thing to Jake. Runs in families, may not develop till as late as sixty, once it starts it can kill you in eighteen months. Same type of organism (only it isn’t one) as Mad Cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, but even more rare. Evan even made Jake go on the Internet and see for himself. Jake showed me a printout.
There are four stages of the disease before an individual’s life ends. The first is progressive insomnia... If homozygous for the mutation, = mean 9.1 months to fatality... Not contagious. Only inherited. Always fatal, and so far, no cure.
“Who-all knows he’s got it?” I asked.
“Everybody up there.” Jake nodded toward the house. “Except Sochi.” We looked at each other. “He knows he should’ve told her. She still believed the curse was nothing but superstition.”
Somehow we got through the rest of the day. The televised news from the county seat described three known fatalities from the storm, but no names yet. “Tomorrow it starts,” Farley said.
The pot of chili had scorched, you could smell it all over downstairs. We had cold duck sandwiches for supper, and a very good Riesling. Tang leaned against the back wall of the kitchen, smiling.
“This place,” Leonor said to him. “When did you last get it cleaned, anyway? You must have a statement there someplace.” She pointed at his piled-high desk. “You can’t possibly find anything in that mess. Probably forgot to pay the bill.”
Leonor put down her fork and went to rummage around on the desktop, and a pile started to slide. “Oops!” Papers cascaded onto the floor, and Sochi’s red hair clip bounced free.
Farley groaned.
“Well.” Leonor picked up the clip. “It was here all the time.” Tang looked at her. Then he tipped his head back and chuckled to himself. Nobody spoke. I opened my mouth, and closed it again. I would wait and talk to the sheriff.
Jagged metal lightning, and then a terrible racket dissolved into a big dead bell tolling — I came awake sitting up and saw Jake the same, grabbing our robes and scrambling into slippers as the measured CLONK, CLONK, CLONK went on, and a man’s voice shouted something, over and over. Jake opened the door and I smelled the smoke.
“Fire!” Tang was yelling. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” The dim hallway was already fogged and acrid and my nose and eyes stung. Farley was ahead of us on the stairs, and here came Evan, staring like a wild animal. Down the stairs as roaring and snapping bonfire sounds came from the bright glowing kitchen and the smoke billowed out, flowing toward the open double doors.
“It’s climbing up,” Tang yelled. “It’s going for the attic.”
“Where’s my mother?” Evan shouted.
“She got out already.” Tang pushed him toward the doors. “Go round to the barn, I told her. Quick! Go on, get out!” We ran down the wide steps into the cold dark and sloshed after Evan along the sodden path. Farley stood at the far edge of the wide gravel turnaround with both hands pressed to his chest, shouting something. When we turned the corner of the house I saw the barn looming out there dark and still, with only gleams of light reflected from the flames. Nothing moved. Behind us the roar of the fire grew.
“Mother?” Evan yelled. “Mom?” Evan whirled around and crashed past us running back toward the front of the house again. The whole kitchen end of the house was going up, windows glaring orange and the music of glass popping, the blaze barely contained in its stone cave.
“Where is she?!” Evan screamed.
“And where is Tang?” Farley called out. Evan ran up the steps to the front entrance, dark now, the doors closed. Through the tall side windows the back-lit smoke glowed in the hall rosy gold and weirdly beautiful, like angel hair.
“Oh my God.” Evan grabbed the doorknob and yanked at it as the roaring beyond grew. The door was locked. “Mother? Tang? Open this door!” He threw himself against it, and then again, the noise of the fire drowning out his shouts.
The left-hand window shattered and fell soundlessly: Evan flinched away and then tried to climb through the broken window. Jake and I dragged at him to pull him away. The old dry walls flared like chaparral, the timbers shrieked and roared as they fell. The heat drove us all back.
Six weeks later Jake and I flew north again for the memorial service at the mission. Afterwards we walked with Evan across the sun-dappled plaza under a tender blue sky scattered with cloudlets.
“I want to tell you what happened with Sochi,” Evan said. It wasn’t necessary, I started to say, but he stopped me with a look. “Please?”
She was supposed to come to him last thing that night so they could talk; he waited with his door ajar. He heard her say goodnight to Tang and he shut his door, waiting. “Then I heard her out there talking to somebody. But after that — nothing.” He looked at me and then away. “It was my mother. So then I figured my mother had managed to buy her off, and Sochi just went on to bed. God! If only I’d...”
“Stop it,” Jake said. “It’s done.”
“Tang must’ve heard them together, too,” Evan said, “and jumped to his own conclusions.” A gust of wind ruffled our hair and pulled at our jackets, and my eyes stung. I figured Sochi had actually known about Evan’s condition, and wanted his child anyway. I figured Tang would have told her.
“Funny.” Evan smiled behind his dark glasses. “Mother made me promise I’d never kill myself. And now I’m the only one left.” He raised both bandaged hands to the big old sycamores just starting to push out their bitter green buds. “Beautiful day, isn’t it? Come on, I’ll buy you guys coffee.”