When he reached the housing development where she lived, however, he saw that her place was dark. He guessed where she was, and that made him madder than ever. He wondered if Bruno was getting into that girl. There were some pretty wild stories going around and he wouldn’t put anything past Wanda. Maybe old Bruno wasn’t a complete nut after all. Might have something going there. Vince had always been secretly aroused by accounts of black masses.
Well, home to big Etta. He did not fail to notice that the erection had gone limp again. Maybe there’d be a good war picture on the TV midnight movie. And then he heard the sirens. Bells. Didn’t seem far off, so he wandered toward where it seemed to be coming from. Began to notice a glow over the rooftops. Hadn’t seen a good fire in eight or nine years, ever since the lumberyard near the railroad station went up. But a siren at night is deceptive; the chase was longer than he thought. Some ten, twelve blocks finally. He got there winded, feeling pretty sober, a crowd already gathered. He shouldered his way to the front line, located Mort Whimple, the mayor, all decked out in his old firechief’s slicker. “Need help, Mort?”
“Hello, Vince. Maybe. May have to put some barricades up if this crowd builds up.”
“Jesus, it’s going up like a matchbox! Whose place is it?”
“Ely Collins’ widow.”
“Oh yeah? Jesus, that’s tough. Did she get out okay?”
“Nobody home.”
Flames lapped at the dark sky. Windows were smashed. Hoses snaked around and there was a lot of shouting. There were people running up all the time, and now it was Tiger Miller, the newspaper editor. Lot of nervous drive to that guy. He showed up everywhere. Vince had always liked him. “What started this fire, Mort?” he asked point-blank. He seemed a little out of breath.
“Beats me,” Whimple said. The guy worked his jaws funny. What was up? “She probably left something plugged in or something.”
“Sure. Like a Christmas tree,” Miller suggested.
Then Vince heard it behind him somewhere: the Black Hand. And with that, he suddenly remembered that the friend who had talked Wanda into joining the weirdies at Bruno’s house was Widow Collins. It was all falling into place. Jesus Christ, he’d stumbled onto something! “Hey, you mean this is one of those Black Hand jobs?” he asked Whimple.
That stung the mayor somehow. Vince felt people cluster at his back. “Naw,” Whimple grumped. “That’s got all cleared up.” And he walked away. Aha.
Just then, a couple women jumped out of a car and came busting through the crowd. He recognized Widow Collins. The other was a young girl. They went flying right at the blazing house. Vince shouted at them to stay back. Tiger Miller chased after them. The door was already busted in. All three disappeared into the house. Smoke seeping out like a kind of sweat. Vince hesitated just a moment, then, with three or four other guys at his heels, followed them in. Darker inside than outside. Spotlights beamed through the front windows. Living room wet and the windows broken, but no flames here yet. The smoke stung, but it wasn’t too bad. Made him think of the mine disaster — had a brief flash of panic, then it lifted. He felt at home. The women were grabbing things off the walls and out of closets. Miller and the other guys were helping, loading up and running out. The widow headed for a back room and Vince followed. Bedroom. Fire there all right. Still, goddamn it, he almost enjoyed it. A spray of water slammed through a broken window. “Load me up!” he cried. She looked up at him, her face wild with shock — Jesus Christ! she’s really mad! She yanked stuff out of closets and drawers, dumped them in his arms. He was crying from the smoke. “Let’s get outa here!” he shouted. He staggered out under his load, coughing like a sonuvabitch. Somebody had spread a blanket out front near the street, and he dumped his armful on it. Ground was wet and soggy from all the water flying around. Vince dipped his handkerchief in the mud, tied it around his face. People watching agog. Lot of them now. Real community function. He recognized buddies from the mine, business guys off Main, teachers from the school, they were really piling in. Weird light from the flames playing on all their gaping faces.
Going back in, he met the rest coming out, all loaded down, all gagging. Widow Collins leaning on Tiger Miller. Didn’t see the girl. Pushed on in. He heard a crash to the rear, felt a puff of hot air in his face. Christ! what an idiot! maybe he was all alone in here! But then he saw the girl, sitting on the floor behind a stuffed chair with an armful of pictures and crap. He tried to grab the stuff away from her, but she wouldn’t let go, so he just grabbed her up, loot and all, lugged her out of there. About Angie’s age, he guessed, though she didn’t have what Angie had, and for a minute there it was like his own house was burning, the house it took him seventeen goddamn years to pay for and all afternoon to paint the front side of — he felt the pain of these people’s loss, just like it was his own, knew the emptiness that would come over them when the shock was gone, and, Jesus, he felt sorry for them and let the tears, pricked out of him by the smoke, flow freely.
On the way in this time, he’d noticed something somebody had dropped by the front door, so, on the porch, he set the little girl down, picked the thing up. Just a shoebox wrapped with newspaper. The girl slumped in his arms as he helped her down the steps, and Widow Collins, standing like something dead over her sad heap of dumped possessions, watched as though she wasn’t seeing anything. Oddly, she held a little porcelain Sacred Heart Madonna in her hand. Friends circled her, a lot of them bawling. Vince wiped his own eyes with his shirtsleeve.
The street was packed with townsfolk. He saw guys like Hall, Smith, Mello, Johnson, Baxter, Lucci, nodded to all of them. Lucci asked him if this was a Black Hand job, and Vince told Georgie that’s what he’d heard. He listened to his answer travel out in waves through the people. He spotted Whimple and Miller in a huddle near Widow Collins, Ted Cavanaugh there, too, and he wandered over, not out of a sense of seeking importance, but because there was something reassuring about them. Cavanaugh tossed him a nod. Old football buddy.
“What do you have there, Vince?” Tiger Miller asked.
“Hunh?” He’d forget he was carrying the box. “I dunno. Found it by the door there.”
He started to hand it over to Widow Collins to put with her things, but Whimple grabbed it out of his hands. Tore off the paper, opened the box, which was partly burnt on the inside somehow, turned stone white and fainted dead away, knocking two guys down as he fell.
There were screams and the crowd pressed on all sides.
Vince took up the box from where it fell, shook out on the blanket what was inside. A carbonized human hand. One finger missing. Same finger that Vince had lost. He felt dizzy and sat down.
People shrieked out what it was. Some girl started to vomit and Tiger Miller held her head. Widow Collins grabbed up that thing and held it high. “Ely!” she screamed. A piece of it fell off and everybody ducked. Jesus, the whole place went crazy! People wailed and hollered and people prayed and people got sick and people shouted and pushed, going in every direction at once, man, it was awful! Vince stared at his own hand with the little finger gone, feeling like he’d just seen an apparition. Widow Collins went completely off her bat, bleating out crazy stuff about the end of the world and the horrors of the last times, and her daughter was howling and groveling around in the stuff on the blanket something terrible. Vince, sitting still, glanced up and noticed that Ted Cavanaugh was looking down at him. Somehow, oddly, that calmed him for the moment. He sighed, got to his feet.
“Vince, you usually home weekdays?” Ted asked.
“Sure.” He realized, standing, how much he was trembling. His throat was parched and his chest hurt.