Lucy ran back to the gasoline stash and realized that she had forgotten the matches. She picked up the jar and, holding it in both hands, carried it inside. Since Dixie was dead, she decided that she’d douse the living room. The trailer on fire would be a more effective lure than some flames in the dirt.
Lucy went to the shot glass filled with matches and dropped a dozen or so in the pocket of her T-shirt. She bent and started pouring the golden liquid from the pickle jar onto the floor, being careful not to get it on her bare feet. She sloshed it on the couch, then went into the bunkroom and poured the remainder on the floor there. She saw a camouflage poncho on the top bunk and she grabbed it and put it on, pulling her head up through into the hood. It would protect them outside, and hopefully make seeing her harder for the men coming in to fight the fire.
Lucy rushed from the room, feeling the cool fuel on the soles of her bare feet. She was at the door when a powerful blow caught her on the side of her head and knocked her reeling out through the door. She landed on her back on the steel porch. The hood partially obscured her vision, but she could see Dixie crawling on all fours toward her, blood covering her face like a wet curtain.
Dixie grabbed Lucy’s ankle and squeezed it so hard Lucy was sure the bone would snap.
“Geahbackinhere!” Dixie was dragging her back inside.
Lucy kicked out, striking Dixie’s collarbone, then the woman’s mouth with her heel. Dixie sat heavily, letting go of Lucy’s ankle and looking at the skinny woman who had tried to kill her with raw rage in her eyes.
“Youdead,” Dixie said. Her jeans were soaked with the gasoline she was sitting in. Lucy scrambled to her feet, her ears ringing from the blow to her head.
“Whereyougoingarunto? Killyouandyourdamkid.” Dixie stood and raised her hand slowly. There was a snap and a thick blade shot out from her hand.
Lucy brought her hand out from under the poncho.
Dixie raised the knife higher and smiled insanely.
Lucy struck the match in her hand on the steel railing and, while the phosphorus blossomed to life, she tossed it on the floor beneath Dixie.
Flames raced along the floor, consuming the fuel.
Lucy leaped over the porch railing, slamming painfully into the dirt.
Dixie stood on the porch beating at her flaming jeans with her hands. “YOULITTLEBITCH!” she roared.
Lucy grabbed the bucket at her feet and hurled its contents at the horrid woman.
When the wave of cool fuel hit Dixie, she froze, probably thinking Lucy was trying to put out the fire on her legs.
There was a fraction of a second before the flame reacted to being fed. Then the air, filled with vapor, went bright white as the liquid caught.
Dixie’s hair vanished. Her false teeth flew out of her flaming mouth, which had been open when the gasoline hit her. And she screamed.
Lucy had never heard such a howl. Lucy turned her back to the horror on the porch, ran to the gasoline drums, lifted the pickax she had placed there. Feeling like Superwoman, Lucy swung the pick like a baseball bat over and over, puncturing the drums. She stopped when she was sure there were enough holes to empty the drums.
Lucy didn’t look at Dixie until streams of gasoline were arcing out of the drums. Aflame, and bellowing, a whirling Dixie fell off the porch, landing on her back. It appeared that she was attempting to roll the flames out.
Lucy ran back to Eli.
Dixie’s screams echoed in Lucy’s ears, the fire a roaring monster trapped for the moment in the trailer. Dixie tried to get up on her hands and knees.
Lucy watched the dark stain growing from the gas drums-flowing toward Dixie.
God, there was so much gasoline.
And it was moving too fast.
60
Peanut Smoot had driven all the way back to Charlotte to get the dope from George the druggist and was a few miles from the turnoff onto gravel road when he saw a wide section of the sky light up orange-red like the sun was rising. Peanut stared openmouthed as a fireball blossomed above the tree line.
He hoped like hell it was the underground gasoline tanks or maybe the big propane tank at the Utzes’ store. But if it wasn’t the store, there wasn’t but one other possible source of an explosion like that one. He set his jaw and stomped the accelerator, shooting fuel to the Hemi. If this was Buck’s doing, his son was a dead man.
He roared past the store, noticing that the old couple who ran it were out in the parking lot under an umbrella staring over at about where his barn was located-a half mile off. He got out at his gate to open it, and looked skyward at the column of thick black smoke boiling into the clouds, illuminated from the ground. He was startled by a series of thunderous explosions that had to be the fifty-pound crates of black powder he had stored up in the trailer, and probably the propane tank for the stove. The whole warehouse was filled with crap that shouldn’t be in there if there was a fire, but that hadn’t ever seemed important before.
As he rounded the first curve in the road to the metal barn, he almost hit the twins. They were standing in the road with their backs turned-shotguns over their shoulders-watching the fire like a couple of cows.
Peanut hit his brights and smacked the horn. Burt and Curt bolted off into the weeds about a second before he would have run them both over. If he hadn’t figured he would need them, he wouldn’t have honked or braked.
“What happened?” he hollered out his window as it went down.
“Looks like it’s a fire at the barn,” Burt said.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Peanut hollered.
“You said to stay here,” Curt answered.
“Get in the truck!” Peanut snarled.
The twins scrambled into the bed and squatted, one on either side of the cab. As Peanut roared off, they put their faces out in the slipstream like dogs enjoying the wind.
Peanut roared along, braking to avoid hitting a group of deer. When he made it around the final bend, he involuntarily sucked in a deep bracing breath. The place looked like one of those fireworks plants on the news that ran plumb out of luck in the unfortunate-spark department. Twisted corrugated metal was scattered everywhere. Blackened sheets of the steel had curled away from the barn’s I-beam superstructure like the petals of an orchid. The steel skeleton-beams and ceiling struts-had come from a Winn-Dixie that had been damaged by Hurricane Hugo, which Peanut had bought from the insurance company for a song.
Peanut hoped the damned volunteer fire department didn’t show up and come on his land, but with the explosion visible for God knew how far off, he wouldn’t be at all surprised if all sorts of authorities came sniffing about, even knowing as most did that he didn’t allow anybody on the place he hadn’t invited. If the Dockerys’ bodies were in this mess, he sure as hell didn’t need anybody snooping around. Buck’s or Dixie’s corpse he could explain, but not the Dockerys’. He had to make some calls and head that off or get the hell out of there.
The shed was on fire. Inside, what had been the tractor, the four-wheelers, Buck’s 1500, the twins’ Blazer, and Dixie’s 1970 GTO were all part of the burning whatnot. Peanut wondered about how much insurance he could collect on all of it. Enough to rebuild. The agent would give him whatever he could think of that was or wasn’t actually in there.
“Buck! Dixie! Buck! Dixie!” the twins hollered out in a steady stream.
“Stop yelling,” Peanut told them.
“You think they’re dead?” Curt asked.
“Maybe Buck went off to do something like he does,” Burt said.
“Don’t know,” Peanut said. He didn’t either. Who knew what the hell Buck was liable to do when he got something in his head?