We decided that the best way to do it would be to have Stobik drive the truck around to the New Hampshire side of the oxbow. Then I’d light the fire from the riverbank too, so that the onrushing flames wouldn’t somehow jump the river. Robert drove the tractor back through the field, leaving me standing right on the bend in the river with a box of matches. I could barely see the white shack over the corn. The river ran behind me, softly laughing its way over the rocks. Everything was still, and my heart almost stopped panting for the first time in a long time. Bill Allen stood on the riverbank and knew he needed to die. He knew he had to go back to the place he was born and answer for the crime that fathered him. I heard the airhorn blow from the big rig, Robert’s signal to me that he was clear of the fields. As I lit the corn on fire, Bill Allen decided to throw himself into the blaze.
The flames grew fast, and I jumped out into the Connecticut River. It must have been cool, but I didn’t feel it. The heat from the fire seemed to reach across the oxbow and right through the water. I climbed up on the bank on the other side just in time to see Robert’s white wedding shack take the flames full force. The walls and roof caught like they were made of rice paper, and in the next instant the shack was gone. The fire was so hot, so intense, I couldn’t look at it. I walked farther up on the bank and Stobik was there with the small truck. I got in and we started to drive back toward Vermont. A black cloud grew in the air of the beautiful blue horizon and we watched it for miles. It seemed as if we’d permanently smudged the sky.
When we got back to Lord’s farm, Robert was busy fending off several local volunteer fire companies, who had arrived with sirens and lights going. He just kept showing them the permit Judge Harris had given to Frank. Stobik and I stayed in the small truck. At one point, I swear the flames in the field were higher than the farmhouse. Stobik backed the truck up so the windshield wouldn’t crack. I finally got out and sat alone in the passenger’s side of the big rig. I fell asleep. It was late that night when Robert climbed in to drive and slammed his door, bringing me straight up in my seat. The fields were still burning and all I could smell was smoke. We drove slowly back to the woodlot and I slept there in my Bronco. The next day — Sunday—I was going to drive all day and turn myself in. Bill Allen was dead.
The screaming echo of the phone over the woodlot woke me. I saw Robert go into the headquarters shack to answer it. He came back out shortly, still in his coveralls, and walked over to the Bronco. I got out. He handed me a styrofoam cup of coffee and pointed his chin at the Bronco.
“Comfy in there last night?” he asked. I nodded and he went on. “That was John on the phone. He’s going to plead out tomorrow and take two years.” Robert shook his head. “Anyway, you’ve got tomorrow off. I’m going up to Concord to be at the sentencing.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills. He handed it to me.
“What’s this for?” I said.
Robert narrowed his eyes and looked at me. “Do you need it or not?” His voice was the hardest love I’d ever felt. I nodded. He turned around and started walking back to the shed. I watched him close the door. I climbed back in the Bronco and headed out onto the highway. I drove north, and crossed over into Vermont. There was still a huge black cloud in the sky over the oxbow. I drove up Route 5 and looked out over the burnt fields, still smoldering, scorched dead. Lord’s farm looked gray from the smoke. I drove up into the Northeast Kingdom. I never did find the courage to turn myself in, and things got worse. I spent the winter at a logging camp in Quebec.
I called once, when I hit a jam out in North Dakota. I called from a phone booth outside a diner. I recognized John’s voice the second he spoke. I hung up. Later, much later, in another life, with another name, we were driving and someone handed me a road atlas. I flipped through it and found Vermont and New Hampshire were together on the same page. I started tracing their shared border, the Connecticut River, north toward Canada. I dropped the atlas when my finger reached the oxbow. For just that split second, right on the tip of my finger, the surface of the map was scorching hot. I heard the roar of the fire, the little white house burning. The air rushing to be eaten by the flames. I smelled the gasoline. Riding across the top of the fire on a black horse was Bill Allen. Three dark shapes followed swiftly after him, the burning wasps in their long black hair, chasing him. Catching him and dragging him down into the fire, screaming.
Years later, on the security ward at Western State Hospital near Tacoma, I saw a man in a straitjacket, strapped to a gurney. I walked over to him and spoke.
“I didn’t know they used straitjackets anymore.”
He could barely move his head. “Well, they do.” The smell of ether was everywhere. He was quiet as a white-jacketed doctor walked by. “Say, Mac, scratch my shoulder, will you?”
I slowly reached down and began scratching the outside of the thick canvas that bound him. Solid steel mesh covered the ward windows.
“Harder,” he said. “I can barely feel it.” He looked up at me. “I think they’re trying to save on the heat. Aren’t you cold?” I shook my head. “I’m cold all the time,” he said.
I dug my nails into the canvas on his right shoulder. “My name is John Wilson,” I said.
He looked at me, his eyes wide. “That’s my name,” he said softly.
I stopped scratching the straitjacket. “What’s your middle name?” I asked.
He shook his head slightly and closed his eyes. “Same as yours,” he said. He shivered. It was cold. But my paper gown was soaked with dry sweat and my face was hot. I could smell smoke.
2005
THOMAS H. COOK
WHAT SHE OFFERED
Thomas H(arper) Cook (1947-) was born in Fort Payne, Alabama, and received a BA from Georgia State College, a masters in American history from Hunter College in New York, and a masters in philosophy from Columbia University. He worked as a teacher and journalist, including four years as a book reviewer for Atlanta magazine, before becoming a full-time writer.
His first novel was a paperback original, Blood Innocents (1980), which received the first of his seven Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations from the Mystery Writers of America. He won the Best Novel Edgar in 1997 for The Chatham School Affair. He also was nominated by the MWA in 1989 for Best Novel (Sacrificial Ground), in 1993 for Best Fact Crime (Blood Echoes), in 2005 for Best Paperback Original (Into the Web), in 2006 for Best Novel (Red Leaves), and in 2007 for Best Short Story (“Rain”). Red Leaves was also nominated for an Anthony Award and the (British) Crime Writers’ Association’s Duncan Lawrie Dagger, and it won the Barry Award and Sweden’s Martin Beck Award. Noted for the poetic lyricism of his work, Cook has enjoyed greater success with critics, reviewers, and his fellow mystery writers, who admire the sensitive beauty of his prose, than he has with book buyers, who have thus far failed to place any of his books on the bestseller list. A film of one of his books, the highly suspenseful Evidence of Blood, was released in 1998; it was directed by Andrew Mondshein and starred David Strathairn and Mary McDonnell.
“What She Offered” was first published in the anthology Dangerous Women (New York: Mysterious Press, 2005).
Sounds like a dangerous woman,” my friend said. He’d not been with me in the bar the night before, not seen her leave or me follow after her.
I took a sip of vodka and glanced toward the window. Outside, the afternoon light was no doubt as it had always been, but it didn’t look the same to me anymore. “I guess she was,” I told him.