At the table, Mom looked flummoxed. She conversed openly with her attorney, but the mic wasn’t picking up their voices.
The chair had switched it off.
“I reckon that settles it,” Charlie said. “Public comment is now closed. You folks are welcome to stay, but if you do, you’ve got to get quiet. Let’s move on to the first agenda item.”
“Next time your dog gets mange, Charlie!” Mom yelled. “Don’t bring him to me!”
The rest of the crowd quietly left their seats. They filed out of the room and then out of the building.
“That’s so bogus,” Cedar said when we got outside. “There were a zillion graves. Mr. Blevins must have a huge family.”
“I really hate that pompous ass Landis,” I said. “He acts like he owns the whole freaking county.”
“He sort of does.”
“Not the people in it,” I said. “So, that’s it for the evening. Want to go someplace private and make out?”
“Very funny.” Cedar punched my arm, then steered us to the parking lot. “And very tempting, but YamFest starts tomorrow, and I have to make sure my project is perfect for the Olympiad.”
“I could help you with it.”
“Distract me from it, you mean.” She draped her arms around my neck and stood on tiptoes. “Remember to meet me on the courthouse green tomorrow. Don’t get occupied with your fires and lose track of time.”
“You’re amazing, you know that?”
“You’re not so bad, either, Mr. Childress.”
Then, before I could stop myself, those three little words popped out of my mouth. “I love you.”
For a long second, then five, then ten, Cedar said nothing. Finally, she slipped out of the hug and gave me a peck on the cheek.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Boone.”
“Yeah. Tomorrow.”
I waved as she and drove away.
Holy shit.
I told her I loved her.
“Crap! I can’t believe I said that!”
And I couldn’t believe she had left me hanging.
No I love you, too.
No I know.
No That’s nice.
Just a see you tomorrow.
Oh man.
More car doors slammed, and more engines started. I stepped into the shadows of the trees.I looked up into the night sky. The moon that had cast shadows the past two days was nowhere to be seen, and the stars that had burned so brightly over the lake seemed dim and very far away.
TUESDAY
1
After Blevins’ revelation at the commission meeting, Mom had left the courthouse a defeated woman. To make matters worse, somebody let it slip that Abner was in the county holding pen, and she rushed over there to bond him out. She was livid that Abner told me and not her. She was even more enraged at me for leaving him in a cell.
Since it was almost midnight when we got back to the house, she insisted that Abner spend the night in my room and banished me to the barn.
“Go sleep with the horses!” she yelled. “You can see what it’s like to sleep in inhumane conditions!”
“I spent three years in a ship’s rack,” I said. “A paddock is the Ritz in comparison!”
So I had dragged an old quilt and a too-fluffy pillow outside through the darkness to the guest room beside the tack room. I settled in, cold and frustrated, my head like a hornet’s nest of thoughts and theories. By the time my mind finally gave up, my body was beyond exhaustion, and I slept like the dead.
The stink of kerosene woke me.
Disoriented by the lack of sleep, I threw back the covers. The light coming through the gaps in the wall changed the color of my skin to the orange glow of sunset. I covered my eyes, but one look told me all I needed to know.
Fire!
I sat up straight in bed, gasped, and sucked in a lungful of scorching air before my training took over. I dropped back on the bed, then rolled to the floor.
On hands and knees I crawled to the door leading outside.
Smoke roiled up through a crack in the wall next to the paddock, where the horses whinnied in panic.
The horses!
I pulled open the door and scrambled outside. A burst of cool air hit my face, and I slammed the door to keep from feeding oxygen to room. In the first light of dawn I saw the paddocks nearby. The doors were still shut, the doors barred with two by fours.
I yanked them off and threw open the doors.
The appaloosa mare snorted and then broke. She raced away from the barn with her head down and made for pasture. Inside the other paddock, the gelding reared up, hoofs pawing the air in front of me.
“Out!” I yelled.
The gelding refused. It turned its wild eyes toward the smoke, which was pouring down from above.
“Come on! Out!”
I ran into the empty paddock. Grabbed a coiled lead rope from the wall. Reached over the planking that separated the stalls and swiped the gelding’s flank with the rope.
The horse bolted. Once it hit open air, it ran hell-bent for the mare.
There was no time for me to congratulate myself. After taking a quick look at the fire—it was burning in the loft above the paddock—I sprinted down the path to the house.
With one leap I was on the porch and through the kitchen door, happy for once that Lamar left the doors unlocked.
“Wake up!” My deep voice rang out. “Fire! The barn’s on fire!”
I snatched the phone from the wall. Punched 911. “Barn fire at Rivenbark house!”
“Boone!” Lamar came down the hall pulling on his boots. “Get in your turnouts! Mary Harriet, go outside and start the pump!”
“Got it!” Mom called from the bedroom.
“The horses are out,” I ran after him to the vehicles. “I turned them loose.”
“I left the herd out to graze last night.” Lamar pulled his gear from his truck. “There’s a two inch hose in the fire shed. Soon as the pump’s running, we’ll lay down a fog spray. That’ll knock the fire down so we can haul the equipment out.”
“Got it.”
In full gear I ran to the fire shed, an outbuilding Lamar had built a decade earlier when lightning took out one of the old tobacco barns. I had always thought of it an another example of Lamar’s paranoia, but now that I was hooking the two-inch hose to a line that ran down to the pond, I was glad my stepfather was a man with foresight.
I ran toward the fire, the heavy canvas hose unrolling behind me.
“Pump’s on!” Mom called from the house.
I barely reached the barn before the hose charged. I twisted the nozzle to set up a fog spray.
Knock it down, knock it down, Lamar’s voice played in my head. Stay under the fire. Heat goes up. Everything that rises must converge. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
What action, I wondered as I attacked the fire, had caused someone to react by trying to burn down our barn with me in it?
2
The Allegheny VFD was the first company to respond. Julia pulled up in her truck ahead of Otto, and the engine arrived five minutes later. Julia set up the pumper so Otto and Julia could give the remnants of the barn a good soaking before the next stations arrived.
I took the chance to get into full gear. Working with Lamar at my side, I used the hooligan and a fire axe to spread out the timbers so the water could reach them more easily. We took a break when the vollies from Galax and Atamasco arrived.
No sign of Eugene Loach and his goons.
Good. I didn’t want them on the property anyway. They were my number one suspects. Torching a man’s barn was a classic Southern gesture of intimidation, like burning switches.