Late One Night

2

Della and the kids — the oldest fourteen, the youngest still a baby — lived in a trailer just south of the Bethlehem corner. Lived there by themselves because late in September, Ronnie moved out and took up living in town with his girlfriend, Brandi Tate. For a while, it was the talk all around Goldengate and out the blacktop to the farms and the shotgun houses and the trailer homes. All that autumn and up through Thanksgiving, folks spoke of it at Read’s IGA, Inyart’s Sundries, Johnstone’s Hardware, the First National Bank, the Real McCoy Café: Ronnie Black had walked out on Della and all those kids.

It was ten thirty on a bitterly cold night in January when Missy Wade, Della’s neighbor, looked out her bedroom window and could hardly believe what she saw.

The trailer was on fire.

Missy and her husband, Pat, lived a hundred yards to the west of Della, a barren cornfield between them. It was mostly open land out there. The flat fields stretched back to thin bands of woodland. That night, there was snow cover on the fields and the temperature had gone down below zero. Across the road from Della’s, a pole light lit up Shooter Rowe’s barnyard and the square, low-roofed ranch house where he lived with his son. Missy saw them running toward the trailer: Shooter and Wesley, the simpleminded boy everyone called Captain.

Pat was already asleep, and Missy shook him hard. The phone was in her hand, and she was calling 911.

“Wake up,” she said. “Pat, wake up. Della’s trailer’s on fire.”

Pat was up in a snap, throwing on the Carhartt overalls he’d left draped over a chair, pushing his feet into boots, grabbing a coat, and then running out into the cold night, running up the blacktop, his heart beating hard, the frigid air stinging his nostrils and pushing an ache into his throat and chest.

Shooter was already at the trailer. The front door stood open, and his bulk nearly filled it, his broad back and shoulders, his height, the mane of his long silver hair. When Pat got there, he saw that Della was handing out one of the twins. The little girl was in a white sleep shirt, and Shooter held her and turned to Pat with the most helpless look on his face, as if he wasn’t sure what to do with this bare-legged, barefoot girl.

Captain stepped up. He was nearly as tall as his father, a sixteenyear-old boy whose body was growing into manhood. Without a word, he took the girl from Shooter and handed her to the oldest girl, Angel, who was in sweatpants and a T-shirt. Hannah, the next in line, was there too, a wild look in her eyes, her face red from the heat of the fire.

Pat counted in his head — three kids safe and four more still inside.

The air stank of burning plastic and fiberglass insulation and melting vinyl. It all popped and crackled. The roof was starting to go.

“Oh, good Lord,” Shooter said.

He started to go into the trailer, but then Della was back. This time she had Sarah, the one born a few years after Hannah. Della handed Sarah out to Shooter, and he gave her to Pat. She clung to his neck, and he could smell the smoke on her, could feel the heat from her body.

Off in the distance, the sirens from the first fire trucks grew louder.

“You better get out of there,” Shooter yelled.

Della shook her head. “I’m going back for Emily.” So the first twin had been Emma. Pat would tell Missy later that Della was calm. She wasn’t panicked at all. “I’m going to get Emily and Gracie and Junior,” she said. “I’m going to get them all out.”