Late One Night

29

By noon the next day word was running around town. Ronnie Black was in custody. Maybe all that gossip? That gossip about him having something to do with that trailer fire? Well, maybe it wasn’t gossip at all. Maybe it was gospel.

“You wouldn’t think it’d be possible,” Roe Carl kept saying to folks who came through her checkout line at Read’s IGA. “But, lordy, these are strange times.”

Certain facts had come to light, and now folks were passing them around tables at the Real McCoy. Anna Spillman listened in as she served lunch platters and refilled coffee cups and iced tea glasses. The investigators from the State Fire Marshal’s office had found footprints in the muddy ground where the fire had melted the snow cover and thawed the frozen earth. A man’s footprints. The ridged tread of work boots. Those prints were frozen into the ground now, just under the fresh snow. You could drive out the blacktop and see them if you took a notion. They’d be there until the thaw came in the spring. The investigators had made plaster casts of those prints, and Sheriff Biggs had them in his office now. That was as true as true could be.

It was also true that Della’s furnace had been acting up, but her daddy had it running fine the day of the fire. Wayne Best had told the investigators as much, and sure enough, when they gave it a look-see, they could tell it hadn’t malfunctioned that night. Nor had the Franklin stove, which Wayne said Della was using, been to blame.

But one fact stood out as a cruel irony. Overlooked at first by investigators, a cardboard box containing wood ash, surely from the Franklin stove, finally got noticed behind the trailer.

When the fire erupted, the points of ignition had been along the back of the trailer, far from the front corner where the stove was — multiple points of ignition near the back door off the kitchen.

Ronnie had filled up a five-gallon gas can at Casey’s the morning of the fire. Taylor Jack reminded everyone about that. He’d been the one to take Ronnie’s money. “You running something?” Taylor asked, and Ronnie said that Brandi had run out of gas on her way to work, and he was carrying some to her. That all made sense, Taylor said later, but how come Ronnie came back the night of the fire to buy five gallons more?

The diner went quiet when Taylor Jack told that part of the story, and even Anna Spillman, who’d always felt sorry for Ronnie and even let him stay with her, had to admit that the unthinkable was possible: Ronnie Black might have burned that trailer, not caring a snap who was inside.

Laverne Ott and the State of Illinois were moving forward. Missy and Pat passed their medical exams and their criminal background checks. Lois and Wayne confirmed that they weren’t in a position to care for the girls and that their wish was that Missy and Pat be granted custody.

On the day of the sheltered care hearing, the judge considered the evidence: a father under investigation for the arson that had killed his wife and three of their children, the story of how that father had tried to run a van off the road knowing that his daughters were inside.

Laverne was there to answer questions concerning her inquiry, and as much as it pained her to say so, she recommended that the girls be allowed to stay in the custody of Pat and Missy Wade.

“I can personally vouch for their character,” she said. “I’ve known them since they were children in my class.”

The judge said, “Everything considered then, I’m awarding custody of these girls to Mr. and Mrs. Wade.”

And like that it was done.

When Missy and Pat got home after the sheltered care hearing, they heard a chainsaw running out in Shooter Rowe’s woods.

“I wonder what he’s up to now?” Pat said.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like that noise.” Missy felt the cold air on her neck. She wrapped her arms around her chest and shivered. “It gets on my last nerve. Come on. Let’s get in the house.”

Pat changed his clothes and got ready to drive out to the job site, a new house out on Highway 50, a few miles west of Goldengate near the Crest Haven cemetery. The framing crew was finishing today and he needed to get out there and see how things were going.

“I might be late this evening,” he told Missy. “Can you handle getting the girls?”

“Angel’s coming on the bus,” she said. “I’ll gather up Hannah and Sarah and Emma.”

“All right.” Pat zipped up his Carhartt coveralls. “Call me if you need anything.”

He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, and she clung to him a little longer than she usually would, putting her arms around him and pressing her face into his chest. She loved the solid feel of him, and she understood that through all their trouble — through all the miscarriages and the numbing sense of loss — she’d depended on him to be there for her no matter how many times she’d disappointed him.

“We’re doing the right thing, aren’t we?” she asked.

He kissed the top of her head. “It’s what you’ve wanted, isn’t it?”

She pulled back from him and looked up into his eyes. They were hard-set as if he were squinting into a bright sun. “Haven’t you always wanted a family?” she said. “You love those girls.”

“I do love them. There’s no doubt about that. I just hope we’re not leaving ourselves open to trouble. You saw how crazy Ronnie was when he tried to run us off the road.”

She nodded. “It’ll be all right.” She took Pat’s hand and squeezed it. “I know it will.”

“I hope so,” he said.

He was thinking of the night of the fire and how he’d run up the road to find Della trying to save everyone from the flames. He’d done what he could. He’d wanted to do more. Then the trailer caved in and he knew there was nothing that he or anyone else could do for Della or the kids who were still inside. All that he and Shooter and Captain and the girls who had made it out could do was watch that trailer burn, backing away from the heat, lifting their heads at the first sound of the sirens coming from Goldengate.

Later, once Biggs had started to sort things out, Pat volunteered to drive into town to tell Ronnie what had happened. And like that, their long strange journey began.

Now it was getting close to an end. Pat could sense that. Questions were going to be answered, and his life and Missy’s and the lives of those sweet girls, who deserved none of this upset, were going to move on.

“I’ll be back when I can,” he told Missy.

She grinned and gave a little shrug of her shoulders as if to say of course he would. Everything was going to be fine. It was going to be easy-breezy. “I’ll be here,” she said.

_________

At the courthouse, Biggs had Ronnie in an interrogation room. Biggs sat at a foldout table. He allowed Ronnie to wander over to the window, where he stood looking out at State Street. A fine snow, half rain, was falling. Ronnie watched a man come out of the J.C. Penney store, a blue scarf wrapped around his face.

“You better start talking,” Biggs said.

For a good while, Ronnie didn’t speak. He just stayed there at that window, his head bowed. Then he turned to face Biggs. He lifted his head, drew his shoulders back.

“All right,” he said. “Now listen.” His voice started to quaver, then, and he had to bite his lip and look down at his feet to get control of himself. “I’m not what people say I am.”

Biggs said, “No one’s condemned you yet.”

Ronnie let out a little puff of breath. He gave Biggs a weak grin. “If you ask me,” he said, “that’s exactly what this town’s done.”

It was Willie Wheeler who finally came into the Real McCoy that afternoon and told Anna Spillman in a voice loud enough for everyone in the restaurant to hear that he’d seen a deputy carrying what looked to be a man’s T-shirt in a big ziplock plastic bag out of Brandi’s house. Another deputy had a bag that held Ronnie’s work boots. The deputies spent some time going through the storage shed in the backyard, and they carried out a five-gallon Marathon gas can, the kind with that logo of the nearly naked man running with his arm in the air and the red block letters that spelled out MARATHON.

Willie didn’t know that at one point the taller deputy went back into Brandi’s house and told her, “We found a gas can in your shed.”

Brandi said, “It’s the can Ronnie used the morning when I ran out of gas before I got to work. He carried five gallons to me in Phillipsport.”

“Did he put it all in your car?”

She nodded. “Every drop.”

For a while, the deputy didn’t say anything. He took out a small pocket notebook and a pen, and he wrote something down. Then he said to Brandi, “That can in your shed? Ma’am, it still had about a gallon of gas in it.”

Missy was making a shopping list — things she needed now that the girls were there — when she heard a racket outside. She got up from the kitchen table, went to the living room window, and peeked outside.

Shooter Rowe was sitting on his Bobcat tractor in her driveway, looking toward the house. He lifted his arm and pointed a finger at her.

What else could she do but go outside to see what he wanted.

He had a scoop shovel on the front of the Bobcat, and she could see the chain saw riding inside. The scoop was stained with fresh mud, speckled with dead leaves and sticks.

“You got those girls with you now.” He shouted over the idling tractor engine. “I saw you all leave this morning.”

She was in no mood for chitchat. “What is it you want?”

He sat on his tractor. “It’s a good thing you’re doing, taking those girls.”

“You said that goat had hoof and mouth.” The words were out before she could even think about where they would lead. “Pat said we haven’t had hoof and mouth in this country for almost eighty years.”

Shooter shut off the tractor and, after the noisy idling, the silence was unnerving. “That goat was sick.” His voice was low and pointed. Missy knew he was telling her to pay attention, warning her that she was going somewhere she really didn’t want to go. She felt certain that he’d been in the woods cutting trees and bulldozing them into the gully to cover the body of the goat. He’d been filling in that grave. “He was sick,” Shooter said, “and I had to put him down.”

“But Pat said—” She heard the weakness in her own voice, and she stopped to gather herself.

Then Shooter said this last thing: “You’ve got what you want, Missy. You’ve got those girls. You wouldn’t want anything to get in the way of your happy-ever-after, would you?”

She didn’t know what to say.

He held her eye a moment longer, and when she still didn’t say anything, he said, “That’s right. You keep to your business, and I’ll keep to mine.”

With that, he put the Bobcat into gear and backed out of the driveway. She watched him go, and then she took out her cell phone and called Pat.

“It’s Shooter,” she told him. “He’s up to something.” Then she related the story of what had just happened. “He threatened me, Pat.”

“Threatened you? How?”

“He told me to keep to my business and let him keep to his. Pat, I’ve got this feeling. This very bad feeling.”

“Do you want me to come home? I’ll leave right now. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“No, I’m on my way into town. I’ve got to get some things for the girls. I’ll stay and pick them up from school. They get out earlier than Angel. Maybe we’ll all drive over to Phillipsport to the high school and pick her up so she doesn’t have to ride the bus. I want to make sure everyone stays safe tonight.”

“Try not to worry too much about Shooter. He’s mostly full of bluff.”

“Still,” she said, “just to be on the safe side.”

“All right, Missy. You know best. Call if you need me.”

_________

Missy moved through her day trying to convince herself that nothing was unusual. It was the first day of what was going to be her life for a good while to come, the life of a mother. She stopped at Read’s IGA and ticked off the items on her list: breakfast cereal, orange juice, bread, milk, apples, bananas, canned soups, lunch meat, ham salad, ground beef, frozen pizzas, pasta, and tomato sauce. It was so cold outside the perishables would be fine in the very back of the van. It wouldn’t take her long to gather up Hannah and Sarah and Emma and then drive over to Phillipsport for Angel. They’d all ride home together, a family, and she’d ask the girls to help her put the groceries away.

By the time she got to the checkout line, Missy’s cart was heaped full.

“Got a load there,” Roe Carl said.

“Cooking for five now,” Missy said.

“I heard you got Ronnie Black’s girls.”

Missy nodded. “The sheltered care hearing was this morning.”

“Good luck to you.”

“Thank you,” said Missy, feeling her breath catch.

She knew Roe didn’t mean to give her any alarm, but something about that wish for good luck made Missy afraid of everything she’d soon know about the night of the fire. Here she was dreaming about the future, all the good parts of it, not stopping to think what it would do to the girls if they found out that indeed Ronnie had set fire to the trailer.

As Missy loaded her groceries into the back of the van and made ready to drive to the grade school, she thought back to the day that ended up being the last one of Della’s life. She’d been making plans too, not knowing she was about to run out of time.

At the high school in Phillipsport, Angel slouched at her desk behind Tommy Stout’s in algebra class and kept kicking her foot against his chair back. The teacher, Mrs. Ferenbacher, was writing equations on the board. She was about a million years old, and she kept a handkerchief balled up in her left hand, and sometimes she had a coughing spell and she spit phlegm into her hanky. When Tommy turned in his seat, Angel rolled her eyes, letting him know how bored she was, and he laughed a little, but not enough for Mrs. F. to hear. The chalk kept on squeaking, and Mrs. F. coughed a little, and Angel stuck her finger in her mouth like she was gagging, and that sent Tommy into a laughing fit he couldn’t control. Mrs. F. turned on her heel and surveyed the class. “Tommy Stout,” she said. “Would you mind telling us what’s tickled your funny bone?”

In Goldengate, Hannah was dressing for P.E. class. They were square dancing with the boys today, so all she had to do was put on gym shoes and then hope that she didn’t get stuck with someone like Kyle Dehner, who always put his hand too low on his partner’s back, sneaking a feel of a hip. He’d been kept back twice and was almost old enough to drive a car. His brown hair hung over his eyes in bangs, and his breath smelled like bread and sour milk. All things considered, Hannah should have thought him disgusting but she couldn’t quite manage it. He was her secret crush, though she couldn’t figure out why she felt the way she did. She was afraid to dance with him. She didn’t want to say something stupid. She didn’t want him to feel her hip and find her too skinny for his taste. She didn’t want to think of him making fun of her later with his friends.

At the grade school, Sarah was passing notes back and forth with Amy Cessna, whose desk was across the aisle from hers. Amy had played one of the Billy Goats Gruff in the class play, and she and Sarah were reviewing the highlights of the performance and giggling behind their hands when their teacher, Mrs. Stout, leaned over to search through a drawer in her desk. “Where is my stapler?” she asked. “Has anyone seen my stapler?” For some reason, Sarah and Amy thought this was the funniest thing they’d ever heard, and they covered their mouths and snorted.

Down the hall, in the first-grade classroom, Emma was doing a reading lesson on the computer. She was learning the sound a short “a” made by reading a story about Zac the Rat. Zac is a rat. Zac sat on a can. The ants ran to the jam. The cartoon that went with the story was funny. She had on a purple sweater with fuzzy sleeves, and she liked the way the sweater felt when she folded her arms on the desk and put her chin on one of those sleeves. The fuzz tickled. It made her l-a-u-g-h.

Sarah and Emma weren’t thinking much at all about what it meant that they’d had to pack their things and go back to Missy’s. They understood that it had something to do with the fire and with their daddy, but they didn’t know what that something was. Since the fire they’d gotten used to going where people told them to go. So they went to Missy’s and they understood that for the time being they didn’t live with their daddy and Brandi. They lived with Missy and Pat, who were kind to them, and the girls imagined, with the trusting natures that disaster had forced onto them, that everything would eventually work out. They knew it was their job to keep their attention on what they were responsible for: a class play, a friend named Amy, fuzzy sweater sleeves, Zac the Rat.

Hannah, though, was old enough to worry, and worry she did. She missed Brandi. She knew that her father might be in trouble. She wanted things to quiet down. She wanted all the talk to stop. The talk about her father and what he’d maybe done. She wanted to sit somewhere by herself for a very long time and not have to give any thought to what was happening and what might happen and what it all meant for her and her family. But the square dancing music was starting, and boys were choosing partners, and here came Kyle Dehner.

Angel thought she was right where she wanted to be: back with Missy, who bought her nice things and cooked her favorite foods and loved on her with hugs and kisses. She’d let Missy be her mother. She wouldn’t argue with that at all. Given the choice between Brandi and Missy, she’d choose Missy anytime, which she had, and now everything was working out the way she’d always dreamed. Mrs. F. was waiting for an answer from Tommy Stout. Exactly what had tickled his funny bone? “You’re in trouble now, buddy,” Angel whispered to Tommy. “You should’ve kept your mouth shut.”

The girls were quiet after school as Missy drove to Phillipsport, even Sarah and Emma who were usually such chatterboxes. Now, away from school, they somehow understood — though Missy had certainly never said as much to them — that they might not see their father for quite some time.

Finally, Hannah said to Sarah, “Where’s your hair scrunchie? Did you lose it?”

Missy glanced up at the rearview mirror and saw Sarah pat her head and run her fingers through her hair. She finally shrugged her shoulders. “Yeppers,” she said.

At the high school, Missy parked along the street right behind the bus that was waiting for the final bell and the students who would tromp up its steps and flop down onto its seats. What a lucky stroke, she thought, to find this place from which she could watch for Angel and honk the horn at her before she could get onto the bus. Missy took it as a sign that everything was going to work out just fine.

“We picking up Angel?” Emma asked, and Missy couldn’t resist the lighthearted feeling that had suddenly filled her.

“Yeppers,” she said, and Emma and Sarah began to giggle.

“She said, ‘Yeppers,’” Emma said. “Didn’t she?”

“Yeppers,” said Sarah, and that started them giggling again.

Then Angel was coming down the school steps, her book bag slung over her shoulder, the wind blowing her hair across her face.

Missy honked the horn, and Angel saw her. The other girls were in the second row of seats, so the front was empty. Missy leaned over and opened the door, and Angel started to get in.

Then someone called her name. Missy turned around to look for who it was, and that’s when she saw Brandi coming up the sidewalk.

“Angel,” Brandi called. “Angel, wait.”

Missy didn’t know why Brandi had come or what it might mean, but she saw how worn down she was. How washed out her face looked with only the slightest tint of pale pink lipstick to adorn it, how burdened and overwhelmed she was, how unlike the sassy woman who had stolen Ronnie from Della. She hadn’t taken time to fix her hair — it had tangles in it — and she was wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt, an old quilted coat thrown on. It was her voice that caught Missy by surprise. So tender it was, so sad.

“Angel,” Brandi said again, taking her by the arm, and though part of Missy resented the intimate tone — one earned from the days Brandi had tried to do the right thing by the girls after the fire — she also felt herself drawn to it, wishing that could be the way she’d speak to Angel all the rest of her days. “Sugar,” Brandi said. “Oh, sugar,” she said again. “There’s something you need to know.”

So there were stories. After weeks of speculation and gossip, people who claimed they knew things — the real, true things — were starting to talk.

Shooter Rowe came into the sheriff’s office and told the deputy at the desk that he had something to say, and he was sure Sheriff Biggs would be very interested to hear it.

Captain was in shop class at the high school. He was staining a gun cabinet he’d built, but his mind was somewhere else. With each stroke of his brush he whispered the chain of words that had become a chant inside his head: gas can, pocket, match.

Brandi was still talking to Angel by Missy’s van at the high school, talking in a whisper. “Sugar, you know the sheriff’s got your daddy.”

“Is he going to go to prison?” Angel’s own voice was calm.

“Oh, sugar, he might.”

Missy couldn’t stop herself. “Maybe that’s just where he needs to be,” she said, and she could barely stand the look that Angel gave her, a hard, hurt look, as if suddenly she’d realized how serious everything was and how awful it was for Missy to have said what she did.

Biggs had questions for Ronnie.

“Ask ’em,” Ronnie said. He’d waived his right to have an attorney present. He folded his hands on top of the table. Biggs sat across from him, and the questions began.

Why had he bought all that gas at Casey’s? Brandi’s boss, Mr. Samms, had verified that Ronnie brought five gallons to put in Brandi’s car the morning of the fire, but what about the five gallons more that he bought that night? Why did the T-shirt he was wearing then now smell like gasoline? Why had a strip of that shirt been cut away? Why were there footprints behind that trailer that matched the size and tread of his boots?

All Ronnie said was, “Everyone in town’s been talking about me. What I might have done. Guess there’s no reason for me to say anything. Folks have already made up their minds.”

The door opened, and a deputy, his bushy brows arched with urgency, stuck his head inside. “You need to come out here,” he said to Biggs.

“It better be important,” Biggs said.

“Shooter Rowe’s wanting to talk to you. Says he knows exactly what happened the night of the fire.”

Biggs nodded his head toward Ronnie. “See what you can get out of him.”

The deputy stepped into the room. Biggs went down the hall to see what Shooter Rowe had to say.

Brandi rubbed her thumb over the back of Angel’s hand, making that one gentle motion to let her know that things could turn out just fine. “I know you’ve gone through a lot,” Brandi said. “More than any girl your age ought to have put upon her, but there are people who love you, Angel. I love you, and your sisters love you, and so does your father.”

Angel wouldn’t look at Brandi. “But he left us. You took him away, and look what happened.”

Brandi didn’t know what to say to that. It was a fact she couldn’t deny. “Sometimes people are lonely,” she finally said. “So lonely they’ll do practically anything to feel happy again. Does that make it right? No, I suppose it doesn’t. I’m just telling you the way it was. I was lonely, and your father was lonely, and there we were.”

“Why was he lonely? He had us, my mother and all us kids. Why weren’t we enough? We all loved him.”

“Sugar, that’s something you’re going to have to ask him.” Brandi made herself count to ten. She took a deep breath and let it out. “But you should know what he told me before the sheriff came.”

At that moment, Brandi felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her abdomen. She held onto Angel and waited for the pain to pass. The sun had come out and the light splintering off the snow-covered ground was too much for her. She felt sick to her stomach. Everything started to spin. Then she could feel the light dimming. She was slipping away. It was like a curtain was being drawn slowly over her eyes, and she felt like she was ducking under a thick pile of quilts.

Angel, she tried to say. Listen, sugar. But she wasn’t sure any words were coming out of her mouth.

Then she heard Angel say, “Missy, help. What are we going to do?”

“It was like this,” Shooter said. “Ronnie Black ran out from behind the trailer that night. He was a man in a hurry, and it’s no wonder, seeing what he’d just done.”

Biggs had taken Shooter into his office. They were standing just inside the door behind the frosted glass with the word SHERIFF stenciled across it. Two men. One, Biggs, barrel-chested and broad-shouldered; the other, worn down by too much, his back starting to hump with the strain of it all.

“What exactly did he do?” Biggs asked.

Shooter couldn’t get the words out of his mouth fast enough. He’d kept them there so long. He’d thought of this moment over and over the past few weeks, and now it was here.

“He burned down that trailer is what he did.” Shooter realized his voice was too loud. He feared he was coming across like a lunatic. He tried to get himself calmed down, and then he tried to say it all again, this time in as steady a voice as he could manage. “He slopped gasoline all over it. He struck a match and lit it up. Then he ran.”

Biggs studied Shooter for a while. “Anyone else see him? Anyone who can corroborate your story?”

Shooter cleared his throat. He swallowed hard. Then he nodded. “My son,” he finally said. “He saw it too.”

Biggs didn’t waste any time. He told Shooter to wait in his office, and then he went back to the room where the deputy had been interrogating Ronnie.

“Well?” Biggs asked.

The deputy shook his head. “Nothing we don’t already know.”

“I’ll tell you who is talking.” Biggs pulled up a chair next to Ronnie. He leaned in close, but Ronnie didn’t try to move away. He met Biggs’s stare. “Shooter Rowe, that’s who. He just told me a very interesting story. Claims he and his boy saw you sloshing gasoline on that trailer and then lighting it up. Looks to me like if you didn’t do that, you might want to take this chance to say so.”

A space heater was running in the corner of the room, and for a while the only noise was the hum of its fan, that and the deputy tapping a pencil against the edge of the table.

Finally Ronnie shifted his weight in his chair, and the deputy put the pencil down. Ronnie cleared his throat.

“Go ahead, Biggs. You chase that story around and see where it takes you.”

Missy called 911 and soon the ambulance arrived, and the EMTs took Brandi away on a gurney. Angel’s fingers were trembling, and she tucked her hands up into her armpits to hide them.

She wanted to ride in the ambulance with Brandi, but Missy said, “You wouldn’t want to be in the way of the EMTs, would you?”

“But who’ll be there for her?” Angel said. “She shouldn’t have to be alone.”

“Honey,” said Missy. “I’m sure she’ll be all right.”

Missy tried to pet Angel’s hair, but Angel pulled away from her.

“You said my dad should be in prison.”

“I shouldn’t have said that. It was wrong of me. I just get mad sometimes.”

Angel could understand that. It was how she’d felt for a good while on both sides of the night of the fire. Before and after. Just mad, mad, mad. Hearing Missy admit that she sometimes felt the same caused something to let go inside her; that anger came unknotted. She let her hands drop to her sides, and she felt a great calm pass through her, the first time she could remember not being on edge, as if strands of barbed wire were tangled up inside her since the night of the fire. Ever since her father had walked out and taken up with Brandi she’d been mad. Just mad at everyone, even herself. Mad at her mother sometimes for not being able to keep her father there. Mad at him for leaving. Mad at Brandi for taking him away. Mad at herself for not being a better person the night of the fire.

Now Brandi was in trouble — and what about her baby? — and Angel was tired of being mad, tired of people’s messed-up lives.

“I want to go to the hospital,” she said. “I want to be there for Brandi. She’s been trying her best with me.”

It was then that Missy realized she was holding Brandi’s purse. It had slipped from her arm when she’d fainted, and somewhere in the bustle of the EMTs, Missy had seen it on the ground and picked it up so it wouldn’t be in the way. She’d been clutching it to her chest.

“Get in the van,” Missy said, and in an instant, though she didn’t yet know this would be true, she got a picture of Pat and her going on into old age alone. As much as that thought saddened her, she felt a light and airy space somewhere deep inside. Something was opening in her heart — some little part of her she’d kept locked ever since her missed chances to have a child of her own. Angel and her sisters — they’d be all their children now. Brandi’s and Laverne Ott’s and Lois and Wayne’s, and every person in Goldengate and on out the blacktop who loved them and wanted them to have a good and happy life. Missy knew that was what she wanted most of all. “Come on,” she said to Angel. “We’ll go to the hospital.”

Biggs told Shooter to go home. “I’ll come by this evening,” he said. “I’ll have a talk with your boy.”

“He’ll tell you,” Shooter said. “Count on it. He’ll tell you exactly what I did.”

Then he left the courthouse and drove straight home. Captain was in the barn with the goats.

“Come on,” Shooter said to him. “Let’s go for a ride.”

“What for?”

“No reason. Let’s just go.”

In the emergency room, Missy went to the front desk to ask about Brandi.

“Are you family?” the woman at the desk asked.

Missy put her hands on Angel’s shoulders and nudged her forward a bit. “This is her daughter,” she said.

Angel reached up and laid her right hand on top of Missy’s left, and then Missy let her go. Angel followed the woman to a set of double doors, and as the doors opened Missy got a glimpse of nurses bustling past in scrubs. She saw an empty gurney against the wall, a row of cubicles with curtains drawn closed. For a moment Angel hesitated, looking back at Missy, who smiled at her and motioned with her hand for her to go on. Angel mouthed the words Thank you, and then she was gone.

Shooter just drove. He had Captain in the truck, and he didn’t know where he was going. He only knew that for the time he didn’t want to be at home, didn’t want to think about that evening when Biggs, if he were true to his word, would come to talk to Captain.

For now, Shooter only knew he wanted to keep moving. He didn’t want to sit still and have time to think. So he drove into Phillipsport and then out of it, letting State Street become Route 50. Soon he was driving past Wabash Sand and Gravel and WPLP, and then he was crossing the river, driving over the bridge that would take him into Indiana.

He slowed down and took a look at the river. The swirls of gray and white and blue in the ice made him think of clouds, puffy white against a blue sky, and it was easy from the height of the bridge to imagine a heaven. There were times like this when he could believe in an afterlife, when he could convince himself that someday he’d see Merlene again.

What would he tell her about Captain? Would he be able to say he’d done his best by him?

“Where we going?” Captain asked.

Shooter glanced at him. “Nowhere in particular. We’re just driving. You in a hurry?”

Captain looked down at his hands. He rubbed at some brown streaks of oak stain on his fingers. “I’m making a gun cabinet in shop.”

“Looks like you made a mess.” Shooter tried a little laugh, as if he’d been cracking a joke, but he could tell that Captain was hurt. He pulled his coat sleeves down over his hands. “I thought I got rid of that coat.” Shooter had buried it down deep in a cedar chest that had been Merlene’s. The chest was in the basement now, full of the clothes of hers that Shooter hadn’t been able to bring himself to get rid of. Apparently Captain had found the coat and dug it out sometime that morning when Shooter was out to the barn getting the Bobcat tractor ready to go. He hadn’t even seen Captain get on the bus wearing that coat.

“I like it,” Captain said.

“It’s ratty.” Shooter reached over and pinched the coat sleeve in his fingers. “You didn’t have any business snooping around and snatching this up.”

The coat was a fake leather bomber jacket that Captain had always favored since Merlene bought it for him from Walmart. The sort with vinyl made to look like leather. Shooter raised Captain’s arm and made him look at the patch as big as a pancake where the vinyl was missing. The quilted lining beneath was dappled, light brown in some places and black in others.

“Mom bought it for me.” Captain yanked his arm away from Shooter’s grip. “She said it was a bomber jacket fit for a Captain.”

They were over the bridge now, coasting down onto the flat plain of the river bottoms. Shooter pulled off onto the shoulder and they sat there while the wind swept across the barren fields, not enough of a treeline anywhere to stop it. The truck shook a little when a gust came up, and out across the fields a fine powder of snow swirled.

“Stay here,” Shooter said.

Then he got out of the truck and tromped through the snow and the corn stubble, fifty feet or so, until he was confident that he was far enough away so Captain wouldn’t be able to see him very well. He listened to the wind howling around him, felt its sting on his face, let it bring tears to his eyes. He forced himself not to look back, not wanting to see Captain’s face looking out the window of the truck.

He reached into the pocket of his barn coat and closed his hand around Captain’s Case Hammerhead lockback knife. He dug out a spot in the snow with the toe of his boot until he could see the frozen ground of the furrow. Then he dropped the knife into that hole and covered it with snow. If luck would have it, he thought, no one would find that knife and spring would come, and the farmer who worked this field would plow the knife under.

It took everything he had to turn around and walk back across the field to the truck where Captain was waiting. He wanted to lie down in the snow and let the cold have him. He wanted to close his eyes and think of Merlene. He wanted to just slip away from the living and not have to answer for anything.

But Captain was waiting. He could feel him watching. Captain, who was his to take care of. No one else’s. He’d promised Merlene that he’d do that much.

“What were you doing?” Captain asked him when he came back to the truck.

“Had to take a leak,” Shooter said. “Let’s go home. It’s getting late.”

“Almost time for supper,” Captain said, and Shooter told him, yes, it was, and after supper the sheriff, Ray Biggs, was going to stop by to ask Captain some questions.

For a long time, Captain didn’t say anything. He rubbed at the stains on his hands some more. Then he said, “About the fire?”

“That’s right,” said Shooter. “You remember what you’re going to say?”

Captain nodded. “I remember.”

“All right then,” Shooter said, and then he pressed down on the gas pedal, hurrying now toward home.

Missy watched the doors close behind Angel. Then she turned to find a seat in the waiting area, where Hannah was keeping Sarah and Emma entertained at a table that had puzzles and games on it.

To Missy’s surprise, she saw Lois Best occupying a chair back in the corner, nearly hidden by a half wall. She’d nodded off with her pocketbook on her lap, her hands resting on top of it, and with her head down like that, Missy nor the girls had taken any notice of her.

Missy wasn’t sure whether to wake her, but she could only assume that Lois was there because of Wayne, and it would certainly be rude not to inquire. So she took the seat next to Lois, hoping that the motion would make her open her eyes.

But it didn’t. Missy reached over and touched her on the arm. “Lois,” she said. “It’s me. Missy.”

Lois snapped up her head and opened her eyes. She blinked a few times as she studied Missy, and Missy knew she was coming back to the living with reluctance.

“Oh, honey,” she finally said. “It’s Wayne. He’s not a bit good.”

Missy asked her what the trouble was, and Lois explained that he’d gotten out of bed that morning and fallen, striking his head against the corner of the dresser.

“Opened up a big old gash.” Lois felt her own scalp. “It just bled and bled. I knew I had to call for the ambulance. They’re sewing him up now but honey, I’m not sure he even knows where he is or what happened. That’s how out of it he is.”

Lois reached out her hand, and Missy took it. She felt the dry skin, cracked from the cold, and she put her free hand on Lois’s back and rubbed slow, gentle circles to give her some comfort.

“I’ll sit right here with you,” Missy said. “I won’t leave you alone. Did you ride in the ambulance with Wayne?”

Lois nodded.

“Then I’ll wait right here, and when it’s time, I’ll give you a ride home.”

“You’ve always been good to me, Missy. And you were good to Della, too.” Lois pressed her finger to her lips, shushing herself. “Oh, just listen to me going on about myself. Shame on me. Is it one of your own that’s brought you here? Don’t tell me something happened to Pat?”

“No, it’s not Pat.” Missy hesitated, not sure whether what she was about to say would upset Lois. “It’s Brandi. She fainted.”

“And you were with her?”

Missy nodded. “At the high school. She was talking to Angel.”

“About Ronnie?”

“She was about to tell the story that Ronnie told her just before Biggs arrested him. Then she passed out. Angel’s back there with her now.”

Lois crooked her neck to peek around Missy at the double doors. “My poor grandbaby. She’s been through a world of hurt. I hope there’s no more on down the road for her, but it looks like Ronnie’s going to have something to answer for come the judgment.”

_________

Biggs was waiting in the driveway when Shooter and Captain got home. His patrol car was idling, a cloud of steam roiling out from the tailpipe.

Shooter pulled alongside him and turned off the truck. “Go on in the house,” he said to Captain. “Get out of your school clothes. Go on.”

By this time, it was close to five o’clock. Only a few minutes of daylight left. Shooter got out of the truck and watched Captain hurry by the patrol car and on up to the front door. He had a key, and he used it to let himself in.

A pair of Canada geese flew overhead, honking as they came to settle in the barren cornfield that ran along the side of the house toward the woods. Shooter knew that those geese mated for life and they were protective of each other. If one was hurt or sick, the other would guard it, not leaving until the mate got well or else died. It was a beautiful thing, Shooter thought. A very beautiful thing.

Biggs was out of his patrol car, unfolding to his full height. Shooter said, “I thought you were coming after suppertime.”

“This can’t wait.” Biggs hunched his shoulders against the cold. “I need to get your boy’s story right now.”

He slammed the patrol car door shut, the noise echoing across the fallow fields. The car door startled the Canada geese, and they lifted into the air, the gander trumpeting the alarm call. Soon they were flying over the woods.

Shooter watched them go. He stood there in the open country, his head tilted up to the sky, and he thought how easy it must be for God to look down and see everything there was to see.

“Wild geese,” Shooter said. “Just looking out for each other. Just trying to get by.”

_________

The doctors found out that Brandi had passed out because her blood pressure was high.

“They say I’ve got toxemia,” she said to Angel, who had come to sit beside her gurney while she waited to see if she’d be discharged or admitted.

“What’s that?” Angel asked.

“Sometimes pregnancy causes the mother’s blood pressure to go up. Pregnancy-induced hypertension. It can happen with first-time moms like me.”

“Will the baby be okay?”

Brandi closed her eyes a moment as she said a silent prayer. Then she explained to Angel how the placenta might not get enough blood and how if that happened the baby wouldn’t get enough oxygen and food and would have a low birth weight.

“But that might not happen,” she said. “Now that we know what’s what, there are things I can do to make sure I deliver a healthy baby.”

Those things turned out to be eating less salt, drinking eight glasses of water a day, and bed rest. The doctor told her she could go home, but he wanted her in bed most of the time, lying on her left side to take the weight of the baby off her major blood vessels.

“Who’s going to take care of things around the house?” Brandi said after she’d listened to the doctor and tried to imagine everything she’d have to do. “Who’ll take care of me?” she said, not knowing whether Ronnie would be back anytime soon, if ever, and there were the girls living with Missy and Pat. Brandi closed her eyes and thought about what might happen with Ronnie, wondered whether anyone would ever believe the story he’d told her. Then she said, “My family all lives in California. I don’t want to go all the way out there.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to the baby,” Angel said. Then a nurse came in to take out Brandi’s IV and Angel stepped out through the curtain so she’d be out of the nurse’s way and so she’d have a chance to find Missy to tell her she was worried about what was going to happen to Brandi.

Shooter and Biggs went into the house, and to Shooter’s dismay, Captain was just standing there, as if he’d been watching out the window, still in his school clothes. He hadn’t even taken off his coat. That ratty-assed bomber’s jacket — Shooter knew he should have thrown it out, but it was one of the last gifts Merlene had given Captain, and Shooter couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it. But now here was Biggs, eager for Captain’s story.

“You ought to get out of those school clothes,” Shooter said. He glanced at Biggs and lifted his eyebrows. “You know how boys are. Always ruining their good things. Go on and change, Wesley. We’ll wait.”

Captain headed toward the hallway, his head down, but as he tried to get past Biggs, Biggs reached out and grabbed him by his coat sleeve.

“This won’t take long,” he said. “I need to ask some questions and then get back to the courthouse.” He said to Shooter, “You understand.”

“Well, at least let the boy take off his coat.”

Biggs let go of Captain’s sleeve and said, “Sure. No harm in that. Go on, son. Make yourself comfortable.”

Captain lifted his head and found Shooter’s gaze upon him. Captain opened his eyes wide, asking his father what he should do, and Shooter gave him an almost imperceptible nod, but it was enough to tell Captain to go ahead and take off his coat. He slipped his arms out of the sleeves and then folded the jacket across his arm, bunched it up into a wad that he hugged to his stomach.

“You got a belly ache?” Biggs asked him.

Captain shook his head no, and then he sat down on the couch, the coat still clutched to him.

“Wesley.” Shooter sat down beside him and put a hand on his back. “Tell the sheriff what you saw the night Della’s trailer burned. That’s what he’s come to hear.”

At the courthouse, the deputy said to Ronnie, “You know what it looks like, don’t you?”

“Looks like what you all want it to look like,” said Ronnie.

“Bought a can of gasoline the morning of the day the trailer burned and another can that night. We found that can in Brandi’s shed, almost a gallon still in it, and she said you used it all up in her car that morning. Looks to me like you used that can again later.” The deputy listed all the evidence that seemed to be adding up to Ronnie’s guilt. “Footprints that match yours found behind the trailer. A T-shirt smelling of gas. Shooter Rowe’s story. And now this? Ronnie, do you know what’ll happen if a jury finds you guilty?”

“Lock me up, I expect.”

The deputy nodded. “For a good long while. Forever, if the State’s Attorney can prove premeditation. And, Ronnie, if you ask me, that won’t be hard to do. I doubt you’ll ever see the outside again.”

It was then that the deputy noticed the first sign of emotion from Ronnie. His lip quivered, and his eyes got wet, and he tipped his head back, his nostrils flaring, as if he were fighting as hard as he could to keep whatever he’d held secret all those weeks balled up inside him.

The deputy said, “Your kids? They’ll come to see you in prison sometimes if they can bring themselves to forgive you for what you did, and if they can manage for someone to drive them down to Menard, which is where you’ll end up. Or maybe they’ll never come and it’ll just be you and those walls and all that time to know the way you ruined them by killing their mother and their sisters and their baby brother. You think they’ll ever be able to get the picture out of their heads of how those kids clung to Della in the flames and the smoke, or what their charred bodies looked like when all was said and done?”

That’s when Ronnie covered his face with his hands. “I didn’t do it,” he said. “I swear.”

“All right then,” the deputy said. “Tell me why we should believe you.”

He was outside that night, Captain said, because he was worried about the goats. “We tried to patch the fence for Della, but they kept busting out.”

He kept his eyes down, focusing on the boots Biggs was wearing. The toes were stained with road salt. Biggs stood in front of the couch, listening to the story.

“So you were outside and you went back behind the trailer to check on the goats?”

Captain nodded.

Biggs said, “Tell me everything you saw.”

“He saw Ronnie’s car,” Shooter said, but Biggs wouldn’t let him go on.

“I want to hear the boy tell it. Let him say what he’s got to say.”

“Ronnie drives a Firebird,” Captain said. “It was parked along the road. That car can go fast. I helped him work on it when he still lived with Della. He said I was his right-hand man. You know what kind of carb that car has? A Barry Grant Six Shooter with a three-deuce setup. Sugar tits! Now that’s something.”

Captain was getting worked up, and Shooter rubbed his back and said, “Wesley, just tell the story. Tell it plain and simple for the sheriff.”

“Ronnie was behind the trailer,” Captain said. “He had a fivegallon gas can. He was sloshing gas all along the back of the trailer. And he reached into his pocket and jerked out a book of matches.” Captain looked up at Biggs for the first time. “He had a book of matches. He lit one up.” Captain was rocking back and forth a little. “He had a gas can and a book of matches. The whole trailer went whoosh. That’s what I remember. That big whoosh. And Ronnie ran away.”

Biggs was quiet for a while. Then he squatted down in front of Captain so the boy would have to look him in the eye.

“You felt pretty close to Ronnie, didn’t you, son? Like you said, you were his right-hand man.”

“I like Ronnie,” said Captain. “He always treated me good.”

“You wouldn’t want to see him get in trouble if he didn’t do anything wrong, would you?”

Captain squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head from side to side until, finally, Shooter had to take him by his shoulders and tell him to stop.

“He had a gas can and a book of matches,” Captain said again. “He lit one up and everything went whoosh. That’s what I know.”

Shooter stood up from the couch. “You got what you need?” he asked Biggs. “Captain always thought the world of Ronnie. This hasn’t been easy for him.”

The words came from Captain’s mouth in chunks, like they were made of steel and hard to bite off. “I always — thought the world — of Ronnie — sugar tits.”

“Wesley, don’t talk like that,” Shooter said. “It’s not proper.”

Biggs said to Shooter, “Why’d you wait so long to tell me your story?”

“I was thinking about Wesley. Things have never been easy for him. And this?” Shooter couldn’t go on. He laid his hand on Captain’s head and stroked the blond hair with a tenderness that almost made Biggs uncomfortable to see it, this moment that should have been private. “But I know what’s right and what’s wrong,” Shooter said, “and I know I have to teach Wesley as much. So what I’m telling you is the right thing to do. I know that for sure now, no matter how this ends up.”

Angel was surprised to see her grandmother in the emergency room waiting area. “Grams?” she said.

“Oh, honey.” Lois got to her feet and put her arms around Angel, gathering her in. “It’s your gramps. He fell and hit his head.” She let go of Angel just enough to hold her at arm’s length so she could get a good look at her. “Honey, are you all right?”

Angel nodded. “I’m fine, Grams. Is Gramps going to be okay?”

“I’m waiting to hear, honey. Missy’s been sitting with me. She just now went out to call Pat. Guess she wanted some privacy.”

Angel saw her then, Missy. She was standing outside the glass doors to the emergency room with her back turned. She had her head down, and Angel could see her nodding as if she were agreeing with what Pat was saying in response to what she’d called to tell him. Then she dropped her cell phone down in her purse.

Angel told her grandma she’d be right back. Then she went out through the doors to where Missy was standing, and she told her everything that Brandi had told her about the high blood pressure and the baby and bed rest.

“We have to take care of her,” Angel said. “She doesn’t have anyone else. Her family is all the way out in California.”

She’d already made up her mind. She wouldn’t be like her father — she’d stay where she was needed.

“But who’s going to take care of you and your sisters?” Missy said.

“We’ll take care of one another.”

“You’re all in my custody now.”

Angel said, “We’re going to stay with Brandi tonight.”

And with that, Angel turned and went back into the hospital. Missy had no choice but to follow.

A doctor was there to talk to Lois, and he was saying that Wayne was going to be all right. He had some stitches in his head, and he was still a little confused, but his vital signs were good, and she could see him now. They’d admitted him and wanted to keep him at least overnight to make sure that he was strong enough to go home.

Missy said she’d wait as long as Lois needed her to.

Angel went back to check on Brandi, and in a few minutes she was back. “They’re releasing her,” she said, and Missy told her she’d drive Brandi home too, and she’d stay that night to help take care of her if that’s what she wanted. She’d drive Lois home first, and then she’d go to her own house and carry in the groceries — who knew if the milk and frozen things would be any good now — and she’d tell Pat what was going to happen.

“Pat can do for himself.” Missy bit her lip and looked away. Then she took a deep breath and turned back to Angel, a tremulous smile on her lips. She waved her hand in the air as if she were swatting away an annoying fly. “He won’t even know I’m gone,” she said. “He’s used to a quiet house.”

After Biggs left, Shooter let Captain sit there on the couch, rocking back and forth, his bomber jacket still clutched to his stomach.

The furnace clicked off and then enough time went by for it to come on again. The hem of the curtains by the front window — the long curtains Merlene had sewed — danced a little in the air from the floor vent.

Finally, when the quiet had become too much for him, Shooter walked across the room to where Captain was sitting and he reached down and took hold of the bomber jacket. For a few seconds, Captain held onto it. Then he let his grip go slack, and Shooter pulled the coat away from him.

“Change out of your school clothes,” Shooter said in a tired voice. “I’m going to take care of the trash. Then we’ll think about supper.”

Captain got up from the couch and went into his room. He tried not to think about anything. Don’t think about the fire, he told himself. Don’t think about the goats. Don’t think about Della or Emily or Gracie or the baby. Don’t think about Mother. She’d bought him that bomber jacket. Don’t think about that. Don’t think about Ronnie. Don’t think about the sheriff and the questions he asked. Don’t think about anything.

Captain heard the back door open and close. He went to his window and peeled back the curtain. He watched his father walking down the path he’d cleared through the snow so he could get to the burn barrel. He had a paper grocery bag full of trash in his left hand, the bomber jacket in his right. He put it all in the barrel.

Then he set it on fire. He stood there, his head bowed toward the flames, and Captain knew he was praying.

Captain turned away from the window, no longer wanting to see the flames rising above the top of the burn barrel. Even in the closed house, he could hear his father coughing. He could smell the same bad odor the air held the night Della’s trailer burned, but now he knew the stink was coming from the vinyl on his bomber jacket.

He opened his closet, and stepped inside. He closed the door and crouched down on the floor in the dark.

Della was his friend. More than that, she loved him. He knew that, and when he was with her, he remembered how it was when his mother was still alive. That’s what Della gave him — that mother’s love — and when he finally crossed the road that night, he only meant to help her. Her car wasn’t in the lane. His father had noticed that just before their argument over the goats had started, pointing out that it was so cold that Della and the kids had gone to spend the night somewhere else, probably with Lois and Wayne. Captain thought it was the exact right time to do a good turn for Della.

The deputy sat across from Ronnie. He said, “You went back out there that night, didn’t you?”

Ronnie nodded. “I was in a state when I left there that afternoon. I won’t deny that. It was over between Della and me — she’d made that plain — and I guess it caught me by surprise even if I’d thought that’s what I wanted. Pissed me off, is what it did. A crazy idea came to me. You have to understand I wasn’t thinking right. I stewed about it all evening, and then finally I made up my mind I’d do it.”

“Do what, Ronnie?”

“I’d call and see if Della and the kids were in the trailer or if they’d gone to her folks. I’d buy five gallons of gas, and if no one answered the phone, I’d go out there and burn the place. If she was going to push me, then I was going to push back. I’d put her in a mess. I’d make her sorry.”

“So you told Brandi you were going out for a drive?”

Ronnie nodded. “I pulled on my boots. I’d made up my mind.”

“But you never told Brandi that?”

“I stopped at Casey’s and called Della. No one answered. I bought that gas and drove on out the blacktop. When I got to the trailer, it was dark, and Della’s car wasn’t in the lane. She always left it in the lane, and it wasn’t there. So I felt certain she’d taken the kids and gone to Lois and Wayne’s. I parked a ways down the road. The neighbors had enough to gossip about. People like Missy Wade. I didn’t want her seeing my car pulled in the lane and wondering what was what.”

Just as he got the gas can out of his car, he said, he heard a door slam shut across the road at the Rowe house, and that was enough to spook him. “That’s when I hauled that gas can through the ditch and angled through the front yard.” He tromped through the snow and got in behind the trailer where he thought no one would see him. “I just stood there a while, catching my breath, listening, just letting things calm down.”

So, yes, Ronnie was there that night, out there behind the trailer. Brandi was retelling the story — the one he’d told her — to Angel and Missy, but she wouldn’t tell it all. No, there were parts of it she wouldn’t want the girls to ever know, parts that shamed Ronnie, parts that Brandi didn’t want to think about ever again. Angel sat on the edge of the bed. Missy stood just inside the door. Lois hadn’t said a word all the way from Phillipsport to Goldengate, and she’d refused to come inside, preferring instead to wait in the van until Missy came out to drive her home. It was then that Lois would say to Missy, “I don’t know how you can be a friend to her. Not after what she did to Della.”

How would Missy ever be able to explain what rose in her as she watched Angel help Brandi with her pajamas, and then, once she was in bed, pull the covers over her with such care? How strongly Missy felt Brandi’s need, and in that moment she let sorrow have every bit of her until it could have no more. She grieved for Della and her children, for Angel and the girlhood she was leaving behind too soon.

Standing there, looking at Angel and Brandi in the lamplight, listening to Brandi’s soft voice, watching Angel reach out and brush a few strands of wayward hair from Brandi’s face, Missy understood in a way she never quite had that life — everyone’s life — came down to this. The chance to do something good, to let people know they weren’t alone. To do it with no thought of what advantage or reward might come to you. To do it because you knew everyone was sometimes stupid, deceitful, selfish, weak. To do it because you knew you were one of those people, no matter how spotless your life. Sooner or later, trouble would find you, either of your own device or a matter of circumstances. Love was sacrifice and forgiveness. She’d heard it in church, read it in her Bible, listened to it from her parents, but somewhere along the line — somewhere in the midst of losing the babies she thought she was meant to have — she’d forgotten it all. She’d become bitter, and this business with Ronnie leaving Della for Brandi had brought out all her anger. She’d been determined to save Angel and her sisters. She’d had no way of knowing that all along it was Angel who was saving her, bringing her back to being a better person than she’d been in too long, bringing her — the thought startled her at first, but then she settled into its comfort — as close as she would ever be to feeling like a mother.

“He went out there that night,” Brandi said to Angel, “because he loved you. He knew the furnace in the trailer was acting up, and he wanted to know you were all right. All of you. All you kids and, yes, even your mom. He wanted to make sure nothing was wrong.”

It wasn’t true — though there was at least a bit of truth in it — but Brandi convinced herself that God would forgive her this one lie, all for the sake of the future.

It was cold, and the wind was coming in gusts, and Ronnie was shivering from the thought of what he was about to do. He noticed a cardboard box on the back steps, a box of ashes.

“The wind had caught some embers,” he said, “and from time to time a shower of sparks sprayed up into the air. I didn’t care. I knew what I’d come to do, and that box of ashes didn’t mean anything to me.”

He unscrewed the cap off the gas can spout and got at it. The old upholstered chair he’d dragged out behind the trailer in the fall just before he’d found out that Della had lied to him and wasn’t taking her birth control pills was still there. He doused it with gasoline, knowing it would soak into the foam and burn hot and quick when he finally lit it. He went down the length of the trailer, slinging gas up onto the hardboard siding, pouring it along the bare ground where the roof’s overhang had kept snow from collecting. The tall grass was dry and brittle. He heard his breath and the noise the can made as it emptied, popping every once in a while as its volume decreased. He smelled the gas, and he felt the wind burning his bare ears. He didn’t have on any gloves, but it wouldn’t be until later that he’d feel the sting in his hands.

“I stopped to rest.” He looked away from the deputy and closed his eyes, playing it all out again in his head. “I still had about half of that can left. I set it down, and I put my hands on my knees. That’s when I saw it.”

A hole in the siding of the trailer, down low, just before the concrete slab. A ragged hole as big as a boot heel right where he knew the wall furnace was. A hole, he assumed, one of the goats had made at some time or the other.

“It was the most amazing thing,” he said. “Like it was a sign to me, an invitation to do something other than what I’d come to do.”

He crouched down and put his finger into the hole. It went all the way through the siding and the insulation and the drywall. He could feel the back of the furnace. It was hot when he touched it, and he knew that meant it was still running. Why, then, had Della taken the kids to her folks, as he assumed from the fact that she hadn’t answered the phone when he called?

“I got to thinking what would happen if a gust of wind came through that hole and blew out the pilot light. I wondered what it meant that right then, when I’d been determined to burn the place down, I was thinking about that pilot light. It came to me, then: Here’s a chance to do something good, and if you do this one good thing, maybe then you can do another and then another, and before long you’ll have your life back on track. That hole was my chance to save myself. I was so close, you see, to doing something I’d never be able to live down. Burn that trailer and then walk away. But now I had this chance to do something different, patch that hole. Then I’d be able to go home and think better about myself.”

That’s when he put the cap back on the gas can. He took out his pocketknife. He opened up his coat and grabbed the bottom of his T-shirt with his hand. It was his Sun Records T-shirt, the one that Brandi had found for him at the Goodwill, and yet he didn’t think about how much it pleased him, nor how much he loved Brandi. He thought only of needing something to stuff into that hole.

He pressed the point of his knife into the T-shirt, down around the bottom, just enough to make a place where he could grab the cloth and rip it. Working with his hand and the knife, he managed to tear away a strip that was sufficient for the task. He wadded it up and stuck it into the hole.

“My fingers were stiff with the cold,” he told the deputy, “and I fumbled my knife and it fell to the ground. I’d just started to feel around for it when I heard a noise. It was Shooter Rowe’s boy, Wesley, the one they call Captain. He was coming around the end of the trailer, headed for the goat pen. I stood dead still and hoped he wouldn’t see me.”

Ronnie watched Captain open the gate to the pen and step inside. The goats were bleating, and Ronnie could hear Captain moving about, his boots whisking through the loose straw on the ground. Once, he cursed. Said, “Goddamn it.” Then, after a time, he came out with one of the nannies, something tied around her neck. He was leading it with a length of something, and he had a kid up under his other arm.

“By this time, I’d gotten over behind the back steps, and I crouched down,” Ronnie said. “I was afraid for him to see me. I didn’t know what I’d say about why I was there.”

Captain went around the other side of the trailer, and Ronnie couldn’t make up his mind whether to go or stay. He wanted to go — wanted to get as far away from there as he could — but he was afraid that if he made a move, Captain would spot him. It was hard for Ronnie to tell where he was. And, too, he was curious about why Captain had come for those goats.

It wasn’t long before he was back, and he led out the other nanny. Again, he had her kid under his arm.

“I thought it was curious,” Ronnie said. “Like he’d come to steal those goats. I thought, What in the world?”

The deputy said, “So it was you and the boy out there?”

Ronnie opened his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “It was the two of us. I was just waiting to see what would happen next.”

Captain remembered what his father had said when they’d patched Della’s fence that afternoon: Sometimes it’s best to start over. Put a match to that fence.

All evening, he’d thought about that, how if that pen and shed were gone, then he and his father could build a better shed, a better pen, and then the goats wouldn’t get out. Della would have that one less thing to worry about, and Captain felt good knowing he could give her that. It was only right after she’d been so kind to him.

His plan was to lead the goats one by one across the road to his father’s barn and leave them there while he got down to work. He had a box of Diamond matches, the ones he used when he burned the trash. He knew there was straw in the shed behind the goat pen. Dry enough even on a cold night to catch and burn. The wood planks of that shed and pen were dry too. It’d be a snap. It’d all go up so quick. He knew his father was asleep in front of the television, and wouldn’t he be surprised when he found out what he’d done?

Della would be surprised too, and so would Ronnie.

When Captain slipped out of the house that night, he remembered to put on his bomber jacket, and he grabbed his sock hat and his gloves. He spotted Ronnie’s Firebird pulled off alongside the blacktop. He didn’t know what to make of that, and he really didn’t have time to think on it. He had to keep his mind on what he was going to do.

Half of the shed was a lean-to, open to the east, facing the blacktop. A doorway cut into the interior wall of the lean-to led to the closed part of the shed, and that’s where the goats had gone to lie down in the straw, where they could be away from the brunt of the wind.

Captain realized he needed something to use for a lead. Otherwise, how would he get those goats across the road to his father’s barn?

That’s what he was wondering as he stood in the pen’s shed.

Then he thought of the bales of straw. Just enough light from the snow cover outside coming in through the doorway helped him find the bales, and in an instant it all clicked inside his head, and he knew what he’d do. A great happiness spread through him. The light from the snow cover, the straw bales — it all meant that someone was helping him to do the thing he’d come to do. It meant that what he intended was right.

He couldn’t get at his knife with his gloves on, so he slipped his hands out and stuffed the gloves into his jacket pockets. He opened the blade of the knife and felt it lock into place. Then he bent over and grabbed one of the strands of twine that held the bale together.

Just as he was ready to cut it — he’d use it for a lead — the billy goat, Methuselah, butted his head against him and the blade slipped and gashed the hock of his left thumb. He felt the cold air sting the flayed skin, and he knew right away he was bleeding.

“Goddamn it,” he said.

Then he went back to work. He cut the twine and then made a slip knot around the neck of the first goat. He’d save the cantankerous one, Methuselah, for last.

The other four were agreeable. The two nannies let him lead them across the road to his father’s barn with little complaint. He was able to carry one of the kids on each trip.

He put his gloves back on, blood soaking into the left one. When it came time to loop the twine around Methuselah’s neck, the goat balked, jerking his head this way and that, filling the shed with his bleats. Captain kept at it, finally getting the job done, and Methuselah let him lead him a few steps before he dug in and refused to go any farther. Captain tugged hard on the lead. That’s when the twine snapped. He went stumbling backwards, falling on his butt on the frozen ground.

That made him mad. First the cut on his hand and now this. He could feel time ticking away, and he still had so much to do.

Methuselah kicked up straw with his hind hooves. Captain decided to leave him alone. He needed to get back to work.

Then Methuselah charged him, and Captain turned and ran out of the shed, out of the pen, ran through the snow toward the trailer.

Methuselah stopped. He went quiet. Captain turned and watched him to make sure he was calm enough not to cause trouble. The goat went closer to the trailer, right up to the back steps, and there he got something in his mouth and started chewing on it. A spray of sparks danced in the air, and that startled the goat, and he stepped away from what Captain could now see was a cardboard box.

He thought that shower of sparks was a beautiful thing, something he, like Methuselah, didn’t expect. It reminded him of fireworks on the Fourth of July, which had always been his mother’s favorite holiday. He could remember sitting on a blanket at the State Park with his father and her. He lay on his back with his head in her lap, and he watched the fireworks burst into sprays and showers in the night sky above the lake. “Look at that one,” his mother said. “Oh, and that one. How pretty they are.”

He liked to imagine that the fireworks were the wings of angels, painting the sky red and blue and silver and gold as they streaked down to Earth to see to this or that.

His mother had something she liked to say to him when she told him goodnight. It came from a poem she learned in school when she was a girl:

Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,

Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.

He wasn’t sure he could say exactly what that meant, but he’d never forgotten the sound of her voice when she said those words — hushed and dreamy — and he knew, without her having to say as much, she was telling him that he was one of those lovely stars. He was one of the forget-me-nots of the angels, and no matter where he found himself, he could count on them to keep him from harm.

Methuselah was coming back to the box now. Well, just let him, Captain thought. He realized then that there was a man behind the trailer, and he knew that man was Ronnie.

“That’s when he saw me,” Ronnie told the deputy. “I knew I was caught, so I stood up. Methuselah stopped in his tracks, stopped bleating, just nosed at the snow. Captain turned back to watch him, and then, after a while, he came up to me, and he said, ‘You come back for good?’”

The wind was really howling now, and Ronnie had to get up close to Captain to make himself heard. He leaned in toward the boy’s ear. He said, “No, not for good. I came out to check on Della and the kids.”

“They’re gone,” Captain said. “Car’s nowhere to be seen.”

Ronnie nodded. “Good thing I came, though.” He pointed down toward the other end of the trailer. About two-thirds of the way down, his Marathon can sat in the snow. “Hole in the siding there. Wind could’ve blown out the pilot light on the furnace. I patched it up.”

Captain looked down at the Marathon can and then back at Ronnie. Captain’s nose wrinkled up, and Ronnie knew he smelled the gas. He waited for Captain to ask him about it, and when he didn’t, Ronnie knew he was afraid to ask him what he was doing with a can of gas back there because he was up to something himself that he didn’t want to have to explain.

“So you’re not back for good?” Captain finally said.

He was clearly disappointed, and Ronnie, who couldn’t work a miracle and make that gas jump back into the can, felt ashamed to be standing there in his presence.

“No, Captain,” he said. “It’s too late for that.”

“Your daddy would never hurt you,” Brandi told Angel. “You know that, don’t you? You know he loves you, and I love you.”

Angel’s bottom lip quivered. “It’s all been so hard,” she said.

Brandi gripped her hand. “It’s going to be all right. Everything. You’ll see.”

She was thinking of the night that Ronnie told her he was going for a drive, that he was feeling antsy. She was reading one of her baby books, and when he came back, she couldn’t have said how long he’d been gone. He came in and went right into the shower. She wouldn’t know until he told her later that on his way back to town, he smelled gasoline and recalled that earlier in the day, when he’d brought the gas for Brandi’s Mustang, the cap on the can’s spout had been difficult and he’d crouched down and used the tail of his T-shirt to get a better grip so he could twist it off and get about the business of pouring gas into the Mustang’s tank. All day, he’d thought he was catching the faint scent of gasoline, and finally that night as he sped up the blacktop, he imagined that not even the strip of the shirt that he’d cut away while he was behind the trailer was enough to get rid of that smell — a smell that seemed dangerous to him now on account of what he’d just done.

At the city limits, he pulled off into the parking lot of the Dairy Dee, closed for the winter, and there he slipped off his coat and pulled the T-shirt over his head. He wadded it up and stuffed it under the passenger seat. Then he put his coat back on and zipped it up. He went on to Brandi’s, and he went straight into the bathroom and undressed and got into the shower.

When he came out, he was ready for bed. She heard the siren at the fire station but barely gave it a thought. Then she reached up and turned off the lamp, and the two of them drifted off to sleep.

When Shooter woke and couldn’t find Captain in the house, he put on his barn coat and went out the back door to look for him.

The pole light in the barnyard was enough for him to spot the footprints in the snow. He recognized the corrugated tread of Captain’s Big Horn Wolverine boots, and the hoof prints the goats had left. Shooter followed the prints to the barn door. Inside, he found four of Della’s goats, bleating their dismay over whatever had happened to move them there. The lights were on in the feedway. Dust motes and chaff hovered around the bare bulbs.

“Wesley,” Shooter shouted, but there was no answer.

_________

In her bedroom, Della thought she heard voices, but she was so far down in sleep she convinced herself it was only the wind.

The baby was asleep. The twins were asleep, and Gracie, and Sarah, and Hannah, and Angel. They were snuggled down in their dreams. The furnace was working fine, and they were cozy in their beds on this cold winter night.

Shooter stepped out of the barn and heard the back door of the house go shut. He hurried inside, and there he found Captain at the bathroom sink, letting the water run over his hand. The only light in the room was a nightlight plugged into the wall below the mirror, that and the light from the snow cover coming in through the little window in the wall facing the road. It was enough light for Shooter to see Captain’s sock hat and his bloody glove on the vanity top.

“You’re cut.” Shooter grabbed the hand and looked at the slice across the hock of Captain’s thumb. “How’d that happen?”

“Knife slipped,” said Captain.

“Knife? Your pocketknife? What were you using it for?”

“To cut baling twine. I found a bale of straw. I didn’t want the goats to get hurt.”

“How were they going to get hurt, Wesley?”

Captain wouldn’t answer. He hung his head and wouldn’t look at his father. Shooter reached over and turned off the faucet. “Wesley, I asked you a question.”

“I meant to start over.” Captain’s voice was flat. “Just like you told me. Put a match to that fence.”

Shooter remembered then what he’d said in passing that afternoon when he and Captain had been mending the fence over at Della’s.

“Oh, good Christ,” he said. “That was just something to say. Something because I was mad. Why would you ever think I was serious?”

Captain shrugged his shoulders. “I just wanted to help Della.”

Shooter looked down at the sock hat and the glove on the vanity. The glove had blood on it.

“Where’s your jacket?” he asked him. “Did you have it on? Where’s your knife?”

“My jacket’s behind the trailer,” Captain said. “It fell off. I don’t know what happened to my knife. I must have dropped it.”

Shooter didn’t know that he was lying about the knife, that he still had it in his jeans pocket, the blade stained with his blood. Shooter was about to tell him to go get his coat and to look for that knife, but then — it was almost imperceptible — the light grew brighter in the room, just enough of a change for Shooter to register. He turned his head toward the window, and he saw light waver behind the curtains. He drew one of the panels back and looked out across the road.

He stood there longer than he should have because he thought Della and her kids weren’t home. He stood there, watching the flames licking through the roof of the trailer, thinking, if he had to be honest, that even though he was stunned to see the fire, a small part of him thought he’d found a convenient answer to his problem with the goats. If the trailer burned, Della and the kids would have to find somewhere else to live, and they’d take the goats with them or else sell them, and spring would come, and he wouldn’t have to worry about them getting loose and eating up his garden. He stood there watching until he saw the first girls, Angel and Hannah, come running from the flames and out into the cold night.

Then he caught a whiff of gasoline, and he knew it was coming from Captain. “My god.” He spun around to look at his son. “Surely you didn’t tote a can of gas over there.”

Captain bowed his head. He didn’t say a word, and Shooter’s mind raced ahead, convinced that his assumption was true.

“Oh, Wesley,” he said. “What in the world have you done?”