Late One Night

30

Biggs had just backed out of Shooter’s drive when he saw Pat Wade up the road at his place waving his arms in the air, motioning for him to come down there.

“There’s something you ought to know,” Pat said, when Biggs pulled his patrol car into the driveway and got out to see what Pat wanted. “He put that goat down,” Pat said. “Shooter. He killed that billy goat, one of Della’s goats. Shot it back there in his woods. Told Missy it had foot and mouth.”

“Foot and mouth?” Biggs said. “Hasn’t been foot and mouth in this country since before you and me.”

“That’s what I know.”

“Missy see him shoot that goat?”

Pat shook his head. “She saw him push it down into a gully. Come inside and she’ll tell you.”

Missy was waiting just inside the front door. She’d left Hannah and Angel to heat up some soup and make cheese sandwiches for her and her sisters and Brandi, and then she’d left the girls there to drive Lois home and then to come and talk to Pat.

“He killed that goat.” She started right in once Biggs and Pat were inside the house. “Then today he was back there with his Bobcat and his chainsaw. Filling in that gully, I expect. Burying what he put there.”

“Seems odd that he’d tell you it had foot and mouth,” Biggs said.

“He threatened me,” she said. “Today. He told me I had what I wanted and not to do anything to ruin my happy-ever-after.”

“Della’s girls,” Pat said.

“I want to know why Shooter killed that goat.” Missy crossed her arms over her chest and tipped her head back a little so her chin pointed out. “And I want to know what brought him to lie about why.”

“I’m going to find out,” said Biggs, and he told Pat and Missy goodnight.

Once he was gone, there wasn’t much for them to say. They stood awhile just inside the front door, though they didn’t speak until the patrol car left their drive and started back up the blacktop toward Shooter’s.

Then Pat said, “Missy?”

His voice was strained, and it was clear he wanted to say more — wanted to know what it meant that she’d left the girls with Brandi — but he didn’t know how.

“That’s done,” Missy said.

She’d unloaded the groceries from the van and put the perishables away. She still had canned goods to stack in the pantry. Then she had the rest of the night, and the ones after that, to get through.

Pat nodded. The quiet of the house and all the sadness it held choked him. “All right,” he managed to say, but by that time, Missy was gone.

Biggs drove back to Shooter’s and said he had more questions. He could tell that Shooter was surprised to see him again, but he let him into the house, and he answered his question about the goats.

Yes, he had Della’s goats, he said.

“I’ve been keeping them as a favor to Wayne Best.” He knew Wayne and Lois weren’t up to seeing to them, and he didn’t mind footing the feed bill for a while since the goats gave Captain so much pleasure. “My boy loves taking care of them,” he said.

Biggs said, “Where is your boy?”

The house was quiet. Night had fallen and stretched on past the supper hour, and there was no sign of Captain. From where Biggs stood in the living room, he could see through the archway into the kitchen, and he noticed there were no signs of a supper having been prepared and eaten — no frying pans on the stove, no dishes in the sink or in the drainer, no pots or pans left to soak, no sign at all that Shooter and the boy had seen to their supper after Biggs left their house earlier. A light above the sink was on. That was the only sign that someone had at least passed through that kitchen long enough to switch it on. Biggs couldn’t have said why he found that tidy, quiet kitchen unsettling, but he did. Something about it told him that Shooter and his boy had been too busy to even think of supper.

“He’s at a 4-H meeting,” Shooter said.

“Isn’t Missy Wade the 4-H leader?”

“One of them.”

“How come she’s home if there’s a meeting tonight?” Biggs waited for that to sink in. Then he said, “I just came from there. I had a talk with Missy and Pat.”

Shooter clapped his hands together and the noise was loud in the quiet house. “How the hell would I know that? I’m not Missy Wade’s keeper.”

Biggs took a step closer to Shooter. He liked to do that when he knew someone wasn’t telling him the whole truth. He liked to get into their personal space just to see what they’d do.

Shooter took a step back and bumped into the coffee table.

“Why’d you kill that billy goat?” Biggs asked.

“He was sick.” Shooter turned around and started straightening a stack of magazines on the coffee table—Popular Mechanics, Car and Driver, Reader’s Digest. “Nothing the vet could cure. I had to do it. Didn’t have any other choice.” Shooter was quiet for a while, and Biggs let the silence build. He knew that in cases like this, when someone had something they didn’t want to say, as he suspected was true about Shooter, the longer the silence went on the more likely they were to fill it, which eventually Shooter did. “I guess Missy told you all about it.” Still Biggs waited, not saying a word. “Guess she thinks it’s her business — everything that goes on around here. Sick goat. That’s the whole story.” He turned back to Biggs. “Now was there something else you wanted?”

Biggs asked the question that had been going through his mind since he’d left Shooter’s house earlier. He hadn’t been able to forget something he’d noticed as he was leaving. The boy was sitting on the couch, his jacket wadded up in his lap. A sleeve of the jacket had come loose and was trailing down to the floor. For some reason, the image of that jacket sleeve kept coming to Biggs after he talked to Missy and Pat. Something about that sleeve that wouldn’t let him go.

Finally, as he stood here with Shooter, he knew what it was that was troubling him. That sleeve. A patch of the vinyl was missing and the lining beneath it was ratty with holes. Biggs swore that when he recalled those holes he could see charred edges, as if they’d been burned into the material.

“Where’s your boy’s jacket?” he asked Shooter now. “The one he had with him when I was here before. I want to look at it.”

“That jacket?” Shooter said. “Well, that jacket was old.”

“He can’t show it to you.” Captain’s voice startled Biggs. The boy had come down the hallway that led from the living room to the bedrooms. How long he’d been standing there, listening, Biggs didn’t know. “He burned it,” Captain said. “He put it in the burn barrel and set it on fire.”

“Like I said.” Shooter’s voice all of a sudden got too bright and cheery. “It was old.”

“I’m tired of lying.” Captain stepped out of the hall and fully into the light of the living room. “I want to tell the truth.”

So it was Captain who told Biggs the story of what happened the night of the fire. He stood in his own house, his father no longer able to keep him quiet, and he said all of it, starting with what his father had said about that goat pen and how it would be best to put a match to it and start over.

“I got worried about the goats that night,” Captain said, “and I went outside to check on them. I remembered what my dad said, and I thought I could help Della.”

He took his time. Biggs could tell that the boy had thought about this moment when he’d go against his father’s wishes and confess everything, had steeled himself for it and was now reciting the facts with little show of emotion. He told Biggs about leading the goats over to his father’s barn. It was just the billy, Methuselah, he said, that wouldn’t go.

“He charged at me, but, finally, he settled down. He saw Ronnie there, and he just stopped.”

“So Ronnie was behind the trailer?” Biggs said. “Just like you told me earlier? You’re sticking by that?’

For a long time Captain didn’t say a word. He looked down at his feet. Then he raised his head. His lip trembled. “Yes,” he finally said, “Ronnie was there.”

Captain was talking fast now, telling Biggs how Methuselah got stirred up again and came charging at him, butted him in the stomach and sent him sprawling backwards into the snow. Then Captain was back on his feet and trying to get away from the goat, running, spinning in circles, dodging this way and that. He unzipped his jacket and slipped his arms out of the sleeves. He stood still and let Methuselah come at him. Then, when the goat was close enough, he threw his jacket over his face and stepped to the side.

But Biggs wanted to know what Ronnie was doing when Captain saw him.

“He wasn’t doing anything,” Captain said.

“Was there gasoline?” Biggs kept his voice low and as gentle as he could manage, coaxing Captain. “Son, listen to me now. Did you see Ronnie pour gasoline on that trailer?”

Captain said, “No, I didn’t see him do that.”

“But you told me you did. Said he slopped it all over that trailer and lit it up. Son, were you lying?”

“Wesley.” Shooter’s voice was flat and worn out, as if he were giving in to what he knew he couldn’t stop. “Tell him the rest.”

At the courthouse, Ronnie told the deputy that when he drove back to town that night, the smell of gas was too much for him. He had the Marathon can resting on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and he couldn’t bear to hear the gas that was left in it sloshing around.

“I was disgusted with myself,” he said. “So I pulled over to the side of the road, and I got that can out, and I poured what was left into my car, as much as it’d hold anyway.”

The deputy said, “There was about a gallon left in it when we found it in Brandi’s shed.”

“That sounds about right,” said Ronnie. “That was all I could do. So I went back into town, and I put that can in the shed and then went in to go to bed.”

Captain said, “We were in the bathroom when we first saw the fire. My dad went to the phone to call 911, and I ran out the front door and across the road. Angel and Hannah were outside. I ran around the end of the trailer to see if I could get in the back door. People think I’m stupid, but I knew what was happening. That trailer was on fire, and Della and the other kids were inside, and they needed help.”

The whole back side of the trailer was in flames — flames leaping up to the windows, the siding already curling and melting, the back door wreathed with fire.

For the first time since he’d begun to tell his story, Captain’s voice quavered. He bit his lip. He closed his eyes, squeezed them shut so tightly his face pinched up in a grimace. “There wasn’t anything I could do,” he finally said in a shaky whisper.

Shooter kept quiet. He let Captain tell his story.

“Then I saw Methuselah,” he said.

The goat, calm now, had Captain’s bomber jacket in his mouth. The sleeve of that jacket had gotten wrapped around one of his forelegs.

“It was on fire,” Captain said. “My jacket sleeve. It was burning.”

So was Methuselah, the vinyl of the burning sleeve melting into his hair and the skin beneath it. Captain ran to him.

“I threw my arms around him,” he said, “and I wrestled him down. I hoped the snow would put out the fire.”

Which it did. Captain got the bomber jacket free from Methuselah. Then he let the goat up and watched it run, disappearing into the night — into the place where the darkness held, black and deep, in spite of the fire.

When Captain got back around front, his father was there, and soon Pat Wade came running from his house, and Della was handing one of the twins out to Shooter. Captain stepped up and took her in his arms, tears running down his cheeks now because he knew.

“I knew exactly what had happened,” he said. “I didn’t want to know it, but I did.”

For a good while, no one said a word. The clock ticked. The refrigerator hummed. The furnace clicked on.

Biggs waited for Captain to tell the rest of his story, but it was Shooter who spoke next. He said, “That vinyl from Captain’s coat melted into that goat’s leg, and I couldn’t get it out. When the fire marshal’s deputies started coming around, I was afraid they’d see it, and I didn’t want them to know that Captain had been anywhere near that fire. That’s why I put that goat down. I couldn’t take the chance.”

Biggs could see the guilt that must have wracked Shooter all those weeks. He could see it deep in his eyes — the pain he’d never be able to rid himself of, not even now that the story had been told. The telling only made it worse. The telling made it true.

“I had to protect Wesley,” Shooter said.

His Adam’s apple slid up and down his throat as he swallowed words he could hardly make himself say. Finally, though, he said them, and, when he did, Biggs felt his heart catch. He was a father, too.

“You’re telling me your boy started that fire,” Biggs said.

“I was afraid you’d take him away from me if the truth got out. Put him in a juvenile home. Or worse, try him as an adult and lock him up. I promised his mother I’d always look out for him.”

Biggs said to Captain, “Son, you need to tell me everything. If you started that fire, I need you to tell me exactly how you did it.”

It was a trick that Ronnie had showed him, a trick Captain had tried and tried to master and finally had.

That night behind the trailer, he said to Ronnie, “I won’t tell anyone.”

Ronnie knew he was saying he wouldn’t let it out that he’d been there, wouldn’t say a word about the gasoline. Captain was telling him he’d keep it all a secret. There was still time then to believe that such a thing was possible, that they could go their separate ways, step back into their lives and no one would be the wiser.

“You’re a good friend,” Ronnie said. “You’re better than a million of me.”

He knew he didn’t deserve such goodness. He’d come out in the night to do a bad thing, but he’d spotted that hole in the trailer’s siding, and then Captain was there, and now as much as Ronnie was relieved, he was humbled and ashamed to be standing before this simple boy who, no matter what he was up to with those goats, was good of heart enough to know there were things a man should ignore, things too ugly to let out into the air. Captain was doing him that favor, leaving him to go back into town and to do his best to face the truth about himself. He was the kind of man who could burn out his wife and kids, and Captain was passing no judgment on him for that, was telling him that would be his and his alone to live with.

“You always treated me good,” Captain said. “You let me be your right-hand man.”

Ronnie couldn’t stop himself. He asked Captain why he’d come for the goats. “Why’d you take them?”

Captain’s voice, when he finally spoke, was tinged with just the slightest air of disbelief, as if he couldn’t imagine how Ronnie didn’t know. “They need a better place,” Captain said. “It’s a cold, cold night. They need a warmer place to be.”

That was enough to break Ronnie, the fact that Captain had come to do this favor. The wind was sweeping across the open fields. Overhead, the stars were brilliant in the clear sky. He wanted to put his arms around Captain. He wanted to thank him for being there on this night when he’d come to do harm. He wanted to press the boy to him and believe that people, even him, could be good.

But instead he said, “Guess we both need to get inside where it’s warm.”

Then he gathered up the Marathon can and made his way to his car. He was moving into the wind now, and he couldn’t hear Captain calling his name. He didn’t know that the boy had taken the box of Diamond matches from his jeans pocket, didn’t know that he’d pressed the head of a match against the strike strip, didn’t know that he’d flicked it with his finger — at that moment, the wind died down, and Ronnie felt the eerie calm after all the ruckus — didn’t see that match, perfectly lit, twirling in the dark.

“Look what I can do,” Captain said. “Look what you taught me.”

But Ronnie couldn’t make out the words. He was too far away.

Captain heard the Firebird come to life, not with a revving of the engine like Ronnie usually gave it, but with a low rumble of the exhaust pipes. The Firebird’s tires cracked through the thin ice at the shoulder of the blacktop as the car eased forward. Captain went to the end of the trailer in enough time to see Ronnie creeping up the blacktop, no headlights on, the white of the snow cover on each side of the road enough to guide him before he felt it was safe to turn on his headlights and make his way back into town.

“Ronnie,” Captain said, and he felt something warm his chest, something he had no words for — he only knew it had something to do with the way his mother had always made him believe that he was special, the Captain of the Universe. He only knew it had something to do with his father and Ronnie and Della and all the kids and Missy and Pat and, yes, even with Brandi Tate. Even the goats. All of them on this cold night.

Captain held that feeling inside him. He let it lead him home. He didn’t know that his legs had brushed through the dry grass or that his boots had tracked through the gas that had pooled up on the frozen ground. He didn’t think a thing about the match he’d lit and sent twirling toward the trailer. He didn’t know that the match had fallen onto the old chair, but later he’d know — the kind of knowing you know in your knower, nary a need for proof — that the lit match had twirled and dropped through the suddenly still night and fallen in a place where the first flame, such a small thing it must have been, caught hold, took in fuel and air and before long became something headstrong and wild, nothing anyone could hope to stop.

Biggs listened to the story of the match. Then he said, “Son, where did that gas come from?”

“There was a can sitting on the ground behind the trailer.”

“You didn’t tote it from your place like your daddy thought?”

“No, it was just there.”

Shooter said, “But you gave me cause to believe—”

Biggs interrupted him. He was growing impatient. “So you poured the gasoline around the trailer?”

Captain wouldn’t answer. He got interested in the scab on his hand, picking at the crust. Biggs knew he wouldn’t answer because he hadn’t thought his story all the way through. He didn’t have an answer because he hadn’t been the one to spread that gasoline.

“Son, if there was a can of gas back there,” Biggs said, “what happened to it?”

Shooter answered for him, “I guess it burned up in the fire.”

“Fire marshal deputies went through everything left over there.” Biggs shook his head. “No gas can. You know why, son?” Biggs waited for Captain to look at him, but he wouldn’t. “Because Ronnie took that can away with him, didn’t he? He was the one who poured that gas. Isn’t that so, son? He poured it, and then, if what you’re telling me is the truth, you lit it up.”

Captain’s voice was barely a whisper. “I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to show Ronnie what I could do with that match.”

“I didn’t know any of that,” Shooter said, his voice getting softer now. “I thought Wesley — you know — I thought — well, I wasn’t too far off from what I thought to be true. I couldn’t take a chance that you’d find out.”

“So you made up that story about Ronnie,” Biggs said, “and it turned out to be near enough true.”

Shooter’s voice was fierce now, pleading with Biggs. “Wouldn’t you have done it too? Tell me, wouldn’t you have done whatever it took to save your son?”

Biggs couldn’t say what he would have done had he stood in Shooter’s place, nor did he have an answer to the next question that Shooter asked.

“So tell me, Biggs, who’s to hold to account? My boy or Ronnie Black?”