Shakespeare’s Trollop

Chapter Seven

I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. There was no point in tearing up my bed tossing and turning any longer. In the darkness I slid into my jeans, black sports bra, an old black Nike T-shirt, and my sneakers. My keys and cell phone were always in the same place on my dresser; I pocketed them and slipped out the front door to begin walking.

There had been too many nights of this pointless activity, I reflected. Too many nights of striding through a silent town-for the past few years this particular silent town of Shakespeare. Before that, other towns in other states: Tennessee, Mississippi. My feet moved silently on the pavement as I covered ground.

I seldom felt the compulsion to walk when Jack stayed with me. If I was restless, I satisfied that restlessness in a more intimate way. Tonight I felt worn ragged, and old.

One of the town’s night patrolmen, Gardner McClanahan, saluted me as he cruised slowly by. He knew better than to stop and talk. Though Claude would never have told me, I’d heard the town police called me the Night Walker, a pun on the title of an old TV show. Every patrol officer knew I’d anonymously called in at least five break-ins and three domestic situations, but we’d silently agreed to pretend they didn’t know their tipster was me. After the previous year, they all knew about my past. I thought it very strange that they apparently respected me for it.

I didn’t raise my hand to acknowledge Gardner, as I would some nights. I kept on moving.

Forty minutes later, I’d circled, doubled, gone to all four points of the compass, and still was only about six blocks from home. On Main, I was passing Joe C’s house, thinking once again about its size and age, when I stopped in my tracks. Had that been a flicker of movement among the bushes in the yard of the Prader house? My hand dropped to the cell phone in my pocket, but there was no point calling the police if I’d been mistaken. I slunk into the yard myself, moving through the overgrown shrubbery as silently as I could.

Yes. Ahead of me, someone was moving. Someone all in black. Someone quiet and quick like me. The closest streetlight was half a block away and the yard was deep and shadowy.

It took me only seconds to realize that whoever this trespasser was, he was moving away from the house, not toward it. I wondered if he’d been trying the doors, hoping to enter and steal. I began making my way as quietly as I could through the jungle of Joe C’s yard.

Then I smelled smoke. I froze in position, my head rotating to track from which direction the thick dark scent was pouring.

It was coming from the house. My skin began to crawl with apprehension. Not even attempting quiet movement, I pressed close enough to peer through the open curtains of Joe C’s living room, the room I’d vacuumed just three days before. Now that I was out of the bushes, the streetlight gave me a little visibility. There were no lights on in the house, but I should have been able to see the outlines of the furniture. Instead, there was a dense movement inside the room. After a second, I realized the room was full of smoke; it was coiling against the windows, waiting to be let out. As I stared into the dark moving cloud, I saw the first dart of the flames.

I broke into a run, crashing through the overgrown crepe myrtles and camellias, around the house and up the shaky steps to Joe C’s back door. I’d decided the back door was farthest from the fire. There was no time to waste trying to track the trespasser. As I pounded on the door to wake the old man, I pulled the phone out of my pocket and dialed 911.

I told the dispatcher what the situation was, and she answered, “We’ll be there in a minute, Lily,” which I’d probably find amusing another time. The smell of smoke was increasing by the second. I pocketed the phone and forced myself to touch the doorknob. It wasn’t hot. Though I expected the door would be locked, it opened easily.

A cloud of darkness billowed out. With it came the terrible smell of things being consumed by fire. I was gasping with terror, knowing I had to try to reach Joe C.

I hesitated, shamefully, afraid of being trapped if I went in. I knew the door must be shut behind me to prevent cross breezes from fanning the flames. For a long second, I was awfully tempted to shut myself right back out on the porch. But that was just something I couldn’t do. I took a deep breath of clean air. Then I entered the burning house and closed the opening to safety.

I started to switch on the lights, realized I shouldn’t. In the choking gloom, I made my way across the kitchen to the familiar double sink, felt the dishcloth draped across the divider. I rinsed it out under cold water and held it across my mouth and nose as I tried to fumble my way out of the kitchen and across the hall to Joe C’s bedroom.

I sucked in breath to call the old man, and that breath exploded out in a bout of coughing. I saw flames to my right, in the living room. Smoke, a deadly silent killer, filled the wide hall. I put one hand to the wall to orient myself, touching a picture of Joe C’s mother I recalled was hanging about a yard to the left of the door to Joe C’s bedroom. I could hear sirens now, but no coughing from anyone but me.

“Joe C!” I screamed, the intake of smoke causing me another coughing spasm. I might have heard something in reply. At least I imagined that I heard a faint answer after I gave a second call. The fire was in the living room, moving closer to the hall, licking at something it really liked. I could feel a sudden escalation in its energy, as if it had eaten a piece of candy. Maybe it had grabbed ahold of Joe C’s antique rolltop desk, its wood dry and ready for the flame after a hundred and fifty years of use.

The door to Joe C’s bedroom was closed. I didn’t know if that was usual or not. I turned the knob, and it opened. I was having good luck with doors tonight, if nothing else.

“Joe C,” I called hoarsely. “Where are you?” I stepped cautiously into the bedroom and shut the door behind me.

“Here,” came the feeble reply. “I’m trying to open this damn winda.”

Since Joe C’s bedroom and the kitchen were at the back of the house, away from the streetlight, between the smoke and the natural darkness I couldn’t tell exactly where the old man was.

“Say something!” I began groping my way into the room, colliding with the bedpost as I shuffled forward. That gave me my bearings.

Joe C said a few things, none of them repeatable.

Finally I reached him, hearing him begin to cough so violently that I knew he didn’t have long to go if we stayed inside. I followed his hands up to the two locks on the window, and I took over the job of twisting them. The right one was easy, the left one very stiff. I wrestled with it, decided to break the glass in about one second if the lock didn’t give.

“Damn, woman, get us out of here!” Joe C said urgently. “The fire is at the door!” Then he was overwhelmed by another coughing spasm.

I glanced over my shoulder to see that the door appeared to be cracking, and the cracks had red edges. If I touched that doorknob now, my hands would burn.

As my whole body would if the damn window… there! The lock gave, I reached down to grip the handles, and I heaved up with all my strength. The window, which I had expected to resist, flew up, and I almost lost my footing. I stuck my hand outward to feel, and encountered a screen. Crap.

I took a step back, lifted my leg, and let it fly. The screen popped out of the window like a cork from a bottle, and I said, between bouts of a hacking cough, “I’m going out first, and then I’m getting you over the sill, Joe C.”

He clung to me, still no more than part of the choking darkness, and I had to disengage his hands to swing my leg over the sill. Of course the bushes were thick underneath the window, and since the house was raised, the drop-off was at least a foot higher than I’d anticipated. I didn’t land square on my feet, but careened sideways, grabbing at branches so I wouldn’t end up on the ground. When my footing was stabilized, I turned and felt through the window until I had run my hands under both Joe C’s armpits.

“Hold on to my shoulders!” I urged him, and his bony claws dug into my skin. I put my left foot somewhat back to keep me steady, and I heaved. Because of the high window, the angle was bad; I was too short to get a good purchase. I gradually worked Joe C about halfway out the window. He began hollering. I took two steps back and heaved again, my shoulders in agony from the strain. More of the old man appeared on my side of the window. I repeated the whole process. But now Joe C began yelling in earnest. I craned over his back to see that his left foot remained hooked to the sill in some mysterious way.

I had a moment of sheer panic. I could not think for the life of me-for his life-how I was going to extricate him. Luckily, I didn’t have to solve the problem. There was commotion all around me now. I was never happier to see anyone in my life than the firefighter who pushed past me to unhook Joe C’s left foot and bring it out to join the rest of him. I staggered back under Joe C’s full weight, and instantly men were helping me to stand, whisking the old man over to ambulance.

They tried to load me in, too, but I resisted. I’m no martyr, but I can only afford minimal insurance, and I could manage to stand and walk.

I sat on the tailgate of the fire chief’s pickup while a couple of firefighters gave me oxygen, which felt sweet to my lungs. They checked me over; not a single burn. I reeked of smoke and didn’t think I would ever breathe easily again, but those were minor considerations right now. At least six firefighters told me how lucky I was. They also mentioned that I should have waited for their help in extricating Joe C. I just nodded; I think we all knew that if I’d waited, Joe C wouldn’t have had much of a chance.

When they were sure I was going to be all right, the two men who’d been tending to me went to help with the more exciting activity across the street. I didn’t know if they’d be able to put out the fire before the first floor collapsed, but it was clear Joe C was not going to get his often-stated wish of dying in his own home.

Gradually, though the hubbub around me continued, I was able to think about something other than how afraid I’d been. I was able to think about what I’d seen.

“You feeling better?” demanded a nasal voice.

I nodded without looking up.

“Then you want to tell me how you came to be here?”

My questioner was Norman Farraclough, Claude’s second in command. He was called “Jump” Farraclough, the result of a story I’d never completely understood. I’d encountered Jump several times. He always seemed to be holding any judgment about me in reserve until he’d observed me a little longer. Actually, that was pretty much the same way I felt about him.

Jump was a late-night weightlifter, when his shift permitted. He often arrived at Body Time just when I was leaving karate class. The assistant police chief had a sharp hooked nose, a tiny mustache, and a pumped body that looked awkward in his blue uniform.

The fire chief, Frank Parrish, holding his helmet by one strap, came to stand by Jump, and they both looked down at me with expectant faces.

I explained very slowly how I’d come to be passing Joe C’s house. Slowly, because not only was breathing still an act I wasn’t taking for granted, but also I wanted to be sure I didn’t make any error, any ambiguous statement, in what I was telling them. I told Jump and Frank about seeing someone in the yard, smelling the smoke, and finding the back door unlocked.

Jump’s face remained expressionless, but Frank was openly troubled by my story.

“Was it a man or a woman?” he asked when I’d come to the end.

“Couldn’t tell.”

“Which direction did he go in?”

“Towards the back of the yard, but there’s no fence back there. He could’ve gone anywhere after that.”

“And that back door was unlocked?”

I sighed, tried to keep it inaudible. “Yes.” It was the third time Frank had asked me.

“You work for Joe C, right?” Jump squatted down to my level to look me directly in the eyes. If this was supposed to be intimidating, it didn’t work.

“Yes.”

“You and him get along?”

“He’s a dirty old bastard,” I said.

And that shocked them, me saying out loud what everyone on God’s green earth already knew.

“But you went in to the house to get him?”

“Obviously I did.” Though I was beginning to regret it.

“That lot is worth a right smart piece of change,” Frank observed to the night air.

I had no response to that. I wanted to shower, to get the stink of smoke off me. I never wanted to smell it again.

“I’m going home.” I stood and began walking.

“Whoa, just a minute!” Jump got into step beside me. “Listen, lady, you ain’t got no privileges now, with your buddy gone.”

“You’re talking about your boss? The boss whose wedding I just attended? As his bride’s best friend?” This behavior wasn’t typical of me, but I was going to pull every string I could to get away from this fire, away from the old house and the smoke.

“Doesn’t cut any ice with me,” Jump stated, but I didn’t believe him.

“Your testosterone’s showing,” I told him. He glanced down before he could stop himself. “I saw a fire, I reported it like a good citizen, and I helped an old man escape death. You can make something suspicious out of that if you want, but I don’t think it’s gonna fly.” And I lengthened my stride, leaving him standing and staring after me with baffled irritation on his shadowed face.